Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Should have given this to Obsidian

As a fan of Obsidian and Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 which I thought was really good, they should have given this to them. Obsidian would have done wonders with this.

I think Larian were the perfect choice, and I love turn based combat way more than real time with pause. There are also many others out there who prefer turn based, so I don't think it's fair to say that Larian don't care what we think. They have made a decision based on what the playerbase as a whole wants, not just what you or any other single individual wants.

RT/TB has its very own topic as it's such a reliably contentious subject. Please take further discussion there.

+1 and very much this.

OK, I'm legitimately confused... what *exactly* is it that you want then? Because the points that have been raised have also been answered, which basically leaves 'they must want to play an expansion to BG1&2 then'. It's set in the same world, it's a continuation of the BG2 story, it has characters coming in further chapters from the last two games, it's based on D&D 5E, etc etc etc. It's got many of the same raw gameplay mechanics, and the story telling style is a modernised version of BG2.

I seriously can't figure out what you guys want if not a copy pasted version of the last games. I'm trying to get it, but I just don't understand what you actually want?

Short answer: the "feel" of the game. And yes, this is extremely subjective and hard to capture. But BG3 could be any other IP if you hid the obvious things like the title and so on. If I didn't know this is supposed to be a BG game, I'd guess it's some new IP set in Faerun that's a cross between D:OS2 and DA:I with 5e rules. I don't think it would ever cross my mind "hey, this really feels as if BG was made today". Just "a nice if flawed modern RPG".

From the things you listed, only the story and characters matter for making this a BG-feeling game, and this is a point I have no major issues with, except maybe... one character and its place in BG3. But the same world? A game just being set in some place doesn't really automatically make it feel a part of the series. See Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games - set in BG, have story connections(?), but VERY much spin-offs and not parts of the main series. Of course, it will be nice to have a BG game that actually has a big chunk of it set in the titular city... Being based on 5e doesn't matter at all, it could be said for any D&D game and they can come in a wide variety of flavours. (BG3 and Solasta are also the ONLY 5e games, I believe, so it's just another difference if you judge by edition rather than D&D in general.)

Speaking of which: let's take a look at the Infinity Engine games, since people like to say "you want Infinity Engine, admit it". But here's the thing: Infinity Engine would not automatically make a Baldur's Gate game. All three IE series have their own specificity, their flavour, their "feel".

Icewind Dale is a dungeon crawler where you make your own custom party. It is very much on the combat side, and is regarded to have amazing encounter design, as well as good exploration and great atmosphere. There isn't that much focus on the story (although IWD2 has been praised in this regard) and you can't recruit NPCs to your party. (If anyone wants to correct me on this, please do, I'm going by what I've heard, not having played IWD myself yet.)

Planescape: Torment is the opposite: its focus is on the story and characters, with very strong narrative, and the combat is an afterthought. The setting is pretty non-standard. The game features lots of dialogue, includes quite a lot of philosphy and, uncharacteristically for a D&D game, you have a set protagonist with his own story, which is also pretty much the main plot.

And then you have Baldur's Gate: it sits somewhere in the middle, with all three pillars (combat, exploration, social) being quite strong. It has both a guiding narrative/structured chapters and freedom of exploration. A big part of the games are also memorable companions, as well as the ability to craft your own main character, which is also very much central to the main plot.

Still, those short descriptions don't really convey the aforementioned "feel" of the games and serve only to demonstrate that the superficially similar IE series are all their own entities and differ from one another. But I've been talking about the elusive "feel" of a BG game: what is it? Imo it's a fine mixture of many different factors. Removing one will weaken the "feel", but won't ruin it. No one of them makes BG BG; it's the sum of the parts that make a greter whole. You can make a BG game without a couple of these ingredients and it will still "feel properly BG". But remove or change too many and you end up with something that doesn't really resemble the original games; you're told it's BG, but you don't see or feel that it's BG. You know - if you have a certain dish and replace one ingredient, it's usually still that dish, just a variation. Replace most of the ingredients and you end up with an entirely different dish. It can still be good, but you'll be calling a pancake an omelette.

And this is also why, imo, it's so subjective: for different people, different ingredients have different "weights". One may say "yeah, the combat is not the most important aspect" and for another it's going to be crucial. And so if you keep most of the aspects the same, most people will recognize the game as "BG-like". If you change most aspects, most people will not feel the familiarity. Depends on what a person deems the "important" ingredients, and therefore... YMMV.

So what are some of those ingredients? In no particular order:

Possibly the biggest one: turn-based combat. BG1&2 had enough of a combat focus for the combat system to matter. Be in the TB or the RTwP camp - this change is huge for the gameplay. It's more of a change than anything in the DA series, for example, and those games suffered from game style shifts across the series. Still, as much as I hate TB, I think you can make a proper BG game that's also TB. Won't elaborate on this, since, as vometia reminded us, there is the dedicated thread for such discussion.

