Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What do you think? Looking for opinions.

I bet you could get a phd just from reading the whole back-catalog�on the early access and trying to figure out what it all was, or means hehe.

I have no gift for brevity but I'll try as hard as I'm able. I've been waiting a couple months to see what people think and what cutting words might land. Reading everything above and above and above, I can't say I disagree�with any of it, although I'll try to give my own take. It won't be concise, since that's just not a thing I've ever been able to do.

I'm a bit of a hermetic person, and so role playing games and games in general are a fun way to interact with other humans, and also serves as a conduit to the broader world. I think I learned much of what I know through gameplay in some form or another, and academia can be that way as well I suppose, and in the larger context BG3 is now inseparable�from the Early Access experience. Sort of like just coming out of the woods here, still getting those bearings. I think for starters they should just say EA means Early Access, FR just means Full Release (or Fae'run if you like or Forgotten Realms) but in either case, it isn't' done. That�should be the line they tow. Larian I mean.

What we have isn't finished yet, it's just a thing that's out and which had to come out in the way it did, and in the state it did, in order to finance its continued existence. But the promise, that initial promise mentioned elsewhere, should be that this isn't the curtain call. It's just the intermezzo. The first 3 acts off a dress rehearsal to make sure Guffman finds his seat. That's what I'm about right now. Basically just say the EA goes on, and we get new boards, and the promise of some expanded contest (similar to the first BG with the Tales of the Sword Coast) with the full screen on that. I think they just need to say the words, and pretty much all is well. Like very well actually, cause this has not happened for anything I've been into, not this much, in some time now. The moment I mean.�The iron is hot! Keep strikin' Larian! Don't let up now!

1. So what do I think of BG3?

Hopeful, somehow, still, though it surprises me to be there. I thought I'd feel more burnt, but instead not quite.

For me BG3 was an absolute gift.�

First let me give you the teaser trailer and more info than you ever wanted to know. At the end of 2019 the following cracked off in rapid succession for me. 5 year�relationship fell apart. My best friend since I was 8 years old died from a rare form of appendix cancer right after his 39th Birthday. My father had a stroke. Covid shut down my family business. Lost the family business, a 40�year old local institution, to a fucking micro-organism. Not even, like some strand of RNA, the only thing that could have ended the�cater game. Not since the�Great War of old, had we seen such a thing. I used to say, 'Hey we might not make much, but at least we're recession proof. I mean people always need to get married and sadly buried right?' but no dice. Failed the�DC on the world ending plague. Lost my job. Got diagnosed with a strange condition�that I guess I've had since I was little, but was only able to put a name on once the whole world shut down and everything slowed pace enough for that sort of introspection (Here's to any other phantasiacs out there, of whatever stripe! Mine is Hyper, from the Greek preposition meaning 'over' or 'above'... (sidebar: some curious extra meanings for a mini 'hype' train hehe)

????? � (hup�r) (governs the genitive, dative and accusative)

(+ genitive)
over, above
farther inland
(nautical, of ships at sea) off of
over, across
beyond
(figurative)
in defense of, on behalf of
for the prosperity or safety of
for, instead of, in the name of; by commission from
as representative of
for, because of, by reason of, on account of


(I guess it's too much, seems apt lol)

Had to move miles and miles away from home. Ended up somewhere, lets just call, not quite as glorious as the previous spot? Like by any�fucking stretch. The Shadowlands. Lets just call them the Shadowlands.��

Real valley from the peaks scenario there. Then something totally unpredictable, a ray of just pure fucking unreal wouldn't have seen it coming, Baldur's Gate 3 announcement. Wait, what? My absolute favorite game, that I played I don't even know how many times. Way way too many times. Still too many times. That Baldurs Gate 3? That one. But I'd never heard of Larian. I asked my younger cousin�straight up, will they do me dirty? He said, no cuz, Larian will do something with it. It might not be what you want, but it'll be something. They're kinda fun. Alright whatever, I had of course already bought the EA. I bought the EA the second I learned about it. I'd have bought it from anyone anywhere on any platform, it's pure existence, or the promise of one was enough. Baldur's Gate 3!!!

I watched the trailer, got a little choked up.

Sight unseen, swooped it on spec. I'm in! I'm here! I made it!

Somehow, got a little thing to look forward to cause Baldur's Gate is back. Met a gal on the beach that weekend. While walking the dog, she had a dog too. Somehow Baldur's Gate came up out of nowhere, Durlags tower I mean, not this one. What are the odds.�A casual turn of phrase like "yeah cause then your best friend dies, and suddenly you're stuck in the middle of Durlag's tower" Like that, unprompted. I had so many things to say when she said that lol. I'd have asked for the number, but my phone was out of batteries, go figure, anyway doesn't really matter. Still don't remember her name have no clue there, but she's a rad human. It was just wow, what a day. Just some cool stranger on the beach who took the time and somehow knew of Baldur's Gate, the OG one? Such a trip. My dad got better and made the recovery. I rescued a greyhound, things were looking good. That's when I started posting here on the regular. So I'm happy to kick around and tell people what I think about BG3, if that's what they're after. Sure I've had some ups and downs since with the game, but I'm in cool a place now with it. I think it can still work so the game can keep going. Like anything worthwhile it needs more love and more suffering and then a little more love after that. But they can do it and they should try.

