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

[casual cRPG player warning]
While I don't mind stat rolling being optional, the issue I see is that it is not a table-top session. Digital won't take into account your stats, if your character is optimised. The game hardly gives value to stats not invested in class relevant attributes, and roleplaying player does is mostly disconnected from his attributes.

I do think in general that attributes system is just not very interesting in D&D - it is a tests if the player understands how his class works, but doesn't actually offer any interesting choice. However, as I see it the only thing that stat rolling would bring in a BG3 is an opportunity for your character to be either overoptimised or underoptimised for combat - our roleplaying capacity would be left untouched. Neither of which I see as a good option, but as long as I would have access to point buy around which the game is balanced, I would be happy.

But yeah, as far as I am concerned attribute distribute could be completely removed from D&D and just automatically assigned based on our choice of class/race. Would be about as interesting as far as I am concerned.
[/casual cRPG player warning]

Yes, Red Queen has it, Larian doesn't have anything on NWN's UI as in, as much as people complain about the UI in BG3, it's no where near as bad as NWN. I'd agree with Warlocke on the story in NWN, which I remember being mostly by-the-numbers, when I said I'd sunk serious time into NWN, that's mostly through all the modules people have made for it.

The higher level you get in 3e, it's hats upon hats, more and more ungainly. Pathfinder, which people sometimes call 3.75, I don't think did much to mitigate that. This is mostly what I was referring to when I said that each edition dissatisfies in its own way.

If it's any consolation, The Red Queen, the difficulty and/or tedium of the combat in WotR has come up often enough. Here's one I remember being a fun example of how a fairly simple encounter can play out without any of the "safeties" on, naturally, actual combat doesn't start until 4 minutes in.

I remember personally slamming my head against the wall for a while against the Playful Darkness (I think that's the one)

It was the lack of a party and a deep story that killed me on NWN. Never even played NWN 2 because of it. IWD was ok but the dead pan party without any interactions/story elements was a let down for me. Planescape Torment was by far my favorite (after BG1/2 of course).

On this matter, it makes me think that there was an image with a message when the EA started... it was : "Gaters are going to gate" (is it what Swen was referring to ?)
There are also rumors about the planeshift artifact...
And in one of the last trailers, there was a strange creature which reminded me of another version of the Lady of Pain...
I do not expect a direct connexion with Sigil, but I hope/expect there will be a good chunk of planeshifting

That's a shame, as NWN2 is nothing like NWN1 - D&D "build your own campaign" toolbox swapped for proper campaign with all halmark Obsidian ambition and jank (though base campaign is very by the numbers considering the studio). It's expansion, Mask of Betrayed could be particularly of interest to you as it channels some Torment vibes.

In controls rather horribly. Really poor UI, and not great 3d camera.

NWN2 had a party, so very different from NWN in that regard. The story was okay, but it had a stronghold management phase that I quite liked. The sequel Mask of the Betrayer had a fantastic story (IMO of course).

I don't think we would have seen such a rapid and widespread proliferation of 3rd edition mechanics if the system wasn't solid enough. Many iconic rpgs of the time used 3rd. Again, KoTOR is build off of that. We are still getting 3rd edition derivative games in the form of the recent Pathfinder game. 4th edition was an absolute desert in terms of worthwhile rpgs, and 5th is only now finally warming up to video games with Solasta and BG III.

I don't think that 3rd edition really has anything left to 'prove' in terms of its track record of video games. It has some places where it struggles, but overall an excellent backbone to build a video game off of. 5e is still Jr on the block, the only real notable game it has brought to the table so far is Solasta, and that's 3rd party. *despite* 5e being noticeably more popular than any other edition. It has plenty left to prove, IMO.

Yeah as others have already said, NwN2 was a completely different game from NwN1. It was made by Obsidian and had a party with real NPC companions. And Mask of the Betrayer is one of the best cRPGs ever made.

Planescape is the rare game that manages to be both janky and perfect. It’s one of the only games that will run of my Surface, so I have a playthrough I’m slowly making my way through now in fits and starts. I’ve still never played anther game that weird and wonderful.



