Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General [Synopsis] Panel From Hell VIII (Release Showcase!)

Hi folks,

Guess this is the last time we'll be doing this, huh?

Time for another Panel From Hell – the final release panel!

As always, this post is a synopsis aimed at conveying the contents and progression of the panel show for those unable or unwilling to dedicate three hours of their life to watching it... for which this viewer does not blame anyone. It will be as spoiler free as possible, though in covering some elements there will inevitably be some spoils here and there as we cover updated or now-announced details. This will also contain elements of my own commentary and observations, but as usual I will attempt to be very clear which parts are my personal opinions and which are information as presented or shown.

As a note, I attempted to watch back the panel show on Larian's own website, but their site UI actively prevented me from scanning through the midsection of the video, since their immovable overlay blocked the scan bar no matter what I did... so I ended up watching it on YT instead like usual. I tried.

We start this panel as we often do with one minute or so of very nice fan art, before jumping straight into Larian's opening skit for another few minutes; Swen and Nick discuss missing spells, before signs of a sudden murder in Larian HQ cause panic and alarm. One murder quickly becomes a second after the lights dim, and in the ensuing panic, the remaining crew decide that it's time to go and do a panel from hell. … Biiiit of a non-sequitur, but sure, I guess.

The formal opening video for the panel focuses on alluding to romance and eroticism, and portentous dreams – we get some hints the confirm the presence of complete models for intimate sequences – something I've written about extensively in other threads; it's an interesting choice that they've gone this direction, and we'll have to see how far they take it (Hint: seemingly, it's pretty far).

After the video, we open onto a modest theatre scene, with a cosy audience count and Swen, dressed now in his lighter, breezier 'summer armour' greets the audience before talking briefly about the moved up release date, and confirming that EA supporters will receive the full digital deluxe edition of the game with numerous in-game and otherwise digital goodies. After a couple of minutes covering this, he segues into a cut in video talking so several of the other (unnamed) designers and developers of the game about Character Creation.

The video runs for about three minutes, and while the various crew talk about the changes they've made to the system and the journey that designing it has been, we get clips that show us a very much revamped character creation screen.

In this viewer's opinion, it looks much more polished and presents its information more clearly. We can see that the order of character creation is presented in order on the left – in the correct handbook order, which suggests that they may also have addressed the persistent bug regarding skill proficiency double-ups; there's no confirmation of this, sadly – this is just this viewer crossing her fingers. We see also that changing your appearance is a completely separate and independent section to picking your mechanical choices, and we get a glimpse that multiple body types are available. It also seems to have been vastly improved by a thumbnail system for most relevant visual choices – no more clicking through one at a time, thank goodness. Welcome to the modern era, Larian. There is also a sign that we might have a custom origin character – though sadly, this later turns out to be disappointing, in this viewer's opinion.

While we watch this, the developers and artists talk about the impacts your character choices can have on the way things unfold and how you're treated – but unfortunately they seem to heavily confirm that Larian's writing habit of tying your personality to your class, and really ramming one defining the other down your throat to be still very much in effect; if you want to reference being a sorcerer, you Will do it by being a smug, self-adulating arsehole, because being a sorcerer apparently means that, by definition. Very disappointing.

We come back from the video to Swen introducing lead character artist Alina, lead writer Adam, associate lead writer Crystal and resident druid Nick, the team's lead system designer, so they can all talk more in depth about the Character Creation Revamp.

We get a lot more detail here, and they dig into some of the specifics of it quite nicely. There seems to be a lot more detail and many more options that present currently in EA, with abetter UI and a better lay out. They take time out to mention that you can define your body type and how you wish to be referred to independently and they tacitly Don't mention the other button related to these, which is that you can also select your intimate equipment set-up independently of the body type you choose. This will no doubt be welcome news for some and will be relevant for the intimate sequences in the game – though this viewer is still a little worried about those, inasmuch as the current system is that non-player origin characters are Always Top... that's not a good thing to do... players should have a conversation with their partner about that (This viewer is also quite concerned that they don't really have a good grasp of the dynamics of D/s play in intimacy at all, judging from what we've seen so far, but that's a slight tangent).

We see more hairs, beards, tattoos, scars, piercings (available for all now) and freckles – though still no ability to customise ourselves below the neck in any way, with the exception of the aforementioned body type and genital buttons. On body types: They demonstrate that the body type section is more than just a masculine/feminine switch; several races have up to four body types available, giving us a bulkier or more lithe option for each... unfortunately, this only seems to be the case for Some races... which is just upsetting and annoying, more than anything else. Only some of the races on screen had four body type buttons – Halflings, for example, still only had two (presumably one masculine and one feminine). I was excited, and then crushingly disappointed again. I was also pretty sad that they took time to showcase each race as the focal point for talking about one element of their revamp... but then laughed at halflings and treated them as a joke, before skipping over them and going to the next race. Not classy, guys.

