Interview with Swen.

I was hoping for more D&D, but oh well. Or DLC.

Shame because the game is really good. Not surprising though as they never seemed enthusiastic about DnD. Personally I’ve no interest in revisiting the Divinity series.

Imagine what they can do with the game they are enthusiastic about.

I feel the same about DOS3. I just couldn't really get into DOS or DOS2.

I secretly hope they came into agreement with Games Workshop to do a WFRP game. It's my wet dream.

I hope they'll work on another license or a new IP next.

Quite frankly I feel like I could gladly go on for the rest of my life without ever having to interact with Rivellon ever again, as far as fictional settings go.

It sounds like something totally new. I don't want DOS 3 either. Their main goal has to be that it be as good as BG3, big risk.

I wouldn't be surprised if they do another Divinity game as they fully own the IP and have control over it.

I wouldn't be surprised either.
I would just be disappointed.

I'm glad for them not doing D&D again. Given their level of homebrew and how they felt restricted by its rulings.

Personally, I'd love a new Divinity game, as I enjoyed DOS1 & 2 (Though miss me with DOS2's awful armour system)

Though, with how they talk about things it's possible they're going to be doing a new IP for their next title. Which would also be fine, as it would be another IP they have full control of so they can do their rules their way.

For me it's the other way round: "restrictions" due to dnd greatly improved gameplay compared to d:os2.


I'm not convinced Larian can handle a game of a much greater scale than bg3.

I read that article and it has me scratching my head in confusion a bit. While I respect their decision to move on, there were so many moments in the epilogue that alluded to something more. It wasn’t exactly subtle at hinting that there was another adventure to be had from most of the companions (and Withers’) comments.

I know Larian doesn’t do DLC’s, but it is upsetting to read that they don’t plan on at least expanding just a tiny bit (I know it’s probably because of the whole Hasbro/WOTC issue but still upsetting nonetheless). I’d even pay for it, but I know that’s not their preferred business model. They did say they do still plan on updating the game, but I'm not sure to what extent.

Well, blame WoTC for all of this. There is probably even no one to work with there at this point. The whole team, that Larian cooperated with, is long gone now, which doesn't inspire confidence for future projects.

I think it's frankly far fetched that WotC is the reason. If anything I could see WotC being willing to write a blank cheque for Larian to do "w/e" for Baldur's Gate 4 given how well received 3 was. It's much more likely they just want to do something else instead and the split was amicable.

Whatever they do next there will be barrels.

I mean... I'd rather developers that work WITH the DnD rulings make DnD games as opposed to ones like Larian making a DnD game DESPITE the DnD rulings.

I'd take Owlcat over Larian any day for a DnD game as it will mean a more accurate representation of DnD ruleset (Albeit not perfect, given the lacking features in some subclasses in games like WotR - But still that game had like 194 subclasses so one can imagine the workload for making them all fully realized)

If I'm playing a DnD game, I want a DnD game.

I agree completely. On the whole, I'm disappointed in this game. I wanted Baldur's Gate 3 and I feel like I got some teen angst horror mashup.

Within the context of Swen's speech at the Game Developer awards it is pretty clear that it's entirely the fault of WOTC/Hasbro.

Given how Hasbro has behaved this isn't surprising. Insisting the game be released before 4th quarter earnings, firing the team that Larian was working with, refusing to negotiate in good faith...no wonder Larian is fed up.

Hasbro is a highly corporate holding company that doesn't respect, or appreciate artistry even when It makes them 90 million dollars. They have a corporate cave-man spreadsheet mentality, focusing on numbers while failing to understand the synergistic value that comes from a holistic approach. They fail by pushing out garbage preferring to cannibalizing their work for a short term win over a long term windfall. I see it all the time - it's the hallmark of corporate mediocrity.

Fuck Hasbro. Larian will be fine, they are taking the hard path that can lead to greatness.

Right, they should have just fully embrace dnd than create a Larian take on it.

You know, secretly I'm hoping for an owlcat game (story and gameplay) with bg3's production value (motion capture, character models, voice actors and sound track).

And I am glad of this statement. Let them finish BG3 with patches and start a new amazing project. I would like to see something new of course.

Would have loved a BG3 dlc or expansion, but can’t wait to hear what they will do next!


From IGN:
“Vincke says the next game won't be Divinity: Original Sin 3, and that it will be "different than what you think it is" but that it's "still familiar." Elsewhere, Vincke said that the new project will "dwarf" the scope of Baldur's Gate 3, which would be quite impressive given the scope of that game.”

What they've said about it paints a very different story.
https://www.ign.com/articles/larian...c-then-canceled-it-the-studio-was-elated

In this article it quotes Swen talking about how they felt like they were only doing it out of obligation and that when it was suggested they cancel plans and work on a new game instead the studio was elated.

I'm glad they've decided to move on from BG3 and DnD and hope they stick to that decision. It always felt like they had to wrestle a lot with 5e's ruleset to make a game they deem fun. I'm curious to see what they do next.

"Thanks - Gustav for ... being Gustav"

I get choked up every single time on that.

So much respect and love and endless gratitude, truly.

It was an absolutely wild ride and a total trip!

Fly on red dragon, fly on. We'll catch ya on the next out hehe

Well fuck, they really don't care.
Won't see me EA testing their next game though. This whole experience left such a bitter taste.

So basically Larian cut and runs after delivering a disjointed mess thanks to their constant rewrites and cuts to the final act instead of trying to fix their mess, trusting that the shippers will be enough to finance their next game.

Well, I'd have liked more of a similar game, but it's hard to see how a full expansion would have worked. Extra missions in the middle would feel like you're being diverted away from the urgent issue of the Absolute, and there are so many potential storylines at the end from all of the different companions it's hard to know which you'd follow. And a new, bigger threat would cheapen the victory of the original game.

I'll keep an eye out for whatever they release next since I really enjoyed BG3, but I don't see any reason to buy early access. I'd rather wait for the finished game and experience the whole thing, rather than getting bits of the plot in advance, which is how I imagine early access worked in BG3

Is an absolute sorrow. Regarding the expansion, I'm sorry they don't make a continuation to get to level 20. I am increasingly convinced that the multiplicity of intricate and convoluted endings from being able to play as a custom character an Origin character.

As for a BG4, it is too early to tell. Probably another SH will do it.

I posted this in the other thread this article was linked.

This is good for Larian, good for the BG franchise, good for D&D, and good for me personally. This is the best news I've heard involving Larian since BG3 was announced. I'm actually finding myself curious and interested in what those two new projects Swen talks about may be. I hope at least one of them turns out to be a Larian game I will like, finally!

I wonder, how can you tell people in detail about the severe problems you faced during development that lead to the release of a playable but unfinished game after 6 years and in the same interview use the Larian philosophy of not rehashing on previous successes as an excuse to leave it like that? And how can you be so confident now to move on to a project that will "dwarf" BG3?

This makes no sense whatsoever, but Swen makes it sound as if it was totally reasonable.

Well, I'm no fan of Divinity. That's the most frustrating game I've ever played.
I've uninstalled both BG3 & Divinity.
They're no worth messing with.

Whow.

The negativity of some posters really give the impression as if BG3 would have been a failure.

Which of course it wasnt at all.


And no, the next game of Larian wont be D&D, since its SF.

Well ... technically SF can be D&D, too. Knights of the Old Republic for example was d20, which is basically a simplified D&D3. IMHO a great basis for making your own rulesystem, by the way. Despite being quite extremely trivialistic compared to pretty much any other rulesystem I've experienced, KotOR was quite fun to play.

But I dont think Larian will go that way.


I havent really paid attention much to game news, so maybe I've missed it. But I'm not aware that Larian ever said "we will never do another D&D game" or "we wont ever do BG4". They just didnt say the opposite, either. As far as I know, they keep their options open, and I dont see anything wrong about that.



P.s.: GNA I love this forum. I could have sworn I clicked the first page before answering this thread. Turns out I didnt. The forum REALLY wants you to only see the end of the thread. Grr.


P.p.s.: But even after seeing the link, I still would say this isnt a final commitment. They may do BG4 after all. Just not as their next game. And that we already knew before.




But we've already known no expansion will happen ? They will work on a definite version and thats it.

I think the constraints imposed by DnD 5e were good for Larian. I bounced hard off of DoS 2 because of the armor implementation and the level scaling gear. BG3 on the other hand had a much smoother gear progression that allowed some gear obtained in the first act to be used for the entire game.

So... I would personally prefer that they make a BG4 or a DLC. However, I never expected them too. I can't remember sources for this, but I recall Sven saying that Larian doesn't do DLC during early access.

In any case, I don't think that they are saying that they would NEVER do BG4, just not next. As implied earlier in this thread, the chaos at Hasbro probably helped them reach this decision (although Sven is too diplomatic to say that outright). Hopefully the project after the next.

How could anyone have know it's not happening, when Swen himself entertained the idea of creating a dlc for a while as he stated in the interview?

And how do we know they will work on a DE when they are "done with bg3" (except for patches and bugfixes, again according to the interview)?

I think the thread title can be expanded to "No DE, DLC, BG4 or DND".

Hot take: What if Larian decided to focus more on the romance/companion aspects of the game because they never really felt like working with the ruleset will get the best they could offer? Like I know companions were a big thing in BG1 and 2, but still to me BG3 is more of a companion simulator rather than a story driven game. Still, could only be they wanted to transport the tabletop feeling with friends interacting with you into the game more than just acting as a DM.

Either way, Larian decided against a DLC and money, they wanted to move on, wanted to do something by heart and maybe therein lies the explanation why act 3 is worse compared to the act 1. Either it was just a time issue or they never really poured in their heart and soul.

No surprise there. Hopefully, there are still some patches in the works.

I am looking forward to next Larian projects.

The fact the studio was “elated” when he told them they are done with BG3 goes a long way to explaining why Act 3 is such a mess. People don’t suddenly burn out, sounds like the enthusiasm for the project drained away quite a while ago.

Even if what they come up with next sounds appealing I’m going to promise myself to swerve EA if they offer one. Not going down that road ever again.

Obviously a D:OS 3 will be a hard-pass for me. But since Swen mentioned two games they have been wanting to make, I'm hopeful the 'other' game--so *not* anything associated with their Divinity franchise--will be something exciting for me. He also mentions that he and his devs have had many new ideas about how to do combat, which they could not try in BG3 because of D&D mechanics limitations. This also intrigues me greatly. Maybe they have some ideas to make TB combat something *not* as crappy as it is currently, something that is actually both fun and realistic. Or even maybe a way to bridge the gap between TB and RT(wP). That would be especially awesome.

I feel sorry for Larian if they burned out during development and I'm afraid, the obsessive fandom played a role in that, but in the end, here we are, fans, hoping for a finished game, a polished game and I really hope they are still motivated to bring the game to a successful end, namely adding at least a bit of the feedback fans gave within the last months and fixing the bugs.
To some degree fans also burned out I feel, they gave their thoughts in EA, wrote tons of feedback and there hasn't been a real statement for months. Same people still hope today that their work wasn't in vain.

And yeah, I also very strongly agree that a huge part of Swen's decision to pivot away from not just BG but D&D entirely is because his interractions with WotC and Hasbro proved to be unpleasant and left him with a bad taste. Any developer that works with WotC walks away having hated their experience. That's WotC's record, especially in recent years.

RIP D&D video games.

I think @Tuco and @Ranxerox nailed it.

The Larian CEO has never liked DnD and always wanted to make DoS3. At first they tried to make BG3 as DoS-like as possible and got frustrated when DnD fans pushed back.

As far as staff being elated it seems cleathat the CEO tends to confuse his staff's reactions with his own. I've worked for bosses like and it was a pretty awful experience. After a while you start to lose your sense of self because you spend all of your time sharing your boss' fears, anxieties and moments of elation.

As the CEO said:

"There are a lot of constraints on making D&D, and 5th Edition is not an easy system to put into a video game. We had all these ideas of new combat we wanted to try out and they were not compatible."

Act 3 is a mess and it's the most Larian of the chapters. Explosions, barrels, everyone-hates-the-gods, undead as comic relief. It's the chapter that wanted to be Larian game but was forced to be DnD game.

So, sure, I will probably buy DoS3 once it has definitive edition and is on sale.

This is yet another signal that the end game will not be improved and that's a disappointment but, on balance, this is good news.

Hopefully BG4 will be made by a company that likes DnD.

I might be missing a point here, but if I don't like DnD, why do I even try to pitch for the IP?
Sure they didn't think they could just make a DOS-BG3 and come away with it. If it was for the popularity and the money, alright, but if so, then they sold themselves and their believes - or at least the CEO did so.
If that's the case, it's pretty heartless to hype so many DnD and BG fans while not sharing that hype at all.

In retrospect, they should have used the characters (or similar characters) and come up with either a new DOS or a new IP.

Sorry, thought my previous post got eaten by the Gateway Error monster

Why yes, D&D may not be an easy system to implement in a game, but it is also an amazingly complex system thats yet very well balanced. Thanks to now 50 years of different people, and some very talented people among them, working on this system.

This would be a lot of work to have either way, and picking up D&D, you get it just so.

And besides, D&D5 is easier to do on the computer than D&D3, which in turn is much easier to do than AD&D (aka D&D2).

And all Bioware had for BG1 and BG2 was AD&D to work with.



I am far from religious about games using D&D, however I absolutely love the enormous flexibility that comes in regards to character creation if you have a system as complex as D&D.



The only games I know that can compete with D&D in this regards can be found in the MMORPG sphere. If developers get years of data and finetuning to perfect a rulesystem, some true rulesystem gems can be created.

In this regard I remember very fondly my favorite MMORPG of all time, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As many different people told me back when VSoH was running, Sigil had managed to "make classes right".

So if someone would want to base their game on the VSoH system, or on an evolution inspired on the VSoH system, I'd be super enthusiastic about that.



As I understand it, WoW is also pretty good. Personally I have a hard time with the limitations of WoW though. Seriously ? You have to stand still while spellcasting ? Yikes. In Vanguard I could move at full speed backwards if levitating ! And move at half speed when spellcasting on the ground. Much more realistic. Why wouldnt you be able to move at all when spellcasting ? That just makes no sense to me.

Well, also in WoW you can completely reskill your character on the fly. Yikes. If you want to base or allow to inspire your rulesystem on WoW, please dont allow that one.

Another reason I personally never touched WoW. There are many more, by the way. But the ideas of the rulesystem havent been bad.

Popularity.

DnD and especially Baldur's Gate, is an EXTREMELY popular title.

Ergo, you get the IP you immediately attract all fans of the IP - Thus get a massive surge in popularity irregardless of how good your game actually is (BG3 is decent... But no multi-GotY material honestly... But then again, GotY is often just a popularity contest not a measure of quality...)

Of course, whether this surge of popularity continues is another matter... I.e. Will all the DnD/BG fans also buy DOS3 or whatever other new IP Larian makes (Given how many people on this forum seem to hate Divinity, it doesn't seem likely)

This is basically a bullshit statement. Larian was super stoked about working with WOTC and the D&D partnership. and anyone claiming otherwise is badly misinformed or outright lying. They pitched Bg3 twice to WOTC.

I have no doubt Larian would have loved to continue working with the D&D IP - in a different setting - which there are a TON to choose from.

That people keep getting hung up on this concept of "BG4" just boggles my mind and saddens me - like, really? You want to keep beating that dead horse? The story is told, move on you ding dongs.

In the end HASBRO fucked themselves over here. They needed Larian more than Larian needed them. Hasbro already tried a D&D game and it failed so spectacularly that the gaming studio went out of business. Dark Alliance was a perfect example of what their "corporate culture" is able to produce and will again produce in future.

So whoever is dumb enough to applaud Larian not working with the D&D franchise anymore I hope you enjoy games on the same level of quality as DA because that's the unfinished, buggy, bullshit that you can expect from that franchise. A couple of those and you will be begging Larian to come back.

Frankly I would love to see Larian partner with Critical Role to develop their own new system with a team of seasoned players and game enthusiasts - and make it open source. Or they can wait a few years for Hasbro to eventually sell off the D&D IP when they realize they can't make it profitable with their low-effort spreadsheet worshipping bullshit.

Forgive me @Blackheifer but it seems that if you are going to dismiss my statement as bullshit - a statement that was backed up by a quote from Larian - you should feel obligated to do the same. Where is your evidence?

I frankly don't have the time to pull up every instance where the Larian CEO indicated he didn't like DnD but, from memory:

- he doesn't like that you miss so often in DnD (in the DOS system missing was rare but enemies had a huge store of hitpoints)

- he doesn't like that character level and spell level are different

- he never played DnD and preferred some other RPG whose name I forgot

- didn't care for the BG series and was more into final fantasy

- the infamous "we produced a 5e version of the game but decided it wasn't very fun"

And, of course, we have the CEO's recent statement. Larian wanted to things in combat that would violate DnD rules.

While your characterization of Hasbro - low effort, spreadsheet minded - is correct I see no evidence that they were behind the death of the DLC. I'm happy to hate on Hasbro but I think I need a bit more than Hasbro eeeevol to go on.

To underline this point: I don't want to carry water for WotC but I don't like conspiracy theories either.

As to why they wanted the contract and tried to get it twice? Everyone making RPGs wanted to make BG3. It's the flagship. It's the name that brings in money and brings recognition They wanted to contract to make money and burnish their reputation. No fandom required. Duh.

I know the perfect IP they should work on next:

Leisure Suit Larry(-an)
Its a perfect fit.

Wacky systems. check.
Weird unfinished stories that starts out hard and ends soft. check.
Disney grotesque visuals. check.
Romance simulator. check.

Just add that fun X rated strategic turn based combat, Halsin the bear running a pub, Astarion the vamp running a brothel and we have a hit.

+1

So I'm looking forward to new titles/parts from Larian!

+1

Sorry but no. D&D 5e is the poster-child for a dumbed-down, over-simplified and superficial character creation system. Even just within D&D, 3.5e is far more deep, complex and sophisticated, as amply demonstrated by the awesomeness of character creation and development in the Pathfinder games. But even better as a deep and complex system is that of the PoE games, which for me is by far the best out there.

I doubt Larian moving away from D&D is some kind of WotC boycott. I mean it might controbute it, but I would be surprised if Larian stuck with D&D.