Yeah, that camera is something else. Three different modes and all of them bad. Game is otherwise a marked improvement over the first.

Planescape: Torment is singular. The only thing I can say against it though, it doesn't really need the rpg system it's built with, it almost veers into visual novel.

Has anyone played Zeno Clash, it's the only game that approaches the tone and style of Planescape I can think of, more than Numenera even.

This is mostly close to what I was describing. I don't hate 3rd Edition. I just think it has it's flaws. And some of them may be highly subjective, which I fully admit. And the only experience I have with later editions consists of Solasta and BG3, both of which I absolutely love.

As a side note, I once tried a mod that changed BG2 into 3rd edition. Boy was that a disappointment. Maybe I have just played the vanilla version so much that I missed the point. Things like the Gauntlets of Ogre power only giving +2 to strength? I mean, I get it. but kind of turns a banger magic item into a meh item. In any event, I didn't enjoy it. I loved NWN 1-2 though, so....

For myself, NWN 1 was my introduction to the D&D CRPGs, so a good deal of my fondness for it may lie in the nostalgia factor. I played Icewind Dale and BG quite a bit later.

The base campaign may have been quite meh (I enjoyed it for what it is, and while it lacked BG's many strong points it being 3e rather than 2e is a huge improvement all by itself. Act 2 was a bloated mess, but there are good quests and moments to be had regardless), but the expansions are most certainly worth a go. And there are numerous great modules to play, which often outshine Bioware's own work in what they offer to the player - it's too bad / all too telling that perhaps the most known one is, um, of raunchy variety (A Dance With Rogues...). It's a great, if not fully accurate (ToEE is a lot closer) 3e engine with practically infinite content to play.

NWN 2, though, didn't get as much attention and community effort thanks to how horrid its toolset is to use compared to NWN 1's (Baldur's Gate: Reloaded is really good, but it's also janky as all damnation - I am still waiting on Reloaded 2 to come out, had hoped it'd be out before BG3 releases). The campaigns are quite good though, even if the base one was really heavily cut (the Obsidian curse remaining from KotOR 2, no less). MotB is downright brilliant, and SoZ is a great sandbox with full party building and a really good dialogue system which more games should have used (only Wasteland 2 did something similar, to my memory, and not nearly as detailed), where you can hot-swap characters mid-conversation to choose skill- or race- or class- or alignment-based responses.

Why did Sven say "on the very first day ", twice...i think you're on to something. Perhaps it's two worlds like Faerun\Shadowfell well be visiting them both. or a tie in to BG1&2...

The game already shows the Shadowfell in the intro cinematic and there already confirmed tie-ins to the previous games.

Saying something twice isn’t a secret code. It’s just Swen being excited and emphasizing how early people were speculating about the thing he wants to talk about and can’t.

Oops replied to the wrong thread.

As for the reveal - i think it’s about Viconia.

She’s one of the most loved companions from prior games, she’s a drow and she’s a worshipper of Shar. Makes sense.

Isn't there's this thing about...

I wouldn't see this as anything more (or less) problematic than the fact that Jaheira or Minsc or indeed Viconia herself could have died in the course of either BG1 or BG2 depending on player actions. In fact, BG2 blithely ignored that they might have come to a sticky end or never have joined up in BG1. Personally, while I do like the idea of being able to preserve choices throughout a series, I can see how it can quickly become a nightmare for developers, if, eg, the fact that a minority of players might have romanced a companion in one game from 20 years ago means that she can't be used at all (or there needs to be an alternative character to play her role) in a new game. I certainly wouldn't blame Larian for sidestepping this issue and just picking versions of events that work for their story, though I hope they'll not be overly specific and rule out too many possible variations of the BG1/BG2 story, and I definitely hope they don't explicitly go with the Abdel Adrian version.

In BG2 we literally had a few seconds to react and save Viconia who was - as usual - about to be executed for her crimes.

Picking “default” bg2 Viconia epilogue, in which she’s still alive and well makes more sense than creating a new Minsc out of a statue…

Im not sure if that is the shadowfell were looking at in the trailer, some have speculated that were looking at Cania the 8th layer of hell.