Originally Posted by Cahir
Originally Posted by kanisatha
My #1 critique of BG3 from Day 1 has been that it is combat and not roleplaying that is central to the game. And in such a game, it is very natural that players will gravitate towards min-maxing, which I fully expect 90% of people playing BG3 to do, because it is the DnD thing to do.

This was indeed my major concern regarding BG3, after playing both DOS and DOS:2. Both games were combat focused and unfortunately the world and story didn't click on me the way I hoped (it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either). Now, I can't tell anything about BG3 in this regard, because I avoided to play EA, to not spoil the full experience, but there is an interesting interview with Swen on Polish site, gry-online.pl, where he said there is relatively low amount of combat, and you can deal with most situations using persuasion. Now, I obviously can't judge if it's true or not, but that gives me hope, there will be a lot of space for roleplayers, like you and me.

Here's English translation of this part of the interview:

Quote
GOL: There is one thing about peaceful solutions in the approach to quests that I had in mind. I felt that in those days Baldur's Gate was more focused on combat, comparing it to Planescape: Torment or Fallout. Do you maintain this approach to clashes in BG3, or do you give people complete freedom in how they can resolve potential conflicts?

Swen: You have absolute freedom. There are very few fights. You can even ally with Gorthas. And it's literally to ally, he keeps his word. So you don't have to fight with him. There are many persuasion options in this game. But there are some fights that need to be fought.
Thanks for the quote. I'm happy to hear it, but ultimately I will judge by what is actually in the game. "Few" is a relative term. How few is few? Also, I am very concerned that avoiding fights will punish players with less XP and less/no loot, not to mention unfavorable/unsatisfying quest/story outcomes. But the good thing now is that we don't need to get into an argument about it, because we all can just wait one more month or so to have definitive answers to all these questions.

Listening to JES I did kinda' have an epiphany. Maybe my disappointment and anger are not really about BG3 and what Larian has/has not done with it. Maybe it is about what WotC has done to DnD in the past 15 or so years. There used to be a time, some 20+ years ago, when I absolutely LOVED all things DnD, not just TT DnD but all their video games and their source books and their novels, and I bought and avidly read through everything. But then inexplicably WotC chose to drive a dagger through the heart of that DnD, and what passes for DnD now is something I cannot stand. So maybe I would've disliked BG3 no matter who would've made it, simply because it is a contemporary DnD game blessed by WotC. And therefore, maybe, if Larian had made their new game anything but DnD, I too could've been here as a fan and not a critic.