Larian Studios Forums General Chat After Seeing the new Dragon Age Trailer so glad BioWare didn't get to make Bg3

Yes needing to go through the Origin app even when playing from Steam is ridiculous. But at least this way, if EA ever goes away, I'll still have the games in my Steam library, alongside all my other games. If all my games were in GOG, then yeah I too would go with GOG.

Also, it's my understanding that you can play DA:O without needing the EA app because it predates EA creating Origin. And yes, it's been confirmed that DA4 will be playable offline.

I've been okay with the combat in the old BG games, the IwD and NwN games, the PoE games, the Pathfinder games, and yes even the DA games. I also was okay with the TB combat of T:ToN and especially Solasta. Seems you just can't (or refuse to) get my nuanced point about combat in RPGs, which to repeat for the millionth time is that it is something I am willing to tolerate for the sake of enjoying all the other aspects of RPGs. In most games I simply dial down the difficulty setting so that I can breeze through combat encounters. This works just fine for me (assuming the game allows for dialing down combat difficulty) since my sense of my self-worth is not even in the slightest tied to masochistic combat difficulty in a game.

To be fair, I think the difference might be that to me the setting/landscape? matters a lot. (I've seen that most people dislike the Sharran trials but the place is really awesome so I'm just happy to be there. Reminds me of how happy I was to be in the Dimitrescu castle in RE8. I extended that a lot just to do nothing and look at the place.)And standard nature mumbojumbo bores me. The hatred I hold for the Tieflings and the Druids is insurmountable, especially after playing through that whole ordeal so many times.
I found out so late you're supposed to tell Rolan to stay, because I just avoided talking to the tieflings altogether. I dislike the approach that I can talk to anyone because that means I don't know who has actually relevant stuff to say, and when 90% of them just say things like "Huh nice weather eh?" I just decide to ignore everyone instead of wasting my time.

I think Act 2 is the best act. It's got more striking aesthetics and is more contained, and doesn't seem rushed. I think Act 3 has very good moments, but suffers from rushing, particularly during the last battle, which is in its entirety fundamentally a mess. I feel like Raphael's fight would make for a better final battle. The way the 2 main villains (Orin, Gortash) are dealt with and explored as characters is also fundamentally flawed at its very base.
A good example to me of them working with the time restraints in Act 3 without failing is Astarion's quest: it's clearly been rushed, there are inconsistencies, and content has very obviously been chopped, but despite that the execution still works really well and comes across. Could it have been better? Sure, but we'll never know, and this version still works really well. Despite me knowing about the extent of the datamined content of his original quest, I remember not even remembering about it for a couple days and just being impressed. Can't say the same for Wyll or Gale's quest.

Exactly, you can explore, there isn't really any time limit unless you start a sequence of events. It's an open world, with lots of secrets and hidden bits of information. You have lots of paths to choose and ways forward. There are decent challenges, and you can do some really insane stuff. I love Act 1.



Pfft, of my 4,000 hours in this game about 3,000 is in Act 1. Still love it.

Given the modding tools Act 1 is a template for how an adventure should be built and I hope we get the chance to do that. Because as predicted Bg3 is dying off - people in single player land have moved on to the next shiny thing. But since Larian didn't invest in multiplayer properly it doesn't have the longevity of Neverwinter Nights - so no community is being built around long term multiplayer modding and modules.

It's fine, I don't think they had a lot of good choices here but Patch 7 and the handful of modding tools may be too little too late.

Veering between BG3 and DA4:
BG3-I wonder if everything (whole game) had been included in the EA, the quality of all three acts would have improved, not just Act I (which I enjoy most)?
DA4-I watched the gameplay trailer yesterday. It didn't feel like a game, it felt more like a Make Your Own Adventure book translated into a movie instead of a book. Was that just me?

People call crpg's Choose Your Own Adventure because of the way the narrative branches apart and then is twisted back together, often inelegantly. The few minutes of gameplay we've seen from DA4, reveals almost nothing about what the narrative will be like. The combat seems to be a more streamlined rendition of the already hyper-streamlined version of the last game. But for anything else, we'd be extrapolating about the game a lot of things from essentially the Nautiloid tutorial level.