They are a studio with their own style, ideas and identity. They created their take on D&D game, and the most prestigious PC IP at that. Sure, a business focused CEO might double down on BG3 success to milk it for as much as it is worth, but Larian is a private company - and Sven is clearly passionate about creating games. They did BG3, brought a lot of eyes on them, made money and expanded the audience: now is time to invest and try something new.

While milking established franchises is how gaming industry functions, it is not healthy way of doing it. They would only be point to making Baldur's Gate4, if Larian wasn't able to pull of what they set out to do in BG3.

I'm disappointed, not so much for the loss of BG4, but for the lack of any new DnD settings from Larian. Whether that be something in Cormyr or a new Dark Sun or some other setting.

I applaud the desire to do something new. Too often in life these days, we get rehashes of previous titles. Movies do this all the time and it reaches the point where you start to wonder where all the creativity went.

My concern is that a new ruleset could be a recipe for disaster. The ruleset itself holds equal importance to all the flavor of the setting. We all know DnD, and for all its flaws, it's packaged into something that works well enough to support the flavor of the story being told. A new system will have to be brilliant to compete, and that's a tall order.

*

I do get the impression that WotC is the reason we're not getting another DnD title from Larian. With the right deal, I think things would have progressed smoothly, but I suspect that Hasbro overestimated the importance of their IP and underestimated the importance of Larian.

The stagnant corporate culture probably didn't make things any easier.

I mean, the fact that the team was burnt out and happy to finally push the game out the door at long last was pretty damn obvious as early as the semi-final EA showcase in Q1 2023, when the game basically took a 180 degree turn and stomped on most things the EA players were trying to steer it towards, marketing towards a quick and short-term reliable shipper- and "average Bioware fan" - customer base who care not about the mechanical background or a deep, impactful storyline - but instead want a glorified dating sim with a flashy presentation.

Like, to this day, I am baffled by the decisions like removing belts and swapping them for the underwear slot which you find no items in the world for until Act 3, just turning crossbows into better bows by not implementing the loading tag, throwing racial ability bonuses away but not allowing for dice roll allocation, screwing up spell distribution with multiclassing so that mixing casters gets out of control all for the sake of it being "fun", not changing the illogical bits of Act 1 whatsoever and not elaborating at all on the Absolute's route, swapping Daisy for the Emperor, going out of control with all the gimmicky magic items instead of reining them the hell in, adding a bunch of characters just for fanservice or to seemingly fill the quotas, never really touching up on the warlock making it one of the most boring classes to play (after the cleric), adding full frontal nudity for whatever reason,...

...this might go on a while. Point being, suddenly going on a rampage with all the smiley interviews and aggressively marketing the game as having the most detailed and inclusive and such character creator and reactivity and the ability to play who you want (which the game barely, if at all, delivers on), and gushing on and on about romances after ~2 years of at least pretending to build up on the game's mechanical core only to throw most of it out the window was very telling. I even asked "who's this game ultimately for?" back then. Welp, it sure ended up with an identity crisis, perhaps the worst case of one in Larian's portfolio.

Forgive me @Killerrabbit but D&D isn't just a set of rules - it's an entire IP that includes people, places, Realms, and existing stories with 50 million current players. They may not have loved aspects of the 5e ruleset, but the ruleset isn't the IP - and if you really just wanted the ruleset you could even mostly replicate that with some clever renaming and some decent lawyers...but why would you want to? 5e isn't anything particularly special as a ruleset - frankly it's pretty basic.

The characters that Larian created now belong to WoTC to do with as they please. Larian CAN'T tell new stories with them without the ok from Hasbro.

So to say that they weren't excited to work with D&D - in your case - is a severe misunderstanding of what D&D actually is, and therefore bullshit.

Larian wanted the Lore...they were forced to use the ruleset.

If you decide to call someones opinion "bullshit", then you show more of your character than you might want to and you don't really encourage others to interact with you. Just saying.


I don't think the ruleset restrictions is the only problem but all the other decisions they made. They wanted to add a lot of traumatic topics like SA but failed to handle it with the needed care and sensitivity.
To me personally (and I'm saying that without any evidence) it feels like they aimed for a big shot to gain popularity, to be a part of the holy grail and in doing so, they never even asked themselves if their were capable of doing so or if they maybe couldn't keep it up for the time needed. In addition to that, the fans they attracted (especially all the fans that bought the game based on all the bear sex and Dark Urge violence news after last PFH) have proved to be way more fanatic and obsessive then they maybe even expected.
I can see the team burning out after all the feedback, the threats and such - thus adding to an already questionable state of the team.

Again, this are just my thoughts, I don't have any evidence but I try to take a different approach than just "Larian good, Hasbro evil, accept it or leave".

I don't like True Strike, but that doesn't mean I don't like DnD. There are numerous things I would change about DnD, but that doesn't mean that I don't like DnD.

Larian has also mentioned a passion for DnD several times.

Bottom line, at least for me, they did a great job with the game. And to reinforce my point: there's a lot about BG3 I don't like. But that doesn't mean I don't like the game.

Bullshit.

You have the option as the player to handle the existence of SA or DV with care...or not. If you fail to see it, or understand it then so be it. What other people do isn't your concern. Frankly it's absolutely brilliant the way these things are written because it leaves the responsibility to you as the player and it doesn't pull punches.

Hasbro is an awful company, and other people have said so. I was nervous about Larian working with them for this very reason. Purely speculation but I am betting Hasbro was pushing for "additional monetization" and Larian said stuff it.

You really must be fun at parties - if you ever get invited, that is.
Marking every opinion as bullshit while also making speculations and even with others still being nice to you.

It's not my concern what other people do? Well, if said other people speak openly about how they bad they felt when they saw how Larian handled the topics, then it is my concern and it should be for every normal empathetic human being, but maybe this is your time failing to understand that.

As for Hasbro, I never said they are good in any way but still it is way too easy to white knight Larian and seeking 100% of the problems at Hasbro just so there is nothing left for your precious little development studio but praise and love. If you are not capable of seeing more than just black and white, then I take that as an explanation for your bad behaviour.

Come on, folks, let’s keep it friendly. We can disagree without being rude or dismissive.

I agree, that this would be good for Larian, good for you, but I don't think it would be good for D&D, and it will definitely not be good for BG franchise. In fact, I think BG franchise just got put to rest (which is not necessarily bad).

I agree with you about Divinity 3, I'm not a big fan of both Original Sin games myself (I loved their first two Divinity games, though) and I hope they will reach for another IP.

My personal dream would be their partnership with Games Workshop and making a game in Warhammer Fantasy setting (or Warhammer 40k, but this is probably less likely, because Owlcat already made a game in this setting). WFRP was probably my favourite tabletop setting, with lots of unforgettable memories from my younger days. I'm not familiar with newer editions, though, I hope GW didn't ruin the lore, like WoTC did with FR.

I would pay good $$ for a Larian Warhammer 40k game, even though I am not sure how they would write the weird morality of the setting, since the good/evil choices in BG3 are so black and white. But Owlcat's Rogue Trader has me frothing at the mouth for basically anyone to make another 40k crpg (though despite Rogue Trader's issues, I think that game sets a very high bar; absolutely love it).

Larian to Pathfinder 2e would seem to fit better as far as other IP's go, IMO. Or Warhammer Fantasy, which I'm not as familiar with yet but would obviously love to explore in a crpg.

Despite my criticisms of BG3, I would have loved to see another Larian game set in Cormyr or Planescape or another D&D setting, but I respect their decision to move on to something they're passionate about. Nobody creates their best work when they're burned out.

Also, I guess this statement is important:

I note he said WoTC not Hasbro. Drawing a line between the people they worked with and the larger corporation.

The buddhist call this a colorful truth.

He says right there "They've let us do our thing" and "this is because it's what's best for Larian"

People are extremely married to this conspiracy theory that WotC or Hasbro are villains in the BG3 development story and are the ones holding the game back somehow. When in reality Larian just doesn't want to make a crappy dlc just because their fans keep demanding them to.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think Swen is being nice and political for professional reasons here. It certainly doesn't rise to the level of conspiracy theory.

It's very unlikely. If Swen was actually ditching it due to Wizards of the Coast not being nice to him that he wouldn't have said anything. Historically when there's animosity between companies they don't talk about it at all or cite "creative differences" as the reason why. They almost never say "no actually we're good" publicly. Swen also says a lot of things that would be weird if he was just making the whole thing up. Things like how when he cancelled DLC plans his developers celebrated because they were more excited about the next project he wanted to do instead. That sort of thing would be very easy to debunk if an anonymous whistleblower came out later.

Additionally historically it's rare this happens in video game design. Like Bioware for example abandoned Wizards of the Coast and Lucasarts primarily because they wanted to make new IPs instead of hitching a ride on another company's ip. Which led to Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

I think it's much more likely that Swen was telling the truth and that Larian just didn't want to keep making D&D based rpgs. 5 years of BG3 was enough for them. And that they actually are working on something else. I think speculating on that is more interesting. He said for example it's not DOS3. I also personally don't think it's Divinity as that likely wouldn't make his team celebrate.

In my opinion there are three possibilities

1. They're working on an entirely new IP. Likely not a medieval fantasy game
2. They're working on another licensed sequel to a beloved rpg. Something like Arcanum or Vampire the Masquerade
3. Swen somehow managed to convince EA to sell him the Ultima IP and got Richard Garriott to license him Lord British.

It seems no matter what is being said by the Swen (or anyone else), if it's against WotC or Hasbro, then is has to be 100% true, if it's something more positive about them (even if it comes from the Larian CEO himself) it might just be for political reasons or a lie. Part of what makes this fandom annoying sometimes.

That's another very annoying thing is the fanbase seems to by default assume Wizards of the Coast is holding BG3/Larian back somehow and that they're an overall villain in the story of the game's development. There's no evidence to support this and a lot of counter evidence.

I first noticed it with the theory that Wizards of the Coast was the reason why BG3 didn't have official mod support. Even though the developers have said countless times it's coming. And now we're seeing the theory WotC blocked DLC plans and/or made too many demands of Larian that they went "I'm out". This is also false as Swen has stated on numerous occasions Wizards of the Coast basically let Larian do w/e with the game. They even reportedly got involved with helping Hasbro potentially sell the IP to another company which implies they're on much better terms than the fanbase suggests.

Never played Arcanum but just taking a quick glance it on Steam it looks like a perfect fit for Larian. "Magic and Technology coexisting in uneasy balance"

Personally I dislike the "tech" that appeared in both DOS2 and BG3 but I could see Larian having a lot of fun with a concept like that.

I thought the House of Healing had way too much of a Victorian era feel to it, maybe some kind of steampunk horror setting will appeal to them.

...and abandoned the IP after the transfer failed. No, they didn't care for DnD, they only wanted to help Hasbro out of unconditional love. Makes sense

It wasn't a full IP sell it was essentially negotiating some licensing agreement with Tencent
https://www.enworld.org/threads/no-hasbro-is-not-selling-d-d.702378/

We don't exactly know why Larian was mentioned in the rumors that they were involved with the negotiations but regardless it doesn't appear like the rights sale was ever on the table.

I also question why Larian would abandon the IP altogether if they actually did plan on selling to Tencent. Which is a company I doubt would be better to work for than Hasbro.

lol

I know your take here is popular in some circles, but I personally don't think 3.5 was deep. It was complicated and bloated... but not deep. IMO 5e is the better system because it is simpler, and gets itself out of the way of playing the game.

I love the 3.5e derived pathfinder games from Owlcat, but they are great in spite of the system, not because of it.

A Larian Ultima would intrigue me. Ultima has been dead to me since IX, but prying it away from Garriot and giving it to Larian might make it sing again.

Ultima would have the additional benefit of the fact that the original dev killed it dead 25 years ago, so nobody would stress out over Larian screwing over the IP (it having been screwed over already).

Downside: nobody younger than gen-x (or maybe the oldest millenials) gives a shit about Ultima now.

That was the same situation Larian had with BG3 and that didn't stop Tiktok from becoming obsessed with it.

I find this decision very disappointing. While I don't question the arguments made by Larian, I remain convinced that games that achieve cult status are often those that continue to evolve in response to a passionate and engaged community. Obviously, to achieve this, you need a solid storyline, excellent writing, fluid rules and quality graphics. But Baldur's Gate 3 had all the necessary ingredients to be among the greatest RPGs, like its predecessors and titles like The Witcher 3.

Unfortunately, this decision risks making BG3 a very good stand alone instead of joining the ranks of iconic games. I hope for Larian that their future videogame will live up to expectations, because the fanbase of DD and Baldur's Gate 3 will be very attentive.

This decision, if true, is a real gamble, but it seems that the players' voices are not fully taken into account.

Ok, this is way more interesting than debating whether Hasbro is the pile of shitbags that everyone says they are.

I don't see EA letting go of Ultima as EA is where IP's go to die and they never seem interested in selling them back or to anyone else.

Sadly Paradox owns the entire White Wolf line including Vampire the Masquerade and they are currently focused on making Bloodlines 2 into utter trash.

Greyhawke, Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, That stupid vampire one, and Faerun are all Hasbro.

Arcanum is owned by Microsoft. Meh.

Then you can get more obscure with stuff like Trespasser and Dungeon Crawl Classics - both have an interesting "funnel" system where you start out as some sad little peasant.
https://tundalus.itch.io/trespasser

Dungeon Crawl Classics.
https://goodman-games.com/store/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/09/DCC_QSR_Free2.pdf

I could see EA selling it for two reasons
1. Larian has money and also is invested in it. Since Swen has said that Ultima 7 is his favorite rpg
2. They can't actually make a new Ultima game as they don't fully own the rights to the IP. Richard Garriot instituted a clause in his contract saying he owns the rights to all of the major characters from the IP like Lord British. This led to EA being forced to change the character into a woman when they tried making an Ultima mobile game. I could foresee him giving Larian permission however given how well liked BG3 was.
Paradox also licenses the IP out to indie studios no strings attached
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-...own-vampire-the-masquerade-game-sort-of-
Arcanum would be the most interesting as it's one of the best examples of a classic rpg that was completely abandoned and had no sequel.

Eh, if it was a nobody that was remaking Ultima then nobody but old fogies would care, but I think Larian will get attention no matter what it does.

As amazing as a sequel to Arcanum (or just a new game in the setting) will be, I highly doubt it'll pass the "modern standards" check.

Troika's games are much too obscure, for better or worse, otherwise people would be throwing a fit at how "problematic" their writing is and such. Looking at what Bloodlines 2 is shaping up as (and at Paradox's handling of the setting / ruleset), it's the most sanitized, inoffensive "dark" urban fantasy one can imagine.

It also seems like my rant was eaten by the forum spazzing out. Do Larian even care about the discussions here at this point, or has their attention shifted to the more "modern" platforms, and so the forum is mostly dead on a good day and very much dead otherwise?

Whatever Larian might come up with as their next game, I will not going down the EA path again, not after all the disappointments BG3 brought me.
Also, I hope they don't oversexualize the game, they work on their humor (especially on how scripted it feels some time) and I hope there will be less hate in the community regarding the genders and sexual preferences of the characters in the game.
Overall, a more laid back fandom without making threats and being heavily aggressive would be much appreciated. Not saying that's the case, but I can imagine that such behaviour can add to being burned out.

Well, I certainly won't be playing another Larian game. (BG3 was gifted to me, so thankfully I didn't pay for it.)

7 years of "perfecting" Act I, then throwing crap at the wall in the few months before release to see what sticks (spoiler: sex).

Project management has some real problems at Larian.

I avoided the early release stuff right at the start. Software people created this concept called "agile development", which means the requirements always evolve, the code always changes, it is never really finished, and the customer needs to prepare for an infinite budget and an infinite schedule. That sounds like the perfect business model, no? No.

As far as BG4 goes, maybe it is time to just let the franchise end. The BG3 ending does kind of hint that there will be reprisals against the Dead Three for what they just attempted to do with the Absolute. And the Astral Prism certainly looked like it was built upon the skeletal remains of an old god, perhaps Jergal? I don't know, it's hard to keep making sequels "more epic". Just look at what Marvel had to do ... save the person, save the city, save the Earth, save the Galaxy, save the Universe, save the timeline, save the very essence of reality, ... wither do we go from there? (pun intended)

If they read it its during bathroom breaks to have a chuckle. As to whether they care - probably not, the server hamster died as I was writing this. Besides that so many good and well written suggestions, critiques and otherwise pressing issues in Early Access got straight up ignored. Some broke through to them via Reddit, sure but most weren't critical. I didn't visit the Discord as much so I can't speak for people voicing their opinions there. I know Twitch chat ate everything Larian gave them for PFH shows, whilst I was just sitting there waiting to hear a crumb, a slip of the tongue, anything about a Day/Night cycle or at least weather that isn't static because it would make the experience dull to play through after you combed through the game a couple of times...and we weren't wrong in that aspect. If my memory serves me right, it was not even adressed.

The more I come to settle into the news of no continuation or DnD games the more I like it, it is the right choice for them. Regardless of people feeling bad about it. Hopefully they leave a dedicated team to patch out arising issues.

Unfortunately, at least for me, I can't imagine Larian/Swen will use/create a new IP that is fantasy-based given that they already have that in their Divinity franchise. So it is much more likely they will go with something sci-fi/post-apocalyptic/steampunk etc. And since I only like fantasy-based games and only now am beginning to become open to these other genres, chances are good I'm not going to get a game from Larian that will make me rejoice. That sucks, and it's too bad, because I believe in giving credit where credit is due and Larian as an RPG developer does have some very positive things going for them.

Fair enough. I get your pov. But for me, what you consider to be "bloat" I consider to be juicy goodness, and what you consider to be "simpler" I consider to be simplified. Different strokes, I suppose.

Personally, I don't see the game being fixed all the way to how it needs to be. With what has been said about the modding tools and how bad the tools seem to be, I don't really see a new team learning said tools and the engine (which is one made by Larian iirc) because there is no money to be made.


