Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Not BG4 or D&D

Oh man BG2 keeps on giving...The king still isn't dead, Long live the king!

Well, we didn't get a toolset at release like with their previous two games (which was a nightmare to work in, but was actually rather powerful - sadly, specifically due to how user-unfriendly it was there barely were any campaigns and the like), and the promised "mod support" sounds more like something akin to the Bethesda Creation Club (cross-platform curated mods accessible from within the game, albeit free and devoid of predatory practices) than what the PC audience has been used to for more than two decades at this point. Anything controversial will still have to be downloaded externally, and player-made modules akin to NWN are quite likely not happening.

I wouldn't get my hopes up is what I am saying. But I could be wrong. The closest thing to NWN-like modding is what Solasta offers, but it's still very limited by comparison. In the meantime I guess one could wait for Baldur's Gate: Reloaded 2 (the NWN2 module) to release, it's been "coming soon" for a while now.

This seems a bit myopic. First, while I absolutely love the original BG games, many of the "quality of life" improvements that have become typical to games over the years are absolutely point blank humongous improvements. Early game gameplay in BG1 especially is total jank. Second, I don't actually think it's true that people can't enjoy these old-school games. I mean, there was an isometric renaissance (that probably LED to BG3) where a lot of the games played fairly similarly to the original Baldurs Gate series. So I don't actually think there's some humongous barrier preventing newer gamers from enjoying these games. I bet a lot of people bought into the series by 3 will go check out the previous titles.

Third, while the average fan of BG3 probably hasn't played the originals, we're not discussing an "average" gamer. We're discussing members of the Larian game studio, specifically those that worked on BG3. I think you should at least expect that the average person from that group should have some knowledge of the originals. I mean, you don't have to be 40+ to have played the originals. They came out around 25 years ago. I'm not 40 and I definitely played through and enjoyed them when they came out, though I am probably on the younger side of those who did, lol. But even long after they came out they remained popular and impactful.

Well, when the first Pillars came out, the then somewhat spoiled by all the "modern" amenities Bioware fans would complain about how it's ugly (which is ironic coming from somebody who thinks that Inquisition of all things is a pretty game...) and how there's too much reading. Meanwhile the original BG games are too "hard" and "unfair" (more like you are starting as a regular person who - guess what? - will probably die to a pack of wolves if not careful rather than someone who beats up devils and aberrations starting at level 1).

Same with the newer Fallout fan generation trying to get into the older games and being put off by - egads! - reading and "complexity" (as in the fact that you have to study the system a bit not to gimp your character, which is an amusing thought given how there are occassional questions asking for help building one in BG3 on the Steam forums, which, given how brain-dead 5e already is and how BG3 in particular holds your hand (albeit still not having class progression previews in-game...), is a rather sad display as to what the average player is capable of nowadays).

People would claim those games are "outdated" and "user-unfriendly", but their UI and mechanics were very intuitive to pick up even though I missed BG back in the day (having only played it in the early 10's first) - at least I did grow up with Fallout 2, and the smaller me was fine with both the mechanics and the reading somehow. And if the games even can become "outdated", why then does everyone complain about how they don't make them the same anymore, and how the old stuff was better (though somehow they mostly refer to the non-PC stuff, which I can't really get behind, since those ones really *are* wooden, ugly, and janky), and how the companies prey on the old IPs and brands to make easy buck off of brand recognition.

Larian aren't an exception to that, I am afraid, no matter how much people defend them. If this was truer to the originals, there wouldn't be the above argument. It may have been envisioned to be at some point, but they certainly stopped caring after they realised the older games' fans aren't their target demographic. Hence us getting the butchered cameo characters, the awful modern writing moments, and the over-reliance on "romance" as the selling point since the perpetually bothered Bioware-nurtured pixel-shaggers will eat it whole after, what, 6 years of abstinence? 9 even, if you skip Andromeda.

