D&D General New Baldur's Gate III Teaser Trailer

Ruin Explorer · Jun 5, 2020

Demetrios1453 said:
Climate-wise, the Sword Coast goes from tundra to desert. In the original BG game, you could explore dry grassland and desert zones all within a few days travel from Baldur's Gate itself.

Elves within the Realms can have odd skin coloration, but don't have to.

Climate-wise, I agree. I am just skeptical re: the terrain because it looks extremely similar to the terrain in the early areas of Larian's two previous games. It's like, can their artists do other styles? This has never been a problem for companies like Bioware or CDPR or Obsidian. Maybe it's just an accident/coincidence, but I suspect when we find out where the stuff we've seen is occurring, some of it will indeed be areas that should be a lot greener.

As for "can", try "often do" or "usually do". It's downright weird for them to both ignore that, and the angular features of elves, whilst having multiple elves in the game. Especially as we know they can do very interesting-looking Elves from DOS2. Astarion just looks like a random white dude in his 40s who is wearing Spock ears to a ren faire. At best it's a bizarre aesthetic choice.

And that doesn't answer any of my other points, nor the fact that there's literally nothing identifiable clearly as "Forgotten Realms" in anything we've seen from the game so far. The names are a particularly bizarre decision. It's why not just go with names that fit the setting? Why come up with a bunch of super-generic and non-FR-ish names? They're not even cool names (imho).

The whole thing has this vibe to me like Larian were working on a new fantasy game, then got the BG license, and repurposed that game's assets to fit the BG deal. That's probably not the case, but it has that kind of mismatched vibe.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
World of Warcraft got a lot of crap back in the day for not trying to be hyperrealistic with their graphics, as EverQuest 2 and others were trying to do, but in the long run, that looks like the right choice to me.

Yeah and this is one of the issues I have with the strange style Larian seem to have gone for here. It's "realistic" enough that it will date extremely fast (unlike DOS2, say), and indeed makes some of the characters look more like bad cosplayers as a result already.

Hopefully I can kick Astarion (aforementioned cosplayer) out of my party because "40-something Euro dude with dyed hair and fake-ass-ears pretending to be an elf vampire" (ugh to elf vampire especially, how did they manage to find something worse than a Drow in terms of eye-roll-inducing-ness? Amazing really) is not a vibe I need in my Baldur's Gate game.

(As an aside, it actually looks like all five of the companions revealed so far have hilarious edgelord-adjacent backstories - elf vampire, priestess of shar on a suicide mission with a dark secret, wizard with a bomb in his chest, outcast githyanki, and warlock who is somehow keeping the fact that he is a warlock secret despite being a famous adventurer (?!?) and trying to overcome his "dark bargain". Must we? When wizard with a bomb in his chest is the least edgelord-y companion in a game you know that game has issues...)

Solasta does look good at least.

Gladius Legis · Jun 5, 2020

Ruin Explorer said:
As for "can", try "often do" or "usually do". It's downright weird for them to both ignore that, and the angular features of elves, whilst having multiple elves in the game. Especially as we know they can do very interesting-looking Elves from DOS2. Astarion just looks like a random white dude in his 40s who is wearing Spock ears to a ren faire. At best it's a bizarre aesthetic choice.

Assuming your premise that elves "usually" have exotic skin tones in FR (where are you getting that from?), why single out BG3 for this when pretty much every elf in BG1 and 2 and Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 all had your typical human fleshy tones?

And that doesn't answer any of my other points, nor the fact that there's literally nothing identifiable clearly as "Forgotten Realms" in anything we've seen from the game so far. The names are a particularly bizarre decision. It's why not just go with names that fit the setting? Why come up with a bunch of super-generic and non-FR-ish names? They're not even cool names (imho).

I mean, what is the standard FR naming convention exactly? It's not from any FRCS that I can remember.

The whole thing has this vibe to me like Larian were working on a new fantasy game, then got the BG license, and repurposed that game's assets to fit the BG deal. That's probably not the case, but it has that kind of mismatched vibe.

Yeah and this is one of the issues I have with the strange style Larian seem to have gone for here. It's "realistic" enough that it will date extremely fast (unlike DOS2, say), and indeed makes some of the characters look more like bad cosplayers as a result already.

Hopefully I can kick Astarion (aforementioned cosplayer) out of my party because "40-something Euro dude with dyed hair and fake-ass-ears pretending to be an elf vampire" (ugh to elf vampire especially, how did they manage to find something worse than a Drow in terms of eye-roll-inducing-ness? Amazing really) is not a vibe I need in my Baldur's Gate game.

I'm really just not seeing any of what you're suggesting here. Like, at all. It's like you're just looking for reasons to hate this game to the point of imagining them.

Gradine · Jun 5, 2020

Gladius Legis said:
I mean, what is the standard FR naming convention exactly? It's not from any FRCS that I can remember.

