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

The "1000+ NPC" was mentioned in Community Update #19:


WolfheartFPS mentioned 2000 and (I think) that half were interactable, even if it was only a simple phrase. I'm not sure where this was coming from, perhaps from something that was said at Ghent?

Either way, it gives an order of magnitude. Both values are big enough.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to report all that to us, The Red Queen!

That's what I thought but I watched that vid at least three times since last night and I don't hear the number mentioned. I can't find it in any other vid I've watched either. It's now got the stage where is is driving my crazy.

More importantly, can The Dark Urge murder them all?

not sure this is mentioned by anyone at all. but what was the technical problem that has stopped not once but multiple times on swen and crystal presentation in the cities? was it frame rate issues?

I'm pretty sure that the technical issues during the PFH were to do with streaming rather than the game itself. Certainly, I had no issues with frame rate or game performance when I was lucky enough to play it earlier in the day, and Wolfheart mentioned on his update that I think is linked earlier in this thread that he'd got the same impression.

Unfortunately my notes on Ghent, like Wolfheart's, weren't clear. Swen definitely mentioned in the presentation in the morning that we both attended that there were around 2,000 NPCs, but neither Wolfheart nor I managed to note whether that was just in the city or the game as a whole.

Separate from that, Swen said that more than half (I think he actually said 50-60%) of the NPCs in Baldur's Gate city were interactable with, with the rest being crowd figures to make the place feel more lived in. A lot of those interactable characters might only have one line, but Swen told us that some of those lines could change depending on what we'd done in the game so presumably they could be different on different playthroughs or on when we talk to someone. Plus I saw there were lots of people just chatting about stuff we could eavesdrop on. And then plenty of characters who have more to say and quests to give.

So, safe to say, there are a lot of people to talk to both in the city and the game as a whole.

I have a horrible feeling that the answer is "yes".

Though Swen did say that to be aware, when starting fights in the city, that the Steel Watchers were very tough. But I'm sure plenty of folk are just going to see that as a challenge

Hopefully the guards that come screaming still goes "I serve the Flaming Fist!" and "I AM the law!"

I think anyone can murder them all. There is a shot of Asterion launching a fireball into the civilians. And the baldy-beardy dev makes a related comment. Rather undermines the premise of the DA if anyone can go psycho but there again it is Larian.

Even more annoying would be all the innocent civilians who also turn hostile when property is damaged.... Especially with 2000 NPCs in the city and we use AOEs and whatever else we have in our repertoire to take down the tanky Steel Watchers.

I did that in BG1. Let off a fireball in the Undercity and killed pretty much everyone. It was an accident officer. Collateral damage.

Also, in the EE, I summoned a Balor with a wild magic surge in Bergarost, which exterminated the entire population.

Yes, I don't think it will feel empty either way. I'm even wondering if that won't be somewhat overwhelming.

I always hope to find an option to disable the "!" quest markers on NPCs and on the map, so I can play it old school (with the help of the journal), but I suppose it's not realistic to design such a big game like that anymore. With 2000, 1000, or even 500 NPCs, even if only half of them are potentially involved in quests, the game would have to be sold with a thick notepad, a pack of pens, and blister bandages. Even with the markers, it will be a lot to take in.

I've tried to see if there's an answer for this, and I can't find one, but if I've missed it, please let me know.... I've a question around camp cinematics and long resting. In EA, I spent aaages long-resting in order to trigger some of the camp cinematics, I'm thinking things like Gale's romance scenes as an example, is this something they've fixed for release? Or, conversely, will we be penalised for spamming the long rests in order to trigger the particular cinematics?

Silly question XD. Do you know if we´re gonna be able to change or choose our character portrait background?? I know its nonsense (BIG NONSENSE) but it would bother me a little bit playing with a druid with a purple background.

Early reviews from influencers and stuff are coming in. Seems almost unanimous that they think this game is going to crush even games like Starfield. Sounds like people were incredibly impressed by what they got to spend time with.

So that is really encouraging!

Despite some of the concerns that I have about the game I an psyched.

Yeah, I've watched a few - with snippets of footage! They've said it's not even close, BG3 could be GOAT for crpgs.

Hi Red Queen.

Firstly, thanks a lot for taking the time to share with us the info you gathered at the PFH and answer our questions. I'd be likewise thankful to Youtubers like Wolfheart, or journalists/video game sites like Fextralife, who have been sharing info with us on YouTube. But they have views to gain by doing this, and you don't. So, massive thanks.