I am eternally skeptical of the argument of old games being better and modern fans being dumber/inferior in some way. I think that the latter argument is always untrue, though the former argument is usually untrue but can vary game to game. To go point by point, the prettiness or ugliness of any game is in the eye of the beholder. I've played part of BG1 and I think it's a pretty nice-looking game. I also happen to think Inquisition is a gorgeous game that still holds up to this day. And I also think that PoE1 is far prettier than BG1 and PoE2 blows all these games out of the water. As for complaints about too much reading and the game being hard, it's not some scathing indictment of modern fans being dumb, it's simply that fans are going in with a different, modern set of expectations. Back then, a lot more games had a baseline of actual unfairness that doesn't exist today. I point you to the abundance of unpredictable instant death traps that used to exist in games that have largely fallen by the wayside. Furthermore there's been an expectation shift both in video games and in the mechanical and storytelling philosophy of D&D as a whole in those times. The game isn't superior just because you're starting out as a normal person who could die to a pack of wolves. It's simply differentand opperatingoff ofa different set of expectations. People not jiving with those expectations doesn't make them dumb or lesser in any way, it simply makes them different.

Furthermore, calling 5e braindead is just wrong. It's far simpler than previous editions but that doesn't make it dumb, and it doesn't make its players dumb for wanting help making good characters in the system. You are used to something far more complex, I would argue that oftentimes that it was needlessly complex. But that doesn't mean that there's no complexity to be found in the newer, simpler versions. I say this as someone who's not a fan of 5e as a system. I find it too simple for my tastes and have chosen Pathfinder 2e as my system of choice. That's also a simpler system than 1e, which was an offshoot of D&D 3.5, but it's a demonstration of how a simpler system doesn't mean dumb. As far as UI is concerned, older games can certainly have good UI, I've not played any of those games with the original UI to judge, but just because it worked for people doesn't mean automatically that it's objectively good. There have been literal decades since those games, during which game devs have been able to build on knowledge and had a chance to see and study what works and why. I don't believe that new automatically means better, but I am willing to go out on a limb and say that overall, UI in games now is genuinely better than UI back then, if youlook at games as a whole, and as intuitive as you found the UI back then, I'm sure those same game devs, if they knew what they know now, could have created something way better.

I also find it amusing how you use as evidence the fact that people claim old stuff still looks good as an argument that things were better in the old days, then in the same metaphorical breath state that those people are wrong when they state that opinion about old stuff you disagree with. That's kind of hypocritical honestly. And really shines a light on how much of this argument is born of nostalgia and opinion. You also ignore the fact that the crpg genre has always been a niche. These games, for all you praise them, never caught on with the majority of gamers even in the old days when fans were supposedly "superior." Because it's not about the fans. Fans didn't become dumber, there's just more of them. The percentage of fans you would approve of is probably largely the same relative to back then, probably a bit larger if I had to guess. But now there are just way more fans in general, and it's easy to actually hear from them via the internet, since social media makes it so easy for people toshare thoughts and feelings, etc. I listen to a gaming podcast and one of the hosts played and loved both the original games. And he absolutely loves BG3 and thinks it's a worthy successor. I've never actually gone through both games but I still dislike BG3. But I also love games like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, the Pathfinder games, but also, Mass Effect Andromeda is tied with 2 as my fave in that series, and Inquisition is hands down my favorite dragon age game. You can't just broadly generalize and say "modern fans are worse than the old guard, and because of that modern games are actually worse." It's simply untrue. Stuff is complicated.

I apologize for getting rather rambly towards the end there. This is just a particular conversation I have a lot of feelings about.

"Important" is not a word I would use - more like "defined".

Amount of narrative content each companions has varies a lot - with Jaheira being far ahead of everyone else. Viconia by becoming a romancable option, became more defined in BG2 than a lot of "lesser" party members (lesser in terms of content). Yes, they absolutely could get Jan and Mazzy wrong. But I think it also would be easier to do something off-beat with Jan and Mazzy that wouldn't feel so off because, we really didn't get to know either of them too well. Not that one should bring familiar faces just for a sake of it.