I've been active on several social platforms and it seems that reddit and twitter is where they really read, interact and retweet, which is funny, because I consider those as some of the most toxic communities. Their Discord has been a good place to write feedback, especially a couple months back, when you could upvote and see if people share your ideas. They even had a frequent feedback post, but that got updated rarely and nearly nothing from that feedback made it into the game, same for the feedback you can find on this forum. Imo, the feedback on the forum and on Discord has mostly been well written with a lot of thought, but what mattered more were all those "give us more kisses, give me more Astarion, I want to kiss xy" community fanboys and fangirls over on Twitter.
I'm pretty sure there are members of Larian who are reading threads on here or Discord, but they never react to it, making you and your feedback feel worthless, while they keep retweeting superficial stuff, fan arts or awards. I don't know why they act like they do, maybe it's because they don't like the feedback or if they just act as private accounts and they don't want to talk about their work but more about what they like.

Also, I haven't seen any of the news this thread is about on Discord or this forum and if it wasn't for some news pages (I don't read IGN) I would've never known. And I think it is an important news for every player and fan, especially when it comes to expectations and the future of the game.

This may be the biggest understatement ever!!! (And to be clear, I totally agree with this.)

And I stand by my claim that we won't be seeing another quality D&D-based game for a good long while. We already have Sawyer from Obsidian publicly stating they will never again work with Hasbro/WotC. I'm quite sure inXile, another studio that wanted to make BG3, feels the same way. A lot of people in the gaming world were very angry with WotC's decision last year to pull the plug on five D&D game projects that were, by all accounts, progressing very well, leaving those studios and their employees high and dry. I'm pretty sure we're done with D&D RPGs for a while. At most we'll get more of the silly mobile-only games and that's it.

I find this perspective coming up a lot, and it's interesting to me because it makes me wonder how much of BG3's wild popularity relied on what people saw in its potential rather than what the game actually is. (And don't get me wrong, I do think it's a solid game as is, I've just never thought it was the best crpg ever).

I think a lot of the fandom, especially people new to the genre, got kind of "spoiled" with the idea that they could ask Larian to do something and it would get added to the game. Romance Halsin? Added. Hug Shadowheart? Added. Want epilogues? Added. And I think this created an illusion that Larian would and could keep doing this forever, just creating game content based on the demands of the fans, up to and including a dlc and sequels. I personally doubted BG3 would get the BG1 to BG2 sequel treatment because the story lacks the narrative focus of those games: a central protagonist.

So I think Larian saying they're done (to whatever extent they are; I do hope for a definitive edition so I can play the game without some character changing their personality every other patch), is a wake up call. Either you love the game for what it is and it can stand by itself, or you loved it because you thought it was a promise for what was to come, and that promise will never be fulfilled. The game has always had issues and still does, and if people overlooked those because they thought it would be "complete" someday, it just seems like yet another day in the current gaming industry tbh.

I think you misinterpreted what I wrote. As a former RPG player (really, trust me), I've always thought that among the cult games, we find those that offered a new perspective with rich and well-written expansions. Think about the richness offered to BG or The Witcher 3 by sequels and expansions. This added considerably to the quality of the original game. I don't care about small fixes and additions for the community. I'm talking about new content. This is why I think Larian is making a mistake by abandoning a game that I consider very successful.

I would be pleased with a new Larian game not being based on D&D, because there is too much immersion killing silliness going on there. I would love a new Larian game to move towards the way XCOM games work:

• Keep turn based combat (of course, that is a no-brainer);
• Permadeath - let us feel the agony of loss;
• Interesting gear, but realistic loadouts (don't carry three warehouses of stuff in your back pocket);
• Different types of missions;
• A party of six (eventually).

Right, the next Larian project will surely come without immersion breaking silliness.

Oh, I agree that dlc and sequels can add a lot of richness to a story; I doubt the original Baldur's Gate series would be as influential if it had ended at BG1. I guess I was just wondering (and this goes more to comments I've seen on other sites) whether people were actually in love with BG3 as is or if they were in love with its potential.

I apologize for looping your comment in with the comments of others I was thinking of, which are more like full on meltdowns. You make a reasonable point.

Well, I think you should give other genres a try. Owlcat's Rogue Trader has one of the best writing I've seen (personally, I find it comparable to PST or Disco Elysium). This shit is absolutely top notch, providing you are a fan of walls of text. Fallout, especially first two games are also great and there is a spiritual successor, Broken World coming next month. The only issue I see for you is that all of those games are turn-bssed, but I have a hard time to find a RTwP game you could potentionally not played yet.

Swen mentioned their next game won't be their peak game, because they still lack the tech do do it. It will be like an intermediary step to their opus magnum game. I get the feeling they either already got, or are working on acquiring Ultima licence. This game is Swen's major inspiration and I can totally see them trying to make a worthy successor.

As for BG, I think we should let it rest. There were already multitude discussions after Larian announced BG3, that it should not be named BG3, and that BG saga is finished. Now, this statement is even more true.

My memory might be wrong but I feel like DOS2 had less silly humor (or at least bad timing on the humor), but I totally might be wrong.

I found BG3 to ultimately be one of the most disappointing gaming experiences I've ever had, and I wouldn't have bought a DLC even if one had come around. But I still feel strangely sad about the news that it's definitely not coming. I'm definitely not buying another Larian game, their style just does not work for me, but I can see a lot of people saddened by this news, and I share their sorrow. But Larian is well within their rights to step away and I don't think they're doing anything wrong by doing that. Not diong DLC certainly doesn't mean "cutting and running." I expect they'll finish up patching the game, I don't think it's crazy to expect a definitive edition in a year or so (less likely now than before, but still not out of the realm of possibility) and I think that's fine. Let the game end, let Larian move on. Let this just be a good game that existed and you had fun with.

Personally I've always had a suspicion that Larian really like Baldur's Gate, but they don't care as much for D&D the system. That seems pretty reasonable based on all I've seen around.

Certainly for me, much as I love the game BG3 is, I also thought its reach exceeded its grasp. Which I’m glad of, as if Larian had played it safe then I wouldn’t have got those tantalising glimpses of what could be, but I am disappointed that we won’t now get a BG game from them that wholly lives up to BG3’s potential. Given the scale of what Larian tried to achieve, I feel it would have been too much to expect them to make my perfect RPG straight off, but with the groundwork firmly in place and ready to build on, I reckon they might have got there had they been willing to try again,

But while disappointed, I’m not entirely surprised that’s not the technical or creative challenge they want, and I’d prefer they embarked on a game they were passionate about rather than try to do something because of fan demand or money that their heart wasn’t in.

I am still sadden that BG3 had to made by Larian. I have total respect for their work but dislike their style of games.
But the sad reality for this last decade is...WHO ELSE? Larian is the best we could get for this scale of a game.

And that is the problem these days. What gaming has turned into as a whole. Apart from a few shining beacons of hope, and some top tear indie studios... No more GOOD games for profit. In the old days that is the only way you can make a profit. Build a good FULL game. Even for the Arcades. The better the game the more the profit the happier the gamers.

And then in 2000s came the Gatcha games with Maplestory and the realization that you do not NEED to make a GOOD game for incredible profits.

Now games turned into multi-million dollar digital profit slot machines designed to enslave your mind into these well designed systems to MANAGE USERS (not gamers) and max out profits.

Honestly tell me, if you were to make 1 million a day with minimum effort for a shit product versus 1 million after 3 years of intensive effort for a quality product...which would 95% of people pick to work for??
That is why we need passionate artistic people in this world.
Larian could of made 1000x more money. They can be proud of their work and you can bet it will be remembered 30 years from now compared to the shit show AAA stuff that has been made the last decade.
Legacy and remembrance is priceless. People who worked for BG3 can tell their grand kids, "You know that game, BG3? Well I was part of the team who made it."

And that people will be my last post to this forum. Its been a fun ride, happy gaming life!

Well, as for Larian's next title, I suppose the one thing they shouldn't do is Early Access. Like, at all.

Their development has always been tumultuous and messy as-is (what with constant rewrites and redesigns very late into the cycle causing everything to come apart at the seams, BG3's just the most obvious example because of how oversaturated it is), and if BG3's EA has shown anything, it's that they can barely maintain a stable vision of what they are trying to cobble together, and you add the player feedback on top of that which they stopped giving a crap about around a year before release, switching to appeasing the "slobbering over a somewhat poorly written globule of pixels" crowd instead...

...Oh, right. Remove romance entirely, please. Altogether. Either make a full-on Subverse-like if you're so commited to slapping sex on everything and everyone, or ignore the subject altogether, because BG3 certainly was anything but a smooth mixture of tones.

And maybe focus on the PC playerbase first and foremost this time around, the, well, overwhelming percentage of whoever even plays CRPGs? Proper mod support on release and not spreading resources to try and squeeze the game onto a brick until a year or so after it comes out worked just fine for D:OS2.

And no need to rent castles anymore, perhaps. That budget could have gone into much, much more pressing matters. Like character customization that isn't embarrasingly simple for a cinematic CRPG. Or not having your AA settings reset every time you launch the game if you're using FSR. Or slings. Or belts. Or proper reactivity....

This, 100%. All those rewritings made me feel like playing a different game on release with characters who pretend to be the same as in EA but simply are a version you can order on wish. The moment I saw the last PFH I had a real bad gut feeling, as people went crazy about "whoa you can f*ck a bear, nice" and "whoa so much gore and blood, nice". Sadly, my feeling was right and what they delivered wasn't a good, deep story but more a shallow story only used as the groundwork for some abysmally bad narrative choices and sex-driven characters just to please the part of the crowd that can be pleased easily whenever they see pixel nipples or nude stuff more down south. Yeah, I get it, it's easier to go that route than to actually come up with a story that's so good that it sticks in your head for a long time.


Exactly, the romances itself, if you compare all the companions, show huge differences in their quality. There were some good moments, ngl, but overall it played on a American Pie-level with all those teenager horniness and the lack of a real adult romance. When I heard Larian talking about their vision for romances for the first time (like grown-up romances, sex should not be a reward etc.) I felt like this could be really good, because I hate how relationships in games are either depicted somewhat childish (like Harvest Moon / Story of Seasons) or way too focused on sex. Makes me question if the developers ever had their own one.
If they decide to add romances again, please tone it down, make it slow burn and less about sex but more about how important compromises are and how you evolve together as a partners.

Am I disappointed that there will be no DLC or BG4? Absolutely.

Is it the end of all days? Of course not, because the modding support will probably lead to a "Big World Project - BG3" and I'm already looking forward to that

Well, well, well.
After six or seven months of fantasising what they want from future DLCs the very same people are now saying they understand Larian not wanting to do any DLCs and are looking forward to what Larian's future output maybe.
Similarly, none of this is down to Larian, it's all down to WotC or Hasbro or somebody - anybody but the Larian clown show.

Personally I'm glad Larian are moving away from DnD. Also I'm wondering where this leaves Larian's statements vis-a-vis modding and modding tools, etc. Or upgrades to this forum for that matter.

My prediction for Larian's next game - some dumbed-down rubbish aimed primarily at the US yoof market because that is where the money is.

I am not quite seeing your point.

I am sure maintaining Early Access is a big commitment, but whenever it is worth it, or not is really up to Larian. Without EA they could withhold from recording VO so early on, but it seems they have created a pipeline that supports that kind of investment.

I also disagree about feedback. Larian has been responding to feedback - throughout EA and up to 1.0 and after release. They didn't change the game they are making, simply because some playerbase didn't like what they were going on, but they did address criticisms that they found valid. Early Access is a testing ground, not a design committee. EA is not the for players to submit their design ideas, it is for devs to see how players interact with the game they are building. Not quite EA but here is TIm Cain talking about his love/hate relationship with focus testing.

I am mostly surprised you thought Early Access wasn't beneficial. In both of their titles I played (D:OS2, BG3) I thought the opening chapter, which was extensively tested throughout EA period has been the best, most polished and robust part of the title by a large margin. Would BG3 be really better, if whole of the game was as messy as act2&3?

Now, that there is sizable gap in quiality in IMO a concern in itself. It seems like Larian has tendency to overscope to start with, and is unable to keep up with the standard they set at the start of their titles. To me it is not great, and I find all three of their recent RPGs to be disappointing - and they are disappointing mainly due to the expectations they set up for themselves. I have no clue what they should do, or if there is a problem to begin with. Complex RPG as simply difficult to test, and testing part of it, and spending time fixing the rest post release, seems like a fairly decent way of doing it. It seems like a happy medium between releasing whole game in Early Access, and releasing game with only internal testing, and than fixing the whole thing post release.

I think you meant Broken Roads, and yes I have that game on my Steam wishlist. Also New Arc Line.

I'm okay giving a TB game a try if it checks off most of my other major preferences (story-rich, strong character development, great world-building, extensive dialogue trees/good writing, choices with meaningful consequences, noncombat paths to resolve encounters and quests, NOT first person perspective, party-based, single-player). But I'm angry with Owlcat over Rogue Trader for not including the RTwP option the same way they included the TB option in the Pathfinder games. Feels deliberately discriminatory to me personally since I was one of the first people to back the first Pathfinder game, backed the second one too, and bought all the DLCs.

Yeah I feel you, but to be honest I don't see how Rogue Trader would work in RTwP. It would have to be designed in a complete different way. It's usually not that simple to just pług a parallel combat system, so it could work flawlessly. And I really doubt they haven't included it only to make you and players like you unhappy.

And yeah, I meant Broken Roads, sorry.

I have no words about how much the turn-based combat in Pathfinder (and in PoE II) sucks. It was so horrible that it even made me, a TB lover and a rtwp hater, to change to rtwp after a while, before I drop the game altogether of course. You can't have both systems in the same game and I can't imagine how Rogue Trader could have a rtwp option that would be playable.

I'm disappointed they will not add DLC or pursue more DnD. For one, I think they created one hell of a game. Some things I would have liked changed a bit but all in, I think the attention to detail, the weaving of the story with multiple outcomes, dialogs and options so deeply woven into the game is second to none.

With that said I do hope another quality team picks up more DnD games with the same depth and story-telling and perhaps one that takes you all the way to 20th level. Would love to see something like owlcat did wiht kingmaker and having / building a base too.

But..

If Larian do a new IP who would like to see their take on a game similar to XCOM (if not take on the XCOM IP directly) but with their deep story-telling, and depth of game on a similar scale? Finding a way to mix procedural in for some replayability?

BG3 has set a high bar when it comes to voice acting and cinematics. And art design, in general. I mean, just look at how great the characters look compared to something like Starfield.

Until another crpg by any developer can match or exceed what Larian has done in this regard, I'm not interested.

When it comes to comparisons to Starfield, anything is a high bar...

A more accurate comparison to good games would be things like the latest FFVII, Dragon's Dogma 2, Elden Ring etc.

Yeah. Me. As I wrote a bit earlier in this thread, I think Larian moving towards XCOM style would be terrific.
Apart from the things I mentioned, one thing that always bugs me is the gradual deflation of excitement of a traditional RPG game, where the first part of the game is a thrilling experience, with much unexplored terrain to cover, and the quest pile getting bigger and bigger. Then at the end the game always peters out. Less and less quests remain open. There is nothing more to do but defeat the end boss, in a final fight that is kind of predictable. It is a long and sad goodbye to a world you've grown to love some. I think it is better to have a game where the tension keeps on rising until the very end. A mission based game could be more gripping than a game based on quests.

The cinematics, the lively characters, the motion capture and voice acting all are very good in BG3 and they could be compellingly paired with permadeath of team members. A mitigating circumstance is that the better your companions get, the less likely will be their death. And the option of romance could really improve your emotional attachment to squad mates, companions that have a real chance of dying. Larian have plenty of room for improving on romantic relationships in their games, and making them integral to the gaming experience. Maybe that will go better if they abandon the sex scenes, which don't do much for story development.

They seem to listen rather selectively, mostly commiting to enabling what is essentially a bug (the whole Minthara debacle) and making less and less content exclusive, practically killing replayability. Why even bother with the Absolute's route if you can get Minthara anyway? It's simply a "wrong" choice that you are punished for, rather than a road for an alternate narrative.

People have also been asking for dice rolls for abilities since Day 1, and for at least the full roster of basic combat actions to be implemented, and yet we got neither of those. People have been pointing out how Disguise Self shouldn't just let you access the "small" tag for interactions because your physicality doesn't change, only your appearance since it's an illusion spell. People have been complaining how Mage Hand doesn't do what it's intended for, making it pointless for most of the puzzle-solving. People were confused where the fishermen from the nautiloid went. People were annoyed about the grove attack taking place in broad daylight.

Act 1 is nowhere near as "polished" as it should have been, all things considered. It's as awkward and janky as the rest of the game. And as far as their previous titles go, I actually think that it's the midgame that's the strongest in both of them, since that's when they really open up and you have most of your toolkit available. Lategame is a mixed bag, but I enjoyed it in both of them, whereas BG3's was a big slog that made the plot stop dead in its tracks, and it was already severely gimped by the Emperor's reveal.

There is so much truth in this words, I like the game (at least some parts of it) but still I feel people are overhyping it, leading to undeserved story awards. Hot take: If it wasn't for the companions, the game would have been dead two months after release or maybe even on EA.

Nothing is an accurate comparison as there is no other high budget cRPG. The most direct comparisons would be Owlcat's Pathfinder and Pillars of Eternity, but those work on a completely different budget.

FFVII is a lavishly produced game but being a jRPG means little reactivity and player agency - DD2 and ER also quite different games. Though DD2 being very systemic, berhaps there is a thing or two it and Larian games could learn from each other.

BG3 is definitely not the best looking, not a smoothest playing game. But we also haven't seen anything with that kind of production value AND that kind of player agency. BG3 pales in comparison to 8 years old Witcher3, but again, that game is mostly quests with occasional branching and heavily pre-staged cinematics and pre-made protagonists.

Do you even need such production values in the first place if they mostly go towards cinematics, and those aren't all that great in the first place? The direction is often worse than in, say, DA:O, to be honest.

The game's over-reliance on the narrator while it is hell-bent on also showing everything that happens, while also chewing and regurgitating the rather obvious plotline creates a rather jarring dissonance. I will take PoE/Owlcat-like adventure book interactive sequences that make for a better role-playing experience (since I don't have to look at my character grimacing awkwardly or wait for the animations to play out, instead letting imagination do its job, you know, like in tabletop) on any day over BG3's heavily cinematic approach which makes every character practically the same no matter who you're trying to play.