That said, one of those other races was indeed the Dragonborn, who seem to have quite a lot of customisation, and even some unique interplay between the base race and draconic sorcerers, which is nice attention to detail. Half-orcs also got a look in, which was good to confirm.

After this examination, Nick talks a little bit more about some of the crunchier mechanical aspects of character creation, and also confirms that the traditional Larian feature of a Respec NPC will be present, allowing characters to redo their class choices and other features. Crystal takes over, moving on to talk about the reactivity and dialogue repercussions of your class, race and other character choices. We're told of a quite extreme amount of material tied to these things threaded through the game, with the promise that there's a whole lot more even in Act I, than has actually been made available for us to see in EA. The conversation does really seem to confirm, unfortunately, that if you want to pick any of the class or race specific dialogues, you have to map yourself hard into the personality that they've decided intrinsically comes with this (all sorcerers are arrogant, self-fellating pricks, etc.), which I continue to find very distasteful.

Adam takes over next to talk about playing as the origin characters and confirms that they will definitely be locking major cutscenes, interactions and information behind playing as these specific characters, that you won't be able to access or learn elsewise. This viewer does not consider this a positive trait – at least not as long as the same is not also true for a custom player character. They show us a brief video teasing some of these exclusive scenes, before coming back to talk about the new 'Custom' origin character.

Along with another teaser video, this actually turns out to be, more or less, just another new origin character; you can customise their appearance and class and so on, but they have at their core a very heavily pre-characterised personality, and a name: They are called The Dark Urge, and they honestly read as an edgelord murder-hobo at first blush – which we are informed we will be able to resist... but it comes back to a choice that looks like 'be a violent murder-hobo, or don't engage with the custom content', which is not much of a choice. It honestly just seems like another origin character, the same as the rest, with the exception that you can change its appearance and class, and that it doesn't show up unless you play as it (so no Dark Urge NPC companion).

Nick then sets about making one for demonstration, while Crystal talks about Karlach, who is also confirmed to be an Origin character. As with Larian's other origin characters, she has her own flavour of super-special-awesome-so-much-more-amazing-than-you edginess, though she's a good-aligned character and seems reasonable about it, from what we had a chance to see. Your barbarian will never be as cool as her, or have the cool superpowers and special abilities she has; you will always be second rate to the Larian Origin character. Standard Larian fare, and not surprising here, sadly.

While Nick is still working, they list a few recruitable NPC companions; Halsin, Minsc and Jaheira, as well as recruitable Minthara... though amidst this there is no mention of a certain other earlier data-mined characters here... so either she's a surprise, or she did get scrapped and rolled into other characters... I'll be a little sad if that's the case, I was looking forward to meeting her. They also discuss a heavy re-write on Wyll's character and story, which they felt wasn't being communicated well enough.

As Nick finishes up making his new Dark Urge character, we get a couple of comments that I feel the need to call out directly... of the Dark Urge, they say:
“It's clear when you start it's a very different character, you have the narrator telling you what's going on in your head” followed by:
“ You feel like the custom character you created”

This is just this viewers personal opinion but, sorry Larian, No. That's a contradiction. I'll feel like the custom character You created. By all means, tell me what my character experiences, and what comes to them through their senses, but if you start telling me what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling, or how I feel about various different things, then I'm no longer playing my character – I'm playing yours, and I'm not interested. There is a distinct line here which I do not feel that Larian's writing has ever really understood, and sadly, what they revel and discuss here does nothing to dissuade that concern.

Nick finishes up making his Dark Urge Origin: The chat apparently decided to make a white dragonborn monk – which conveniently was the same combination that their pre-recorded teaser video had used. I'm side-eyeing that a little. We see a little bit of gameplay, where the narrator tells us about how our mind has been cold and empty until now, and then tells us how we feel about a few other things. It didn't really feel like playing my own character, to be honest, choice point or no choice point – just playing the role of someone else's character, like all the other origins.

As we continue to play the murder-hobo, this brings up the point of companion death, and potential total companion death, where Nick can confirm for us a hireling system will also be in place – though he mentions specifically '12 more', rather than it being an unlimited pool. A comment a few minutes on suggests that maybe he only said that number to represent making one of each class, but we didn't get a clear confirmation.

One more little titbit they give us is a brief glance at casual camp attire; more comfortable wardrobe to relax in when you're camping for the night. This is another much requested feature by some; we'll be able to customise it, dye it, and buy or find various different pieces, they tell us, so this sounds pretty positive!

After dealing with brutality, we move to romance. We get a cut in video from some other (also/still unnamed with no title cards) developers talking about the many permutations romances and relationships can take, and they try to stress that they wanted to make something more reactive than just 'do quest, get laid'. Here's hoping!

