Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Two wishes, and three questions regarding BG3

For me, the best diablo is diablo 1.

Well, how to become better or learning how to throw fire bolts?
Diablo 1 = Reading magical tomes and having enough magical capabilities to learn
Diablo 2 = Investing skill points
Diablo 3 = Finding a bigger and sharper axe

Raising difficulty
Diablo 1 - Enemies will have more immunities, new uniques will spawn, they will have a greater overall level, and had his stats adjusted to the new level that they represent
Diablo 2 - Same of D1 but you need to complete normal before nightmare
Diablo 3 - Zimbabwe level endless number inflation on just two variables(health/damage)

Graphics
Diablo 1 - Dark fantasy gothic style
Diablo 2 - Dark Fantasy gothic style
Diablo 3 - Wow style

Just look to armor. Armor on D1/D2 looks like proper armor that i see in some modern games like GreedFall. Armor in D3 looks more like something that i will see in a bizarre Brazilian “carnival” parade.

Armor
D1 - Armor deflect blows
D2 - Armor deflect blows
D3 - Armor absorb a damage in percentage

Restriction on skill usage
D1 - No cooldowns
D2 - Only small cooldowns in HW intensive skills
D3 - Cooldowns everywere to do everything. You casted bone spirit? Cooldown. You jumped? Cooldown. Gave a order to a minion? Cooldown.

Character building
D1 - Elixirs + gear + decision on char screen + etc
D2 - Some quests rewards + gear + attributes + skills + charms
D3 - Only gear and 60% of your gear customization is mandatory set

Diablo fights
Diablo 1 vs Diablo 2 vs Diablo 3 fight


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I an very happy to see that Larian will not make a game with everything that i hate on modern games. After some comments like "missing not work" and "spell slots aren't intuitive", i was expecting a SCL/D3 like game.

I played through D1 and D2 once, actually I do not know why. I will definitely not buy another Diablo.
You run through random maps and click things to death in order to get random items that make you better in clicking things to death.

I liked the first Larian game Divine Divinity way more than any Diablo.
Combat was copied from Diablo, but you had a hand crafted map, a story, interesting quests and funny writing.

If anything I blame the success of Diablo for the random items of all former Larian games.
It was still OK in Divine Divinity and Divinity2 which are single character action RPGs.
But when they switched to turn based games with a full party, being flooded with random items is something I do not like.
I am happy that Larian finally abandoned Diablo and moved to another character and item system such as DnD 5E.

For most it's runtime BGs were not gritty. Thay had some dark content, but overall the feel was of an adventure, with some dark and really silly moments inbetween.

Playing through D:OS2. and what I miss are stakes. No one really cares, nor is concerned about anything. While BG2 was bright and fun, dark stuff happened and had consequences. Things happen to people outside your party, but all Origin characters seem like a bunch of sociopaths.

D:OS2 doesn't shy from gore and gross, but it doesn't have narrative impact. Your companions are constatly snarky and indifferent, and so are most other NPCs.

> I liked the first Larian game Divine Divinity way more than any Diablo.


Divine Divinity is the unique LArian game that i've liked at moment. I really don't like certain mechanics like cooldowns. But i've heard that LArian was planning to make DD a turn based game and only made RT due publisher pressures. Anyway, Diablo 1/2 has a lot of cool spells. iron golem for eg, creating a iron golem absorbing the magical propriety from a item is so cool.

I guess that's somewhat fair. I think DOS 2 focuses so much on locale-building that the world-building suffers quite a bit.

Take Act 2 - About 10-20 minutes walk northeast of Driftwood, it appears that the landscape has collapsed into a hellish nightmare world where healing hurts and a settlement is collapsing into arcane screaming torment. Driftwood doesn't talk about that, it's too busy talking about Driftwood.

The lack of world-building also hurts the origin stories because too many pieces are missing. The Red Prince was caught consorting with a demon, then was exiled by his own people to Fort Joy. He says that once he returns to his people, he'll become emperor again. Except we're missing "Step 2", which is the explanation for why he won't be arrested and imprisoned, and how he'll suddenly be promoted to the throne without his political enemies being able to stop him.

Queen Justinia of the Dwarves plans to

Can't she talk to the leader of the Humans in that area? Who is leading the humans? No one knows because Larian didn't think that was important... except that getting at least a vague idea of the power dynamics at play are important for understanding the decisions people are making.

The bit about ACT 2 i totally agree, there is some weird ass areas on that map that are never explained at all, massive monstrosities that are just sitting around waiting to kill you with slim to no plot points explaining why.
It's all about "Hunting the sorcerers" and little else in Driftwood, as in the entire game really..
As for Queen Justinia it does explain somewhat why shes going for Genocide, she is being manipulated by her Royal advisor that is *Suprise* a Demon or undead something in disguise. But once you kill her Aid everything just kinda
goes back to normal. It's rather underwhelming as far as the whole last act. I have faith BG3 will be better though. All in all D:OS was a great game besides my few weird grievances.