Like, the lady-like swagger from the first scene with Us the devourer looks so freaking goofy on buff bodies and short / stout races. I'd rather have a far-off camera angle or a static pose, please. And if the sheer amount of supposed facial detail and emotion they wanted to showcase is the reason why we didn't get a good character creator, then it kind of failed to deliver on both fronts, especially since it's a rather weak excuse given how, say, Capcom have had both heavily editable faces AND impressive animations in their games which had character creation for a good 3/4 of a decade at this point.

It's kind of interesting reading through this thread, because I see a lot of people going through the same process I did with Larian, years ago.

For me, the conclusion I reached is that Larian is a studio with humongous weaknesses and glaring flaws, many of which, after multiple games, they have not managed to improve on:

1. Does Larian make good combat systems? Debatable. Part of Larian's saving grace, to me, is that they have really fun combat....for a portion of the game. In the early to mid-game, the systems are well-balanced and fights are fun. By the end, in almost every Larian game, combat degrades into being trivial. And yes, almost all RPGs have the problem where combat becomes easier by the endgame, but part of the problem with Larian's very deliberate turn-based format is that the ease of the combat becomes a much bigger problem because all combat takes much longer. (Easy combat in a RTWP system does not hurt the game nearly as much as RTWP in a turn-based combat system.)

I give Larian huge props for having combat that simply feels very fun in that early game. But that's not to say their combat systems are the best in the early game either. People have already mentioned DOS2's armor system. It is fun DESPITE the glaring flaws in the combat.

I will be honest - when I first heard that Larian was making BG3, I wasn't very enthusiastic about it. And I was even LESS enthusiastic when I saw their first cutscene trailer (but I'll talk more about that in a minute.) But I had hoped that Dungeons and Dragon's system - which, to blunt, is far superior to any combat system Larian has ever natively come up with - would actually serve to cover their weakness with combat systems becoming degraded over the course of the game. But it didn't, because Larian, entirely of their own accord, unbalanced the DnD system by introducing wildly unbalanced homebrew rules and handing out artifact-level magical items like candy. It is perhaps one of the most frustrating things I've seen them do in any of their games. I'm not saying that they had to follow the DnD 5e rules exactly, and I'm even willing to overlook some unbalanced stuff in the name of fun (like the pushing.) But a huge reason why combat becomes so trivial, a huge reason why the game begins relying on combat gimmicks in combat as early as act 2, is because Larian very thoughtlessly implemented ridiculously unbalanced changes to the system. And what has been worse about it has been watching people blame DnD for it. Because no, DnD is not the problem here. This is 100 percent Larian's own self-inflicted wound.

2. Does Larian make good worlds to interact with? Again, debatable. In the parts of their game that actually feel polished, like act 1 in BG3 or act 1 and 2 in DOS2, the world feels fun to interact with, and you can appreciate the effort that went into implementing multiple approaches to a problem. But much like the combat, it clearly degrades and falls apart by the end game.

3. Does Larian have good plot writing...? Bluntly, no. Hard no. I have never played a Larian game where I've been enthralled by the plot. And in fact I would say BG3 is probably one of their weaker plots. This is part of why I found the initial cutscene they released for BG3 so troubling. It had all the hallmarks of Larian writing. If there's one word I could use to summarize Larian's flaws, it's that they are "immature." Like, in combat, they can't seem to have the restraint to build fun effects that are still balanced; they have to give you ridiculously OP powers, and ridiculously OP items, because you get a short dopamine boost from using them the first couple of times. But then you end up frustrated because those OP things end up ruining combat by making it have zero challenge. And likewise, with the plot, they don't seem to be willing to do the work to draw people into the world on the strength of intrigue. It's immediately WHOOOOOAAA YOU'RE ON AN ALIEN SHIP AND THEN WHOOOOOA DRAGONS ATTACK AND THEN WHOOOOOOOAAA NOW YOU'RE IN HELL!!! And this continues into Act 1: You have archdemons casually teleporting onto a beach to talk with you at like, level 2. Their other games had a similar problem.

And also, they cannot seem to stop themselves from using modern anachronisms in what is supposed to be a fantasy world? I mean, I'm not super strict about this. The original Baldur's Gate games had a bunch of in-game gags referencing modern things (including items that were tongue-in-cheek references to the Blair Witch Project.) But it feels a bit different when it's a 'wink wink nudge nudge hey it's a joke' reference, vs when characters are using clearly modern terminology and there's no joke or reference, they're just.....written that way.

4. Does Larian have good character writing...? I know a lot of people say they enjoy the characters in BG3, and I do agree they're the most appealing characters in any Larian game to date, but the thing is....I don't know if that's actually down to Larian's writing. Like, I don't actually think their character writing improved at all. I think it's simply down to the fact that they gave the characters expressive, animated faces and fantastic voice actors. I've said it before, but I think I'd hate Gale's guts and find him super obnoxious if it wasn't for his VA and his expressive character - now I just sort of find him a lovable scamp. Maybe this is more of a criticism of the rest of the people in this space....they've relied on static paper dolls for a long time and it really handicaps them.

To be honest, I have very, very mixed feelings about Larian, and very, very mixed feelings about BG3. I mean, BG1 and BG2 are basically the grandfathers of WRPGs. Tons of games, even if not in the same format or similar setting, can trace their lineage back to BG. And Larian's strength has always been in making a very charming early-game, especially for people who are unfamiliar with them and their flaws. So the combination of Larian's early game charm and the number of people being introduced to them because of the popularity and legacy of the Baldur's Gate name led to an explosion in popularity. But that being said....I sort of wish Larian really just cashed in on the name, and didn't connect their game or story to the previous Baldur's Gate games at all. To me, all the flaws, all the disappointments in BG3 are absolute repeats of disappointments in previous Larian games; for that reason alone I don't buy into the idea that they can be blamed on other actors like WoTC and Hasbro. You don't need any explanation other than "Larian is a humongously flawed gaming studio."

I'm glad that they aren't making another DnD game. I don't think they treated the system very well; in fact they sort of seemed to have a bit of contempt for it. And if they move in a science-fiction direction, I actually think that would be great. I think the quirks of their writing would feel more at home in a sort of lighter-hearted scifi setting than they do in any fantasy setting. However, I am very, very skeptical of the idea that the new game would be "of even greater scope" than BG3. As far as I am concerned, Larian has literally never, not once, properly met the 'scope' of any of the games they've made. It sounds like more Larian "immaturity" to me, like another project where they'll inevitably burn out and have a crappy second half of the game because they didn't have a realistic vision to begin with. BG3 is the last game of theirs I will ever buy on release; in the future, I don't care how much people are singing their praises, I will wait until they release a DE. What I would want to see from them, more than anything, is a game where it feels like the passion they had for the first half still existed in the second half; or at the very least, a game where the quality did not crash so dramatically in the second half.

I enjoyed the swagger, which I read more as cat-like, but of course that scene is etched into my brain now too. On my hot avatars like Generica D'Tav the High Elf Barbarian or Tav'itha the Githyanki sorceress it played pretty well. Din the Durge pulled it off too. Six Middling the Halfling not so much, where it could only ever make me laugh. I did think though, in each instance trying to save Us, that if this was a thing that I had somehow selected, as a gestural/emotive trope that was being expressed in the cinematic, then that is sorta exactly what I want from a cRPG sim of this sort. There are tons of little moments like that throughout the game and among the various characters, especially the bit characters who are most memorable. It's definitely more step into the role than role invention though.

I feel like there is a lot of player agency in the approach to encounters and how a given combat might play out, but the main character isn't really a D&D player character the way I tend to think of that, or at least not in the way that I really wanted to see. We can't make a custom character with anything like the depth of their origin companion characters. To me that would be a big thing worthy of doing, somehow getting the custom Tav to be at that level, but then dude up and said they weren't a tool making company. Kind of a buzzkill honestly, cause that's the exact thing I want from a D&D cRPG, that exact sort of tool, specifically.

It's tough. I really wanted a full Expansion and a BG4, probably for weird reasons of a sense of symmetry on my part that doesn't truly matter, but still, it's what I wanted. That BG3 would get a BG4, the same way BG1 got a BG2, created by the same people. Seemed like all the groundwork was laid and then now they have this massive audience all primed for it.

I get that desire to only make big things even if it does sound kinda megalomaniacal, but they legit just did that, so I kinda thought it would go "big" in the other way. You know, bigger but simultaneously more intimate, where we might get something along the lines of the BG2 stronghold quests but in BG3. Sorta more intimate and oriented on things like Class or Background and more stuff for the custom Tav. I expected any big news to be like a trailer for the expansion. Something to get another hook in, like these did...


But then I at every point along the way I also imagined them way further along than they apparently were, so I don't know. I thought it'd already have been the oven like 6 months by now, and that maybe I'd get a teaser trailer with a party of 6 or something. So a bigger party, but more intimate campaign adventure, perhaps camp in-world. Things of that sort.

For now it just sorta took the wind out the sails a bit. Clearly there's not going to be any return to werewolf island with Shadowheart in tow. As a result my desire to dive back in on it just fell off a cliff into some kind of chasm, least for the moment. I'm sure I'll return to it periodically the same way I would return to BG1 every year or so. I think it will strike a similarly nostalgic chord for me, and this whole experience did clue me in to some of my own sentimentality on this score, but yeah I'm torn. I wanted them to call it on the Full Release so they could wrap that disc and ship it, focus on the next big campaign, but I didn't want that to also mean no Expansion or no BG4 lol. Damn, this is going to be a hard one to move on from. DD2 is alright, but it's not scratching the same itch really. Just a very different sort of gameplay vibe. I think I'm a sucker for FR too, even though it's probably the silliest of all possible settings hehe. Maybe somehow it gets picked up again, who can say, but if the length of the last intermission was any indication I'll be holding my breath till the 2040s and like D&D 10th Edition? Like damn, last time it took forever and a day just to get to from 2 to 3. The distance from 3 to 4 now seems unfathomably far off, cause I can't imagine who else could step up and pull it off, and I don't trust wizards any farther than I could throw them with a strength potion. Guess we'll have to see. As it stands even the boards are feeling like a concert encore after the lights have already been turned on. Light I'll be holding the lighter up totally pointlessly lol

I mean, the original post I was responding to wasn't strictly about CRPG's, nor did it talk about actual gameplay. It merely talked about VA, cinematics and art design. Then compared to Starfield of all things (Which is meme worthy with how horrible its characters are)


Player agency has little to do with things.

There are plenty of good character creators that also look very good - Things like Dragon's Dogma 2, Soul Caliber 6, Black Desert Online, Monster Hunter.

Also "Pre-staged cinematics"? As if BG3 isn't literally full of pre-staged cinematics... You don't get height options in CC because of all the pre-staged cinematics.

Meanwhile, BG3 also lacks things such as VA for player characters (Something Solasta has), dynamic conversations (Most dialogues are Bethesda-esk standing still and make faces at each other) and actual character creation that isn't just choosing a preset head and hair (At least you get a portrait of your actual character unlike most other CRPG's that make you pick some random png that often has little to do with what you can actually choose for customization options)...

All BG3 has going for it in terms of art quality... Is it's a CRPG that isn't using the classic isometric viewpoint. Thus, making character models more prominent as you are closer to them so can actually see detail. Then what few model options exist are well executed (If somewhat repetitive... How many NPC's have the exact same scar as Shadowheart...)

I reject your notion that it's not "all that great in the first place."

It's exceptionally well done. You can certainly cherry pick the occasional buggy moment, but overall, it's the result of real skill and effort. The success of BG3 speaks for itself, and it's shallow to reduce that success to nothing more than "bear sex." The game succeeded because of the cinematics, the voice acting, and the excellent character writing. Yes, excellent. Those characters came alive for so many people. That doesn't happen with hack writers.

It's fair if it's not to your taste. I think it's remarkably well done. You don't. Let's just call it a no-brainer.


Yes, it was. The part of the post that you didn't quote said:

Eh, it's a difficult balance. I mean, personally, for now I am still against cinematics in cRPGs, in the same way as I would rather have silent protagonist, over bland, non-discripts PC voice as an attempt to be both fully voiced, and allow players to roleplay. For me personally, the "RPGs" that worked with cinematics are those that also greatly limited who our PC is (Mass Effect, Witcher3). For a game like BG3 to work, they would need to come up with a dynamic cinematic system that would adjust to my roleplaying choices and shifting power dynamics between actors, and I am just not sure how it could be done.

As to comparison to DA:O. I thought DA:O was very uneven. It had some great cinematics, mostly in early game, but for majority of the playtime, it was both farily limited, and not very good. But I do think, that at least at times, DA:O achieved competency (in both non-interactive cutscenes, like intro or battle scenes, and some mildly interactive sequences like meeting King Cailan) that BG3 was never able to get close to. Still, I think DA:O was only good, when PC wasn't an active participant, and anything with PC was pretty bad. I thought BG3 pulled of interactive, cinematic dialogue much better, as misguided as the core concept is in my opinion.

I must say that that Bioware titles from that era (Mass Effect1&2, Dragon Age1) were particulalry well done in cinematic sense - something Bioware didn't managed to do before or after. I do wonder if there was a particular person, or a group of persons thanks to whom cinematics in those games didn't suck.

@WizardGnome I overall agree with what you have written. Couple thoughts of mine:


Does any RPG have a good combat system? I think flexibility and player choice that is core to RPGs, goes against what I would consider a "good combat system" that would need to be tighter and more balanced.

However, like yourself I was looking forward to Larian doing a D&D as I thought them using 5e would result in flat out better combat experience. What they decided to do, is still beyond my ability to comprehend.

As such, I would rather see them pursuing their own game systems. D:OS combat has a lot of good ideas, and a lot of potential, but it needs to mature. D:OS2 armor system was abhorrent, making a lot of D:OS interesting aspects irrelevant, but in D:OSs Larian did a lot of things differently and I think it is worth exploring. After BG3 though, I am more worried Larian isn't interesting in creating a strong core gameplay loop, rather than them not being able to.



As I see it, I don't think Larian figure out how to combine effectively different things they build. I don't think BG3 (and D:OS2) narrative design interacts well with the systemic side of the game. It tends to lean toward two outcomes:
1) you can do whatever you want and it doesn't matter
2) We have created a narrative, and you are free to discard it, but if you want narrative experience you will do what we want you to do. Otherwise have a less rich experience.

I just don't think narrative and interactivity support each other well. On a flip side, BG3 does have some great bits - killing goblin leaders is a very neat, open ended quest, that can be completed in multiple ways, and be satisfying on both narrative and emergent gameplay side. I think Larian needs to take a good look at stuff they created as well as Arcane and Tim Cains works, and figure out how they can create a narratively compelling scenario that will encourage and reward use of emergent gameplay without clashing with the narrative.

BG3 did feel like they tried to combine more scripted and linear Bioware style game, with their own systemic sandbox as those were quite often at odds with each other.

@Blackheifer

But I think the expressions of passion for DnD were reactions to the backlash to the CEO's statement that Larian would help DnD out by creating a ruleset that was fun for video games. After that backlash Larian did do the right thing by hiring some real DnD fans and this shows up in chapter 2 and in many of the books BUT that falls apart in Chapter 3.

Sure, you can dislike true strike and still like DnD. I dislike Tasha's / OneDnD. And yet I still like DnD. But Larian's attitude from the start has been hostile towards the ruleset. Why don't archers get height advantage? Why don't poison attacks create a poison surface? Why doesn't ray of frost create a surface? If you are fire why doesn't that come with an advantage like heat convergence? Flaming sphere would be better if it make a surface. Who says explosives are rare?

Now Larian deserves praise for creating a lovely city. Running around Baldur's Gate gives the same feels as BG1 but once we get past the amazing visuals and look at the story the retreads from DoS2 become apparent.

Chapter 3 is pure Larian. And it's the worst chapter.


Gods:

In DoS2 the MC becomes one of the chosen of the gods only to discover that the gods are asshats who treat their followers like cattle; the adventurers eventually kill the gods.

In chapter 3 BG3 everyone seems to adopted Kethric's opinion on the gods. For no good reason other than this is just the template that Larian uses. Shadowheart is convinced that **all** the gods are petty. Gale believes that Mystra uses him as plaything. Lae'zel believes Vlaakith treats the Gith like cattle (and she is right even if the others are wrong). Wyll still believes in the Triad but he's happy to confirm the god hating attitudes of the other companions.


You can like that or not but it's not Faerun. This isn't the age of enlightenment, this isn't Rivellon, nor is it Eora. If Mystra asked one of her chosen to kill themselves she would return them to life immediately or give them a place of honor in Elysium. In the realms the good gods are good, evil gods evil and the heroes vanquish the villains. If you prefer grimdark or morally grey you use the Greyhawk setting, not the realms.

Technology:

Factories just don't exist, smokepowder is rare and grenades are rarer than legendary items (and are very likely to explode in your pack).

Golems do exist but the 1950s switchboard that controls them, the steel infrastructure of the factory (which needed another factory to make) felt like it was imported from Arcanum or some other game.

Quests

One of the first quests you encounter is the explosives made by a creepy toymaker who creates explosive toys - which was all but a cut and paste from chapter 3 of DoS2.

After that you can go to the circus, get your lols from redcaps, ghouls, mummies and dancing zombies. And get the assemble the clown quest so you can help make another zombie. Boy is that fun /s

Then you can return the amulet and, for whatever reason, see the undead represented in manner consistent with DnD lore. Off to the graveyard where you do indeed see a cleric of Kelemvor represented accurately but then, for whatever reason, you need to forget DnD lore so you can get your lols from the necromancer in the magic store.

Then, if you hate yourself, you complete the save the artist quest and put some intelligent zombies in charge of a house of horrors. Going in as cleric of Kelmevor / Lathander is clearly the evil way to complete this quest for some reason.

Then off Astarian's quest where the "good" choice is to flood Baldur's Gate with 7000 vampire spawn. While holding the blood of Lathander presumably.

TL;DR

Yes, there is something to Larian wanting to use the lore of realms but not the combat ruleset. But it's equally clear that they felt constrained by the lore of the realms. Chapter 3 just belongs in another setting. Perhaps Eora.

They may have felt constrained by WotC but I think they also felt constrained by fans like me. They don't want to be told that Faerun doesn't have factories or that explosives are rare. They want barrels and for fans to post videos of big explosions from backpack bombs.

