Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General So... what is Sven's big upcoming surprise ?

Same

Hmm I was thinking again about what might have been debated at the very beginning. In BG 1 & BG 2, there was only the classic adventurer-hero route. Sure, you could make evil decisions up to a certain point in-game, but in terms of the main story, you really only ever destroyed the bad guys and were hailed as a hero. What if Baldur's Gate 3 breaks that tradition, which is very possible with the tadpole and knowledge we currently have about it, is much more aligned and supportive of an evil plot route. What if Baldur's Gate 3 can be played in addition to the hero route leaning towards Obsidians "Tyranny"? That would indeed be a surprise for all those who are toying with the murder hobo route. And yes the current criticisms about missed EA opportunities of a murder hobo style may have been intentional as it is still to remain a secret.

I have seen something ...


So ...
Maybe the big secret is the amount of differences between EA and 1.0

I know there’s a good chance you weren’t being serious, but for context here’s why this type of reveal is unlikely: ask yourself “Why in the hell would they need to keep it secret if that was a feature they were adding to the game?”.
This would be advertised to hell and back as a feature.

I’m afraid that the people suspecting some “meme stuff” are a lot more close to nailing what Swen would promote as a big, exciting surprise.

After more thought I'm now convinced it's some ridiculously OP crafting system that allows you to make bombs from a piece of string and some plant that grows everywhere. Or combine potions to make some inane haste+heal+bless aoe bombs.

Surely the crafting system of 5e needs to be fixed since it's not broken.

Didn't Larian state that they would keep crafting very tame in the past?

The point of these posts is to passive aggressively throw shade on Swen and Larian. Don’t take them at face value.

I would prefer if we could keep crafting to a minimum. Why did it become a neccessity instead of a fun gimmick? I find it tedious and I would really appreciate if I could fully ignore it without having to suffer for it.

I expect potions at least-Larian has put a lot herbs, crystals and flowers etc in-game that could work very well for thar role. I'm not expecting something like NWN2's armor/weapon crafting system though.


Drow being originally Green Elves is not exactly 100% canon. If you take the Lady Penitent series to heart, then yeah maybe you could interpret that way since they have both been describe in similar physical terms IIRC. But Drow/Green Elves being their own separate subspecies distinct from the Green Elves has ample precedence before and after that series. Plus the whole 'Curse of Ham' thing with the literal blood taint that particular series decided to run with made lots of people uncomfortable at the time and absolutely would not fly today.

Have WOTC talked about any non-Menzo cities post the whole Udadrow/Aevendrow/Lorendrow debacle? Their new history/definition of the drow leaves very little wiggle room to interpret vast sprawling underdark cityscapes spread around Toril. The wording they use makes it clear that Menzo=udadrow and that the Lorendrow/Aevendrow are the 'good' equivalents to that city state. Note stuff like the Lorendrow being an open surface-dwelling city in southern Faerun that doesn't try to hide but is safe from the Spider Queen because of it's *geographical distance* from Menzoberanzan. Which makes no damn sense if cities like Guallidurth or the nation of Dambrath were canon, because Southern Faerun is(was) an absolute bastion of ancient and powerful drow holdings. It's also 100% clear in the new canon that the Lolth-worshipping drow originate from Menzo, and it was Lolth's fault for tricking them underground (specifically to found Menzo) rather than the Crown Wars origin. Menzo is only a few thousand years old btw, which mean drow as we know them are basically a blip on the radar in terms of FR history now.

I’ve seen enough of Sven to think he is a simple man (good thing) who gets excited over things like shiny armor and cheese!

The only mechanical thing I can think would spur this kind reaction from Swen would maybe be the world map. It's something that would be revealed relatively early and would far exceed most people's expectations based on the EA

I'm liking this.
Would be great to get a peak and idea of the general world lore with the map. Something that is dreadfully missing in this EA of a game, a firm Faerun lore foothold to get us involved in this world. I am not immersed when I play BG3, well not as much as I would like to be.

In this game, I'd rather have a fully voiced one, the close ups mime shots are strange. Ya, I heard the same about it being dropped, would be a lovely surprise if it wasn't though, well see.

Overall, my bet is that what Sven is indicating is likely how everything ties back to the situation with BG1 and BG2. It's pretty much a given that with how the various DoS games have eluded to, the protagonist(s) end up saving the world in some way, either becoming guardians (DOS) or setting someone up as the guardian (your protagonist, one of your companions, the antagonists - DOS 2), so I see the same kind of thing happening with BG3 (even in BG2:ToB you had the option to either let the antagonist take the power, keep the power for yourself, or let the power disperse). Same situation setup I see going here with BG3 where Larian re-hashes their typical endings from DOS 1 and/or 2.