Viconia and Sarevok are just such bizzare cases - I wonder how they came to be. If you would tell me they replaced different NPCs in the last stretch of the game I would believe it. It just doesn't feel like the scenarios they find themselves in have been crafted with them in mind. It just doesn't make sense for them to be there, or be... like this.

Well, first off, I object to characterizing them as "spoiled", because again a lot of those modern amenities are absolutely huge improvements. Second, I personally played BG1 when it came out and played Pillars, and while I love both the games, one of MY objections was "too much reading." Or rather, not too much reading, but the simple fact that the games will present you with walls of text that your eyes will glaze over. Pillars, imo, had somehow unlearned the lesson that BG2 had learned quite well - in BG2 there's a lot of text to read as well, but they *break it up* every few sentences, making you click a button to continue a conversation even when there's no break in the conversation or dialogue choice to make. This one little thing makes a lot of the text to read go down much smoother. Pillars also has the problem that to "get" its plot, you almost IMMEDIATELY need to have a TON of buy-in about the lore of the world, a world that nobody had encountered before. Which made closely reading what people were saying a downright necessity, to the point that they felt they had to add those little "lore links" in the text. I loved Pillars, but it definitely had its huge flaws (and I think it's a huge shame that the sequel, which addressed so many of them, didn't do very well. Pillars 2 is also just a gorgeous isometric game in the classic "painted backgrounds" style, and I worry we'll never see something like it again.)

Also, I mean....BG1 absolutely *is* unfair, lol. First off, you are not starting off as a "normal person", a 1st level adventurer in second edition dnd is not a normal person. They're not as powerful as they can become,but they absolutely stand out as being able to practice simple magic or being trained for combat or getting divine spells from their god, etc. And it's NOT fair - it's not fair to throw people into a system where they have little idea of what their power is like and then bombard them with combat which will totally destroy them, especially when nothing you've done establishes the convention that this is going to be some sort of survival, as opposed to adventure, game. BG1, just early on, by virtue of this aggressive unfairness, is simply a *different type of game* than ANY of its sequels, really - I knew fans of BG2 who couldn't get into BG1 because of it! Because by the time you start out in BG2, this element of "We need to run away from a ton of fights" is simply gone, and it is much more a straightforward adventure game.

For me, I was a kid and enthusiastic enough to overcome how unfair it was and the jank in the combat system and, frankly, how absurdly useless some character classes can feel at that early level. And once you get over this early hump, BG1 starts playing much more like a typical adventure game later on. And to me, it holds some charm. But I'm not going to say that modern gamers have been trained out of liking some of these blatant, glaring flaws. I mean, there are, these days, entire games based around the idea of survival, avoiding combat, and having little to no chance if you do get into combat. So the idea that modern gamers simply wouldn't put up with these elements seems blatantly false to me. It's simply that it's *not the genre some people want to play.* That's why I also disagree that the problem in Fallout is the "complexity." I think the problem is just that Fallout 3-onward is just an entirely different genre of game than the earlier games. That simple fact alone means there will inevitably be people who love the latter games but don't like the earlier games.

The original games ARE outmoded and user unfriendly. For example, there's no marker showing the aoe of spells - you just cast fireball and learn the AoE and eyeball it, lol. (though some people prefer this and a lot of games have the option for this mode.) I also don't get what you're saying. You simultaneously claim that people claim that the games are outdated and user unfriendly, but then that at the same time "Everyone" complains how they don't make them the same anymore. Well, I played the originals when they came out, and yeah, in a lot of ways they absolutely ARE outdated and user unfriendly. I mean, I think it would be pretty terrible if they WEREN'T outdated in many ways, because that would inevitably mean the gaming industry had stagnated over the past 25 years. And I don't think that "everyone" claims that the old ones are better. I think YOU claim that, and a lot of people disagree. I myself, personally, disagree. I have tons of nostalgia for BG1, but IMO, BG3 is way than BG1 in a lot of ways. I say this as someone who is a humongous critic of BG3, and I think BG1 is better than BG3 in some ways (storytelling in particular!) I can't say the same for BG2, I think BG2 is better than BG3. In a way, it's hard to compare because they're such different games.

