Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General All the News from today

To me also it looks like the team initiative is still there, so I am happy about that at least. If that gets removed, then that will be the final straw for me and a hard pass on the game. The ridiculous decision to change party size to four is still there, clearly a sop to MP, but on that issue I am hopeful a mod will get made to fix that horrible mistake.

Having said all that, overall, as a harsh critic of the game right from the beginning, I am willing to admit the game does indeed look a whole lot better now. In particular the artstyle and art assets of the game are hugely improved, and no longer look like the ridiculous cartoonish D:OS artstyle. The atmosphere and the tone of the game also is now much more the Forgotten Realms and not D:OS. So, overall, I am now more cautiously hopeful about the game.

Not only do you not have to take him, you can piss him off enough that he leaves the party or you can straight up kill him.

i dnt realy understand why you are so upset about the renaissance aestheitc.
it appeas to mirror FR pretty well.
note that FR is a kitchen sink setting and that the level of aesthetic and technology vary greatly based on wehre you are in it.
Rashemen was always based on the Kievan rus and thus it mirrors that ancient vikings and slavic aesthetic.
Baldurs gate was always a bit odd in that.

I guess a lot of people assumed an early middle ages level of technology and fashion.
Quite frankly, thats more Greyhawk than Forgotten Realms.
Now, id actually find it refreshing to go full Dark Ages again with DND, but the current Art just doesnt look that way, and it hasnt since ADnD

I picture the FR right now as more a Renaissance setting than medieval.
I mean, they have firearms, mechanical portcullis and soul-fueled bikes in the Forgotten realms now so...

A bastardization of the setting by the new people WotC hired to handle the setting during the 4e era. Some of these people came in openly saying they hated the FR setting in its previous form and wanted to radically change it.



I agree that the pre-made characters still suck and remain very annoying, a window into the poor quality of the writing that continues to be an enduring legacy for Larian from the D:OS games. Shadowheart in particular will get slaughtered by me right away if I ever play this game, simply for the crime of being super-annoying.

Hah, true. And that lame hipster mage Gale, no thanks the name alone bores me to death. La'zeal is so ugly to look at, she looks like a photoshop filter gone wrong, sorry. Astarion would be cool but he is simply too gay. Whats left, Wyll? It's Gonna be a two party team then, damn.

Well, for my own part, the darkness in current games is a reason why I stopped playing RPGs altogether. Seriously. And yes, I'm THAT old.

And before someone calls me "play hello kitty instead !", I must say that this colouring isn't my taste, either.

Currently, DDO is what meets my tastes most.

But all this "everything must be dark and ugly !" thing ... I've already incorporated that into a market scene of a story I'm writing. Plus a market visitor's distaste for colourfulness. I do hope that I'll manage to get a book out of all that ...

We have seen almost no dialogue from this 25-50 hour game, and yet you have already got such a firm opinion on that 10 minutes (or less) of dialogue that they are now and forever will be "super-annoying". Have you ever heard of "character development" or "character arcs", where a character does this thing known as "changing over time"?

I imagine that this is a moot point since you'll only kill her on sight "if" you "ever" play the game. Somehow I don't think you will ever play the game.




See above.

Hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure all the or
Origin characters are bisexual. All of them.

I imagine you meant to say player-sexual, though maybe bisexual too.

But I want to be very clear nowhere in my post did I say anything about anyone's sexual orientation in any form.

While I will be buying and playing come full release, can't say I'm all that impressed with the NPCs we've seen up to this point. I intend to give them all a go (as I did with BG and BG2)...except Astarion. The Renaissance aesthetic throughout what we've seen thus far disgusts me (I detest the look, both actual and fictionalized Renaissance) and Astarion, unfortunately, seems to exemplify that style. I plan to do what I normally do to NPCs I loathe in the BG series...Ctrl + Y gib them so they're gone for good (if such an option will exist for BG3). An overreaction to a simple aesthetic I suppose, but I truly do utterly despise it.

Overall, what I find objectionable to the NPCs is they seem wildly too contemporary in personality. Rather than appearing to fit in the fantasy world they're in, they seem to be more akin to people you might know today (minus all the fantastic powers and whatnot obviously lol). Now I don't expect them to speak in "ye olde Englishe" and other such tropes like every dwarf has a Scottish accent, but the flavor is lacking (using terminology of the setting, expressions of excitement and frustration that are more fitting with the world they're in). Frankly they don't strike me as Forgotten Realms NPCs...they strike me more as enthusiastic cosplayers.

I'm still gonna buy and play this, but I gotta say, I've yet to see much to allay my doubts Larian can do this title justice.

Yes this is it exactly. They all reek of "yay for us super-cool super-awesome millennials" looks and attitudes.

I'm seeing good and bad. I'm still remembering the boot throw. But, yeah, the recent comments really demonstrate the problem with only having a handful of NPCs. BG2 had -- what -- 12? 14? meaning you if didn't like someone there was someone else to chose from.

Imagine what people would have thought of BG2 if you could only choose between Cernd, Anomen and Aerie?

There are more Origin characters coming and mercanaries too.

This thread in the words of immortal Deekin:


I have almost diametrically opposed views to most here. Party initiative? Bad. Breaks rule, likely to be imbalanced especially on top of surprise. Smaller team size? Good, especially combined with party initiative where large parties could spike damage and take out enemies with relative ease. DnD 5e is a complex and high micromanage system and less companions will make for less time-consuming battles. I also prefer fewer and deeper characters to explore relationship with. Smaller party makes choices matter more and there is increased replayability (not that I care as a casual gamer). I liked the apparent physical changes to Shadowheart (the headband/tiara thingy was particularly annoying). Larian definitely has my confidence, the writing and the storytelling in D:OS2 was nothing short of superb and it stood out to me as the real spiritual successor of the original BG-series, certainly much more so than anything Bioware produced.

That was exactly my concern, in the gameplay videos we were seeing huge advantage from having more people in your party where having more people doesn't mean everyone in the party would ''decide'' faster on what they wanna do. My initial and quick thought was, okay, they want to add up everyone initiative stat but divide the total by the number of member in that said party. So therefore, having more dexterity based characters would still mean something; rather than just adding anything as a party member to the total like adding minions, conjured beings, familiars, etc. just to buff the total initiative number.

I actually don't mind the party initiative. I would certainly prefer individual initiative, but I can roll with the party-based approach just as well.

It didn't look completely like D:OS 3 in the trailer, so I guess that is an improvement, for what it's worth.

But sadly, the gameplay will still be 100 percent D:OS and 0 percent Baldur's Gate.

Well, maybe for this game, having a smaller party size may indeed be a good thing. In every party-based cRPG I've ever played, the companions provided in the game have typically been really cool and fun to have in my party such that having to choose only some of them to be in the party and not others was very difficult, and I hated that some really awesome companions had to be left out of my active party. In this game, given how silly and ridiculous many of the companions are, my problem will likely be the exact opposite of all those other games: not enough companions I like and enjoy having in my party available to fill out even a four-person party.

Not particularly upset; it's a personal preference arising from playing DnD ( including Greyhawk & Blackmoor ) in the 1970s. I have no problem with other systems addressing other settings, but DnD to me has always meant classic swords & sorcery in a pre-handgun world.

FR is heavily reliant on real-world historical, geographic and cultural parallels ( as are many other settings ) for their sense of familiarity and ease of assimilation for the player. That doesn't mean I will like how they choose to develop it, if it goes against my sense of what DnD means ( which is definitely not clothing elements from 1600CE ).

Astarion would be a particular problem as he has no other redeeming features, in my eyes. As it seems I can discard or kill him, that problem is solved.