Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Panel From Hell/Creator Day Impressions

Whaaaaaaat?
That sounds awesome!

Can you kill the demon guy fighting the mindflayer on the ship in the opening to get the big flaming sword still? Or has the big flaming sword been removed?

Okay, let's see what I noted about character creation that I've not already said.

• A few races at least seemed to have at least one new head option, though I didn't see loads of new heads.
• There are a bunch of sliders that you probably saw at PFH that can be used to increase variety: for maturity, freckles, freckle intensity and vitiglio.
• We can also select from various scarring options, piercings, have different colour eyes and tint our lips.
• Both head hair and facial hair looked better and more luxurious, without the odd gaps from EA (though caveat that the graphics capability of the machine I was using in Ghent was likely to be better than my own PC)
• A few new hairstyles, including a longish straight one with side plaits I've seen in a mod and some cool curly/afro ones with shaved sides I'm definitely going to use. And each hairstyle was given a fun name - the only one I can recall was Waterdhavian Scholar but I did appreciate the effort that had been put in.
• Again, shown at PFH, but the fact we now have icons for hair, faces, etc so we can see our options at a glance rather than having to scroll through was a HUGE improvement.
• A couple of new facial hair options, though still not nearly enough in my book!
• Dragonborn could select a face and crest separately. And I didn't note this, but I think someone mentioned to me that there were three different tail options, as well as no tail (or maybe no tail was one of the three options, and there were two tails!)
• Humans and a few other races, eg elves, have four body types (normal male/female and buff male/female), but other races only seem to have two. I didn't check every race, but halflings and half-orcs, for example, only have a male and female body shape.
• Genitals can be specified independently of body type (options were "default", "penis" and "vulva")
• Unfortunately, paladins still didn't seem to be able to say in game who their deity was if they have one, though I didn't actually try to create a paladin.
• I also counted 21 cleric deity options, but now I look at EA there seem to be 22, so either we're losing one or - more likely! - I miscounted.
• 8 custom voicesets probably was shown at PFH too, and anyway was expected as a result of what modders found, but just to confirm there were 4 female-sounding and 4 male-sounding ones, any of which could be used for any character.

I've not forgotten. How could I?

I'm just guessing once we get to that it might then dominate discussion, so trying to cover everything else first.

@TheRedQueen Thank you for sharing with the experience. I must say, PFH left me really disappointed and you have given me a decent amount of hope.

I wanted to ask if you have seen anything like a class preview. Sven said they want to make character creator more understandable to newcomers but I spotted nothing that would help to understand what each class does or their level progression.

What else?

Oh, there are definitely modesty filters in the options. I seem not to have noted exactly what they were, but from recollection (so heavily caveated) I think there were three in total that sounded as though they were intended to equate to (1) no nudity, (2) no sex and (3) safe for streaming.

Though from what I hear about some stuff that's been screenshotted from the PFH, options (1) and (3) at least, and maybe (2) sound as though they could possibly do with some fine tuning!

One more thing, though I suspect you might have no answer for this one:

Any changes to the fast travelling system to integrate it more believable within the world?

I barely spared him a glance as I headed straight for the transponder, so I'm not actually sure that Zhalk still had the flaming sword. But that whole fight seemed pretty similar to EA, so I don't see any reason to expect that we won't be able to kill and loot him. Though that was rebalanced even between patches, wasn't it, so even if still possible it might be harder (my preference!) or easier.

I'm glad I've helped I had a blast playing the game and saw some stuff in the presentations that really whetted my appetite for the full release. I didn't feel it came across as well in the PFH as in the earlier presentation I saw, but wasn't sure how much that was due to the technical issues that plagued the PFH, how much was that they tried to cram too much in, and how much was due to the fact that by that stage I'd had a pretty long day and my attention was starting to flag!

My overall impression from what I saw is that if someone wasn't already broadly positive about the game in EA then they're probably not going to suddenly become a convert. But if someone found stuff to enjoy about the EA experience but had issues and reservations with elements of the game, then the changes that have been made are on the whole improvements and show that Larian has been listening to EA feedback even if they've not completely overhauled, or changed, everything as a result of it.

