Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General To those who played BG2…

That depends on what you mean by better/worse...

It will release to great fanfare, and lots of people will have fun playing it. So in that regard it will be a success. By that metric whether it is better or worse has more to do with the interests of the person playing than anything else.

On the other hand, I doubt that we will talking about Baldur's Gate 3 in 20 years, so by that metric BG2 is "better". I could be wrong about that though. Only time will tell.

One of the most common complaints I hear about Bg1 and 2 when people go back to play it is that it "hasn't aged well and it feels like work to play it".

People will say that about BG3 in 20 years... if its lucky. Probably they will just ignore it though. That doesn't mean that I think it will be bad. I have enjoyed my time playing it. Its just that most games don't stick around that long, and I doubt this one will be much different.

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 still have people going back to them in spite of the fact that they "haven't aged well", and I hear that they also have a sequel in the works.

I miss the days of the curving BG1 arrows and the home brew to “fix” it.

It's a recurring idiocy people say about a lot of older games.

Frankly I feel that the only aspect of BG2 that didn't "age that well" is its technical obsolescence: natively designed around a very low resolution, with an abysmal default frame rate, etc.
And you could make an argument for the inventory system being a bit more cumbersome that it should be. Which ironically enough is a complain that can be applied to BG3 as well.


Then you have slightly modernized takes on the same formula (PoE 2 and both the Pathfinder games) proving almost everything of the core system can still work just fine to this day.

Its hard to judge or review BG2 because there is just SO MUCH CONTENT going for it. TONS and TONS of spells. But yea, lots of junk (some are fun!). TONS of creatures. Some very annoying. LOTS of playable companions, but not all created equally in terms of content. A bazillion interesting magical items...and some annoying inventory management. Still when you look at it as a whole, its just a beast of a game.
So naturally a lot of stuff can be criticized very easily.
Comparing the two games is just not possible anymore...BG2 was amazing for its time (and still is imho...) but its like arguing a CRT tv is better than a new OLED. People who have never lived through gaming with CRTs just cannot begin the understand why gamers would use such displays (when used with classic games). Why would you game with a CRT lol? Like why would you prefer BG2 over BG3`s modern systems and technical advancements.

My view...there is room to have fun with simple ideas and basic systems as much as new complex and technology advanced systems. I listen to my music digitally yet I also have an analogue amp+record system. They offer different experiences.

I think Larians comment about "boring" Player Characters comes into play.
They think you choose Horns because "they look cool" and dont see the grounded player who thinks "no horns, or some townsfolk think im evil".
Larians approach is "cheap" entertainment and every minute without fireworks is a lost minute.
Firework is nice, Highlights have their place but muist be every minute of Game more awesome than the last?

I am playing BG II right now, getting in the spirit for the upcoming BG III release. BG II has aged as well as I have, I guess, and I still enjoy it in a zen kind of way ... pure escapism. It's way better than watching TV. For me, the BG series was the best way to get a D&D experience because I did not have much time for a regular pen-n-paper group. BG works for me, and although I have tried a few others years ago, BG is the only one I want to play. If Larian were just doing another version of their in-house games (Divinity Original Sin, et. al.), I would not be interested at all.

I heard there is actually a market now for CRT displays! Apparently certain vintage console games were optimized for the CRT analog raster scan method, and will actually look better on a CRT than on a digital pixellated display. Sort of like the use of 12AX7 vacuum tubes in guitar amps ... no other way to get that sweet overdrive.

@Argyle

I suspect the same, I just don’t remember it looking that pixilated when first released… Mayhaps it’s just nostalgia kicking in…

I generally try not to compare things, one vs the other.

For me, BG1 and BG2 are among my most beloved games. I have played both of them more times than I care to admit. It is safe to say that I have put more hours into BG series than any other single game, and likely any other franchise. So that is an incredibly high bar.