During some mild technical difficulties, we talk a bit more about what's on the table and how things can develop in romance; they mention that the spectrum is broad and varied, even by individual character; there is the suggestion that honestly and openly communicated and consensual poly relationships are on the table, which I'm happy to hear, personally.

Further technical difficulties plague the team's ability to give us naughty romance scenes in acceptable FPS, and we take a ten minute break.

When we come back, the issues are still not quite resolved, so the crew have a brief AMA with the small theatre audience while they continue to struggle with tech, but we learn some interesting things: we'll have potentially up to 8 character voices to pick from. Currently we have 4 (two masculine, two feminine, but all pretty same-ish at the moment). They also confirm that there won't be an arbitrary party lock-out, as was originally planned.

They switch to audience live questions... which, to me felt incredible scripted and not like spur-of-moment audience-sourced randomness at all. At one point they ask Swen what the game is doing to really tempt people to play dark and evil, since the majority of players generally do prefer to play good; Swen's answer is that they tempt you. Informative.

With the technical issues resolved, we cut back to the demonstration – we get to meet a paperboy called “DIALOGUE: LOW_BaldursMouth_PaperBoy_Stormshore.lsj || CONTEXT: <No Cinematic Context>”. He seems like a good kid.

We watch some story interactions, and then try to trigger the date they want to showcase... but it won't trigger the way it's supposed to. Swen seems surprised; “Wow, that's a first” he remarks... while those who have watched the development progress and played the EA are not at all surprised at a camp event trigger not quite firing as intended and being fiddly. Eventually they get it, and show us a very cute little date sequence. It was nice enough and a little sweet, but my concern is in the same vein as it often is here: the date served only to spotlight the Origin character – I'd have preferred more chance to express and define ourselves, rather than just being a springboard for the origin character to express themselves – but that's unfortunately par for the course.

They do another, intending to let the chat drive the choices The camp scene starts in the lower city, but when the date itself triggers we're suddenly in deep woodland by a river. Who knows how we got there. The chat picks some options that really show that when Larian says they want to present a broad spectrum of romance and intimacy possibilities, they meant it. This viewer wonders most intently what Icelyn thinks... … #ScratchForCompanion

Don't worry, they also confirm that there is a player-side choice for a modesty filters.

That said, at this point, this viewer finds herself having to ask:

What sort of incredibly shit druid is Halsin anyway?
- Is Bear literally the only wildshape he knows?
- If you cannot control yourself when you're in wild shape, you barely deserve to call yourself a druid.... if you lose your mental faculties, or risk doing so, while in wildshape, then you're not really much of a druid; this is basic, basic stuff.
- If you risk having your wildshape come out when you don't want it to, by accident, when you get worked up, then you're a really shit druid.

So, either Halsin is an incredibly shit druid who is actually just a first year druidic acolyte who has only just started to learn about the process of wildshape, and can't really do it right yet... or the people who designed him haven't got a proper clue about what druids are in the D&D space.

Or maybe he's actually a werebear, and just trying to hide it.

Or an awakened bear pretending to be an elf.

Either way, an Archdruid he is not.

Ahem...

Aaanyway..... Swen tries his best to calm the crowd and transition to the topic of combat. They talk about difficulty modes; we'll have three; an easier explorer mode, the average balanced mode, and then their harder Tactician mode. They bring in Matthew to speak a little about their philosophy of making every combat encounter a puzzle to solve; this confirms that every enemy is a set piece, as we've experienced so far, and there won't be any random generation involved.

They begin another play-test demonstration, this time to showcase the Monk class as well as the difficulty modes. They show us using 'flurry of blows' as their bonus action without taking the attack action (sigh). After telling us about the Monk's deflect missile attack, their monk then gets shot, and the game does not appear to give them any opportunity to use the ability. Excellent showcase so far. Some spellcasting happens from an enemy somewhere, but as is often the case, the camera and screen fail to show who was actually casting what... unchanged from the usual EA experience. Adam mentions on his turn staying next to the spellcaster he didn't quite kill, so that he could have an opportunity attack on them. When that spellcaster's turn comes around it runs away from the Monk, but does not provoke opportunity at all, and is free to clear distance and cast its spell. When the monk's turn starts again, we see that the effect “Martial Arts: Unarmed Strike” ends on the character... it activates again when he uses his Flurry of Blows again... once more, without committing his action to attack. His monk continues to get shot without deflecting anything and chases some enemies around, eventually punching most of them to death.