Larian's communications to the modding community seemed to be tinged with sincere anger and frustration. I can detect a note of annoyance when Larian talks about mindflayers and souls. I think they also want to free themselves from DnD fans and their expectations.


****

I think the Ultima series would be good fit for Larian - indeed parts of the BG3 plot are lifted from Ultima 6 and 7. (the devil horned people are either refugees or heroes / the new religion is just a front for an evil force that wants to take over the world)

But Larian couldn't help themselves from making fun of the Avatar so who knows if "Lord British" will let them make fun of a setting which includes the author's self insert . . .

Clearly it wasn't. As it was comparing to Starfield, which is not a CRPG.

That you went on to state your interest in CRPG's, the original line I quoted was not specific to CRPG's given that it was a comparison to a non-CRPG.

If your intention was that BG3 raised the bar for CRPG's, you should be more clear about that and for comparison purposes, should compare to an actual CRPG.



Personally, I wasn't such a big fan of DOS1 combat... It honestly felt like dual wield wands and just regular attacking everything seemed better than literally anything else.

DOS2 had the god awful armour system. That not only had the whole "Status effects don't work while armour exists" making 99.99% of skills worthless (Especially since when armour was removed, targets died within a round anyway) and the split between physical and magical armour meant you were penalized for having a diverse party instead of focusing either entirely physical damage or entirely magical damage to burn through a singular armour type. Divinity Unleashed mod made the game 1000x more enjoyable due to reworking this trash system.

BG3 is meh combat. It's based on DnD but with various extra liberties that make it less strategic (Such as everyone being able to swap between melee and ranged weapons at will, with shields and such still providing benefits while using a ranged weapon). It's fairly standard in terms of video game DnD combat (Which doesn't ever compare to the actual fun of a TT system where things are more dynamic because things are not hard coded)

That said, I admit that the concept of surfaces in combat are interesting. It's just they've been implemented kind of awkwardly throughout the games (In DOS2 it's hampered by the dumb armour system. In BG3 it's shoehorned into a DnD game)


Larian's worlds are decent. In the sense that their size and density of things to do are pretty good. Generally I still like DOS2 with More Uniques mod to make exploration a smidge more interesting. BG3 feels somewhat unrewarding to fully explore without such a mod (Also things like the diggable loot being mostly garbage don't help)


I think the Divinity plots were passable.

DOS1 being you as mage hunters, hunting mages because sourcery is bad.

DOS2 being you as mages, escaping from prison and then developing your sourcery because mages are people too.

BG3's plot is kind of trash though.


I think character writing from them has generally been positive.

Lohse, Fane, The Red Prince, Lae'zel, Shadowheart and Karlach are characters I've been reasonably fond of.

BG3 has had a number of complete duds though like Wyll, Halsin, The Emperor...


Gale is irritating because his background is completely at odds with how he's portrayed.

Literally, his entire story is based on him being a narcisistic prick, ignoring the wishes of his Goddess GF to try and gain more power because he thinks he knows better than a literal god.

Then his character is a charming, caring, selfless person.

A complete 180 in characterization. Only we don't actually get to experience any character arc when this change occurs (Unlike with say, Lae'zel) or any reference to a change of personality.

May I just say that your knowledge is amazing and this is a really good list of things I likely would've never noticed as I'm fairly new to the Forgotten Realms and some things make way more sense now (like I never got why the Mystra ingame feels so different from the one I read about on the FR wiki).
So, just wanted to thank you and hopefully whoever makes the next DnD game hires people like you.

@Killer Rabit - lovely post. The "this is NOT Faerun" feeling seeps through in earlier Acts (I'm looking at you, House of Healing) and is jarring.
Like you said - Faerun is heroic fantasy, not early Warhammer (grimdark with lols, before it evolved into grimderp).

Curiously enough, someone else got it. I'd suggest this may be a reading comprehension issue as opposed to faulty delivery. Your mileage may vary.

The full IGN article is pretty interesting

https://www.ign.com/articles/baldur...t-foregoing-dlc-aaa-development-and-more

I was struck by this part near the end

"Vincke: Well, it came up to the point that our studios were haunting down the ambassadors so that they would give an approval just so that they would get a work permit. So getting the work permits was the major problem. So the initial bit was just getting people out. So figuring that out. But that's not it. That comes with an entire family, the dog, the cat. Turns out the dogs and the cats were the hardest bit. So we spend more time and more money on getting some dogs out of Russia than we did on the people, which is crazy."

Like I read that and it just endears me to the whole endeavor even moreso than I already was.

Like damn, if 60 bucks for an Early Access helps makes stuff like that happen, then absolutely - for sure! I give them some serious credit for somehow pulling it off. Couple times there I thought it would just fold under it's own weight, but it was more like just hold up and wait, which wasn't too bad I suppose. It's the last curtain call that still feels a bit premature though.

I feel like some sort of forget me not for a final capstone would be nice, which if it isn't a DLC or Expansion or Sequel I guess will have to just be some sort of last patch that makes mod stuff possible on consoles. That's pretty cool, usually don't get much in the way of that sort of thing. There was some other stuff in there equally interesting, about their pipeline and whatnot, the cost of turnover and layoff and all the quarterly nonsense, some stuff about Wyll and Dragons that I guess was impossible, but seemed pretty damn cool to me! I don't know, hopefully something still comes down the pike at some point.

Anyhow, can't leave the dog! That part just got me good, all right in the feels

KillerRabbit killing it with that killer post.

I do have to say, some things noted here did seem strange to me (the steampunk golems definitely stood out) but it had been so long since I dove into the official "realm" lore that I didnt know if expectations had changed over the years. I definitely did find the whole blanket cynicism about the gods ham-fisted and an obvious Larian "tell". In a way, sometimes I felt like I was playing something closer to the Planescape setting.

The moment, the very moment you aren't playing a race that uses the standard human physique, it all falls apart. Close-ups of, say, githyanki in different armors are painful to look at with all the clipping. Recycled animations that don't change no matter which race or body or gender you're playing harken back to that one shot of Shepard from ME2 in a dress with legs spread wide. If they were more neutral, it wouldn't be nearly as jarring, but, again, the feminine stride from one of the very first scenes is extremely obviously out of place once you aren't playing a female character.

Expressions and gestures make your character seem like a buffoonish moron no matter whom you are trying to play most of the time - why would a barbarian, or a particularly sadistic Dark Urge be recoiling in fear from, say, the hyenas transforming into gnolls (look at 'em polygons!) after having just recently ripped Gale's arm off?

The camerawork is very subpar compared to, say, Witcher 3, where the Wild Hunt fight scene outside of Kaer Morhen alone is simply plain gorgeous. Here everyone moves with all the grace of a sock puppet, and some moments clearly show that they were done in very different timeframes (Barcus' first dialogue had those very distinct motion-captured animations very similar to how they looked in Dragon Commander ever since he was shown during the very first gameplay reveal).

Romance scenes are laughably bad, too. Stiff, awkward, with, again, poorly placed camera angles. The naked models are so low-detail and devoid of physics that showing them this close is a very questionable decision. Reused animations are even worse here, with, say, male characters' hands not lining up with Minthara's at all, or Karlach outright ignoring anatomy at one point. Haarlep's is just downright painful to look at - if ever there was a "two dolls humping" scene, that one certainly qualifies the most.

Clothes look like they're made of clay and every close-up of, say, Volo feels like something from a decade ago. And so on. And so forth.

All that cinematics budget could have gone into much better areas, is all I am saying, with what the results are like in the end.

Agreeing with you on each point, especially Haarlep and Karlach were cruel to look at, just completely ignorant of what gender they are dealing with. This is definitely not done exceptionally well, it's bad and it's an insult to everyone who paid for this game.
As for the Tav, it doesn't help that (when I played) I only saw like 2 different facial expressions (squinting eyes or scared) and crossed arms. Add the masculine walking animation to it and I never felt really satisfied with my female Tav.

Personally, I'd say what saved this game from most of the flaws being noticed is the voice acting, that really is the only thing on AAA level for me, personally. The VAs are the ones who are capable of breathing life into the otherwise wax figure like characters.

Brace yourself for further disappointment.

In order for a "Big World Project" to materialise a several things would be needed.

1. The modding tools would have to actually exist.
2. The game would need a substantial player-base to provide the necessary numbers of modders willing and able to work towards a BWP.
3. The audience or user base for the BWP would have to be large enough to convince the modders that the time and energy expended would be worth it.


============================================

Place your bets for Saint Swen selling out to one of the big boys before the end of the year.

@KillerRabbit, as always, what an awesome post! Speaking as a longtime hardcore fan of the Realms, you totally nailed it!

With BG3 winning most awards the past year and nine months after launch still having 100k regular players on steam,¹ I do not see this as a problem.

¹: https://steamcharts.com/app/1086940#6m

@KillerRabbit killed it.
Dead on.

Regarding modding, mentioned it since day 1 of EA the current situation, because this is Larian! While everyone else was "BG3 will be a modding D&D powerhouse...". but we are getting mods = DOS2.

Mods reality check...top mods:

Better UI to fix this and that.
New faces, Other heads.
Hair salon, extra dyes
More bags. More equipment. More items.
Cheats, quality of life for xxx.
Fast XP, more weight, no romance limit, xxx unlock.
Enhanced nudes.

BG3 is one of the most BORING and un-friendly/annoying game to mod. It should be the complete opposite.
No excuse that its because "of the narrative" or "cinematics". They could of made a non-cinematic dialogue option <DOS2 mode> that let people build modules to add adventures.
Baldur's Gate 2 had a great story, and had tons of amazing extra fan made content within the world tied to the main story / or as extra adventures. Adventures are still being made to this day.

In contrast check out mods for Solasta....more than half of them are quests, campaigns and adventures with lots of D&D rule tweaks + extra stuff.

About the lack of female running animation -- I just wanted to say that I never experienced this until I started playing a female half-elf instead of a female elf. The female elf runs like she should, in my opinion.

Now, if the male elf runs like my female elf does, well, that's another problem.

Thanks everyone for the kind words. @Filia, your comments made me smile but I'm not expecting a job offer anytime soon. Can't imagine any CEO saying "hire the rabbit with pointy teeth"


Forum member @Niara is the real expert on the ruleset and @Kanisatha's knowledge of the novels surpasses mine. I got lucky one day when someone sold their entire 2e and 3.0 collection when 3.5 came out.

While this does dampen my hopes that chapter 3 will be revised in a definitive edition I wish Larian good luck and hope they are able to get more dogs out of Russia.

I expect that I will enjoy their next games as much as I enjoyed DoS2

Total sidebar, but just on the technology in FR. I also had a similar feeling with the various Constructs and Explosives. It's also strange though, because I rather liked Bernard, and the Steel Watch, and Philomeen and pretty much everything with the Ironhand Gnomes, which is sort of inexplicable to me. I think I attribute this to the fact that I'm not at all that precious when it comes to the Forgotten Realms, because as a setting it has always felt like such a grab-bag to me. I legit get the feeling that FR had to go this way, because of fucking Eberron lol. As if some wizard was like, 'well, what the hell are we supposed to do with all this Eberron crap we spent the last decade pushing?' And some other Wizard was like "Don't worry, we'll fold it into the Forgotten Realms like we always do" and then all the wizards nodded in agreement hehe.

FR is probably my favorite D&D campaign setting on account of some of this silliness, but playing BG3 also helped me to realize where I draw my line, which is that I don't dig Arquebuses and Guns in FR. It just diminishes all the magic missiles and fireballs and bows. I'm slightly annoyed by the advent of 'crossbows for all' for similar reasons, but at least it's not everyone packin' a blunderbuss ya know.

It was the thing that frustrated me most about Eora and Pillars, even if I get that there is a ton of crossover between like Knights of the Round Table and the swashbuckling Pirate genres. I let most things slide. Like I don't really care if I can see the curvature of the earth from a Razaminth's space needle tower, standing taller than Egyptian pyramids with the riddle of steel I-beams. I don't care if Dragons can't fly without some serious magic lift. I don't mind when it dips into Ravenloft Gothic Horror either, as long it's mostly bowie knives to take out Dracula and not a showdown at the OK corral with the quick draw. Even the Robocop switch board brain was fine, some fireworks ok sure, just leave the guns out of it.

I don't know but somehow someone always want to sneak in some guns and some steam engines, which will just ruin it for me every time. I think Steam Punk is not my fav, because while I do like Punk, I also have weird associations there, like as this avante garde thing that can only really exist as reactionary. I think there's a reason Eberron didn't catch fire in the aughts, so I don't know why it always has to keep haunting in the aftermath constantly. Like I'm over here pining for a long-hair happy hippie dip into some kind of Robin Hood fantasy, only to have the archery contest interrupted by someone with a spiked mohawk throwing grenades around like it's Holiday in the Sun. Anarchy lol. It's similar to say, making a SW flick where everyone suddenly has smart phones and touch screens, instead of a bunch of goofy hand mics with knobs and dials and switches and whatnot. Like at this point we know how the various holograms used for galactic communications are produced, I don't need it to be more real, just keep it in the trash compactor. Granted I'm totally inconsistent with some of this stuff. Like yellow submarine rides at disney land, sure thing, sign me up for 20,000 leagues there. I thought that part was pretty great. But if it was a Thomas the Train with a railroad crossing I would balk! Why one and not the other? Who can say. I honestly don't know. I am arbitrary and capricious with my nitpicks. I'm fine with the robocops as long as they're swinging giants swords and using crossbows I guess. If they blow up when they die, sure, worked for me. Whereas if they'd had rocket launchers and gatling guns for arms and shot lasers from their eyes, then suddenly it's like 'wait, this isn't right is it?' But then it was pretty satisfying to take on all of Wyrms rock just immediately, no quarter hehe. I was going to say draw the line at no cannons and flying machines, but then I don't care at all when it's Rolan vs the Nautiloids, or some pirate ship blimp I guess, so go figure. I'm just happy it wasn't like muskets and flint locks though, cause I think that, even for the kitchen sink setting that is the Forgotten Realms, it starts to buckle pretty badly on that one.

Anyhow, just rambling. I'm so happy to just smoke a cigarette in the parking lot while the roadies are packing up and feel the ringing in my ears still hehe.

ps. I think I might be a bit harsh on Baker and fans of Eberron. On it's face I should have been totally into it cause, like the wiki says... "The Eberron Campaign Setting sourcebook lists the following films as inspirations for Eberron's tone and attitude: Brotherhood of the Wolf, Casablanca, From Hell, The Maltese Falcon, The Mummy, The Name of the Rose, Pirates of the Caribbean, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Sleepy Hollow. Baker also said inspiration for the war-torn setting came from the unstable period of world history between World War I and II."

I read that and it's like holy shit, that sounds like a pretty good pitch! I like those flicks. But then it's also emblematic of this weird thing that happened, like the hauntology of the aughts, where everything had to get thrown in the recyclotron blender cause there weren't enough ideas anymore apparently? Like time just stopped at some point in the mid 90s when the avante garde become ironic and everything had to blend in that way. So like Punk (both it's late 70s/80s version and it's 90s revival) I guess recalls the WW1 haircuts, and so of course just set it there? But that reminds me of Fire and Ice or the Bakshi LotR where they're just rotoscoping WW2 photos and doing the modern/medieval mashup. Not that that can't work. I mean there are probably peeps who feel the same way when FR dips into Ravenloft for the horror or Planescape for the astral weirdness, or Greyhawk for moral ambiguity, except for some reason if they show me a shotgun and knights in the same frame, I just get Army of Darkness from that. Like then it only works as comedy, because there are shotguns and chainsaws for arms now lol. I don't know if it makes sense, or what all it's worth. Some sort of cautionary tale about the super specific and yet wildly vague milieu I expect the thing to operate within. It's some sort of time travel riff for me too I guess, which is another complicating factor.


Along those lines, I suppose it's hard for me to tell when BG3 is being earnest or Earnest Goes to Camp, if that makes sense. Or like when it's aiming to be a satirical send up of BG/FR/D&D vs something with the aching heart gravity, cause it kinda does both. But then at the end it's sorta like "That's all folks!" & we're on to the main event now! But I was still into it more for the cartoons that played before the double feature!

I'm pleased with what they've achieved, though I wish there was more. It's impossible for me to shut about this game, or to control my impulse on that. Like good grief, how much oversharing can one pull off in a place like this, to just keep running my mouth or cool the warp core endlessly? It might pick up again! After they walk it back slightly and drop whatever patch? More crystals would probably do the trick, doubtless. This ship has been patched and patched so many times, if it takes on water or I get queasy, there's usually a bucket somewhere or an animal to talk to, to help decompress. I wanted it to never end, but it would seems that's somehow not the thing either. I think I just want a heartfelt goodbye now, where we know it's for real and not a boomerang coming back again next week with a text message at 3 am. There's plenty of ghosts to not get ghosted, but like also - the timing! If we'd known the drill before the epilogue stuff dropped, it would probably have felt right-ish. But we didn't know that was goodbye at the time, so it stings a bit. Is this a 5 star BG day today, or like a 2 star BG day today? I don't know. Still feels a bit like we got jilted on the honeymoon there, as if there was going to be some sort of grand vacation in Hell or maybe Menzobaranzan, but then they were like "Sorry, we found someone new. We're just not into you anymore. If only you'd caught all those hints along the way though right? Might have saved ya some heartache. But GG! Good luck! Have fun!" lol. I'm only taking it to these absurdly hyperbolic dimensions here, cause that is somehow how it landed for me. Didn't see it coming, but then maybe I had the blinders on. Deer in the headlights - almost certainly the case.

One thing I have enjoyed heartily is the banter and the back and forth though, the occasional foodfight, the gummy berry juice and the bounce. I guess it was happy trails after all. Maybe Mods? Kinda loved it! Good lookin' out!

I don't always understand everything in Black_Elk's posts but I always enjoy them

Excellent thread! I love reading the forum’s conclusive thoughts on the game. Still haven’t played it, but one of my favorite posters made great points about early access and I’d like to reply. (Thanks for the youtube link!)

We’ve had the same basic argument over a year ago during the drought between patches 8 and 9. I said Larian should’ve tested more stuff during EA and you said then what you said here.

