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

Larian Studios posted a teaser trailer for Baldur's Gate III on Twitter, showing off both apparent cutscene and gameplay footage.

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The trailer ends with the statement "Join us on the road to Baldur's Gate Starting June 6" This date is the first date of the Guerrilla Collective Indie Game Showcase, taking place online from June 6-8. Larian Studios is a participant in the event and previously promised Baldur's Gate III news at the showcase. This statement lends further credence to industry speculation that the big announcement will be the date of early access, and it may hint that early access will start on June 6. But it looks like we still have another week before we know for sure.

 

[jgsugden]

...Combat is obviously the glue that holds most RPGs together (at least DnD based ones). 5E makes me pretty unconcerned about that though. It just lends itself to scaling very well by nature, bad rolls can be reasonable mitigated, you can fight things below your CR without getting bored and stuff way above without feeling completely outmatched.

I disagree with this statement. The story is the glue. The combat serves the story, extends dramatic moments, and adds uncertainty to the story. It also provides a fun little minigame. However, random combats with no story gets boring really fast. Great stories with no combats can still be amazingly fun (or do you break out in fights whenever you read a book, watch a movie, or watch TV?)

 

[Var]

I disagree with this statement. The story is the glue. The combat serves the story, extends dramatic moments, and adds uncertainty to the story. It also provides a fun little minigame. However, random combats with no story gets boring really fast. Great stories with no combats can still be amazingly fun (or do you break out in fights whenever you read a book, watch a movie, or watch TV?)

Might just be personal preference, but I've hardly played a RPG (with combat component) in the last 15 years that had semi reasonably good story.

I didn't really have it in mind at all when writing my last post, but the best RPG I played since Morrowind (which has a massive amount of nostalgia attached) was Dark Souls 1 (and Bloodborne).
Now that I'm thinking about "Souls" games, they have very little active story, but that's not why they're good RPGs. The whole series works because it manages to make you give a damn about the people you meet while getting chewed out by the world due to total lack of sidetracking you with immersion breaking distractions like "slay 10 of that" or "fetch 5 of those" and the combat is fun and rewarding to keep you going (arguably not even hard once you figure out a style that works for you).
Because the whole game is set up to make you explore for hidden treasure, areas pieces of the lore etc it just works as an RPG. Coincidentally I don't think I've seen my fast travel complaint been addressed as well as in DS either. Finding and unlocking shortcuts in that gorgeous coherent 3d map was a pleasure. When you finally unlock fast travel (limited to bonfires you have already found) it makes sense in the story and you're comfortable traversing the game's world.

Guess it would be similar to the 3 pillars in DND, doesn't matter which one is the glue and which ones are the parts it holds together. You need all 3 to make it work.

I'd actually hope we get a free flowing dialogue system. No particular "good choice is highlighted in green" "evil choice is red". Choices are yours to make, rather than always clicking green or red to unlock one or the other ending. Dragon Age Origins did a pretty good job at letting you be the guy that was fine with Blood Magic while also standing up for racism against Elves - as a Dwarf - and the story adjusted for each individual decision rather than cumulating in a big positive or negative number in the end.
For terrible examples on how to ruin a story without ever giving it a chance to breathe, both Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder: Kingmaker do a pretty terrible job at allowing you to play a character rather than picking a Faction/Alignment and rolling with the choices that fit them.

 

[jgsugden]

Might just be personal preference, but I've hardly played a RPG (with combat component) in the last 15 years that had semi reasonably good story.

Are you just talking CRPGs? Just computers? I was not.

However, there are games where there are raves over the quality of the storyline where the story is narrowly focused (like reading a good book) and a few with open ended storytelling where you can arrive in a variety of endgames depending upon the choices you make - with each endgame path telling a good story along the way.

From a CRPG like BG3, I expect you to make meaningful choices where there is not an obvious right answer. I want to be able to redirect parts of the story - where making a decision here or there will impact what happens in the game. I understand that due to resource constraints, most decisions may veer off in one direction or another, but will likely come back together on a central path that heads to a result - but like any good book or movie, even if I have no control over it, it can be a good and entertaining story. And, when performed in an engaging way, they can distract you enough that you do not feel like you're on a series of tracks that all head to the same destination.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Honestly, though, here's the thing. The naming conventions of FR aren't super prevalent. They're present, but it doesn't make a game any less an FR game if the main characters are named stuff like Edwin and Khalid. It certainly doesn't make it less of a Baldur's Gate game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Stirring the hornet's nest a bit further.
A minor percentile of players (single digit) owning BG2 on Steam played it for over an hour.
Well below Steam average.

Are you saying less than 10% of players who own BG2 on Steam played it for over an hour, or am I misunderstanding the wording?

If that's true, I strongly suspect something beyond "lol this game sux" is at play. I'm not a fan of RtwP, and prefer turn-based myself but really doubt that figure represents a reaction to RtwP. It could be that the game isn't tracking time played properly for some reason. That's particularly likely with a retrogame. If, for example, it used some program to boot up, and then ran outside Steam, you would likely see this if the boot program then closed. Or there might have been some massive give-away or something.

I'd also be interested to see figures from a lot of other CRPGs - how do you find this info? My Google-fu is failing me.

