Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Community Update #21: Forging Your Legacy

A little disappointed it sounds like they haven’t changed the multiplayer dialogue system. I’m hoping there’s at least an option to auto-join conversations started by other players

I thought I saw somewhere that in multiplayer players can “eavesdrop” on ongoing conversations and vote on how they want them to proceed. Which is probably not what you’re after, but I’d understood to at least be changes. Not that I’ve played multiplayer so apologies if this response is totally irrelevant to you!

That's how it already works I think..? It's not an official "vote" - you can just indicate which option you'd like the Primary Conversationalist to take.

(and it's terrible for multiple reasons - discussed somewhere else in the forums)

I sadly agree.

o they changed the multiplayer all right... just perhaps not the fix you were hoping for

i see they also reneded on 72 hour head start... well at least its confirmed now

Have to say, I'm a bit disappointed in the game not bring available 72 hours early for EA owners, BUT it is how it is
Note I just hope this isn't bad news.

What I mean is: 28 days earlier are fine, but 3 more isn't? Do you have too little time? Please don't make your developers crunch just because you wanted to avoid collision of release dates with Starfield. In that case I'd rather have gotten the original date and 72 hours but no crunch for the dev team. So please let me be wrong here.

No ... its not.

What would be benefit of such limitation?

Narrative consistency and commitment to long term choices.
Thanks for asking.

Sounds like poor excuses to force your prefferences to others. :-/
Was there anything stoping you to have the game as naratively consistent and commited as you want it?

I don't care how it sounds, though.

There can be such a thing as "too much freedom and convenience" at expenses of other factors, when it comes to game design.
Even if some of you don't want to admit it. Or even just accept it, really.

Respecin is great so I can take full advantage of ability raising magical items and it gives nice flexibility to adjusting your companion build to more your liking. I only wish that Larian would give as ASI every fourth level no matter how you multiclass because only two ASI if multiclassing is not fun and Larian is all about us having fun.

I know what are the convenences of having unlimited respeccing.
I just happen to think that not just because something is convenient is also for the better.
I value the appeal of making long lasting decisions and feeling the weight of their permanence.

Dropping a bunch of +10 weapons would be super-convenient as well, but it would absolutely wreak the balance of the game.

That aside, I don't know what you two are even going on about, because that specific quote wasn't just about "respec" but more specifically about being able to change the starting class of companions.
Something I remain adamantly against, no matter how many silly and contrived excuses people will throw at me to argue I should enjoy.

Some interesting news, thank you!

Larian, could you additionally clarify the +2 / +1 attributes rule for all races? Is it optional like in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or is it mandatory? If second, how would you compensate for races that were reliant on additional attributes to stay competitive, like Humans and Half-Elves? New human proficiencies and weight limit increase are not enough, especially for most martial classes that get them anyway and some caster classes that don't use neither light armor (because of Mage Armor / Draconic Resilience) nor polearms (because staves for them contain better bonuses / additionall spells and they attack with cantrips / spells anyway). As for Half-Elves, without +2 / +1 / +1 they are just worse Elves without Perception proficiency and without bows / swords proficiencies, so just inferior to them.

As a result, if +2 / +1 is indeed mandatory, please consider making it optional or providing proper compensaton for some races.

Extremely disappointing behaviour from Larian. Reneging on sales offer is highly unethical and will make me seriously consider whatever they say in future. If they are willing to go back on a sales offer no reason why they won't go back on anything else.

Almost certain they will give journos and influencers the game before the 72 hour headstart. So for me their excuse is just spin.

I think your best option here is to become famous influencer quickly, that way you could probably get the game couple of days earlier. Maybe try to do that instead of wasting your time on hating.

I really like this! We don't know how it will work out yet, but the promise is alluring. Good job making this a development goal!


This is also a piece of heartening news. Bigger is better!

Sure it's hating when they are still advertising the 72 hour early start on their pre-order page with no mention that it only applies to the ps5 version...

I think you are right, you should be allowed to play by the 28th of august as it was promised since start.

It's clear some folk are feeling strongly about the fact all PC players will now be able to start playing at the same time on 3 August, and they are totally entitled to express that as long as an individual forum member doesn't keep repeating themself.

If we don't agree that the change to early access to the full game is a problem then we can say why we are okay with it. Again, once is enough. But if anyone in this camp wants to see us move on from discussing the 72h thing as quickly as possible, the thing that will accomplish that fastest is to stop talking about it themself. Arguing with other forum members rather than allowing them to vent their frustration is not the way.

First of all: the character creation looks AMAZING! It looks like so much fun to play with, and I can't wait to start creating character(s).... or well.... I guess that is where the issue with this Community Update is.

It seems to me, from what I understand, that we are going to have this AMAZING character creation setup, where you can color the tip of your Tiefling's horns, have your character have different color eyes with the heterochromia feature etc. etc. - SO SO COOL, and then well... bummer... we are not really going to be able to use it, are we....?

If we pick an Origin character as our main character (excluding the Urge), we don't even get to see the character creation menu at all, as all other recruitable characters in the game are premade, and not customizable with relation to their race, name or appearance. Some of us (a lot I think) had hoped that the hirelings would be fully customizable, and would make up for this apparent lack of customizability. But according to this Community Update, they are not.

If we choose to play as a custom main character, the game allows us to create and customize ONE character per play-through, which means we get to play around with all the cool features that they developed for us ONCE in what might be 200 hours... and for some, that don't replay the game, never again - that just seems like SUCH a waste and a shame, if you consider how much time went into creating that part of the game.

One custom character is not enough! I have ideas for so many more! And I know I am not the only one!

Having 12 premade "temporary" hireling characters, that you can't change name, race or appearance of just feels so counterintuitive and wrong when the character creation is so elaborate and so fun to play with, and is just sitting there begging to be utilized! That is one of the things I love most about CRPG's: creating my own characters and having them blend in with the premade characters.

I think it is completely fair to compare BG3 with games like Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 (games that are highly influenced by Baldur's Gate 1 and 2), where you could make up to 8 completely custom characters (not temporary I might add!), and change your group setup throughout the game, mixing them with the premade characters however you wanted, so you didn't miss out on their individual quests. Having BG3 allow for something like that it would be my one and only wish for this game for now. I know that modders are probably going to make it possible later on, but I really don't see why Larian don't just implement it into the game to begin with. Especially seeing as it seems that they are really intent on making the game open for many different kinds of ways to play. So why not this way? If I can kill all the premade characters, why can't I create my own? I would say that the first scenario is far more "gamebreaking" than the latter.

So Larian: why can't we play with our own customized characters - it's really a small thing to ask at this point and would be extremely easy to implement. And those that want to play with the hirelings as they are, they still get to do just that, it wouldn't really be taking anything away from that - just adding another option of how one wishes to play, and making players like me enjoy the game a whole lot more. (I was planning to create some of the characters from BG1 and BG2 that would still be alive at the time of BG3, like Aerie etc.)

Pretty please, Larian, with owlbear on top!