Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What games are you playing while waiting for BG3?/No Politics version.

Maybe ... but its not the same.

I for one love BG-3 and dont regret buying it for a second ...
Yet, i feel no urge to buy either previous BG, or Divinity games ... bcs its simply not the same.

I won’t probably find time for it before BG3 launch, but I am slowely thinking more and more about giving it a go.

It's funny you mention ST: TNG because I used to love that show when I was young - it wasn't until later watching it as an adult that i found myself fast forwarding through all the exposition. It was one of the shows that made me realize how much exposition diminishes the story. Understand, they did not have to use exposition, they did it to meet the run-time instead of telling a story properly. Honestly I find Strange New Worlds to be a much better written show with less exposition.

But you are right, it's one of two things I take personally in media. The other is laugh tracks. Laugh tracks are - if anything - much worse. They are telling you what to think. "We don't think you are smart enough to get these jokes so here is a laugh track to tell you".

Exposition can be occasionally excused in small doses - laugh tracks are unforgivable. It should be a jailable offense.

A few things though:


Well, that's a tricky one - because Obi Wan straight up lies to Luke. Obi Wan is being an unreliable narrator of events. There is subtext involved in this exchange and even a certain degree of conflict. And him confessing the truth later also has a LOT of subtext that conveys his own disappointment in himself and Anakin. Especially in the second dialogue there is an attack/defend pattern to the dialogue. Reading the subtext - Luke - "You lied to me" - Obi Wan: "Yeah, I really didn't want to have to explain how much I fucked up"

Remember, exposition is purely factual with no subtext.


Never needs to happen, because it's irrelevant to the audience. Have it happen off-camera and let the dialogue be about character development.

"Ok so how the fuck do I get there?"

"Oh, what, this your first visit to the depressing swamps of ass-smelling fungus? Not a typical summer destination for house fancy-pants? Let me point out some of the more scenic vistas for you!"

I find your feelings on exposition and laugh tracks fascinating. That you interpret them as insults is interesting yo mr. If anything I would take them as the opposite, they're not confident enough in the joke or their ability to convey information adequately so they're compensating for their own shortcomings.

The star wars example is indeed interesting because it only becomes a lie retroactively. When it was written Vader was not meant to be Luke's father, so I would argue it's still exposition.

And I'm counting things as simple as "go that way" or someone introducing a character's name, be that their own name or someone else's as exposition, even in a larger dialogue.

Okay, moderator comments first.

People are perfectly free to decide how to spend their time based on their own understanding of their tastes without having shade thrown at them. We might think, or even say, that we believe they are missing out, but let's not be snide about it. And if people do object to our tone, especially in a jokey way, the right thing to do is to de-escalate or at the very least disengage, not to start digging at them too.

I did find myself continually faffing with the difficulty settings. Generally, I found normal difficulty the most fun, forcing me to use positioning and a variety of skills and spells. But it was time-consuming, requiring (for me at any rate) either turn-based combat or very frequent pausing. I found casual or lower setting combat generally pointless and trivially easy, at least outside of a few boss battles I got pwned on at higher difficulties, but at least I could let it play out mainly in real time.

What kind of worked for me was keeping the game on normal difficulty for most of the time when just exploring the world and smaller maps where there weren't many encounters, then turning the difficulty down for larger areas or main story missions. But I found that made the latter underwhelming as I just wandered about the map incidentally wiping out hordes of enemies without really thinking about it. But that was still better than the alternative which was to have higher difficulty combat encounters that might have been fun the first couple of times I fought the same enemies but got too repetitive and for me broke the pacing of the game horribly. I also played around with the more detailed difficulty settings but ended up just flipping between Normal and Casual as at least that was quicker and more convenient than tinkering with multiple other options.

It made it clear to me that my taste in games like this runs to fewer, more challenging (but not too challenging!) combat encounters, and I don't think any amount of messing with the difficulty settings will make WotR my cup of tea in that particular respect. Though if there is a way and I just didn't find it, I'll very happily stand corrected!

I guess the other alternative that might work for me would be a DA:O/DA2 approach of highly customisable party AI that lets me set reasonably complex conditional rules, letting me do my thinking outside of battle and then seeing it work (or not) more or less in real time. Though I'm not sure how well that approach would work in Pathfinder. And if someone tells me that there is more configurable party AI beyond setting default actions that I just missed I'll ... probably give the game another go .