In short, if you were looking forward to the game before this, then what I saw I think means that you would be justified in looking forward to it even more (as I certainly am!). But if you were already thinking it wasn't for you, then I didn't see anything that I would expect to completely change your mind about that.


I didn't see anything like this, though I agree it's sorely needed. I wouldn't swear there isn't more help there that I didn't see as I didn't spend as long at character creation or level up as I'd have liked, but there was certainly nothing jumping out at me.

I didn't actually use a teleport. At PFH you may have seen that there's a bit more to Gale's entrance through a portal which I felt did help integrate them into the world a little more, but this is certainly something where tastes are going to vary. For me, the amount of explanation we get about the teleports in EA (ie that they're mysterious Netherese magic) is already spot on: ie enough to say that they are intended to be in-world things rather than merely a gameplay convenience, without giving me enough to start getting my critical thinking faculties firing on their implausibilities

It actually has bothered me that "makeup" thus far has only really meant "makeup around the eyes". A welcome addition I did not expect.

So was Gale not on the ship (if he is stuck on the other side of the teleporter)?

Okay, getting there. Here are a few random UI/odds and sods I noticed.

• Shove was still a bonus action but I didn't manage to check whether distances looked the same (I only tried a couple of shoves and both times the opponent saved!).
• We still have the same chain system (which is not a bad thing in my book, as I do think it has some advantages over click and drag selection).
• Still no formations, and when you select a new party leader the previous leader still goes to the back of the diamond which I was hoping would be revisited.
• Summons and similar still seem to be attached to a party member, but on the plus side there was now an option to ungroup and move independently of them. I didn't get the chance to see how that would work in the event of multiple summons for one party member, though.
• Going into and out of turn-based mode seemed much quicker (it took an oddly long time in EA).
• Did I already say that character portraits looked much more distinctive and better? I didn't see any option to customise the ones for our main character, but they were now differently coloured and posed for both our party and enemies, rather than boring headshots.
• I did get a quick glimpse of the wheel-like controller interface in the presentation, but didn't try that out. I'm strictly mouse and keyboard!
• The silent protagonist reactions didn't really seem to have been changed, and I'm sure folk will still find them a bit much unless there's a late change.
• We still seemed to get the 2AC bonus from a shield when wielding a ranged weapon (which I'd understood was planned to be fixed from a bug report I'd made, but perhaps turned out to be too fiddly in the engine), and seemed to be able to swap freely between melee and ranged weapons. I didn't play around with changing equipped melee or ranged weapons in battle.

Or he tried to use it to leave the area on his own and got stuck.

Now that you've mentioned new spells, did you get any info on some of the divination spells?

On the smaller scale: detect magic, identify, etc.
Larger scale: community, divination, etc.

I know your pc didn't have access to any, but would love to hear any insight you have.

Personally I hope they don't implement a formation system, and If they do I hope we can turn it off. I find the little circles that your character are going to fill as they run there are off putting and kill immersion. Imo what they have now works for me.

In EA, we saw him just step through the teleport to us. He told us he just tried to get a "taste" of the magic and got whisked away. I'm assuming his story is basically the same, except instead of just being able to step through the teleport he got stuck for some reason. Or at least, I saw nothing in the bit I played to lead me to think his backstory had changed dramatically.


Sorry, no! My post about spells here was literally all the new stuff I noted about them, but I wouldn't draw any conclusions from the fact I didn't spot anything specific about divination spells, as it's not something I looked into. Practically all the spell stuff I noted there was just because Swen happened to show it in the presentation I saw in the morning which is why it's a bit of an odd selection

Oh, that is surprising. I thought in the panel from hell right at the start they said they had 'lost' shield and detect invisibility so I presumed that meant they weren't in the game.

Okay, last pass through my notes for some more random but probably non-spoilery content stuff I spotted in the presentation by Swen on the morning before the PFH.

I am going to put this in spoiler tags, though, as though it's things I'd not mind knowing in advance of the game, some folk might prefer to discover it for themselves as they play. And I do have just a bit more stuff noted that I definitely judge to be spoilers so I won't call it out, though I might try to drop tantalising hints if anything to which it's relevant crops up here or in other places

The beginning of the PFH was a skit acknowledging that they didn't include many spells on the spell list in community update 20.