2. Did you play from early access or did you wait until full release?

I did a bit of both, meaning I tried in my way to avoid what I always do in such games and play it to death immediately. Instead I tried to focus on permutations of the initial adventure in as many ways as I could think of to see what sort of things they would iterate in the earliest part of the game. I played the full thing out with one character just to see the areas that were included, but intentionally didn't linger there too long. Here I think the XP and lvl cap sort of forced my hand as I would lose interest and kept finding myself wanting to be in Char creation more than the game itself anyway. I was both floored and left wanting much from this game. But yeah, I think it's safe to say I played the shit out of Early Access, and yet somehow managed to be on pins and needles waiting for the full release at the same time. Tough answer I know. For me, Early Access was the experience that I was most interested in though, because I find game design fascinating and enjoy having a place to discuss it, even if at warp speed and a bit over my head. Tried discord couldn't get down. I'm too old perhaps, but a good old fashioned forum, now that's something to vibe on. I can get with that.

3. What did you find the most enjoyable?

Pure joy? Lae'zel's silver sword and everything she does and says hehe. As I was playing the many permutations and now in Full release, I enjoy catching what I think might be some of the early Lae'zel vs later Lae'zel and thinking they're both in the game still somehow, if not in the same way. I played with Shadowheart as Origin and thought, wait is Lae'zel�going soft on me here?' but then I think it must just be the grab bag there. The Chex Mix version. Big high notes for me were mostly in character delivery, particularly the Goblins and Tiefs, each of which have endeared themselves to me so much now that I kinda feel like I know them all personally. Similar to the NPCs in BG1, there were some real standouts among the bit players here. The narrator! I never really needed a set story or a coherent anything to make the EA work, but that is in part because of the way my brain works I guess. Everything for me is already a little disjointed and moving either too fast or too slow at all times anyway, and I see faces in everything. So I had rather hoped EA would be this massive Etch-a-sketch thing, that they would shake up dramatically every few weeks.

Including new stuff and changing stuff around, but doing it at a steady clip, so that at no point could someone with any degree of confidence say they really understood what the main story was, or the thread binding it together. I think the mistake, if there was one, was to show us a rough cut, rather than a bunch of dailies, if that makes sense. Because of the way it was delivered, people would think well this is the story to this point, and you latch on to stuff and really start to lean in. Once it's set that way I mean. I'd have liked them to revisit a few things from earlier on too, so say giving some attention to the initial classes like Rogue and Wizard and Fighter and Ranger that had been there since the start, so sort of complete the circle there. EA I feel is not quite tied up with a nice red ribbon yet, and it really should be because this game if it goes on to have the sort of life I think it might, will be a real testament to the artistic spirit. This is because EA happened when it did, so much loss and troubled times, but games help us solve problems. They teach us how to do that. They're subtle too that way, but it's probably among the best tools we have, because all games are hopeful. You can always win in the game. Even if you have to savescum�your ass off or drink every potion. You don't quit. Well yeah of course you do. But then later you reload and give it another go. That's the way shit gets done.

4. What about the least enjoyable?

For the EA- it was the Radio silence. Long stretches with no word or no new word. Angst and the general malaise that sets in when things slow down. For the game the cam controls and party movements stuff. The insufficient�number of voices and models and companions which made it harder for me to dive in to the Char creation process to the extent I'd have liked. I think they did it sort of backwards, meaning they should have prioritized the char creation content over the gameplay content as a way to keep people busy and engaged while the content slowly dripped in. Finding a way to do that without breaking the stability of an ongoing save via concurrent builds or something similar. Basically having an overlap between each patch so instead of updating you'd just have both. Even if it means more of the ssd got gobbled up, I'd have liked that.

5. What would you like to see added? Any DLC, tweaks or extra features?

A great deal. For starters what I would absolutely love to see for once, is the full on Player's Handbook caliber Avatar and Portrait Suite that just knocks it out of the park with so many well done faces and animations and cool getups that a player could literally spend the next many years doing nothing but create characters and never get bored hehe. Is that too much? Maybe but consider this - How many people love GI Joe and Barbie and the little Miniatures from D&D and elsewhere and how cool would it be to finally have that where you got the whole table done up with miniatures and custom painted minis, and then that just receives the breath of life from the actors. That's what I want most. Neverwinter came close, but it lacked what I think this game has which is a potentially very engaging and exciting form of turn based combat. Is it there yet? Well probably not, I guess, just judging from what I can see and hear, but it's still got something. It's not at all like BG1 and BG2 in that respect. It's very new there (I mean not new obviously, but the difference is pronounced) still it has that thing where you're pressing into combat and then sort of winging it the way you would in TT session. I think there's a real charm to that. For me what it needs in that arena starts with the camera. Because the game is allowing us to pretend to be the director of our own imagined and play-acted narrative, it makes sense that we can be our own cinematographer too, and for this we must free the eye in the sky. Doing this (and cleaning up the skyboxes) will instantly give the game a whole new dimension which if you are only playing the un-modded version right now you wouldn't get to really see. The game is beautiful, it should be admired, the camera is our window onto this world. Give us clutch controls to feel it out and party formations, things of that sort. And portraits, and more dogs.

6. Do you use any mods? If so, which and why?

The Native Camera Tweaks mod and WASD mod which are essential for me to play the game comfortably for long periods of time.

7. Do you play any other kind of D&D, Baldur's Gate or Forgotten Realm games/campaigns?

Not right now! This one has my complete and undivided attention. But yeah, of course, I like 'em all. If it's set in the realms I'll check it out.�


ps. ? oh that does look good! I'll do the same!