Thus far, I have thoroughly enjoyed BG3 in early access. I think it has a ton of potential to rank up there in my estimation. I love the graphics, the turn based combat, the companions, the story, the (more or less) open world approach to tackling the map (meaning that you aren't restricted to a single path and can go anywhere you don't get killed. might be a different definition than others' of 'Open World' but it is what I meant here). I love the exploration and the different ways to tackle various challenges. My latest playthrough was with a bard and I am silver tongue talking my way out of most things. So there is definitely versatility.

In the end, I look forward to the full release and thoroughly exploring the entire game before I make any judgements. If the rest of the game lives up to Chapter 1, it is likely to make it into my top 10 list. I guess we will see with time.

Overall, I agree. I never have any problems playing BG2 over and over. It does have to be said that one aspect you don't mention is the problematic pathing in both BG1 and BG2. I can't tell you how many 'accidental deaths' resulted from the pathing taking my party members places that they shouldn't have gone. "Imoen, why are you going the LONG way around?????"

😂

https://8bitpickle.com/video-games/best-crt-tv-for-retro-gaming/
https://geekflare.com/crt-instead-of-leds-for-retro-gamers/

Yeah, believe it or not, this is a thing.

Now if only I could convince a modern car manufacturer to make car which looks like a '57 Ford Thunderbird on the outside, but is really no more than a Honda Civic on the inside. I gotta have the air conditioning and good mileage.

If walls-of-text were subject to gravity (or Larian environmental shenanigans), this thread would be deemed a hazard zone lol. So let me be short and sweet.

Of course it will be better. Not even a contest!

Mini wall-of-text: Will it be as good relative to its contemporaries though? Probably not so much considering BG pioneered the cRPG genre and overdelivered besides. Storywise it's hard to tell, the original BG-series was a pretty stereotypical rags to riches story. You started out hunting rats in a warehouse, and ended up akin to a god chasing demons in hell. Part of the secret sauce was developing a relationship over several games over several years - much like in the Mass Effect series and it would be unfair to compare BG3 after just one game. Especially with the rose-tinted glasses of old fans who just as much miss the naivete of youth. BG3 is akin to Bioware of old though: Great focus on roleplaying and party interactions, just taken to the next level and then some. If you hate Bioware - you're likely not to love this.

Oh gosh I really do. I honestly really do.

I tried liking Dragon Age Origins and Baldurs Gate 2. I hated them both. I honestly don't like games with an immense level of complexity. If that's what I want, I'd play Civilizations just like everyone else. To give you an idea of my threshold for too-complex games... Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion is about as much as I can take. That's it.

Divinity 2 DKS was a very simple game and I loved it. I also love Horizon Zero Dawn for the same reason.

Gameplaywise, RTWP was never all that great – but there’s some fan-made combat mod for Icewind Dale 2 that I installed way back, and the intensity and perfect level of difficulty it added to every encounter was a stroke of genius.

I installed combat mods for BG2 ‘way back’ that likewise made it interesting, but nowhere near as perfectly balanced as that combat mod for ID2.

I’ve no interest in multiplayer – don’t have time for it, never will, so it could be a proper pile of shite and it wouldn’t bother me in the least.

Storywise, Larian is all over the gaff with BG3. The latest trailer exposed how insecure they are in their vision – it’s everything but the kitchen sink in terms of ‘tone’. A hobbling, yabbering narratively-inbred thing that doesn’t know if it should be campy/goofy – Larian’s trademark style – or all ‘serious’, with it’s sombre ‘My life was dismantled piece by piece’ opening.

‘Show don’t tell’ is a cliché in fiction, when a lot of the best literary writers paid this no heed, to astounding effect.

But here Larian should heed that advice as we’re being bashed over the head with the drama they’re trying to set up.

Of course it’ll be a playable game. Their artists are talented, if only they could go back to the solid ‘chiaroscuro’ style from earlier patches over the horrid ‘make everything bright’ style. The blacker, starker graphics work great in particular for video games, which still cannot match the visual punch of reality. Yet they erased this darker style in later patches – there are many threads on the topic. It’s amazing how bad that decision is, art-wise.