4 vs 6 party members. Another big one, though less dramatic. Also a matter of heated debate.

Also a huge one and perhaps the most obvious: shift to (non-top-view/isometric) 3D, more than that, with cinematics.

The UI/2D art style is completely different. Not just a matter of modern UI/prettier graphics, it's the art direction.

Time. BG3 is timeless. BG1&2 had day/night cycle with the world changing dynamically, as well a weather system.

The music is different. Good, but different.

The origin system: it results in two "alterations" in comparison to the classic games. One is the dramatically reduced companion count. Part of the companion appeal in BG1&2 is their variety and ability to choose just the right party. Another thing is that if you have companions-as-protagonists, you can't have plot focused on your custom character, like in BG1&2.

Those are just some high-profile examples off the top of my head. Again: it's not that you can't make a BG game without changing any aspect of it or that it's ruined when you introduce one of the above. It's not that those things are inherently bad, either. I've actually praised some of those, some I'd love to see built upon in another game. But every change you make shifts the game further away from resembling the original games, diminishes the "BG feel", subjective as it may be.

Most of the things that the old games and BG3 have in common are generic: a party-based D&D cRPG with recruitable companions. You could make pretty much any D&D game out of it. Again, title, location and some story connections can't carry the series' identity on their own.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. 100% agree.

I would also add: world structure. Using singular large open levels simply have different effect then smaller ones connected via world map. BG1&2 were journeys spanning across multiple locations. D:OD/BG3 approach with no time mechanic, makes the world feel small and static. There are of course, many advantages to Larian single map per chapter approach, especially for COOP, but it is a different design, goal and effect then the old games. And it’s not about being archaic - one could do some innovative and next gen things with a travel system as well.

My 2 cents:
- DnD is turn based per definition. In so far the bigger question is why did BG1 chose rtwp?
So far I have not seen a real time game thats based on 5E. I think this is harder to put in real time with the action/bonus action/reaction mechanic.
Congratulations to kingmaker for a rtwp game that is very close to PnP rules and also has a TB mode, though Pathfinder is DnD 3.75E, not 5E.

- I think PnP DnD was designed for 4 players plus DM. I have no idea why BG1 chose 6. Because of the success of the IE games many players somehow consider this standart. There are many different RPGs with different party size.But I admit its part of the BG feel.

- BG 1+2 was 2D while BG3 is 3D and very vertical. The ability to move and rotate the camera is a must have now. I admit a kind of isometric camera would be good.
The camera in BG3 definitely needs some improvement.
suggestion: just copy DA:O

- I agree that the UI could be much better and it would be nice if it looks closer to BG1+2.
I am not a huge fan of endless hotbars, by the way.
Some changes need to be done (different spell system with the ability to cast spell at higher level, all classes have active abilities now, all classes have all skills, action reaction and bonus sction stuff, . . . ) but even then it could look better and closer to Bg1+2.
About the general art style, its hard to compare a low resolution 2D game with a 3D game were verticality is very importent. In BG1+2 you had the character portraits and the rest was up to your imagination. In BG3 you can see your chars in a realistic way from all directions and you see their face often.
Another thing is DnD 2E vs 5E. As far as I can tell BG3 is quite close to the official 5E art style. I am not an expert for the differences between editions, especially if we look beyond game mechanics.

- A day/night cycle would be nice to have, but apart from encounters with vampires it had very little effect in BG2 and BG 1+2 had very few timed quests and even there the time limit was very large.

- Music: No sure who has the rights for the music of BG1+2 (wotc, the computer game company or someone else)

- You are free to ignore the origin system. If you create a custom char and consider the others as normal companions it feels similar to most other RPG

about world map design: Technically BG1 was one huge map, it was just separated into several maps because of technological limitations. With current technology it would be possible to make BG1 with one huge 3D map and only some indoor areas or dungeons are a single different map, like BG3 is now.




But its good that you could give some arguments about why BG3 has a different feel.
Apart from a better looking UI it will be very hard to get closer to the BG1+2 feeling.

Yes. I was initially against the idea of dividing the map into small pieces... but it's better than having the world be a setpiece. Everything is close together, creating a theme park impression - and as you say, the world is static without time passage. The waypoint magic travel system doesn't help.

on what dnd is designed for:

varies by edition.
ODnD and early ADnD was designed for very large parties, this doesnt mean it was neccesarily played that way, but older editions ofthen had more than one person DMing, basically they ofthen had a "handler" whose entire job was asking the players what they do sot he process wasnt so damn slow.

Naturally this might have been just a convention thing, not relay my area of expertise.