I wasn’t really interested in these games because I very much don’t like the Pathfinder (or 3.0 / 3.5 D&D) ruleset, but listening to y’all talk about the imbalanced difficulty and combat encounters is somehow even further discouraging me from picking it up. 😂

Given the fact I think I missed a fair bit of the last slog I'm not sure I'm in a position to comment: I'm guessing there are options for dealing permanently with Nocticula, Deskari and Baphomet beyond simply killing them once and sending them to live cautiously in their own realms, but I never got quests to find them again. I largely avoided spoilers and walkthroughs beyond those for their puzzles (which I couldn't be bothered with, despite thinking of myself as someone who enjoys puzzles in general), but in what I did read I saw occasional mentions of a possibility of ascension that never came to anything in my playthrough.

However, that all said, and with apologies if you already know all this, but I found the Trickster path had a lot to recommend it when it came to avoiding slog in the late game largely because of the aforementioned persuasion level 3 "Mythic Trick" available at Mythic rank 7 which means all enemies have to make a save against your demoralize skill on their first round or else coup de grace themselves. I had this trick in the Enigma puzzle area which I know I'd have found hell without it, but with it I just walked around solving the puzzles (okay, reading and applying the solutions I found online) while the majority of enemies just died as soon as they saw me. It obviously helped that I was a sorceror/arcane trickster with high charisma and a maxed persuasion skill. That plus the Trickster improved critical feats, which meant Woljif ended up with a critical threat range of 13-20 with his daggers and therefore any non-boss enemy - especially one vulnerable to sneak attacks - was toast pretty quickly, actually made the endgame much less of a slog than the midgame for me, even on mainly normal difficulty!

Cyberpunk is another game I'm hoping to pick up in a sale one day. I'd not bought it when it came out as I'd told myself I wasn't allowed until I'd actually played, or at least started, Witcher 3. For which I first need to finish Witcher 2, which for some reason I just stopped playing after a few hours years ago despite as I recall quite enjoying it (despite being incompetent at the combat). Anyway, having not bought Cyberpunk pre-release I obviously wasn't going to once I read reviews and until the initial bugs were fixed, but I did think it looked and sounded interesting. Perhaps after I've played BG3 into the ground .

This is my take on the game too. I often find myself turning the difficulty down all the way when the combat becomes a chore, especially where a lot of pre-buffing of my party becomes a necessity that I don't want to do. And for me, the story of WotR is awesome (note that I say story and not necessarily the quality of the writing). I love playing the goodly hero laying down the hurt on evil everywhere, so playing Angel Oracle has been stupendous!

This mod takes care of the buffing for you. Takes a bit to set up but once you do you just push a button and you're buffed for the fight.

https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderwrathoftherighteous/mods/195

I've been telling the devs that they should take a page from Larian's book and take over some of the mods as "gift bags"

Yes, it's fun playing as hero against the tides of evil. My Azata is transforming a desert into a fantasy forest. Together we will make this land bloom again! For freedom and flowers!

Look, it's your call, but I will say this. I have been gaming for 40 years and Elden Ring is the best game I have ever played. It's one of the few games I have played that felt *crafted* not just made.
Things I love:

1. It does multiplayer in a way that few people could take issue with. As you travel around you see little ghosts of people, other players, doing all kinds of stuff. You can see bloodstains on the floor that tell you how other people died which can range from a solid warning of impending danger, to an extremely humorous derpiness on the part of that person or persons.
2. It does interplayer communication right. You can leave messages for others but you have a limited vocabulary to choose from which has led to some interesting creativity and memes but also very useful info. You can upvote or downvote other messages. Hint: Take the message "Time for Prawn" VERY seriously.
3. You can bring in other players to help you with boss fights/areas and to just pvp with.
4. All aspects of multiplayer are optional and can be turned off at any time.
5. There really isn't any meta build for the game or meta weapon. There are good weapons for beginners (Bloodhound Fang, Claymore, Watchdog's Staff) but there isn't a God weapon above all others and there are a metric TON of weapons and weapon types.
6. Magic isn't better than melee - it just requires different strategies. Also you are free to mix and match magic and melee.
7. You are not forced to deal with a boss or no progress - if something is too tough just leave, gain some levels doing other things and come back later. You can max every stat and learn every spell given enough time.
8. The combat is the best I have ever seen- it's clean and highly responsive (as long as you are not fat-rolling anyway). I used to think the Witcher 3 was the gold standard, but this blows it out of the water.