As someone who used to dabble in painting/sketching and even won a few awards for it ‘back in the day’, I happen to have strong opinions on the visual art side.

This is the only place I can truly complement Larian. They have genuinely talented artists – there are many places in the game where the graphical work is exceptional. More so in the later parts of the act, such as the unfortunately named ‘Grymforge’ (did you get that it’s a grim forge???).
But despite their artistic talent, BG2 had, as others mentioned, a more evocatively lowkey aesthetic, that knew when to dial things up and when to tone things down. It matters not a damn that it’s an old game, because the art was hand-drawn. That will never age. 10 years from now, though, BG3’s 3D graphics will look potato-esque.

The drow city in BG2 had a sinister, spidery menace. Likewise, the cerebral geometric shapes within the illithid city were far more imaginative and alien than Larian’s Hollywood blockbuster take on the ship of these creatures, with the silly flashy floor lights etc.

Character-wise, as others have mentioned here, BG2 knocked it out of the park. Someone here once chastised me for saying BG2’s devs weren’t ‘having a laugh’. Yeah, they clearly were in all aspects of the characterisation. Where BG3 tries too hard to please with its overly special posse of dry-shites, BG2’s characters were rough-hewn, made for the craic rather than the memes.

There is no story on earth that is a masterpiece that will appeal to everyone, flawlessly, and not have some aspects people view as naff, dated, derivate, or what-have-you.

But you have to look at the overall thing and what it achieves. Does it have the ‘magic’, in its rough, imperfect way? BG2 did. BG3 does not.

It will be a competent, big-budget game, with good gameplay, possibly great artwork and a truly forgettable story.

Not sure what part of it you think it's funny.
In a lot of ways some high end CRT panels are still virtually unmatched in terms of response time/ghosting/color quality.

The downsides are that if you want a screen of a decent size you better be ready to have a 90Kg beast on your desk... Plus the whole "radiations in your face" thing.

I recently did a rerun of the BG2 with some balance-tweaking mods installed, and definitely disagree that it ‘hadn’t aged well’. The core mechanics are identical to the likes of WOTR and other similar ‘modern’ games such as POE etc. The only difference is it’s hand-drawn, rather than 3D – and I happen to prefer the hand-drawn assets over pillars and WOTR.

I’d agree that what BG3 is mostly missing is what you might call a ‘soul’. Athkatla was immersive from the get-go – the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, the rumble of the medieval crowd. It’s amazing how effective simple sound effects are in luring you into the world they created.

I don’t even hear anything authentic in BG3’s overly elaborate villages, such as the Druid Grove, which looks almost comically implausible in its setup. This place seems to rely more on special effects, such as the swirly glowing effects at the centre. It would be more interesting if it was less in-your-face about the fantasy aspect and more grounded in the art. Then let the sound effects carry the rest: the bustle of the place and these druids murmuring and conversing in the background. We seem to be missing all of these ‘little touches’.

Likewise, the ambience of the world outside the villages seems quite dead compared to BG2. There doesn’t appear to be any life going on in the place.

In general, the whole thing seems very plastic and shallow, over-workshopped and more than a little fake.

I don’t like any of the OTT characters.

The gameplay is well-designed – I haven’t had any issues with this. But the story is so weak that I don’t know if I could bring myself to commit to the inevitable 200 hours (or whatever it will be in the end) to see it through. I had this same problem with DOS2.

I would have preferred a proper indie company to have made BG3. A company less eager to please. But too late now, I guess. We’re stuck with what we’ve got.

Once again impressed by the quality of the responses in this forum. Find myself enthusiastically agreeing with nearly everything @Tuco said and mostly agreeing with @Leucrotta.