5e is designed for 4 playersplus DM, but when the infinity engine games came out, this wasnt the case and it wasnt in subsequent editions, i think 4e was balanced roughly for 5 PCs, 4 was the bare minimum required to make the combat design work as intended.

Video games have the added benefit of additional characters not slwoing the game down as much as an additional player.

my personal record was 8 players plus DM, maybe 9, i forgot. I can tell you that takes some time to manage.
Yet, theres a great utility in this number of players.
With such high numbers of characters you can truly tell stories of raiding parties, of heroic fellowships.

I dont see how DnD beeing designed for 4 players translates to "a game shoulD be designed around 5 players". so im gonna disagree there.


Of course its not like modern Obsidian understands this.
They simply default to larger party sizes because its convention, for they are surprisingly conservative for a bunch of progressive hippies.

To say that 5e is designed for 4 players + GM is to me, misleading. Unless I am mistaken, most officially published 5e adventures clearly state that they are built for 4-6 players.

It's probably based off the 'challenge rating' calculations for monsters/NPCs, which is explained as 'a party of four adventurers of X level should be able to defeat a monster of X CR without dying'. Intended or not, it's certainly the impression I got. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've never been in a group that ran prefab adventures, though, so idk if that makes a different impression on a player. It might be fair to say 5e is balanced around a 4-person minimum party...

Yes! This exactly. You said it much better than I did.

I believe the day/night thing is being addressed isn't it? I was under the impression that's why we get tells from the companions about being "tired" at different intervals depending on the companion. It's early access, not all features are live yet.

As to the 'openness' of the world, has there been any confirmation that it will be as closed off as it is now? We're still in EA so the map boundaries we have in place are there because anything past that is still 'under construction'.

The camera angles, turn based style and Origin player characters are *completely in the hands of the player*. If you like it use it, if you don't, then don't! Options being added have not removed the ability to play 'oldschool', they have added options for those who prefer the choice.

The party size is *per 5E*. 4-6 means FOUR or more. We have 4, and there are occasional additions like Glut which ups the party size. That's accurate according to 5E rules.

We're (according to the existing story) heading for BG on leaving the current accessible area, so there will almost certainly be towns/cities with inns etc in future content. Again, we're in EA.

I'm really grateful that people have given some arguments re nostalgia and 'feel' though, it does help to explain the sentiment that something is lacking. I was very much the same when DA:2 came out. I *hated* it for months. It just didn't feel like DA, despite being in the same world, with the same history and lore, and the same general art style. It was set in a geographically different place, with a different cultural emphasis and it just didn't give the same feeling while playing.

Well said.

Baldur's Gate is its own interpretation of D&D. It was never about the ruleset, but the implementation. There were many games based on D&D, but none were as iconic. BG was not successful because it was faithful.

I think there is where Larian is failing. They are basing the game on the ruleset and their own games instead of the original games.

Eh, the guys who own the D&D franchise and write the books heavily oversaw the making of this game, and are *still* heavily involved. *They* chose this company, this platform, and this style of game. *They* saw DOS:2 and decided that this style of game would be the best to represent the BG franchise for a 3rd game.

Soooo... Maybe it's not Larian's fault that the game is the way it is?

That’s the first I am hearing of it. As far as I understand, maps have set time of day, and “camping” is night. I don’t know if there is a plan to tie time passage to camping (camp = end day).


I am 75% sure that D:OS chapter structure has been confirmed. So big maps per chapter.


How can one not use turn-based combat, in a turn based game? (I actually have no problem with TB, but argument itself is too absurd, not to point it out)

Same with Origins. It’s not just about having an extra option - it’s how making Origins limits both companions and content for the player character. As far as companions are concerned, making them playable Origins doesn’t need to necessarily hurt them when compared against Baldur’s Gate2, but then we ignore almost 20 years of progress and how well implemented companions can be in a singleplayer RPG. So far it doesn’t look too bad, but I didn’t look at BG3 too closely - I want it be able to make the best possible impression on me, once it’s finished.

As to player character - there are benefits to both a blank slate characters and pre-defined characters. Such advantages, however, can exist only in a game designed with such protagonist in mind. D:OS2 did both at once, and did both poorly - neither providing strong hook and reactivity to shape our own character, nor strong enough characterisation to create compelling pre-determined characters.

I played the hell out of BG and modified it with the help of Gate Keeper.
Played TOSC, BG2, and TOB. (modded with Shadow Keeper)

IMHO Baldur's Gate 3 has the potential to be best version Baldur's Gate I've played.
Having a blast in Early Access and looking forward to more great things to come.

Larian has done a brilliant job!

Hear hear i agree too, I'm having a blast in EA. What is it about Obsidian that is "so much" better?

They actually made games that were like BG1 and 2??? Larian knows how to make DOS. BG3 is DOS3 with a lick of 5e paint. PoE play like BG. BG3 plays like DOS. Pretty simple.