With more hindsight, we’re in a better position to interrogate that claim. We’ve seen the game evolve over fifteen odd patches: How closely does the initial vision match the final product? It’s not a rhetorical question, nor one for which I have all the information.

There are two comparisons to be made: Act 1 on day 1 of EA before time and feedback turned it into Act 1 on release; Act 1 on release compared to Act 3 on release (similar-ish amounts of time but no feedback for the latter).

From what I gather, time and feedback yield terrific results but time alone doesn’t do great. The value Larian got from EA goes way beyond QA testing. Over the course of 3 years, they found a lot of our ideas valid, to the point where it’s become unclear to me what the initial vision was.

You’ve a different take on why Acts 1 and 3 are so different in quality:
It does make sense. Larian tend to make their games front to back, and we know they rescoped BG3 after its initial early access success.

I’d argue most of the initial design period is figuring out what the game wants to be, and I don’t see Larian navigating that without a passionate community. Act 1’s polish is a side effect of that process, which wasn’t as effective through later acts. That’s my first takeaway: Larian’s passion does show through the faults, which makes players fall in love and dream of improvements.

My second takeaway is that the business side matters. I came to early access to see the geniuses behind DoS:2 (according to sources I still trust) craft a sequel to a pair of masterpieces (according to me and same sources) but I saw passionate project managers leveraging ressources to make returns.

That’s possibly the harshest way to put it while still being mostly truthful. To be sure, they improved their returns by improving the game, but at some point you have to stop optimizing the inventory and ship it.

I’m glad Larian are switching projects. Please let their passion shine through a game that designs around their weaknesses. If you’re set up to build discrete set pieces, fold that into the world and lore; if you know you tend to change the plot, make it shorter; if your inventory isn’t working, find a way to do without.

Will you look at that, Larian still make me dream.

I did have a rather vain hope that BG3 might become the new NWN when it came to being able to make your own modules, and that Larian might actually work on the toolset this time around to make it more end user-friendly.

Hah. Hah hah.

All it sounds like we're getting are "curated" (whatever the hell that's supposed to imply) cross-platform mods, because apparently the game just had to be released for bricks instead of being properly completed and polished to (almost) perfection on PC. No toolset, no big content changes (goodbye, hopes for a proper evil run and Minthara/Halsin becoming fleshed out at all...), no real future for the game outside of being a one-time big hit mostly thanks to obnoxiously aggressive marketing which was more of a showcase of them giving up on so many aspects it could have otherwise had. D:OS2 had support years after release, all the way up to, what, 2019-2020? With a definitive edition and content packs. Its modding never really took off because, again, the toolset is a pain in the ass to use (unlike NWN's), but there was at least a cool custom combat gauntlet mod that was worth downloading.

It's kind of insulting to hear how "they look forward to what modders will do" regarding the missing Dodge/Ready Action and such, and then barely provide any mod support in the end. But hey, the slobbering redditors/tumblos ate it whole, and who needs any other kinda feedback when Reddit fellates you 24/7 and any dissent there is quickly silenced, so you don't have to look at any negativity.

All of this is coming from a life-long Larian fan, BTW. One who thought that even Beyond Divinity, perhaps the weakest Larian outing (what with all the publisher pressure and very rushed development) was a really good game. The tales from the Divinity Anthology's diaries were both inspiring and really showcased how Larian's current issues were there from the start (overreaching, poor planning, time/resource management, retooling things way too late...). Now, though, as the fame got to their head, it seems that said issues are just ignored instead of worked on, which is quite unfortunate. With Obsidian eaten by Microsoft, Owlcat still releasing games in a barely beta-worthy state, and things like Colony Ship being very niche, the CRPG renaissance is no more, it seems.

Alright, that's enough drama.

You are right about the nature of the mods published for BG3.
On the other hand, the comparison with Solasta is not justified. Just look: we're talking about a ridiculous number of mods. Only 136 mods for Solasta. The NWN example seems more relevant to me.

In any case, the growing complexity of games (graphics, cutscenes, etc.) makes it illusory to create rich and truly attractive quests. At best we will have a "dungeon" quest and that's it.

Abandoning D&D will certainly help. D&D is a Frankenstein's monster of regurgitated toddler fantasy tropes, the epitome of silliness. The social value of tabletop D&D is to be appreciated, but its score on creative, sensible world building is near zero.

Abandoning D&D won't help because the silliness a lot of people have issue with seems to just be a baked in part of Larian storytelling. I'm not super familiar with the Forgotten Realms, but what I have seen and heard is certainly derivative in places, but as far as inherent siliness goes, a DM can easily dial it up or down to their liking for the story they're trying to tell.

Silliness is way, way, WAY more a hallmark of Larian storytelling than it is a necessary component of DnD.

Yep, the tone of the Forgotten Realms as a setting *really* depends on the GM/writer/game dev. All the FR based games I've played have had different tones. Icewind Dale 1 and 2 feel isolated, desolate even. Baldur's Gate 1 is goofy but also mysterious. Baldur's Gate 2 takes the undercurrent of darkness present in BG1 and dials it up. There's still some great humor, but the tone is much more serious. NWN2 is a pretty classic feeling fantasy adventure; MotB again dials up the darkness and, as I recall, felt quite mature in its themes.

BG3 leaning more toward "silly" (but with some dark shock value type elements) is due to Larian's take on the setting, not the setting itself. The FR as a setting is incredibly comprehensive, and obviously juggles a lot of elements that can clash with each other and be like "Frankenstein's monster" in the wrong hands, because a story needs focus. A good GM narrows down that focus, sets a tone, and tells a story with the appropriate elements. (And while I'm not the biggest fan of BG3's story, I'm not implying Larian failed here, because obviously they got a lot of people into the setting who weren't before).

A lot of these depend on choices, and also Vlaakith is not a God as has been mentioned. Mystra can and does restore Gale but it isn't promised as that undermines the gravity of the sacrifice itself. Shadowheart can go a lot of different paths, again depends on choices.

You seem to be complaining about outcomes that you chose. Odd.



It exists in the hells. It's all over Descent to Avernus - unless you want to claim that isn't part of the Lore either. Gortash helped design this technology which he clearly adapted or stole from the Hells.


It's hard to take any of this seriously since you don't back it up with sources. And for some reason you don't seem to consider the modules themselves as sources, or even the timeline of what has happened in the realms.

After the Time of Troubles Gond taught the Lantanese how to make Smokepowder and it became fairly common even if it was often banned locally by various governments. In Dragon Heist it can be purchased in Waterdeep and it is considered an Uncommon Wondrous Item.

You also seem to be projecting your own idea of what the game believes is evil or good onto your play. I have played as a Cleric of Lathander and I always killed undead when I met with them and I don't feel any guilt about it - I didn't feel any guilt about killing Astarion when it was revealed he was a vampire and that really solves a lot of that problem. If my companions have an issue with my behavior they can fuck right off. Also the game does not imply, and I have never interpreted it, that flooding Baldur's Gate with 7k spawn is in any way a good thing.

If you play the game where your moral compass is dictated by the approval or disapproval of your companions then that is the same as not having any moral/ethical outlook. It says you lack the strength of your convictions - or simply that you have no convictions or that your convictions are just meaningless virtue signaling where you constantly chase the approval of others.

So much projection.

Protip - Try to focus your arguments and back them with sources. You are really all over the place.

Also you seem to be split on your theme whether it's your own disappointing play or if you are trying to argue that Larian didn't follow the lore of Faerun. The first is subjective so I would just avoid that but the second one has promise and you may be able to make a decent argument if you can back with sources.

@Blackheiffer woke up and chose violence.

I confess I had lol with your psychoanalysis Of course I engage in projection. As do you. I always smile whenever I see you inveighing against nostalgia - you really are quite hard on yourself. Protip: engage in some self reflection on that matter, you really do inveigh against yourself and it leaves you 'all over the place'. Truly.

Anyway. This isn't an academic paper but let's pretend it is

On smokepowder. Lots of sources here. Covers availability, stability, controversy, etc.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Smokepowder

https://web.archive.org/web/20210517004301/https://twitter.com/jvcparry/status/867391458827005953

Yes Gond taught it to the Lantanese but this was opposed by other gods. Which is why it was cursed to be unstable.

(and in meta terms this reflects battles inside of WotC - some people want to see firearms in the realms, some strongly oppose it)

Avernus is Max Max: Fury Road in the hells and thus it is possible that factories exist outside of Faerun. [1] (it is equally likely that the iron that makes up a infernal machines grows on trees, pours out of infernal fountains, floats on top of the rivers of salt or is produced by an act of will by Zariel) How many such infernal factories exist? I assume the factories are as rare as Thunderdome but neither of us knows - 5e avernus is under construction.


If the entire factory - and not just the "special material"s for the steel watch referred to in the notes - came from the hells there should some indication it did. Seems a pretty big move some for some who needs to pay a diabolist to traverse the planes, no? It's not clear how Gortash gets the small amounts of infernal iron he has but it is strongly implied that it came as part of deal that involved Karlach and her beta test heart.

I'm glad you felt like you got good role play out slaughtering the zombies in the streets, in the circus and in sorcerous sundries. Unless you found some way to stealth that it leads of a murder hobo / enemy of justice response and if you find that fun, I guess you do. I mean the zombies beg for mercy for Bhaal's sake . . .


Because I like DnD lore I do kill the vampire spawn in astarian's quest but the story absolutely does not confirm that as a good act. It's an that action causes Paladin of devotion to fall - in Larian's mind it is **coded** as an evil act (or at least not a lawful good act). Good Shadowheart tells you that sparing the lives of the spawn was the right decision because their deaths would weigh on you . . . Releasing the spawn is the good option - it's hard to argue otherwise. And it does turn out for the best . . . (which I think is silly)

I don't know what to say about this:


Other than: that seems to be an exceptionally poor reading of what I wrote. Odd.

1] https://www.inverse.com/article/592...ernus-writer-reveals-mad-max-inspiration

"the iron that makes up a infernal machines grows on trees, pours out of infernal fountains, floats on top of the rivers "

You're pretty close to the real world, really ... it's called Bog Iron, and it is found in swamps and bogs as a result of the natural activities of plant life. It was in fact the primary source of iron in the not-so-long-ago days. And it is renewable. I've always found bogs and swamps to be kind of magical, with will-o-wisps flitting about and the Mad Hermit living in his hollow tree, but alas, Larian is moving away from the rich landscapes of early D&D that existed long before the Forgotten Realms.

That's great! I vaguely remember some history channel-like documentary on viking swords and why they thought the swords that came from (what is now) France were magical in nature that mentioned bog iron.

You are absolutely right about the magic of bogs. I don't miss living in the midwest but one thing I do miss is seeing fireflies on warms summer nights, watching the lights dance above a dell is indeed magical experience

I've followed Forgotten Realms since I first read the novel Spellfire when it was released. I loved the setting more than Dragonlance and always thought it was a better place to adventure in.

But I always realized it was an unrealistic hodgepodge of ideas and societies crammed together.

I still remember my first Forgotten Realms box set with the fold out map. Back when TSR said Sembia would always remain undeveloped so that players could have their own region that wasn't disturbed by canon interference. I must've read those books a thousand times or more. Back then I read every Realms novel that was published. My bookshelf was my secret best friend. My greatest treasure.

And while I appreciate and prefer settings that lack technology, I'm forced to accept that DnD, Forgotten Realms included, has always been a bit of a sandbox. Whether players were hopping between planes or delving into engineering miracles underground, what was included in the setting was always beholden to the needs of the storyteller.

In today's Forgotten Realms there are artificers. Clearly there's smokepowder and infernal machines, and there's always been clockwork automatons. It's a setting that attempts to please every nook and cranny of taste.

Are there factories in Forgotten Realms? I'll bet you Wyll's good eye that there are and that you'll start to see more and more of this stuff as WotC releases more and more product. I get the feeling that KillerRabbit is advocating for his preferred version of Forgotten Realms rather than recognizing that what exists in BG3 has the WotC stamp of approval. It's not some crazy Larian interpretation. This stuff is canon now.

So again, are there factories in Forgotten Realms? There sure are. BG3 is the proof, not the culprit.

(I prefer a fantasy setting without factories and smokepowder.)

You may be right that more may be coming. The Pathfinder setting has places with guns and a part of the map that is entirely steampunk. If you played WOTR you might have remembered the joy that was fighting the cybermen.

Like you I prefer setting without guns and factories but thus far the one in BG3 is the only one I know of. There is a swamp in Cormyr with buildings formed of glass and steel that sounds like it contains technology but to the best of my knowledge that never got anything more than a paragraph.

I dunno what to say about this way of arguing - we all acknowledge that there is a factory in BG3. Right? That's a given. But I don't think think you can argue that the factory seems perfectly in place in the setting because it is in BG3. Were that the case *nothing* could be ruled out of place in the setting.

Imagine if we couldn't say "Astarian and Shadowheart shouldn't be texting on iPhones because that seems out of place in Faerun" and getting the response. "iPhones are in BG3 so they are not out place in the realms and I suspect we will be seeing many more iPhones in the future"

I mean that wouldn't convince you, would it?

Now I am both saying what is and would I like to remain. Am I saying that I want see the realms remain a high fantasy, medievalish, hot mess of setting. I am also saying that it is currently a high fantasy, medievalish hot mess of setting. Both Faerun and Golorian are hodgepodge settings but Faerun has a bit less hodge and Golorian has a bit more podge.

There has long been debate about how much technology to include in the setting - I provided a link to internal discussion about firearms - and up until now WotC has decided that Faerun is neither Ebberon nor Golorian.

Actually, you can.

Since BG3 is canon. Thus anything that is in BG3 is considered canon to the setting.

As far as "Nothing being ruled out", well... Yeah. That's the point. At the end of the day, WotC have the last say in what is acceptable to include in the canon and once it's included in some canon media it is suddenly an accepted part of the setting.

Like, if WotC DID greenlight iPhones, Blasters and Apache Attack Helicopters in BG3... Then those things would thus be canon to the setting.

Such is the nature of this sort of mass developed setting. With the hodge podge of ideas from different people writing stories within the setting and a "Hands off" holder of the IP that just greenlights whatever they feel is acceptable you can end up getting things that might seem anachronistic to the setting... But they become canon nonetheless.

If the IP holder (WotC) was a primary source of writing, and actually cared much about consistency within the IP, then they'd be able to focus the setting into a specific vision and be more selective with what they greenlight from other writers, which may have resulted in no factories or smokepowder appearing in the setting.

Having only dabbled in DnD many many years ago when the USSR was still a thing I had never heard of the Forgotten Realms until BG3. It's been fascinating to learn about it on here and through the Wiki and discussions like this are much appreciated by someone new to it like me.

Ignoring whatever word salad that first paragraph was, but this is again wrong. You got the timeline mixed up. Mystra cursed smokepowder to make it non-functional and then Gond taught the Latanese how to get around it during the Time of troubles.

The point is that Smokepowder is not some rare and legendary thing in the realms but fairly uncommon but available.


The point is that both actions have negative and positive consequences and that YOU have to decide which one you can live with. There is no objective "good" black and white choice. This is the drum Larian has been beating since they started making this game but you don't seem to be able to dance to the rhythm.

As a Cleric of Lathander I can wipe out 7k Undead because that is part of my ethos, and in my eyes this is an act of kindness and charity - but if I was a Devotion paladin I would be forced to protect all life and acknowledge that the Spawn are victims as well.

In the case of the Circus I can exercise more discretion, and just not agree to help Lucretius put the clown back together. After all, I am not a Paladin and not bound by an Oath to act immediately and directly.

Who cares what Shadowheart thinks, or any of the companions? This was a flaw in the original games where people set their moral compass by chasing the approval of companions.


I think this is the truth of it. You, and a handful of others have an idea of what the Forgotten realms "ought" to be - when in reality it is a large sandbox and Larian got to choose what to utilize and you don't agree with that. That's fine, why do you think we have been banging the "mods now" drum so loud. Some of us want to make persistent worlds that conform to more traditional settings and allow people to explore that.

Although I do want to point out that Bg2 went pretty hard on the science bullshit when it came to Jon Irenicus* and his 'experiments' - his little Lab under Amn was chock full of Steampunk-esque nonsense.

*I call this the 'Because all mages are apparently fucking master engineers" foible.

Mystra save me from people who ask for sources and then decline to read them. Here, to save you effort of clicking:



. . . .




Note that both of these sources are **after** the destruction of Lantan. The Lantanese techniques are either lost or reserved to a select portion of the Gondian priesthood. To get meta once again - I think the changes reflect disagreements on firearms inside WotC. Yes, I know I am relying to 4e source which is a sin but, in my defense, it was written by Ed Greenwood.

The curse is active.

Everything in that article underlines small quantities, very difficult to get. If you need me to I can post those bits as well but I would prefer if you took the time to read it yourself.



While that statement could be written by the Larian PR department it's false. You can only believe that **if** you ignore the overwhelming evident that the oath of devotion is a de facto Lawful Good Paladin. And, as strange as it might sound, I think this is a case where Larian is doing a better job of respecting DnD Lore than is WotC. Larian clearly wanted Paladins to be classic holy warriors and the oath of devotion is that.


Like you I kill them all because I think their soul are already lost and this is the most compassionate thing I can do - free them from sanguine hunger. To me it's clear that the author believed that was a failure of compassion on your part. Were I to channel the voice of the author I would ask: "You thought Astarian was capable of change, why aren't you prepared to give the Gur children the same opportunity."?

But I believe our interpretations are at odd with the author's own. The author didn't like the lore that said they were monsters the moment they were turned and so they changed it. Yes we are free to headcannon that killing the kids is the kind, compassionate choice - but the code would argue with us.

(and to be clear I really like the story - my point, once again, is that Larian felt constrained by DnD lore)



I'm sure that Lathander forgives you You are charged to destroy undead whenever possible and I am sure that Lathander would accept that it wasn't possible in the circus or right next to Baslisk Gate.



Because evil Shadowheart and good Shadowheart have differing opinions on things and those statements are the voice of the authors telling you whether or not your actions were good or evil.



I get why you are upset that you aren't getting the mod tools you wanted. I am sincerely confused as to why you are angry with me about it. Or, to be perfectly honest, I know that you aren't angry with me but I'm here and the CEO isn't so I become the sounding board for your anger. Perhaps "sincerely surprised" is more accurate than "sincerely confused".