I think they are related to the "Three altars" quest that you receive from the undead scarecrow and the story of the sorcerer that made them, It´s the one that sends you mental messages when you are exploring. As every act is an "open world" of sorts there are high chances that you killed a few of them before even talking to the scarecrow, or you killed the scarecrow too, depending on what direction you explore after leaving Driftwood.

Thanks, I guess that is one of the things why I never finished DOS2.
So far I thought its just the random items and inflating numbers that made me quit, but this is importent too.
You just don´t care what happens in the world and the people in this world do not care too.
The origin characters do not care much for things that are not related to their personal quest.
You walk around and kill stuff that stands around and waits to be killed by you.
Sometimes somebody tells you which direction to go or what to kill, which feels strange because often you already been there or killed that.
Plus you have nice large maps, but the extreme level scaling makes things feel very linear.

Good news is that they seemed to have learned stuff. The video were you fight the goblins at the gate got me more interested than much of the stuff in DOS2.
You know why you are fighting, what your goal is and why they attack.

I really like the Trails series. I have played Trails in the Sky1+2+3 and Trails of cold Steel 1+2 so far.
They do a great job in world building. When you talk to NPC they say something new after every event, give their opinion on what happened lately or what will happen next and they give the impression that things are happening in the world that have nothing to do with you. OK, Its a linear JRPG so the things that happen are always the same, the devs don´t need to write text for the many different ways the story might go.

As for western open world games, Gothic1+2 are fantastic in creating a world that feels alive and believable.

The Witcher 3 is a fantastic game too. One of the best games ever in creating an immersive world.

My childhood birthday party. ohgod.




Anyway, the atmosphere in Baldur's Gate was definitely not just one thing. There were goofy things like the golden pantaloons, and dark things like vampires torturing your love interests, and a god of murder, and Edwina, and Khalid getting murdered in an experimental sex dungeon, and Boo, and Jan Jansen...

If true to form, BG3 will have its ridiculous moments and its dark as pitch moments as well. Which I think they're doing well at so far, what with the worms in the eyes and Gale's cheesy pick-up lines. Hell, even watching

Well at least now that they are working in the Forgotten Realms lack of world building will not be an issue at all 😉

It occurs to me that just because the party is limited to 10th level and 5th level spells, doesn't mean all the NPCs and monsters are. It's natural to assume that we won't meet anything above our level in CR, but this is the Forgotten Realms so that assumption would be a mistake. It occurs to me that it's likely we will meet NPCs much more powerful then us, who have access to spells more powerful then us, but that this won't be default combat encounters unless we choose to attack them.

It´s also rare to find legendary creatures at lower levels, and the top would be 10, but I do not know if some bosses with legendary actions or resistances would be in the game because those are always fun to play ( Mostly as a DM )

We shall see. Drawing from existing lore without properly introducing it ingame might be a problem in itself. Thats an issue even some original games suffer from (looking at you, but with an affection, Pillars of Eternity).

Bioware did an excellent job in using existing FR lore and characters without feeling off to a complete new comer (like myself). Everything had either a strong set up, was a flavour detail which gave an impression of wider world, and was a nice detail for folk familiar with the source material, or was driven by a strong, relatable central narrative, allowing to accept weirder stuff.

Outside Torment, I never felt it was achieved quite as elegantly in other games. I remember watching early Marvel movies, and coming out with "WTF was that thing or why did that happen" to be explained it comes from comics or is building toward something, but never quite fitting in the currect narrative. I never had this feeling with BG1&2. I might not know who Drizzit was, but his apperance worked.

The important thing, in terms of involving a player with a game-world, is to be aware that a player may know nothing at all about the world, or may know everything about the world. That can be tricky to handle.

The best way to deal with these extremes is to only force the minimum information about the current situation into the story, but allow ample opportunity to gather lore concerning the wider world geography, history, religions, politics etc, through optional dialog, books, inscriptions, paintings, carvings and other in-world information sources.

From a personal perspective, I find access to maps to be invaluable to make sense of a game world, and time-lines can also be helpful. Clearly, making information you discover available for later cross-reference is also important.

Unfortunately, many developers do not pay enough attention to getting this right, and their games suffer for it.

Or perhaps, simply not enough crowd testing. Just recently Deadfire cut some crucial lore info from the final game when getting rid of unnecessary exposition. Devs, being intimately familiar with the details, missed that they cut some vital information players won't learn any other way.

Balancing between newcomer/fan of the IP is certainly a difficult feat to pull off. Keeping my fingers crossed for Larian.

the impact in OS2 obviously comes from the central conflict.
Nobody talks about the fifssures because they are supposed to just have happened when you get there.

meanwhile the magister crackdown on everything?
the plight of the dwarves? the voidwoken everywhere?

You have to be delusional to think that those arent referenced int he dialogue.

If you want all grimdark all the time go wank to the latest 40k space marine book that they spit out every month

being referenced doesn't make them impactful by default. no one is asking for grimdark, no need for assuming extremes.

>not a big impact
literaly the entire game world is about this conflict.

of course you wouldnt know, having never played it

yes but the game world being about that conflict doesn't make the writing impactful enough to make that conflict actually matter in ANY way outside of the plot rails it puts you on.