I am not super happy with how Larian is communicating with us in that final strech about, at a global level, everything that will be in the game. It's not like there are things still the work that they don't want to talk about until they know for sure that they have them working. RagnarokCzD started a thread recently about all the things players want to know. I can somewhat understand that giving us all this info didn't fit into what they had already programmed for the PFH. But they have other ways to communicate.

At a more local level, well, a big round of fresh info was shared during the PFH, and it is hard to get it all from one single place.

A part of me started thinking about compiling a list of all the things we learned from that PFH. Putting together what Larian highlighted during the PFH, what was not highlighted but that people spotted anyway (e.g. the "details..." button in the character creation), as well as the info that we got from people who attended the PFH/Creators Day (combing through this thread, plus a few YouTube videos). But I have a fair amount of work this week. And I gathered (from a Reddit post linking to a reply-tweet from someone who works at Larian) that we're going to have a Community Update soon.

I expect that the first topic of this Community Update will be clarifying the 72h head start situation that many players are unclear about. If this Community Update could also summarise the new info we learned from the recent PFH, that would be really great. Alternatively, maybe Larian will tell us more when the time for the Q&A comes.

But in the meantime, while I feel that it's a bit unfair to rely on you, well ... help us The Red Queen Kenobi, you're our only hope.


I'm not sure I'm 100% on top of all the posts in this thread, but hopefully I've seen most of your answers and will not ask to many questions that were previously answered.

• Party controls.
  
  I know you said that the chain control scheme scheme isn't gone. But what about the order of portaits ? Can we fix them (e.g. Lae'zel in 1, Gale in 4, etc), or do they keep being shuffled around ?
  
  I like that Larian gave us hotkeys to select characters (F1-F4). Hotkeys are a great way to increase the efficiency of routine operations that don't need much attention. If every time that I want to select Gale, I have to pause to check which position his portrait is at (instead of just hitting F4), this requires my attention and the whole point of a hotkey becomes moot. An alternative is to regularly re-order portraits, but that is also annoying.
  
  
• Camera.
  
  Can we rotate it upward/downward (tilt) ? (found the answer, and it's "no".) Can we translate it on the z-axis ? Can we zoom out (and in) more than before ?
  
  
• Inventory UI.
  
  Can we move multiple items at once ?
  
  Do you know if Larian introduced a shortcut for Send To Camp (e.g. Ctrl+LeftClick, similar to the shortcut for Mark As Wares) ?
  
  
• Looting UI.
  
  Do we have a View All Loot In Vicinity functionality ? (found your answer in Tuco's thread on things we (apparently) aren't getting).
  
  
• Ambushes and start of combat.
  
  I've read that you've found that Larian changed the interaction between Start Of Combat and Stealth. It seems that, now, attacking from Stealth will always trigger a Start Of Combat. That's good. How about the characters in Stealth who did not perform the attack ? Do they get dragged in Combat ?
  
  A big issue right now is that we can't do ambushes properly. It's a bit unclear who will be dragged into Combat (roll Initiative) and who stays out. Some of our character may fail to join Combat. This results in them experiencing Continuous Time and losing several rounds of buff duration. Or being spotted by an enemy who plays early, dragged into combat, and take no turn on Round 1 as a result (which feels like a penalty for being surprised when we were the ones doing the ambush).
  
  
• AoE Spell Visualiser. Any chance that they fixed the disconnect between what the visualiser shows us and what area the spell actually affects ?
  
  It's always annoying when you spend some time carefully positioning the centre for your AoE spell, so that it affects 3 enemies, and upon casting it affects only one.
  
  
• Opportunity Attack indicator. Is it more visible now, that a certain move will cause an Opportuinty Attack ?
  
  Previously the red arrow could be hard to see, especially when under Large Creatures.
  
  
• Do spells with spherical AoE work better with verticality ?
  
  
• Do all the conversations cutscenes that progress the relationship with a Companion still happen at Camp ? And if so, can we experience multiple Camp Scenes when visiting the Camp ?

I would be calm about what Wolfheart says, from what I heard the guy has tendency to REALLY fanboy over this game and ban people for commenting anything critical about it (although I have not seen proof of that, but the way this guy talks about BG3 makes it... not that out of place). If there are 2000 npcs then I think it is in entire game. If it was just the city I feel like it would be very visible on screen. 2000 Npcs in the entire game and around half of them being interactable... again, in the entire game, that seems more reasonable and realistic.

Does Bless still target so badly as in EA?