I'm sorry you aren't getting them, I had nothing to do with that decision. Also, I do hope you can modify the tools you do get. With BG2 the fan made mod tools were so much better than the ones Bioware used that Beamdog chose to use the fan made tools in lieu of the ones they paid for.


I do agree on this and would add the aesthetics of the planar sphere. While I think I am the only one who notices this but square hay bales annoy me and have been annoying me since BG 1. Uniform, tightly bound bales are a symbol of industrialization. Come on artists! I know someone Larian is expert in art history - it shows in your descriptions of paintings . . . You've seen all the paintings with hay stacks and thick sheaves tied with cord . . .

To be fair, Irenicus is essentially an epic-level mage. When it comes to the secret lair of mages that powerful, some "advanced" aesthetics, I find, is less jarring than an active factory in the middle of a city. The same goes for the planar sphere; I mean some of the "high-tech" aesthetics in there were because you were actively being transported to small poritons of high-tech planes, wasn't it?

The point being made in that like you quoted isn't about canon. It's not about what factually is the case, it's about whether that thing feels like it fits into the setting. You are correct that WotC can make anything they like canon, but that doesn't mean those things will automatically feel appropriate to the setting and actually fit in naturally. You even agree with her point, saying that "you can end up getting things that might seem anachronistic to the setting" which is what KillerRabbit is saying the factories are.

And the point I was making is that it doesn't matter what us, the consumer, feel like fits into the setting.

It's all about what WotC feel fits into their setting.

Since they control the IP, it's their decision as to what is fitting for the setting.

The nature of the setting is that it is ultimately controlled by a company that doesn't have a strict vision for what the setting is.

Meaning, whatever becomes canon is the canon, whether we consumers like it or not.

Thus, we have the argument that anything that does show up in canon, make sense. As it's not beholden to any standard that we have, it's only to meet the standards that WotC has. It only has to make sense to WotC and whomever wrote the story in the first place.

If an inclusion seems nonsensical, then the ultimate issue is the lack of awareness that WotC don't particularly care about retaining an exclusive "High Fantasy" setting for the IP.

Is your argument that The Forgtten Realms is a nonsense non-setting where anything goes and everything is fine and acceptable at any point? Is your argument that "if a story were to suddenly be written where the city of new york exists in its entirety in Faerun, that would feel totally in line with the setting because it's a setting where in theory WotC just has to approve it for it to be canon"?

The consumers feelings do in fact matter because who do you think the setting is being made for? If BG3 had been a failure and people had been complaining about how it didn't fit the pre-established tone of the setting, do you think WotC would stick to their guns and say that it's absolutely canon? No, they'd ignore its canonicity.

Your claim ignores the fact that the setting has in fact existed in a particular way for a long time leading up to the release of this game. People have experienced the setting for decades leading to this point. It's been a hodge-podge yes, but still has had some degree of consistency in flavor. So when things are introduced arbitrarily that go against that flavor, people are well within their rights to say "that doesn't fit with what's been established before." Then WotC or whoever are free to say "you're right, we'll change it" or "well that's what the setting is now". The implication of your argument is that fans should just silently take whatever they're given as though WotC is doing them a favor. That fans should just pretend the setting as it existed in the past doesn't exist and should have no bearing on their feelings about any decisions made in the present. That is not how people work, nor is it how businesses or even creative projects work. If George RR Martin were to say in the next Game of Thrones book that it's canon that cell phones exist and people travel around on motorcycles, then that's as much canon as anything going on with BG3 and the forgotten realms. You could argue that "since he's the author and IP holder, he's entitled to make the setting anything he wants" and it would be just as valid as what you're saying about WotC. People would still have every right to complain about it, dislike it, and stop buying the books.

Furthermore, this particular line of discussion began with KillerRabbit claiming that Larian don't particularly like the setting of the Forgotten Realms as it existed and so by act three they were introducing thinigs to it that did not fit in the setting as it had been established previously to make it more to their tastes. So again, the point isn't that WotC can make anything canon. The point being made was that Larian did not like the forgotten realms as it had existed before they were allowed to influence it, and as evidence, KR pointed to a number of things Larian included that run counter to the setting as it had previously been presented. It doesn't matter that those things can be allowed if WotC says they are, what matters is that they weren't there before and Larian added them in because they were unsatisfied with the setting as they had recieved it. The argument is that if Larian had been happy with the setting, they would not have added the things they did. What is and isn't canon is another discussion.

Well said Gray Ghost.

No, my argument is that WotC determines what is and what isn't canon. Not some random forum user.


The setting is being made for whomever will give WotC money. Whether this is long established fans, or new ones. They don't care. So long as they make money.

If WotC introduces lightsabers, blasters and the force they might alienate their existing fans, but they might also attract in a ton of Star Wars fans (And a massive lawsuit from Disney, but I digress) which could be acceptable if they still made acceptable profits.

Though, it's not like things being in a setting necessarily dictate much. Since it's up to other writers whether they include certain things in their stories. Like, if BG3 included iPhones and helicopters, it doesn't necessarily mean every future writer making a story set in FR has to include them. At worst all that would be necessary is for a BG4 to either include them or include a pretense for lacking them.


Sure. But we don't live in that world.

We live in a world where BG3 is a success and is canon. Ergo, everything in it is canon, despite any gripes of random people on a forum.


When did I say that?

People are well within their right to complain about anything they like. It doesn't mean WotC will bend over backwards to cater to them.

My argument merely is that WotC has the final say on what is or isn't acceptable in THEIR IP.

Perhaps mass backlash might influence their decision, like if BG3 was a massive flop specifically because of something it introduced to the setting. But ultimately, it's under their control and it's their decision about what is or isn't canon.


How is that in any way relevant?

If George RR Martin added that stuff into his next book. People can complain. But it won't necessarily mean that the book stops being canon.

If people complain and then George RR Martin declares the book non-canon as a result. That is the only time the consumer sentiment influences the canon of his IP.


And the point I was making was that as WotC determines what is canon and as BG3 has been declared canon, then anything in BG3 is considered to be acceptable to the setting by those in charge of the IP.

Since the line I was responding to was that you cannot make the argument that because it exists in BG3 it is acceptable for the setting. Which is categorically untrue, because of WotC making BG3 canon.

Thus, according to the owners of the IP, everything that is in BG3 is acceptable to them. Hence we can consider everything in BG3 to be acceptable to the setting.

This doesn't make it undisputable, people are well within their rights to argue against anything in BG3 or other canon media. But the argument is there that as BG3 is canon, thus it is acceptable in the setting.

You keep arguing about canon, but this discussion isn't about canon, it's about the feel of the setting as it has existed up until this moment. Those things are related, but not inherently the same. You keep talking like the fact that BG3 is canon now suddenly makes the setting as it has been presented all this time suddenly fundamentally different. Yes, BG3 suddenly now makes the setting into one where factories and such can now exist and be normal. But it WAS NOT THAT BEFORE. It was once one thing, now it is a different thing. And what KR is saying is that it is now a different thing because Larian did not like the thing it was before. Larian were given permission to change that thing, yes, but they DID change it. Key word here being CHANGE, make it something it did not used to be. And KR is saying that the reason they changed it is that they were not happy with how it was before. She is suggesting that if they had been happy with it as it had been, they would not have included all the other stuff that they did. Because it did not exist or behave this way before Larian's influence, and the reason it does now is because Larian saw that it was not to their liking before and included new things to make it so. Things that WotC had to look at and decide they were okay with.

That's why I asked those questions about if new york were to be transplanted into the setting or if the setting is inherently a nonsense setting. Because even if WotC decides today that yes, all those things are true, that does not retroactively mean the decisions line up and make sense with what the setting has been before that decision. The only way that would be the case is if the Forgotten Realms were in fact a nonsense setting where anything goes.

My all times favorite D&D setting is by a long shot PLANESCAPE (2nd/3rd ed).
The 2023 reboot seems, pretty decent??? People say that its 5e but FEELS like 2nd (!) In hopes we might get a good D&D computer game out of it...

Its too bad really, because I feel that for THAT setting Larian would do an amazing job : Planescape is just all over the place with CRAZY mechanics.

"It used to not be like this."

"Well, it's like this now."

*

What is the discussion about? Liking or not liking the direction the setting is going? Or that these things don't belong in the setting? Because one of those discussion points is reasonable. The other one less so.

Also, what the setting *feels* like to you isn't necessarily the same as what the setting feels like to someone else. This is a shared setting with players all over the world.

The feeling of the setting includes all the clutter from numerous sources and planes travelling campaigns. One minute you could be in Cormyr and then poof, you're in Gamma World. It's the nature of the game, for better or worse. An old Greyhawk module had players exploring the crashed remains of an alien spaceship. When you're talking about the *feeling* of a setting, all of these things merge together in the minds of many players, and a lot of tabletop play encourages that mindset.

There are inventors and artificers and marvels of engineering.

Once upon a time the Realms didn't have dragonborn. Now they do. The timeline has progressed, significantly.

BG3 is NOT canon. WotC has repeatedly said over the years that anything from D&D video games is explicitly NOT cannon. Only WotC-released printed source materials are canon.

Yeah, I guarantee you this follow up to Descent into Avernus is canon. Gortash is canon. Astarion is canon. Orpheus is canon.

The only question is which direction will be canon. Did Astarion ascend or not? Those are the type of things up for discussion when it comes to canon.

Denial doesn't change what we all know to be true. This is a big part of the Forgotten Realms setting now.

This discussion and that discussion are different.

The point I raised is in direct response to the notion that something being in BG3 =/= suitable for the setting.

Wherein, it doesn't matter what has existed to this point. All that matters is the canon and WotC's take on the setting.

If WotC deems it appropriate to add to the setting, then you can argue that it is appropriate for the setting. This doesn't necessarily mean it is "Correct" or "Irrefutable". Only that an argument can be made.

Which is directly related to the snippet I quoted. You note I didn't quote an entire post and haven't responded to the entire post, only to the single line about this one particular thing.


This entire ramble about change is meaningless. Like literally pointless.

We're discussing whether the CHANGES are appropriate for the setting (As there's always CHANGES when new story is written. As new characters, new lore, new stories get added to this ever CHANGING setting) so explicitly emphasising CHANGE has literally no relevance.


If WotC decides that those are true, then you can make the arguement that it makes sense because it is canon and they deem it acceptable for their IP.

Which is again, true. You as a consumer can disagree with that notion and make counter arguments that it is not narratively consistent with what has previously been written. But that doesn't preclude the argument that it is canon, therefore it makes sense.

"Denial doesn't change what we all know to be true." You should try practising what you preach. The events surrounding Gortash, Asterion and Orpheus in BG3 exist only in BG3. How is this "a big part of the Forgotten Realms setting now"? Has it featured in any WotC printed source material?

WotC has already adapted this long ago. Not 100% one-to-one, of course, but in a modified form and you guys already mentioned some of it or encountered it in their Games:

lightsabers = Shadowblade (Mandos Darksaber) / Moonblade spells

blasters = ToBs Easter Egg the Big Metal Rod, or BG3s Crossbow of Arcane Force

the force = the Weave or monks Ki


Smoke powder is ok, even as a grenade, but using the next level of development as a firearm is too much in my humble opinion. It would also be a gross immersive design flaw as magic is already used in DnD as a power source after physical strength. This means that, unlike in our real world, no one should have the idea or need to generate propulsive power through dangerous explosive force.

It all depends on the measure. If you dose it well, I think it's fine, but if you overdo it and want to make an Arcanum or Planescape out of it, it's too much of a good thing with the Steam Punk influence. Even an Artificer class should be more like the A-Team, utilizing innovative low-tech inventions using existing materials rather than groundbreaking new discoveries. This is also much more in keeping with the spirit of Gond (e.g. water and steam propulsion and thus also in keeping with appropriate (Elemtar) magic).

Less is more!


This would be my recommendation, based on compromise, for "canonization". However, it is a matter for others to decide: I also puzzle all the time if there will be other versions of Kagha and Shadowheart or if they already are canon:

https://scryfall.com/card/clb/146/shadowheart-dark-justiciar

https://scryfall.com/card/clb/279/kagha-shadow-archdruid

You can either see the writing on the wall or you can't. If you can't acknowledge that BG3 is a big part of the Forgotten Realms setting now then you're not following what's happening. That's either a lack of vision or being in a state of denial.

Do MTG cards count as printed source material? WOTC added several of those to their Baldur's Gate set. Note that the set also features characters from the previous games.

Astarion - https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563148
Gale - https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=562955
Halsin - https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563117
Karlach - https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563069
Lae'zel - https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=562912
Minthara - https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563169
Shadowheart - https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563029
Wyll - https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563091

Gut - https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563063
Kagha - https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563162
Raphael - https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=563175

One thing is for sure…these realms are not forgotten.

When it comes to WotC, best not to focus on what's "canon" and what isn't, because it contradicts itself, and the written works especially contradict the video games. Even with BG3's popularity, I have zero faith that what WotC ultimately takes from it for "canon" will line up with the game canon at all, especially as the years pass. The stuff WotC has "canonized" from the old games makes it look like they learned about the games from playing telephone . . . even when writers of new content also worked on those games. It's whatever they think will sell, not what's logical and consistent.

Companies can declare canon all they like, but I learned a trick with The Last Jedi and The Return of Skywalker... when companies make worthless choices about their canon you can just stop paying attention.

(Incidentally, I don't have a strong opinion on Forgotten Realms canon, I just used an example of something I do have strong feelings about).

*cough* Abdel Adrian *cough*

Also, "Here Lies Kanon"... I think is an inside joke.

Yup. Unless it is of exceptional quality, I'll never buy BG4/a DnD FR game with the bastard child of Sherlock Holms, Dumbo and Watto in it.

Yes exactly. All of this gets to be canon only if WotC decides that it will be so. And yes, they could do so, for example by releasing a new game module based on the events of BG3 and featuring some of the characters from BG3. But they have not yet done any such thing, not announced any such thing. So as of now, BG3 is not canon, in the same way that BG 1 and 2 were never canon.

What writing on which wall? What is happening and where is it happening? Point me to it and I'll gladly check it out and change my opinion if necessary. Until then it's just your wishful thinking and projection.

We've both reiterated our disagreement with one another enough to make it clear we aren't going to agree. You ask for "proof." I say it's self-evident. There's no point in continuing to trace this circle.

Yes I ask for evidence (not "proof") and yes you keep saying it is self-evident without giving any evidence of its existence. What is self-evident is that you have no evidence let alone proof (with or without quote marks).

If you poll a hundred thousand people who are familiar with BG3, I'm confident the vast majority of them would understand that BG3 is a big part of the Forgotten Realms setting now. That's how successful the game was.

However, there are always some folks who aren't capable of understanding for one reason or another. It doesn't bother me that you don't get it. I don't expect you to agree. I certainly don't expect you to understand things outside of your processing ability.

So an imaginary poll and your confidence constitutes evidence? What is it I am incapable of understanding? What is it that I don't get? What you don't seem to get is that repeatedly saying something one wants to be true does not make it true.


If we were discussing a book then the question of whether Asterion ascended or not would not be up for discussion as regardless of however many people read the book, what happened to Asterion is the same in every copy of the book. With the game there are people who never took Asterion along; people who only had Asterion for the earlier part of the game; people who didn't have Astarion ascend; and people who did have Astarion ascend. Then there are all the other things Astarion can do or not do in the game such as romances etc.
Similar arguments can be made regarding characters such as Minthara, Wyll, Shadowheart or even relatively minor characters such as Auntie Ethel.
Nothing would ever become canon because the discussion as you call it would be interminable.

How much of Jaheira in BG3 is canon? I seem to recall discussions on this forum about that.

BG3 sold millions of copies, but nothing in it is a big part of Forgotten Realms until it's included in a module that sells upwards of 5k copies!

Okay, Jodaker. Thanks for letting us know where your line is.

Meanwhile millions of the rest of us will just continue considering BG3 a big part of Forgotten Realms.

Cool conversation, lol.

Asking an honest question as someone new to the FR and canon as it relates to DnD. What is the significance as to whether or not BG3 (or anything else for that matter) is considered canon? Obviously players are free to ignore or embrace whatever works for them. I'm assuming its only an issue for publishers.

What module? What line? I have no idea what you are talking about.

Now you are moving the goalposts. This wasn't about BG3 being a big part of FR, it was about BG3 being canon. Even the 'big' part of FR is debatable can you show any evidence of BG3 material appearing anywhere other than BG3?

You are trying to sound oh so nonchalant with your "cool conversation, lol" yet you very rarely, if ever, answer any of my questions and I'm still waiting for any evidence.

I see a lot of it being about the identity of the world/universe of the IP. Over the last few years there has been outcries against the makers of Rings Of Power because they trashed Tolkien's lore and against the makers of Wheel Of Time because they did a similar thing to that IP.

The significance is that it enables future stories to include parts of the canon stories.

For example, if BG3 is canon and it's Steel Watch factories are canon, then future story writers can include Steel Watch factories. Which, if someone really doesn't want that in their FR, means it will detract from that particular story.

Whether this future story is a module (Thus more easily avoidable with a likeminded DM who just doesn't include them), or a video game, it can impact someone's overall enjoyment of the content.

With of course, the major gripe tending to be the slippery slope problem. Where something that someone dislikes not only gets reused, but built upon, further straying from that persons personal ideal for the setting.

The most often seen complaint is along the lines of Steel Watch and Factories can lead to more industrialization and thus gunpowder and then firearms and then all of a sudden the setting isn't fantasy swords and magic but people running around with AK's and flying fighter jets and then it becomes laser rifles and space ships...

That said, this slippery slope argument doesn't hold a lot of weight, due to the fact that it's not even guaranteed that anyone will ever re-include anything like that, let alone build upon it. Also, future writers always have the potential to write something out of the setting (Stuff like "Mystra didn't like gunpowder, so she used magic to make it inert and thus useless" because magic and gods are great sources of plothole filler and retcons).

Also, it's far more likely that more drastic changes to a setting might instead be replaced by a new setting that better fits it. Much like there's the 40k setting to provide a futuristic theme for the Warhammer universe without affecting the OG swords and magic Warhammer setting.