This whole thing started because I was disappointed in the way that Larian handled Viconia specifically, to which you claim that this is simply because they weren't writing with fans of the original in mind. But that doesn't seem right, because in other ways they clearly were - I think Jaheira was handled fairly well, for example, and the game has tons of references to the original series. They didn't NEED to do that, if they wanted to just ride on the "Baldur's Gate" name - and hell, there are *already games* that take that approach, use the name but have little or no connection.

I'm also confused by your mention of Bioware - especially because I consider Bioware series like Dragon Age and Mass Effect to have *much better* writing than BG3. You've left me a bit confused; you seem to be drawing some connection between BG3 and Larian writing, and Bioware writing, and I'm not sure I get it. Granted, its been a while since I've played Bioware games - I played Mass Effect through 3, and Dragon Age through Inquisition - but IMO the Bioware writing was clearly different from Larian's writing, and clearly superior. Also what over-reliance on romance...? I do happen to think Larian's writing for romance was pretty weak as well, but....it's all totally optional. There's tons of plot stuff that happens totally independent from romance. In what way are they relying on it? I'm not sure I follow the point you're making here.

And for what it's worth, I also hugely disagree with 5e being "brain dead". I grew up on 2nd edition and third edition DnD, (skipped 4e), and IMO 5e is by FAR superior to those versions. I mean don't get me wrong: I love COMPUTER games where you can dive in and optimize a complex system, and 5e is not that. But IMO 5e's "simplifications" make it a far better TABLETOP game. When I'm playing a computer game, I can sit down and take my time and try to figure out how a bunch of different bonuses add up to make something totally overpowered, and there's a charm to that. But translate that time in TT, and it's *ridiculous* - the beauty of computer games is they can just passively apply all these bonuses in the background, you don't need to REMEMBER to add them to every roll and which rolls they'd apply to and blah blah blah. The beauty of 5e's "simplifications" is that the system itself gets in the way of you playing the game *much less than previous versions*. In my experience, as a tabletop game it's simply much smoother and more fun. Though perhaps, translated as a system for a computer game, it comes across as a bit lacking.

There is some validity to the claims, however only to certain extents.

"Old games were better" has the truth of "Old games were generally more complete when released" - Back when you couldn't just ship patches out the wazoo (Also back when gaming was more niche so it was more gamers making games for gamers and fewer corporates making games for shareholders) there was more emphasis on making a polished, functional product out of the gate. While most modern games aren't finished until a year after their release (If they finish at all).

"Modern fans being dumber/inferior" has the truth of games being more mainstream, so you get more casual gamers. You have things like whales funding terrible MTX practices, you have kids eating up slop like CoD, FIFA and Ubisoft games that are churned out using copy/paste as well as game "Journalist" types that cry whenever a game doesn't hold their hand through the entire experience...

These aren't end-all-be-all terms though. There are plenty of games being released that are well polished on release, that are designed for gamers and not shareholders. There are still hardcore gamers that want good games that don't hold their hand all the time.


Most of these complaints are actually results of old games being old. Thus having limited technology and software to actually implement things well.

Heavy reading reliance because having fully VA dialogue was too much back in the day. With a lot of difficulty being due to janky controls or systems.


Honestly, as someone who's recently been on a binge of older games... Most older games UI's are actually trash. Like, they're serviceable, and certainly were great at the time, but compared to most modern games the UI just sucks.

I haven't recently replayed BG1 or BG2 though so can't comment specifically on those. But overall my experience of older games is usually awful UI, janky controls and dated systems (With the games that hold up today being those that have great writing. Something that is lacking in many modern games in favour of shiny graphics).