Edit - Kept looking, can't find a free site with your info - Steam Spy requires a paid subscription effectively to get that info.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Honestly, though, here's the thing. The naming conventions of FR aren't super prevalent. They're present, but it doesn't make a game any less an FR game if the main characters are named stuff like Edwin and Khalid. It certainly doesn't make it less of a Baldur's Gate game.

I did say, upthread, and everyone ignored it, that it the proof would be in the actual game. It just makes me extremely skeptical that it will be meaningfully related to the FR or BG. Especially if it's not just the main characters. If like literally no character they create has authentically ridiculous FR name, that is saying something. Yes, if it's just the main characters, and odd other character, then it's merely a slightly weird choice (BG1/2 had a mix of more conventional names and "FR names" on the main characters). If it's everyone except imports like Volo, that's something else.

But my Toronto-for-NY point remains.

If you keep ignoring things that make a setting or story specific, and replacing them with generic things, that does eventually make that story first "less of" a story about those things, and eventually not a story about them at all. Now, it might still be a good story, because those things might not be relevant. But it's not going to be a story about those specific things.

We'll see.

Probably I'm totally wrong, and it's just these things. The NPCs will have FR names and the lore will connect and be embedded like BG1/2 (which were really pretty good for that). The story will link to and use themes from BG1/2 in a cool way, and so on. I'm just... skeptical.

 

[Azzy]

They're present, but it doesn't make a game any less an FR game if the main characters are named stuff like Edwin and Khalid.

Khalid is an example Calishite name in the PHB (it's also the name of a character that I played in the Al Qadim setting), and Edwin doesn't seem like a stretch for a Chondathan name. As far as Asterion, it doesn't seem like it wouldn't fit in withe elven names in the PHB or Xanathar's.

 

[Var]

Are you saying less than 10% of players who own BG2 on Steam played it for over an hour, or am I misunderstanding the wording?

If that's true, I strongly suspect something beyond "lol this game sux" is at play. I'm not a fan of RtwP, and prefer turn-based myself but really doubt that figure represents a reaction to RtwP. It could be that the game isn't tracking time played properly for some reason. That's particularly likely with a retrogame. If, for example, it used some program to boot up, and then ran outside Steam, you would likely see this if the boot program then closed. Or there might have been some massive give-away or something.

I'd also be interested to see figures from a lot of other CRPGs - how do you find this info? My Google-fu is failing me.

Edit - Kept looking, can't find a free site with your info - Steam Spy requires a paid subscription effectively to get that info.

Some postmortem info from the devs on game stats for the remastered version (wish I could find it... was on youtube somewhere). They suggested a lot of people bought it for the reputation or nostalgia and either bounced off hard or lost interest during the rather slow start that is a 90s tutorial to an RPG.

For those who stuck with it, it has a pretty high completion rate and the average playtime on completion is around 200 hours. I'd assume that includes a bunch of idling around with the game running, so there is that.

Point being, 201X+ isn't 1998. People apparently don't love the game that's treated like the gold standard as much as they claim to.
While on the other side RPG games haven't been married to RTWP in recent times. In between Pathfinder, PoE(I&II) and DOS(I&II) - DOS 2 Enhanced edition alone outdoes the others combined. Whatever people liked more in DOS, turn based is part of the bundle, so it doesn't look like it's detrimental.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

While on the other side RPG games haven't been married to RTWP in recent times. In between Pathfinder, PoE(I&II) and DOS(I&II) - DOS 2 Enhanced edition alone outdoes the others combined. Whatever people liked more in DOS, turn based is part of the bundle, so it doesn't look like it's detrimental.

I'd be really interested to hear the play times on the DOS games, especially DOS2, because I strongly suspect the pattern is similar to BG2EE, though nowhere near as extreme. Unfortunately I think I'd have to pay Steam Spy to even learn if they had the figures, let alone what they were.

I think the reason is perhaps different though - with DOS I think a huge sales driver is multiplayer, and that this is something other CRPG design teams need to sit up and pay attention to. Virtually everyone I know on Steam seems to have DOS or DOS2, yet a very large proportion have 0 or a very low number of hours played. Why? I'm pretty sure it's because loads and loads of people bought copies to gift to people for multiplayer, and then just didn't actually do it. DOS2 is four-player, so it's likely to be even more pronounced (also DOS1 was very new and shiny). The whole various editions will have helped confuse things now, of course, but I saw a lot of this, and neither DOS game is super-accessible initially (I suspect a lot of people bounce off character creation, even, let alone actually playing). Yet the sales were very good.

I strongly suspect that this is the "killer app" for sales in this field - the suggestion that you can play it with your friends, but that it's strictly optional. I wonder how well POE2 would have sold with the ability for a friend to drop in and control a companion or the like? I suspect a hell of a lot better, even without the larger accomodations that the DOS games made.

I agree that turn-based clearly isn't hurting sales, and I strongly suspect most people under 30 have barely even played RtwP games, unlike the older crowd who grew up with that and where RTSes were the normal (rather than MOBAs where you're managing a single character).

 

[Coroc]

Stirring the hornet's nest a bit further.
A minor percentile of players (single digit) owning BG2 on Steam played it for over an hour.
Well below Steam average.

But does steam also count playtime of people who play the game offline (which you totally can do with bg2) ?