I think BG3 was in development for too long, long enough that the scope of the game was expanded, then had to be cut back in order to ship the game. They rewrote Wyll from scratch, a whole section of Baldur's Gate was left on the cutting room floor, and we can see the artifacts of older narrative choices throughout the game, but especially where the narrative hits rough patches.
The reason the EA was so big is probably the same reason for this mission creep. Covid. They'd already made so much money from the EA alone, they probably felt safer working on the game for as long as they did, on the whole it made a terrific game, but I'm not sure giving more of it for us to bugtest would have addressed the problems in the later Acts. I could be wrong, I am curious to know what this forum would have been like if we'd gone through the second act with the same fine toothed comb as we did Act I.

For your first question, about BG3, I don't know. I tend to like act 1 and 2 more than act 3. I consider the EA alone a good spending of my money, no matter the criticisms I might have had in mind with the full game. I imagine that, yes, having been able to work like that for act 1 in EA, with feedback, might have helped a lot. But it was also the start of the game, the story, a narrower scope. I find act 2 very good too, maybe because it's still very focused, on Ketheric and Moonrise. Same for the revelations and objectives, I think. And the totally different atmosphere is nice. Would the rest have benefited from the same EA treatment, maybe. Would it have been possible, don't know. The writing and the ideas for how to bring things in motion and to conclusion are important. I find act 3 more all over the place, and I don't know exactly to what extent feedback could have helped there.

For DA4, I don't know what to say to you (it's very subjective ?), but no, I didn't have the same impression. I mean, I kind of understand what you're saying, but not that much in fact. Different tone, visual style, and choice of point of focus to expose, but I, for example, don't find it too dissimilar to the trailers for BG3 I've seen. In that it felt movie like with its editing from scenes from the game. Emphasis on you as the hero (like the one with Jaheira talking), and cue to funny moments (I think it's in the same one that there's a poor flying Barcus with an Astarion comment). As for the Make Your Own Adventure book reference, well, at least it's on brand ? I really didn't mind it, honestly. And I like that they focused on Rook and his companions for the Veilguard. It allows to take a look at various places we'll travel to, at various factions we'll meet, and to recall some lore, through them and their segment. While emphasizing on something that many people enjoy in a DA game, the group of people you're facing things with. At the same time, it doesn't go too in depth regarding the plot, which is not a bad thing in my opinion. But, at the same time, I've played the previous games, enjoyed them, and read the short stories and comics in between. So that might influence my perception of things, and it might be difficult to get something out of the trailer otherwise.

I also have enjoyed all previous DAs, I guess the trailer just hit me wrong.

No problem there, a lot of people apparently thought the same. I was just trying to acknowledge my own bias (it was totally fine with my own expectations and personal tastes). I know that many found the gameplay trailer better.

They also recently teased full nudity in Veilguard.

They talked about the presence of nudity in the interviews and articles I read at the time the trailer dropped. But yes, Game Informer talked a bit more about it (among other things) recently.

I will say, their CC sounds great from what they teased. The characters they've showcased made in the CC finally look good (ahem... DAI had um... issues)

I'm copypasting the info from a twitter that keeps reporting on DATV:

New Dragon Age Veilguard Character Creator details 🐺
▫️Vitiligo slider
▫️A TON of long hair options
▫️4 different lighting options - purple hue, bright tropical day, and gothic night
▫️40 different complexions - smooth, rugged, youthful, and freckled skin tones
▫️Cool and warm skin tone options
Melanin slider
▫️Undergarments with or w/o nudity
▫️Cataracts options
▫️Several ear options even including cauliflower
▫️30+ make up options, there's even glitter
▫️Tattoos can go anywhere on Rook's body
▫️40+ options for qunari horns
▫️4 voices with voice pitches
▫️she/her he/him they/them options separate from gender
▫️sliders for just about everything

Yes, it seems pretty solid. They hinted that we might have a little presentation at some point, if I remember correctly. I also like the fact that we might be able to adjust height and body shape. And I personally find the possibility to have different lighting options very useful. I have bad memories of DAI (with the green light from the fade right at the start), and other games.

Ah yes, the essentials for an RPG. What about story and plot, party-size, number of available companions, races, classes, skills, meaningful choices? Most of that CC is common fodder these days there is nothing really new. Hell, many games have mods which can do all that.
For me DA4 was always facing an uphill battle just for featuring that pompous, baldy-bap arsehole Solas.