Which is probably why RPG's are often the highly rated classic games, as people remember the story of games like Planescape: Torment, FFVII, System Shock, Fallout 2, KotoR etc despite their gameplay being nothing spectacular.

Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth.That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law?

Recruit: Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir!

Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot!

Recruit: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!

Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire a husk of metal, it keeps going until it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip.

Recruit: Sir, yes sir!"

If only we could ever get this quality of writing in an RPG again. *sighs in old lady*

You raise a lot of interesting points. Regarding the superiority or not of old games, I'd also like to point out that there were absolutely bad games madein the old days. Lots of really bad, poorly designed games that simply were not fun. They just were forgotten about because no one would ever talk about them, and there was no easy way for people to share their displeasure the way there is now. In those days, a bad game was bad because of genuine incompetence and inability most of the time. Nowadays, a team making a game probably has a higher baseline competence and ability than back in the early days because back then they were still figuring out a lot of what would and wouldn't work, and it was also harder to actually learn back then. When a game is bad these days, despite what most people want to believe, it's less because the people making it don't know how to make a game (though that can still happen) and more because as you say, they've got to deal with studio demands, shareholder expectations, etc. In my opinion a lot of games we call bad nowadays are still fundamentally competent and technically fine. The gaming floor is miles higher now than in the past.


I'm actually gonna speak in defense of BG3 here. I think that the ME games are miles better written overall, but BG3 absolutely has moments of dialogue that at least match something like this. Right at character selection, The little intro dialogues for Lae'zel and Durge in particular are downright Shakespearean. BG3 is disappointing, but it has its moments. They simply never come together like other games do. I would argue that even "bad" RPGs all have their moments. They're just always that, moments.

Golden Age fallacy is strong in this thread.

I do believe older games had overall more artistic identity. While BG3 isn't exactly my cup of tea, Larian is in many ways return to good old days. Really, the only complain I have is that it is too broad to really excel at anything. I will take a smaller, more focused title anyday, over jack of all trades. But as much as I complain about BG3, it is not a victim of things I would usually list as problems in modern games. "Than vs now" definitely isn't black and white conversation though. Here is Tim Cain sharing some of his thoughts:

Yes, he mentions many good challenges, including: "Marketing dictates game design". This is also familiar from other industries such as music and acting. Why are the movies usually worse than the books, because a book only has one author and that author is hardly under any time pressure to write his/her work until he/she finds it perfect.

Siege of Avalon by Digital Tome - Played any good books lately?

It's no shame if you don't have the technical possibilities of a one-to-one implementation. On the contrary, it's even a good thing if you intentionally and skillfully leave some details to the imagination of the individual, e.g. Abdel Adrian should never have existed. Especially if you have an excellent basis (book: storytelling etc.), then you can also achieve a lot via other stylistic devices. Just like with Blair Witch Project (nice reference in BG 2's with the Umar Hills Witch) or DARTH MAUL: Apprentice - A Star Wars Fan-Film

Many cooks spoil the broth. It takes a lot of determination and also management that has the team's back so that their own creative development potential can blossom instead of being eaten away by constraints and greed for money.

Time often plays a factor in why movies don't hold up to books.

Movies are constrained to 90-120 minutes to tell the story. Which doesn't give as much time to adequetely convey things that are in a book which is often critical for the overall story (Even more so when a single film often spans multiple books in a series). You lose a lot of build up and worldbuilding when things are rushed through so that an audience can reach the end within the couple of hours the film lasts for.

This is also why video game movies often are terrible too, since even though they both share the multiple writers, the need to cram a 20-40 hour game's story, worldbuilding and drama into a fraction of that usually ends up with something that ends up being shallow and uninteresting, with only action scenes being notable because nothing else has had the exposition to flourish.

On the flip side, when a media is simply used for the setting rather than trying to redo a story in film, results are better. The FFVII film Advent Children simply uses the setting and characters from the game and the film thus focuses on having a story written for the film specifically, so its pacing is appropriate for what is being told and as a result the film is actually good.