Finally, an enemy shoots at the other monk, which prompts a deflect missiles reaction. The player reacts, deflecting the missile...but it's a fire arrow, so it still splashes fire everywhere all over the monk, the ground, and destroys the ladder next to her as well, even though she successfully caught and threw back the fire arrow. The screen shows the monk making a saving throw of some sort when this happens – probably from the fire splash damage that shouldn't have happened. We also get a brief glimpse of the tooltip that tells us that their Deflect Missiles will automatically spend your ki to throw the missile back at the enemy that shot you; it doesn't, as we see in a moment, and the option to do so is indeed separate, but you'd be forgiven for not understanding that, since there are two separate icons for this, both named Deflect Missiles and both with the exact same icon. The deflection, we see, automatically attacks the attacker rather than letting you pick a target (lack of freedom and options that you should have), but it's also more or less what this viewer has come to expect of Larian implementation – I am disappointed, but not at all surprised.

When trialling some combat on the harder Tactician difficulty, it's mentioned that now all the goblins will have fire arrows, and there's lots of other little 'explosive surprises' scattered through the set piece combat... because covering more of the area in more fire is exactly what counts for tactical gameplay. No, Larian – that's what this writer generally would call “overbearing actual tactics with your gimmicks.”

To illustrate how much harder Tactician mode is, their player chooses not to use deflect missiles when prompted, against the game telling them they're being hit by a critical hit, and their team functionally gets killed before either of them get to have a proper turn. They then show you how it's really done – which is, of course, by exploiting! The third player, who was detached from the party elsewhere now sneaks in, taking as much time as he likes while the goblins are time-frozen in their combat with the other players (which they strangely remain, even though the other two players are dead).

He does take a decent amount of time, having a little trouble climbing up onto the roof over the boxes, and having some camera issues with the display through the building, but he gets there and initiates eventually. During the clip we see more mysterious off-screen casting, and goblins shooting arrows at people through solid roof layers. Impressive.

They do showcase a little bit of splitscreen multiplayer, which I believe is the first time we've seen this since it was initially promised.

The play-test ends and we switch topics to discuss cinematics and cinematic content, with a video cut in of various (still uncredited) Larian employees talking about what has been Larian's first time ever developing cinematic content. This viewer would say that, yes, she knows; she can tell. Apparently they're really happy with it. This viewer refrains from further comment, but would refer others to the detailed analytical threads on this topic posted by herself and others.

They go on to discuss some of the antagonistic characters, and tell us that we'll like them even when we know we shouldn't; we'll see but I'm sceptical of that. They also tell us that, in terms of expansiveness, if you straight run through the game and just blitz the core story, you're looking at 80 hours of gameplay.... I'm also exceptionally sceptical about that, but that's pretty cool if it's true. Still, the teasers they give us during this video show a lot of different environments and a lot of scope, and it does look promising. We also see teases of many monsters that we've not seen yet, and a few other races that we've not yet seen, including kobolds. Sadly not playable though.

As we wind down, Swen asks his co-hosts what their favourite moments in the game are, and they have to each in turn say that it's one they obviously can't spoil here. Edifying Content. They move on to reiterating that you'll necessarily be locked out of various major cinematics that are exclusive to playing as various origin characters, and that all the origins have loads of exclusive content in that manner. No word on whether the same is true of playing a custom character; it does not sound as though it is... It sounds, rather, that playing a custom character will just result in a lesser experience and an emptier game.

Swen moves into his general wrap for the panel, and mentions that the after show to follow will showcase playing a section of the later game, which will be heavy spoiler territory, with himself and Nick playing characters that have come to the same point in very different ways, to showcase how different the game can be.

They take closing remarks to show off the collector's edition of the game, and the physical merch you can get for it, unboxing style. We get a look at the nice map, some art prints and stickers, some very nice-looking character sheets for the origin characters and a very beautiful hard cover art book, and the much splash-screened Illithid model (some assembly required).

The after-show gameplay they showcase is pitched at how differently the game can unfold based on your decisions, and how the same events and same places can be very heavily differentiated by these... What they actually SHOW us, however, just really looks like the difference between someone who took the high road, and someone who took the low road, in regards to the Act I direction choice.

I'll refrain from giving any actual spoilers by discussing the events seen, but I will say this:

For crying out loud, Larian, please do your due diligence on the lore of the world you're making a game for. Don't assume you know all about something because it resembles something that exists in other mythologies and other cultures.

Pixies are NOT malicious – categorically they are not, it's part of the defining nature of what they ARE. Pixies might be malicious in other mythologies and legends, but in D&D, and in the Forgotten Realms, they are NOT, and anyone who Passed their intelligence check on the matter, would KNOW this, and not be mistaken about it. They are good and good natured, curious and playful – tricksters and occasionally pranksters, true enough, but distinctly and specifically not malicious; they are very much opposed to violence and harm in any way, as part of their very being. Please have some respect for the material you're acting as the custodians of.

That, however, is that for this final Panel From Hell, and though I was mistaken the last time, this time I'm pretty sure this one will be the last one of these I do.

Take care everyone,

-Niara