First with @Leucrotta's comments on 2e Faerun



I agree, the BG2 era when the setting felt like the setting. At first, I was very happy with the launch of 5e because it was undoing the damage of 4e but my enthusiasm since has dampened. Initially I was trilled with 5e's decision to return to the DIY, 1e spirit - "this is a DIY game, the rules are just guides, change them if you want to" - but since start of the 6e revisions I think that WotC has veered too far in the "do whatever you want" direction. Ideally everyone wants the freedom to do what every they want at their own table but you also want the setting to maintain its integrity. I think 2e was able to steer the ship between a rock and hard place - never straying too far towards the rock of complete freedom or the hard place of feeling like the rules were too restrictive to be fun. I think 6e is steering course towards the rocks and doing so at the expense of setting integrity. The rules all boil down to "do what you want" why do you need a setting at all?

Things like "in Faerun everyone worships a god" make Faerun, Faerun; unfortunately the decision to remove the wall of the faithless undoes that - instead of saying "if you don't like the wall just eliminate it from your table" the devs chose to remove the bit of lore that ensured that everyone had to chose a god. And they did in errata! Eratta! Not that I'm bitter. They the changes to player species also make Faerun seem less like Faerun. Instead saying "if your DM says you can play half gnome go for it, have fun" the devs have removed the rules that only allowed half elves and half orcs as playable races. This changes the setting quite a bit - yes, changes it a fun way - you can be anything at all but "anything goes" changes the feel of the setting. Now the cities of the Forgotten Realms feel more like Sigil than BG2 era Baldur's Gate.

And all of this before Larian gets its hands on the lore - lore that the Larian ceo doesn't appear to know or to value. (although I think he, unlike WotC understands that people like alignment)

So it will be a fun game - it just won't be a sequel to BG2 because the setting that produced BG2 is gone and the developers of this game aren't great lovers of the lore.



Again enthusiastic with nearly everything Tuco said. Especially the bit about the amusement park maps, hate them. I but do have minor disagreement with the quoted section. While BG3 is indeed more reactive it's ground trigger based banter system is it inferior to BG2's timer based banter system. In BG3 you can hear nearly all of you companions lines while running over the triggers outside of the blighted village but your party members go strangely quiet in the underdark - in BG2 you never knew when a conversation was going to happen and that gave the interactions an organic feel. (and sometimes provided unintended comic relief -" uh, yeah, I also like the cut of your gib. Let's talk once the dragon stops trying to kill us, okay?)

Also with the flaw with range of option is a symptom of a larger problem. In BG2 the conversations had two paths - a) walk the path that daddy Bhaal wants you walk down or b) restrain your rage and disarm the trap your father set for you. In that game choosing the path of peace didn't feel "submissive" it felt like a victory against fate itself. Why in BG3 I would choose the pacifist path? To win points with Shadowheart I guess?

Didn't find myself agreeing with anything that The Red Queen said except this:


The BG3 companions do have more layers than the BG2 companions but there just aren't many of them. One of the reasons BG2 has such high replay value is the number of companions - there are some dialogues that only come up if you have Yoshimo, Viconia and Haer Dalis in your party . . .

No, they do not.

They have trinkets and gimmicks galore, but it takes a very ‘special’ person to think that = ‘layers of depth’. Lol to that, lol and lol again.

BG3, I would say, have the worst possible writers going at the moment. They’re even banking on a former Gamespot critic to deliver. A ‘game critic’ is writing the characters – says everything you need to know.

The latest trailers expose how lacklustre and tame and limp and very small the whole thing is – it’s the narrative equivalent of dandruff.

It’s mind-boggling (IMO) how anyone can buy into these side-shows over the simply brilliant BG2 equivalents.

This game will be forgotten for sure. They haven’t a clue what they want to do with the thing. Outside of the cult, pretty much everyone sees this thing for the dud that it is.

Anyway, ‘let them off’. Let them spend their millions on ‘live capture’ for their horrible lines…

It could not be worse, really.