Thing is, they're still keeping a fair amount of Greenwood's world information. Afterall, they backtracked on the lore and happenings of 4E (killing all the Drow gods off except for Lolth and Ghaunaduar since it's more than a Drow god) which lends a lot to keeping various information found in the *Drow of the Underdark* from both 2E and 3E/3.5E. If you go back through that information, which WotC hasn't completely gone off the deep end like Disney did, can still go back on the old information and pull it forward and that old information does point specifically at Green Elves becoming the Drow when they were fighting against the Gold Elves when the Gold Elves almost destroyed some of the other Elven sub-groups. In order to fight back, the Green Elves turned to Lolth and demons to fight back against the Gold Elves even though the Seldarine also were fighting against the Gold Elves as well and assisting the other Elven sub-groups. Because of the tactics of the Green Elves and the overall destruction that was happening to the Elves overall and the fact that the Gold Elves were willing to return to the Seldarine even though it was there actions that lead to the war between all the Elves that the Seldarine then cursed the Green Elves turning them into the Drow and left the Drow with only the option of continuing to follow Lolth and thus went underground into the Underdark.

The other thing to realize is that WotC with 5E have really limited the scope of Toril that they actually talk about with it centering around the Sword Coast area of Faerun and not really dealing with other areas. It's known that there's a very large above ground Drow populus out in the Dalelands. Though, because WotC is concentrating on the Sword Coast, that isn't brought up in 5E much. WotC would rather try to push in MtG settings into D&D instead of using the existing world settings they have access to. So I wouldn't say that it's really WotC changing things around a lot, but instead ignoring what is out there already (this is why if you go to *Dungeon Master's Guild*, you'll find a lot of written material for 5E from Ed Greenwood and others for the Faerun setting outside of the situation in the Sword Coast).

In the early days, right after the first trailer dropped, all I remember is the discussion centered around BG2's unfinished quest involving the Illithids in the sewers under the Temple District. And that quest's connections with truncated Jan Jansen's quest-line involving the Hidden.Everyone seemed to think Larian was planning to play off the loose threads as one way to connect BG3 to the previous installments.Who knows really? But, I imagine that it's something story related, otherwise there's no need to be too secretive.

I'm aware of the Drow's previous history, you don't need to recite back to me the entire history of the Crown Wars and the Descent, lol. If you read other sourcebooks and novels though, the definitely distinguish between the dark elves and the green elves both culturally and physically. And the nature of the curse is more ambiguous with other authors as well. Some sources suggest that the drow were never transformed at all.

The thing about welcome moderate rollback of the awful ideas of 3e/4e (killing the Dark Seldarine off, for one) is that this occurred at the start of 5e, and the more recent drow changes came after that and supersede that. So when WoTC says udadrow come from Menzoberranzan, that udadrow are defined as the Lolth-worshipping drow of the underdark, that Menzoberranzan was founded by an isolated cult only a few thousand years ago and imply that most drow never followed and still don't follow Lolth, when the descriptions of the new non-lol-worshipping city states conspicuously ignore the existence of pre-established drow enclaves and populations of both lolth-worshipping and non-lolth-worshipping drow, I don't think it's a matter of WoTC's typical attitude of just not being interested in fleshing out areas of the Realms. They merely rewrote the entirety of drow culture without regard to prior canon-and their new canon views the drow as being divided into three flavors easily defined by their association with a specific city-state. There is no question that the Drow's role as villains has shrunk. And that's not even getting to the metaplot stuff with the revolution in Menzo, or how even before the recent retcons, there was precious little outside of the return of the Seldarine that was actually meaningfully repaired (all the cities destroyed in the War of the Spider Queen+4e were still gone)

As for Greenwood and the DMG, nothing he posts on his patron, his youtube, or anything he publishes on the DMG is strictly canon, as far as WoTC treats it. He's a superb world-builder, but I haven't seen much indication pretty much since 5e launched that he's still part of their creative team in any meaningful way/ Much less whatever Larian is cooking up.

Yes, meme stuff is more likely.
I wasn't being serious 100%, but a part of me wants to believe it.

Based on a certain thing that was dropped here a while ago, which, to be far, could have been just an independent artist's own creation, I have a suspicion that the "surprise" could be...


...or it could just be references to the Bhaalspawn and maybe even an ability to "customize" them in a KoTOR 2 fashion where you picked Revan's gender and Force side in a conversation early on. Could use Volo and his lack of credibility for that, so it doesn't turn into Jaheira and Minsc having memory issues about their famous lover/friend?

It might just be something like: Withers is *actually* Jergal!

That's something they'd want to wait for folks to know, and it was a big speculation point back around day one.

Then the Grand Arbiter he mentions is Ao, which makes sense. But if he supports us at the behest of Ao himself, that's also an imposant plot that should live up to the rest of the implementation. That would be a very high claim from Larian, against which they then have to be measured themselves. I mean it's a strange feeling to somehow be in the favor of not just any god, but Ao himself. Very bold.