Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General BG3 at Summer Game Fest!

Huh, that trailer was something all right. So we have a famous actor (yay..?) voicing another antagonist, which is cool I guess. And steampunk mechs as his personal army? And..that's it? Well, if anything that confirms that we are indeed going to Baldur's Gate, so that's a positive for sure.

I have to say, I'm a little torn on how engaged I'm going to be with the main plot. Is the main plot "get the tadpoles out"? Or solve the mystery behind the absolute? I know we haven't seen too much yet, but I guess I'm a bit confused on how MY character plays into this. Why would they care past getting healed? I don't feel that yet. Hopefully Act II will really start to open up the plot and make things more clear for me. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed and haven't done a lot of datamined reading, so I don't know all the intricacies of what most people know.

Side note: is the forum having issues for anyone else? It's taking a long time to respond for me.

actually someone point it out that we did see a little of dragonborn.

My guess?

Act I. - You got Tadpole > Get rid of it ... finished by "yay we are saved" at Moonrise Tower ...
Act II. - Now what? > Pick an Origin character who you will acompany on their journey to the city of Baldur's Gate ... some time during that quest we find out either that Dead Three is beind that whole Absolute thing, and they are bad news for us, so we will fight them for our own survival ... or that we were changed enough, so plans of The Absolute still includes us ... or that we are hunter by servants of The Absolute, since we know too much ... scenarios are not mutualy exclusive.
Act III. - Finale ... either we find out who is the Absolute, or just where to find them > Defeat them and live happily ever after, until larian decide to make a DLC.

Yup.

I don’t think that we will have the tadpole out by the end of act 1. In fact, I can guarantee it. There are too many game mechanics and plot points tied to it.

The forum has been sluggish for me for weeks now. Ever since they added the new emojis, it runs like it’s held together by duct tape and prayers.

Larian has been trying new marketing strategies for a while now. First, those tiktok/shorts to appeal younger audiences. Didn't like those. Now this focus on celebrities to attract more general attention to the title, I guess. The thing is, CRPGs are rather niche when compared to action RPGs and they kinda NEED some fresh appeal to become massive. I doubt introducing previously unknown character no one cares about is it, though. I have a feeling like genre fans are divided on this marketing while their "target audience" doesn't really care.

By the end of Act I they’re probably going to tie the tadpole and Absolute together somehow. What I have no idea about is the impending war people keep referencing. Is it with the forces of the Absolute? The duke disappearing seems to be a way to destabilize BG with Gortash being a nonbeliever accomplice for the Absolute, but a lot of this plot hasn’t happened yet it seems.

The forum’s been a little ragged for a few days now, on my end at least

Well the tadpoles are already tied to the Absolute. They allow the Absolute to invade the mind of the host and give them power, and those with tadpoles are acting as sub-lieutenants commanding forces under the Cult of the Absolute.

But I’m sure the true motivation for this, and the identity of the Absolute (probably Bhaal, if not the combined Dead Three) will become evident at the end of act 1, because that’s how narratives usually progress.

Well, that was underwhelming. Larian really leaning on celebrity voice actors to sell their game right now, IDK if that's the right move, personally.

Not sure about the second main villain having a bunch of mechs as villain faction you can ally with in Act 2? One of my biggest complaints about the Act 1 'evil path' was that it felt like it wasn't really set up for much of a follow-up later in the game. Wheras you gain lots of allies etc that promise to meet you and do stuff in Baldur's Gate if you side with the Tieflings. I hope there is more to this guy's faction besides him and a bunch of personality-less robots otherwise it's not going to be too appealing either, I'm afraid.

Sorry, I meant the two plots. Removing the tadpole and dealing with the Absolute. We know they’re connected but there isn’t anything connecting their resolutions yet

If you read between the lines its more then appears. We see alot of Baldur's Gate, so that means we will likely get to explore alot of thr city. The story also seems heavily entwinned with the politics of the city.

