Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General So what now?

May the Truth be with you.

Best case scenario: a decent game, but a poor follow-up to Baldur's Gate 2 / Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. BGINO.

Prepare to be blamed otherwise ...

Well, if it's going to be next week, we are probably bound to hear about it by the end of this one.
Otherwise... Second half of June at best.

I feel the same way. The MTG DND Crossover Set from WotC will be released this Friday: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Commander_Legends:_Battle_for_Baldur%27s_Gate
I bet nothing will be announced by Larian before this release. And I also assume that they will also promote the TCG as soon as it's officially released and maybe that's why they're waiting.

I had such high hopes upon seeing a tweet notification from Larian an hour ago, but it’s just Swen playing with a Steam Deck… Things aren’t looking good for my future as a prophet.

Lotus Noctus makes a good point about the MtG/DnD crossover dropping Friday. I could see Larian saying “have fun on pre-release weekend, see you next week for patch 8.”

One more week and it will have been a full month since they teased the PFH.

I feel like Larian has a pretty bad habit of teasing things too far in advance.

Then again, nothing compares to the Dragon's Dogma fans getting blue balled yesterday.

I understood this reference.

Still not bad as Paradox Interactive ...
But slow and steady getting close. :-/

We still have about 16 days left in June. I'm not terribly surprised we haven't seen it yet.

I've been getting surprised by Larian for 7 EA patches now, and it was always a "Wait ... WHAT?! Ohh no ..." type of surprise.

I'm getting ready to keep being surprised in that way up till they drop the first DLC for this game.

Larian is not planning on doing DLCs. They are not a huge fan of the practice.

The series of free gift bags that came out for D:OS2 were well received, and they were indeed DLC - downloadable extra content for the base game released post launch. Though if I recall, they only arrived over a year after the original release of the game, after the enhanced edition, I think? (My details on that are fuzzy)

True ...
But that both can easily change.

Well, they were free - generally DLC refers to paid post launch content with few exceptions - and I am pretty sure they were popular community mods implemented into the game as console players don’t have access to modding. Larian certainly provides post launch support (usually with enhanced edition once they finish console port).

Exactly, my understanding of DLC is purchasable post-launch content.

To me, DLC is DLC, and it comes in "Paid DLC" and "Free DLC" types... Paid is more common than free, sure, but not by such an overwhelming amount as to be definitional - at least, not across the spectrum of games that I personally play. I do find it pretty sad and telling that a lot of people treat Paid DLC as the basic definition of DLC itself, these days... it certainly did not used to be that way even a short handful of years ago (nothing against those individuals, just against the industry itself).
If it is officially released material that is downloaded for a game post launch, then it's DLC, by literal definition - the gift bags were DLC. They were Free DLC. Larian has a strong disinclination to release Paid DLC, but they're perfectly happy with releasing Free DLC.

Post release content:

1) If you didn't choose to download it and can't disable out of it explicitly, it's free, and it was made by the game developers, it's a patch

2) If you chose to download it, you can disable it explicitly, and it was made by the game developers, it's DLC. You may or may not pay money for it.

3) If you chose to download it, you can disable it, it's free, and it was made by someone other than the game developers, it's a mod.

+1

If we are piling in definitions:

I personally also like to distinguish DLC and Expansions. There just a big enough gap with what expansions in the old days offered, and the small bits of content that became popular with DLCs I don't like to throw them both into one basket, as IMO they offer rather different experience. The easiest example is Firaxis - XCOM2s small DLCs being DLCs and War of the Chosen being an expansion, with how much content it offers and how it overhauls experience on a deep level, rather then just sprinkling content on top of the base game.

As to D:OS2, it got only one DLC and that's Sir Lora was and is on sale. It got patched several times though, unclusing Enhanced Edition that included enhancements made during development of the console port.

I rarely see see DLCs. D:OS2 Sir Lora isn't really that as I think it was pre-order bonus for console release with existing D:OS2 owners getting it for free), Witcher3 that released bunch of "free DLC" to keep player engagement leading up to paid DLC release, and similar thing happened with Deadfire. DLC release in those cases has been more of a marketing stunt, then anything else. There is really no reason to release new beards as a additional free download instead of just patching it into the game outside PR.

4) If you chose to download it, you can disable it, you paid for it, and it was made by someone other than the game developers, That's Illegal! (and no longer protected under fair use or transformative work laws)