You know you and what you like, but while as I've said I too often found combat a choice between repetitive chore or boringly trivial, and have my own issues with 3.x D&D and find building characters in Pathfinder still utterly bewildering despite the fairly good character progression info in the game, I'm glad I played WotR and found lots to enjoy. There's certainly a lot of imagination at play with the Mythic paths and the opportunity to build a really distinctive character with skills and abilities that support roleplay. With some exceptions, I found my character really worked, and was able to make build, dialogue and story choices that came together to bring to satisfying life my fey kitsune Trickster chaotic neutral character, who didn't give a damn about rules or plans or good or evil, and wanted everyone to play together, despite the fact not everyone would agree with her definition of "fun". And from what kanisatha and KillerRabbit have just said, other paths are also satisfying if smiting evil or bringing freedom and beauty are your things instead (and other options are available!).

Which is a long way of saying I wouldn't rule it out, particularly if you can pick it up for a steal in a Steam sale like I did so there's not much lost if you find the negatives really do outweigh the positives for you .

(I'm even glad I played Kingmaker, despite the fact that I gave up part way through and frankly am unlikely to ever pick it up again, but would definitely go for WotR over that.)

Maybe I’ll try it one day. I actually attempted Kingmaker for a hot minute, but after spending an hour or so in the character creator with a second tab up so I could do what I regard to be requisite Pathfinder character creation research, I only made it about 20 minutes into the actual game. It was the voice acting that sealed the game’s fate for me. I remember I made it up to finding the barbarian companion, hearing her speak and then deciding I’d rather ask Steam to give me my $20 back before the two hours was up. 🤗

People can complain about BG3 companions all they like (and there are certainly valid critiques to make), but at least they are all very competently acted. Even for Lae’zel, whom I don’t like and will probably never recruit, I must admit the VA is crushing it. That sort of polish matters a lot to me. Maybe more than it should, but I ain’t bothered.

Choose halfling, nature oracle, leopard companion, angel path. When you have the option choose "merge spellbooks". Have fun 🙂 It goes on sale pretty often so set an alert

I don't recall the voice acting in Kingmaker clearly enough to say whether I think WotR is better. In my view, BG3 voice acting is better than WotR but then I think BG3 voice acting is on the whole excellent so while WotR is worse I don't think it's actually bad even at its lowest, and some of it I think is pretty good or at least perfectly competent. But without my assessment of Kingmaker for calibration, you probably can't take my word for that!

Regarding character creation, WotR does give reasonably easy access to an NPC who can respec your character from scratch (including level 1 class, name, race and everything ... well possibly, though I don't know how that works with Mythic paths as I never tried to change that), as well as your companions from the point at which you meet them. Usually I wouldn't want to be doing that regularly - and in fact it gets really time-consuming at later levels - but given the complexity of the Pathfinder classes, archetypes, etc and the lack of up front in game info about the Mythic paths, I gave myself free rein to rebuild my character if I thought I could do better, and this did take a lot of the hesitancy and fear of buyer's remorse from the levelling up process. I stuck with the same basic concept (kitsune sorceror/arcane trickster) but tweaked spells, feats and mythic abilities every few levels (or sometimes more) until I found a combo that I felt worked. And I certainly ballsed up some of my companion builds and was glad of the opportunity to remedy that!

I mention it here, as if I'd known up front I'd probably have been less worried about how exactly I built my character at level 1 too!

Anyone else fell in love with Diablo 4 ?

I only felt in hate with Blizzard considering how they are treating Overwatch.

Everything Blizzard does feels like such a naked and transparent monetization scheme first and a game second to me now. All AAA games are made with profit in mind, sure, but to me there is always something cynically calculated about how Blizzard approaches game design.

ehhhhh.

I've put about 50 hours into it. Am I in love? No, no I am not. There are a few glaring issues that are holding it back, but I'm too burnt out right now to discuss it. I'm going to switch to something else for the next week or two.

I played for an evening during open beta, and don't feel a need to ever play it again.

That's not a criticism of the title, that's been my experience with every Diablo game (and Torchlight) so far.

Finished Midnight Suns, and can finally move on to something else - probably Solasta's newest DLC.

Gosh Midnight Suns was a journey. I was rather underwhelmed by it at first (and by at first I mean about first 10 hours). Than when the game finished tutorializing everything, and I got past the Abby exploration, the game settled into a bit wonky but addictive rhythm and I started to enjoy it. But than game's grindy progression, repetiteveness of the combat system and daily chores and inefficient UI really started to grind away. Over 130h of playtime later, I can conclude that I don't like the game quite a bit. Combat system could be interesting if there was more depth to it, but I would give the rest of the package