Such things can arise in other forms of cross media products - Such as books or films turned into video games are almost universally garbage. Since writing needs to be done for the specific media or it tends to fail (With things turned into video games also often having the sin of removing one of the best parts of video game storytelling - Player interaction. Since if a game railroads a player into the strict linear path of the book/film, you lose the reason to even have it be a game)

Yes exactly, you're absolutely right of course, but that's not just because of that, but because movies/games based on books are forced into a tight corset instead of treating them in several parts. The gradual build-up of suspense is ignored. Hence the broad hint to Siege of Avalon (Episodes), which did exactly the opposite. Baldur's Gate / DnD, like its predecessors, is practically predestined for multi-part games instead of leaving us out in the rain with a stand-alone title with a bombastic intro (which has been criticized often enough) etc. pp. Because you no longer know how to top your own bar, which has been set too high, or as the current process shows: the cooperation was put off because someone pulled the corset too tight again...

This is a pretty intriguing argument anyway. In particular when it comes to Baldur's Gate. Bioware have always aimed for mainstream audiences, in relative terms. They may not have aimed at the "modern" mainstream. But tried HARD to appeal to the Diablo and Warcraft (RTS!) crowd back then, some of the biggest crowds in PC gaming at the time. They were heavily targeting people who'd never touch something like Darklands, Realms Of Arkania or Fallout before.

In particular BG1 is a super simple game in its low level play -- in AD&D 2e this means pushing a button upon level-up, and having casters with barely ability (the only characters wich much ability in 2e to begin with). If Bioware had the tech and budget to do cinematic cutscenes and full VO, they would have done that as early as at least BG2.

Also, one of the main attractions for Interplay was Bioware's engine. Rendering environments in lush and VERY PRETTY FOR THE TIME detail. Usually, such environments were tile-based. The Infinity Engine could do this stuff painterly -- which was actually its strength, despite even older Ultima games going far deeper than the pretty but static IE environments. Interplay marketing focused heavily on how pretty the game would look and how exciting the action would be.



tldr; Guido Henkel is spot on about BG. "Publishers turned their backs on these kinds of hard core games and instead went down the path of streamlined mainstream products, especially since Baldur’s Gate proved very clearly at the time that there is a market for light role-playing games." https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8620

And yet even compared to the streamlined games of the past, modern games like BG3 are even more streamlined and bland.

In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. The Infinity Engine was as static as they came back then (look, never touch). It's even more static now. And the quests didn't get any less linear and hack&slash, with combat in general usually being the only option.

In the grander scheme of things, I'd rate BG3 as the "missing link" between what was started on Kickstarter back then (Wasteland 2, Pillars et all) + the indies (Jeff Vogel, Spiderweb) and the big guys on the block (Bethesda, Bioware, et all). The former are deliberately going for a retro aesthetic. The latter have largely abandoned 1980s/1990s/early 2000s RPG design altogether in a rather desperate bid to reach an ever larger crowd. https://fextralife.com/forums/t293778/bioware-we-want-call-of-dutys-audience

BG3 technically is the kind of project hinting at where things may have picked up from next if that hadn't happened. Far from the only one possible. But one possible.

I'd love to see examples of what you mean here.


Something of a Curate's Egg then?

This is a collection of all the character selection intros. Lae'zel and Durge's are my favorites, but I think they're all pretty good in that they all reflect who the character is. Gale talking like he's giving an academic lecture is an example.

I think that while I don't enjoy BG3, it's on the whole an okay game. I think there's actually quite a number of good things in it. I would say that in isolation, act 2 is actually quite well-written overall. It's probably the largest stretch of good story writing in the game, but even it is plaguedby weird choices and issues like Kethric's never-referenced extended family. BG3 is not a bad game. It's just a sloppy game created by developers who overally just seem very flakey and flighty.