Also Gortash seems to be a very different villian from the first one, who was a necromancer with an undead army (who apparently has served many Gods), where as Gortash is a politician who was raised by a devil, but also clearly an ARTIFICER, which makes that class alot more likely to end up in the game.

Because he's a politician, it'll be very hard to attack him directly without massive fallout from the city.

And because of his upbringing, je may have Infernal Allies, perhqps damned souls power his constructs, like elementals do Golems. Heck maybe at the core of a Steelwatcher is a Soul Coin.


Also someone pointed to a dead dragonborn in the video.

New bad guy looks like hes just finshed auditioning for the remake of labyrinth to be the goblin king
But was rejected for being to chubby
His hair looks like a wig
Those mech armours look comicly stupid
thing is its to late for any changes
Hype videos are having thr oppsite effect for me

lol, i had to laugh at hearing this amazing voice and then...oh, that's not Lucius Malfoy haha

This trailer was so bad in so many ways.

BG3 is really shaping up to be a total disaster.

Larian trailers aren't on par with the modern AAA standards for sure, but calling the game an impending disaster is a massive exaggeration. Actually I think it is a bit tragic that a game this good and newcomer friendly got such a fogettable trailer in front on 1.5 million viewers of a mainstream event.

Good

Great voice acting, Larian is good at this. J.K. Simmons is good at what he does.

Unlike some others I liked the look of the new villain. He looks contemptible and I'll probably have a good time hitting him with a mace. Reminds me of Deacon Frost from Blade 1

https://iv1.lisimg.com/image/14993689/696full-deacon-frost.jpg

Nice to see the colors from the sorcerous sundries fall on Tav's face.

Not so good

Larian and I just have different tastes. Yes, golems have been part of DnD forever but I want golems to look like something hammered out on a forge, not a Star Wars assembly line. Too science fantasy for me. But that's been my judgement since the beginning - Larian and I just have different tastes. I've never found Mind Flayers terribly interesting either 🤷‍♀️

Well politics is certainly fun-but if the politics game involves one guy and an army of faceless robots on one end and a host of interesting characters with their own goals and motivations on the other, I don't know if a celebrity voice actor is going to win me over to his side.

And capital 'A' artificers (as in the class) are a poor fit for the Forgotten Realms. It's the sort of gonzo D&D I was hoping larian would be avoiding. I really hope that this guy is going to be a lower-case 'a' artificer.

Really hoping these are just golems by another name. It's really easy to lean too hard into that steampunk stuff.

No, we are not getting rid of the tadpoles - they are integral to party interactions and core systems and they are not going away. They are D:OS2 source equivalent - so I assume at the end of act1 in moonlight tower we will actually learn what's the purpose of the tadpoles and we will pursue the thread from there - in this case likely embracing or rejecting tadpoles power along the way.

With the whole taking over the city, mechanical guardians and nobility Gortash gives me strong Jindosh vibes (from Dishonored2). One could only hope for similarly intricate residence

😊

That sums up my feelings as well

The more i think about it, the more convinced I feel that this trailer wasn't the right showing for this venue compared to all the other
stuff that was shown off. This did not show any real gameplay for a game that's three months away. They had an audience full of potential new folks and they shared something that barely means anything to people who have played EA and probably will mean even less to people who already lack context. If this is the first you're seeing of the game, then you would be forgiven for thinking Gortash is the main antagonist. If he were then maybe this would be a good trailer, introducing the main conflict of the game. But it's not that.

I think a better route honestly would have been to show off something that requires no context to understand or care about. Like even the Ketheric trailer showed off a lot of stuff other than him. It showed gameplay, console controls, the release date, stuff a casual observer can get hyped over and take information away from. Larian seems to be rolling out their marketing on the assumption that everyone is following the campaign. I think they'd have been better off showing a scene from act 1 but with features from the full game. Their priorities for what they want to keep secret and show off seems wonky. I'm biased because I don't much care for Larian or have a lot of regard for them and the persona they present as a company, but it feels rather childish. Tying to keep secrets for the sake of keeping them while also showing off stuff they think is "cool" despite it not being meaningful or worthwhile.