As Taril notes it's slippery slope issue and it's a question if the flavor of the setting has been altered.

Someone mentioned Star Wars - which is a useful analogue. In the prequels it was revealed that the force came from Midi-chlorians. Now Star Wars has a policy that is the inverse of WotC's policy on cannon: movies are canon and books are not.

Not only was this a movie, it was a movie directed by the creator of the series. It is absolutely canon! And many fans hated it. For them it ruined the 70's mysticism of the force. Star Wars fans wanted the force to be arcane and mysterious force not some biologically inherited trait that can be discovered with a blood test.

And because the backlash was so strong subsequent directors have left midi chlorians alone even as they have changed the lore on the force . . .

Closer to home, the canonical hero of the Bhaalspawn crisis is Abdel Adrian. A character most BG2 fans hate. Passionately. But, because he is the canonical hero he has figured in modules like Murder in Baldur's Gate. He's even mentioned in BG3 but Larian was smart to downplay him. You really need to search to find the references and neither Minsc or Jaheria name the hero of Baldur's Gate.

So even if something is deeply disliked it is much more likely to appear in future works if it is canon. Taril downplays the slippery slope to which I say: Abdel Adrian is BG3 and Murder in Baldurs Gate. He's in BG3 despite the fact that Larian knows that fans hate him. Such is the nature of canon, it's difficult to ignore.

If we're adding more examples, then there's also Meetra Surik (The Exile) from KOTOR 2 getting similar treatment and everyone hates that.
Even this game does it to Viconia and Sarevok, which most BG2 fans seem to dislike too (at least going by thread on this forum).

Seems like continuing and/or making certain choices cannon is a bad idea for everyone involved at this point, so I can imagine the most WOTC might use would be the Dead Three's plans.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Absolute_crisis

My experience with the Forgotten Realms is that there's a "hierarchy" of canon. Official adventures are at the top, and video games are usually somewhere near the bottom. This doesn't mean that the events of video games are never canon, only that they are considered canon unless those events are superseded or contradicted by a source with a higher hierarchy. You can read about it, here, in fact.

If your complaint is that there's multiple ways to end the game and therefor you disagree with what ending is considered canon, then you may be happy (or not) to learn that this issue is not isolated to the video games. The canonical end of Descent into Avernus (an official adventure) is not the Zariel redemption ending, despite it being the objectively best one. This has been a thing since the beginning of 5e, because everyone's personal version of the Forgotten Realms is different, based on the choices they make in their adventures. So there is "official" canon, and then there is your/your DM's/your group's personal canon based on the choices that get made. Murder in Baldur's Gate had the same issue.

We've been through this with multiple other games set in FR. Broad strokes over fine details. It doesn't matter if the Kalach-Cha sided with the shadow thieves or the city watch, what matters is that they were instrumental in ending the Shadow War in 1374. Until some further piece of official material comes out that mentions something specifically related to a choice that could be made in game, like the leader of the Sharran church in Baldur's Gate being led by a woman named Shadowheart, it's in flux, and kept vague for this very reason.

The most IRONIC thing about BG3 is that most die hard fans of the game AND D&D 5th outright dislikes the prior games. Or don't even mention them in comparison.

I think the forgotten reals world and atmosphere/immersion was top tier and really well done with the prior games. I still prefer them to BG3 in the long run.
So many more options/ways they can be played thanks to mods still being developed, a huge playable NPC companion base mixed in with 6 party adventure gives it tons of replay potential.

Even with current/future MODS no way BG3 will ever have more NPCs, quests, dialogues and such... and a forced modded 6 party game just does not fit the Larian designed board game type encounters.
And Larian's weak mod support + giving up on future expansions or any kind of major changes apart for bug fixes is pretty much the nail in the coffin for this game.

Why the hate for Abdel Adrian? I only know of him from the FR wiki where he is described in positive terms.

The novelizations of BG 1+2 are quite possibly the worst things ever created by humankind. Definitely among the worst books ever published. Those are where Minsc having red hair comes from (maybe it was intended in the games at some point - the books were written while they were being developed so a lot of things like that are wrong).

Abdel Adrian is equivalent to picking a race, gender, and class progression for Tav, and then making THAT canon.

Ok, this was helpful and led me to some other discussions online and now I get that people dislike the character because of the poorly written novels and/or because in the game he's essentially Tav.

Having pondered this and the above ongoing discussion I do have a deeper appreciation for the issues of canon as it relates to something like DnD. It's definitely something that gets infinitely more complicated the more popular the subject becomes, and the more content that gets added to it. I've been struck about the passion shown by some posters regarding the whole Astarion ascension issue as well as the presentation of Viconia and Saverok in BG3. Its amazing how attached people can become to these characters and settings. I guess that is a big part of the attraction of CPRG's.

haha I found this online after I first posted it, thought I would share it for context.

"I remember my brother once tried to play BG1, to see why I was so obsessed about the game.

He created a stereotypically brainless fighter with mediocre stats and little intelligence, despite not knowing what min-maxing was, the character barely got through it's first fight and cared little about anything or anyone, ignored side quests to flesh things out and also promptly kicked out Khalid asap, by having the character die soloing trash and kicking the greyed out portrait from the party, so the character couldn't be resurrected. He got as far as recruiting Xan, only to try and have him as a frontline character, then kicked him out too as soon as the portrait went grey.

That's what Abdel Adrian is. An idiot.

The novelisation remains the only book I've ever used for kindling.

Athans also wrote a book in the War of the Spider Queen series for WotC, I remember at the time, people said it was the weakest novel of the series, yet the series was apparently his idea in the first place. I have no idea if that is true and I fear finding out because he also wrote BG2 and that was also just as shit as the first one."

Yeah, I've never seen anyone say they like Abdel unless they're trolling. In addition to being a stereotypical meathead, he is intensely unlikeable, cheats on Jaheira with a villain from BG2 and so forth. The books he comes from are terrible (even the author said they were bad because he had like 2 weeks to write the first one and hadn't played the game or something. It shows).

It's also ironic because if the books themselves were truly canon, Jaheira would not even be alive in BG3, because she died in the last book.

I did same to Khalid - and Minsc's Witch too.

Personally, don't have an opinion as I know nothing (and don't particularly care for) novelization of an RPG game.

To me changing an RPG protagonist into pre-defined character is just problematic. The point of an RPG is to come up and role-play as your character. If than IP owner makes your choices irrelevant and potentially replaces your character with someone pretty different, it will not be welcome by people who played your RPG (at least myself). Same principle also applies to retconing player choices in RPG sequels.

That's of course quite a challenge but not one that is not insurmountable. Annoying enough, BG3 was walking the line rather well until act3. Than they bring back characters who should be dead, and don't even respect who they were in previous games, not to mention manouvering around possible outcomes. As clunky as BG2 was in that regard (But I thought I killed you!) at least it acknowledge some discrepencies between BG1&2.

Name dropping Abdel just seemed completely unnecessary. He means nothing to not fans of BG1&2, and will annoy fans of BG1&2 as it means their character is considered non-canon.


With... Irenicus? That's something BG3 would be very much into.

Viconia, although I suspect that she died more often than not in BG1 and BG2, still had some following as the resident edgelady. Hence her resurrection in BG2 (where you had 10-20 seconds to react to keep her alive) after saving her in BG1 (dialogue to prevent her summary execution for murder by LEO).
As I vividly remember her battlecry of "Nightsinger, give me strenght!" the cracked faced angel in BG3 rubs me the wrong way.

Well that would have at least made the books more interesting.

In other CRPG sequels I've played - which are chiefly Elder Scrolls and Fallout - although they do choose certain events to be canon or not (for example, obviously the Brotherhood of Steel wasn't nuked at the end of Fallout 3), they do generally avoid mentioning anything specific about previous protagonists and only refer to them in vague terms.

Although before anyone says it, I am aware Fallout 1 does have a canon protagonist, as Fallout 2 came with a booklet (remember when games came with books?) that was the Vault Dweller's diary detailing the events of the first game. I don't think he was named, although we do know he was a he, and the original Dogmeat died running into a force field. Other than that, I guess it didn't really matter so much then as most of the NPC's in those games were disposable; people didn't have relationships and become attached to them as with characters like Jaheira, Aerie, and Viconia.

One of the very best moments in BG2 for me that I will never forget is Viconia's death.

As a D&D noob, I had both Viconia and Kheldorn in my party. They squabbled as we went along, but my naive Cleric of Lathander thought it was ok as she was constantly smoothing things over. Then one day we were walking down the street, and Kheldorn just randomly gibs Viconia with Carsomyr. There was nothing left to resurrect.

I think the problem with Viconia's depiction, more than anything, is it simply seems, like...lazy and uninformed.

Like it's not a problem that she's evil, with no trace of her possible redemptive path. It's just that even "evil" Viconia in BG1 and BG2 was a more nuanced evil. Even if you KEPT her evil, she was still an evil that had felt an intense disgust over what Lolth had demanded of her.

And like, the thing is....you could have had her do almost exactly what she did in BG3, and still be a good character, a commentary on the nature of evil. Shar is still evil, after all, she is the lady of loss. Maybe in the end, what Viconia lost in her years of service to Shar was herself. Like yeah, she is now doing things that bear somewhat of a resemblance to what initially disgusted her about Lolth, and that's the point. She's not "Viconia on the redemption path", she's evil Viconia, and after all these years Shar managed to do what Drow society and Lolth could not: Extinguish the one little spark of conscience in her.

Viconia could, with a little more writing and backstory, do exactly what she currently does in BG3 and come across much better. She would be a tragic figure, and maybe some fans of the old games would be sad that she couldn't be more like the Viconia they knew in BG1 and BG2. But she could be a commentary on the nature of evil, and a striking demonstration, especially for fans of the old games, that evil is what Shar *is*. The danger that Shadowheart faced is written in Viconia here: The Drow that once rebelled against the insane demands of her evil god now reduced to this, made less, by the years of her service to Shar.

Maybe I ought to give Larian the benefit of the doubt, maybe that's what they were going for. But it didn't really seem to come across, to me. It just sort of came across as "Wow look! Fun cameo by the EVIL party member from the previous games!"

@Liare - lovely story!
@WizardGnomeThis.
A few cameos were nicely done, like the referece to the commie nutjub de'Arnisse, but most are too heavily handed and/or simply needless.
As to Viconia's arc in Bg1/2 - a switch from Lollth to Shaar is like shifting allegience from Hitler to Stalin - from evil crazy to evil sane.

Yeah it seems more like poorly conceived cameos than anything else.

More of a Mussolini. I mean, say what you will about Viconia, but the memory losses happened on time.

I should say, fun cameos for some characters I don't consider bad. Some characters are more deeply written than others. I think you could get away with a "Wink wink nudge nudge oh look it's Jan Jansen! Or Mazzy Fentan!" or something like that.

Other characters, however, are clearly more important and need to have more thought given to their inclusion. Viconia, I think, is a nuanced enough character, with a fantastic enough romantic arc, that her appearance should have been more thoughtful. Maybe I'm biased, because she is by far my favorite romance in the originals (And not just because she's an edgy sexy drow lady, though that helps).

But Viconia is such a tragic character, in my view; born into the heart of evil, into a privileged position there, and even then still having an attack of conscience. And her reward for her conscience is to be persecuted, to be hunted down arbitrarily on the surface. And the only character who treats her with any decency is you, and just being shown a bit of kindness is enough to get her on the path to abandoning evil. In a way Viconia can be read as a character with an innately good nature, struggling against the fact that she grew up in, was brainwashed into, one of the most dehumanizing, sadistic, cruel societies imaginable. And this appearance could have shown that tragically, there is no happy end for her. That absent the redemption path in BG2, she wasn't going to find redemption on her own. She couldn't do it all alone, and in service to Shar the sense of injustice she once had would slowly be chipped away, forgotten, erased from her, even as she erased Shadowheart's identity. Her potential fate in the original games could really make you *feel* what a sadistic monster Lolth was. I feel like if she was written better in BG3, it could have made you feel the depths of Shar's evil.

I don't know, again maybe I'm biased. I just feel like she deserved more.

Why do you consider Hitler crazy and Stalin sane? I am just curious.

They were both mentally ill.

That is personal taste. What makes Viconia more important than Mazzy or Jan? I personally have Jan and Mazzy always in my party but do not care for Viconia at all.
I would have been more mad, if they brought in Jan or Mazzy and not get them right.
I'm not saying they are more important than Viconia or Sarevok, but from a players perspective neither are less important.

Just because Jan and Mazzy don't have the standard edgy backstory doesn't make them less deep. I personally prefer some more sane and healthy conpanioyover an edge fest.

And yeah,I agree with Bubba, Viconias development was from one crazy evil goddess to another. That isn't much of a development imo. ( and without going into real life stuff: evil dictators, that kill thousands for their world view,are rarely sane, just saying).
I personally would have been ok, if Viconia wouldn't have made a comeback in BG 3. And Sarevok neither. He basically was purged of Bhaal similar to resisting Durge, so I would want an explanation, how Bhaal was able to control him again.

Re regurgitation of Viconia in BG3 - IMO Sarevok in BG2 was just as bad (or worse).
Larian following a bad example, that's all.

It is not about "more important" or even personal taste, here. It is that you can capture a lot of, say, Jan's character on the first blush. He has depths to him as well, including a surprisingly somber personal quest. But if you included him in BG3 as a funny little gnome guy who tinkers with things and tells long, rambling stories, you'd capture the majority of his character - and it's exactly apparent that this is what he is within, like, two seconds of meeting him in BG2. With Viconia, on the other hand, her character isn't super obvious from first blush. It's more difficult to do a simple cameo with her. You could have Jan appear for a single scene and do a faithful job representing him; Viconia is more difficult, and I think they really badly failed her. Even in the BG2 endings where she remained evil and wasn't romanced, her story was more complex and ambiguous - she kills a Shar cult for "betraying" her (angering even Shar), but also is honored, by the elves no less, for saving one of their cities. Even when she remained evil during the course of the game, her ending seemed to speak to the the complexity of her character.

BG3 changed her back story to make her much more along the lines of "Actually, she secretly was obeying Shar all along!" and her actions bear no small resemblance to what initially disgusted her about Lolth to begin with. And again, like I said, even THAT can be fine, even THAT can be a good story, if it actually feels like there's some DEPTH there. It can be a sad story about how Shar's evil eventually wormed its way into Viconia's heart and corrupted her, robbed her of her complexity and conscience, and eventually debased her until she was doing, with her own hands, what so disgusted her in the first place.

But unless I missed something, it doesn't feel like there's depth to Larian's changes to Viconia. It doesn't feel like they actually considered her character in the previous games at all. It sort of just feels like they wanted some cruel and fairly shallow villain for their new character, Shadowheart, to overcome, and at the same time wanted to do a cameo. So they just sort of mashed what they wanted on to Viconia while, for the most part, ignoring her actual character. It kind of makes me wonder if the person who wrote Viconia in BG3 actually even played BG2 at all, or if they just sort of skimmed through the character roster and thought "Hey, an evil drow who worships Shar? That could kinda fit the villain we want for Shadowheart!"

You take Viconia in your party if you want a full cleric and can't stand Anomen.

Also, from a min-max standpoint her stats are pretty good (Anomen can be good too though).

From the perspective of min-max, Anomen is stronger than Viconia since he is a dual class fighter→cleric

In the first game Branwen is a pretty good single-class cleric.

He is very annoying though.

Yes, she is. Viconia has spell resistance and very high dexterity, so that probably makes her "better" if you don't mind the evil. At the end of the day the game is easy enough that it doesn't matter though.

Yeah, I remember Branwen also being really good at laying the smack down with that hammer of hers.

Branwen was a very nicely done Valkiria, a bash-their-brains-in type of Cleric.
Viconia could tank - with her high DEX (and if she carried her armour and nothing else) - but her high WIZ made her better as healer and skeleton summoner.
That's my experience, at least.
As I drifted into playing with parties of four and had Viconia as 1st Healer and Jaheira as backup, I never had a slot for Branwen ...

[/quote]
It kind of makes me wonder if the person who wrote Viconia in BG3 actually even played BG2 at all, or if they just sort of skimmed through the character roster and thought "Hey, an evil drow who worships Shar? That could kinda fit the villain we want for Shadowheart!"[/quote]

You don't say.
ANYTHING tied to the previous games, in terms of world building or NPCs is a disappointment. Wonder why (hint: Salad dressing).

If we did a poll on who has played and finished Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, bet you 7 out of 10 BG3 gamers haven't even touched these games, and the remaining probably played for a couple hours.
I'd argue that probably 1 out of 10 BG3 gamer actually played through the originals, and even less with all the amazing mods out there that makes the game 5x more interesting. I clocked in over 400 hours for BG2 will all story/quests/expended npc story mods.

Im not seing lots of 40+ year olds in Larian's staff that worked on BG3's story and character dev....I highly doubt most played through the games either. And nowadays with gamers having the attention span of an EDGY DUCK, no way they can enjoy these amazing games before starting to complain about "accessibility" and "quality of life" this and that.

I can see it....the first team meeting at Larian HQ , pre-EA, Swen in armor asking everyone "So, who has played the previous Baldur's gate games!?"....and the awkward silence. lol. "WEll!!! Get to iT!!".

Larian probably had someone come up with a LIST of boxes to check to somehow tie to the previous games. I highly doubt it took much thought.


Who cares anyways. The 3 in Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't mean anything in this day and age. True for so many older IPs.
I wish studios made new original IPs instead of cashing in past successes. Really happy Larian is moving on to an original project. 100% support.

Apart from that, the BG 3 Vicci looks worse to me than the BG 2 Vicci.

By the way, there is a wonderful new mod for BG 2 about my beloved Waukeen:



BG 3 still lacks her as a selectable deity to choose from. Appropriate dialogues and inspiration goals could have easily been implemented. -.-

One can only hope that Larian's modding support will be good enough to keep up...

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.

Personally I wouldn't mind a DoS3 but I'd like them to make it bigger. You could spend hundred of hours in BG3 and still have things to do. After 20 hours I completed 2 campaign of DoS2.

Finally managed to sneak past the Gateway Timeout Error guardian. FFS.

I wouldn't go as far as Shakespearean but I see where you are coming from.

Throw in 'over-hyped' and I totally agree.