As you can see with BG3, as long as you get the shippers on board you do not need story, choices or mechanics. You just need a bunch of naked people the players can stare at while writing nsfw fanfiction.

You guys make it sound like we have to hate everything all the time. I don't even think DATV is going to be good, and I've said as much on this thread.
Sometimes it's okay to preemptively say "this specific feature sounds good on paper!" without going "but what about everything else? That's probably going to be terrible."

Yeah… Honestly I find it quite amusing to try to have a conversation when people seem to focus on one thing in one or two last posts, and do as if the rest of the conversation had never happened.

I don’t think it’s bad, or has to be described in a certain way, if people positively notice one aspect of a game. And in previous messages I talked about story, choices and what not, because they’ve also started elaborating on other things. I also talked about forays on other media in between games. And that’s why I put the “among other things” when answering about the nudity thing in the coverage by Game Informer.

I get being cautious, critical, not liking something in part or totality, not being enthusiastic, whatever. Yet, I’ll admit I’m a bit perplexed here, regarding what it is that you’re in fact trying to convey.

Anyway, I’m still enthusiastic about DA4’s release, and discovering more about all its aspects for myself (since it’s a bit more difficult as long as it’s not out). And I’ll repeat that I think it’s cool there are lots of things on offer for various people and various tastes.

Well, Dragons Dogma 2 had a very robust character creation system... and look what happened there (Atleast the combat was mostly good).

I guess the negativitiy has to do with how DAVs marketing is mostly focused on Romances/Nudity/CC/etc, and abit of combat rather than, say, more info on classes and how high level combat looks/works, how does companion dynamics work out if they only get skill points based on your ?good? relationship with them, are there branching narratives and choices?
Perhaps they can't or I've missed something.

One thing I found interesting is it's indepth difficulty settings which includes a no Death option, which sounds like an odd choice tbh.

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Otherwise, personally, it's hard to care when the "important" aspects they have shown off just don't look that interesting, which includes:

How the combat looks like a rather boring left click spam, with occasional use of 5? abilities (3 on MC, 1 per companion) on a set cooldown of upwards of 2 minutes.

The pivot from a focus on stopping Solas to a companion focused narrative doesn't look super appealing, mostly given that I've only liked a few Bioware companions, although theres always atleast 1 per Bioware game.
Companion interaction, dialogue choices and leveling might also be abit hamstrung if they only get skill points if you choose the options they like.

Maybe it won't be as bad as I've read/heard and hopefully the consequences seen in the gameplay trailer and soundtrack make up for whatever shortcomings it might have.
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Also, completely unrelated, but I just have to say:

Excellent taste

Thats sadly the BG3 effect.
Larian made money by delivering a broken game and instead catering exclusively to fanfiction writer and shippers by sexualizing everything. So now other companies copy that as its easier to render vaginas than make interesting combat systems.

I honestly don't know if they mostly focus on romances, nudity, or the character creator. Most of the infos at the moment seem to come from the articles in Game Informers and a few interviews here and there. It seems to me that a few things got more traction because of people buzzing about them (recently I've seen an interest on the difficulty settings and the nudity).

I know kanisatha posted a link regarding the combat, there was something else about the classes and factions. I don't know if it's useful or anything, but I'll still put the links here :

https://www.gameinformer.com/exclus...ilguards-combat-abilities-skill-tree-and

https://www.gameinformer.com/exclus...-age-the-veilguards-classes-and-factions

Regarding the difficulty settings, including the no death option, I only see it as a welcome attempt at being inclusive. Certain people can have disabilities and such that prevent them from playing as effectively as others. Some are just in for the story and do not like combats that much. If it helps people experiencing something in good conditions from their perspective, while not bothering other players, I think it can be a fine tool.

They should apparently show more before release (I think they talked about the character creator, but also more about combat).

I do not mind that stopping Solas is not so much important at the moment. I think that, most of all with the 10 years delay in between games, it makes sense to take care of more pressing bad guys (since Solas put the veil in place for a reason in the first place). And I like the focus on companions because they also represent the places and factions, with their respective lore, we're going to interact with. But again, like I said, I was personally satisfied with the things revealed for the moment, so.