This actually isn't the first place I've heard this specific complaint, which boggles the mind. "Asterion" being a particularly egregious name for... reasons

Ruin Explorer · Jun 6, 2020

Gladius Legis said:
I mean, what is the standard FR naming convention exactly? It's not from any FRCS that I can remember.

Wow, okay, if you're going to pretend the FR doesn't do names in a specific way, I don't think you're interested in a good faith discussion here, so I'm not going to do this with you. I mean, your preemptive dismissal was bad enough, but that. Good grief.

As for the game in general - I was extremely positive about, as can be seen from my posts on various forums, until they started giving doing the actual teasers/trailers. So claiming I just "want to hate it" is demonstrably untrue. I didn't expect Larian, of all people, to do something that looks so generic.

Gradine said:
This actually isn't the first place I've heard this specific complaint, which boggles the mind. "Asterion" being a particularly egregious name for... reasons

Asterion is the name of the minotaur from Greek Myth. So it's pretty weird for an elf vampire to be called Astarion. It is a different spelling at least. At least his backstory is weird enough that he might have made up his own name or something though.

The proof will be in the NPCs, anyway. That the companions have names that aren't cool and aren't FR-ish is weird, but it's 5 NPCs. We'll see as we see more of the game if they're aberration or if they just ignored how the FR does names.

Paul Farquhar · Jun 6, 2020

Gladius Legis said:
I mean, what is the standard FR naming convention exactly? It's not from any FRCS that I can remember.

Presumably the one where FR names are made of an unprononcable jumble of random letters.

The lack of any systematic linguistic style is something I would consider a significant weakness of the setting*.

*(possibly spoiled by Middle Earth)

Gladius Legis · Jun 6, 2020

Ruin Explorer said:
Wow, okay, if you're going to pretend the FR doesn't do names in a specific way, I don't think you're interested in a good faith discussion here, so I'm not going to do this with you. I mean, your preemptive dismissal was bad enough, but that. Good grief.

I'm not pretending. I just don't see it. But whatever, if you're not going to explain it, then fine.

Asterion is the name of the minotaur from Greek Myth. So it's pretty weird for an elf vampire to be called Astarion. It is a different spelling at least. At least his backstory is weird enough that he might have made up his own name or something though.

Khalid = popular Arabic name
Edwin = popular English name
Minsc = the capital of Belarus with its last letter changed from a "k" to a "c"
Mazzy = real-world name with Hebrew origins
Keldorn = the name of a trucking company that existed long before BGII ever did

... shall I go on?

Oofta · Jun 6, 2020

Ruin Explorer said:
Wow, okay, if you're going to pretend the FR doesn't do names in a specific way, I don't think you're interested in a good faith discussion here, so I'm not going to do this with you. I mean, your preemptive dismissal was bad enough, but that. Good grief.

You do know that not everyone has encyclopedia Forgotten Realms memorized, right? That some of us slept through the FR Naming graduate course?

You may not like the names, but not caring about names just means the poster is not an extreme FR grognard. To me following one naming convention for such a large region doesn't make sense anyway.

But it's these extremes that you pick at along with "OMG a bit of scenery looks like a bit of scenery from another game so therefore the developers have no imagination" that to me is not arguing in good faith. Have you played the game? Have you seen the final version, not some alpha build? No? Then how can you pass judgement?

I have no clue if the game is going to be good or not. Neither do you. It may not be the game for you if you insist that it must adhere to your personal vision of FR, and it's really too bad that Larian didn't hire you as a consultant. But there are a lot of us looking forward to a new CCRPG instead of GTA #24 or Call of Duty #137.

So I'm hopeful, but like all games will wait for reviews. Maybe even a sale.

jgsugden · Jun 6, 2020

If you're insinuating that all the authors and game designers have been following a narrow code on how they name characters - No. Nope. Not even close. When a popular character is given a name, others may look at it for inspiration. Some of the game products have provided possible name suggestions. However, there have been a lot of names from literature twisted into novels, products and lore of the Realms.

Further, if I took the top 100 Realms experts in the world, put them in a room, gave them a list of 100 made up names and asked them to check off which were most likely from the Sword Coast, the answers would be very different.

Demetrios1453 · Jun 6, 2020

Ruin Explorer said:
Wow, okay, if you're going to pretend the FR doesn't do names in a specific way, I don't think you're interested in a good faith discussion here, so I'm not going to do this with you. I mean, your preemptive dismissal was bad enough, but that. Good grief.

As someone who has been a big Realms fan since the original Gray Box, yes, there is a something of a Realms naming convention, but it's very, very broad (probably too broad to easily define within a few paragraphs), and there are many, many, MANY exceptions to it. Heck, a later poster even shows how major NPC names from the original BG games don't conform to it.