D&D 5E Baldur's Gate 3 will allow us to explore the whole city of Baldur's Gate Seamlessly

[Parmandur]

Ultima VII was illusionism, the "city" was the size of a small village. Baldur's Gate in BG1 was bigger, both in terms of amount of content and imaginary square mileage (although the forced-perspective means map scale isn't a constant). BG3 may avoid splitting the city across load screens, but how big is it? How much interesting content does it have?

We'll see about how interesting it is, but a square mile or so seems plausible for full scale at this point. Tears of the Kingdom, as a recent example, is a technically simpler game thar covers a waaaaaay bigger square mileage than Baldur's Gate.

 

[Parmandur]

But it wasn't just the city. It was the entire game world, which includes many cities. You could also enter all bulidings and they had detailed interiors with interactive parts and objects you could move around.

The entire game world was about a fifth of a mile square, or 768 square meters. Pure illusion...but good artifice to hide that.

 

[Andvari]

I'm guessing Baldur's Gate will also be a pure illusion, but in a more literal way. Many buildings will likely look real from the outside, but you can't enter them. Or NPCs you can't talk to or just stand in the same spot all day. Purely visual distractions without substance, but certainly impressive-looking at a glance.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm guessing Baldur's Gate will also be a pure illusion, but in a more literal way. Many buildings will likely look real from the outside, but you can't enter them. Or NPCs you can't talk to or just stand in the same spot all day. Purely visual distractions without substance, but certainly impressive-looking at a glance.

Yeah, I doubt they will have tens of thousands of distinct NPCs.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, I doubt they will have tens of thousands of distinct NPCs.

I was discussing this with my wife - this is one of those places where a LLM like Chat GPT could create miscellaneous NPCs for you. You'd have to put some guard rails on, of course, but for a game that should be possible.

Not sure when it will happen, but I suspect some game will have every bartender, maid and candle stick maker supported by such a system at some point in the not-too-distant future.

 

[Parmandur]

I was discussing this with my wife - this is one of those places where a LLM like Chat GPT could create miscellaneous NPCs for you. You'd have to put some guard rails on, of course, but for a game that should be possible.

Not sure when it will happen, but I suspect some game will have every bartender, maid and candle stick maker supported by such a system at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Yeah, I can see that.

 

[Ibrandul]

Interesting. I wonder how much of WotC's lore Ed chooses to use himself I never did read Elminster's Forgotten Realms, but it seems surprising to me that he would accept major revisions to Baldur's Gate. Is the Spellplague even "Greenwood canon"?

Even "Elminster's Forgotten Realms" includes references to the Spellplague.

WotC marketing at the time made "Elminster's Forgotten Realms" sound like it contained an alternate FR based on Greenwood's original vision. There are some photos in that book of archival documents such as original typescripts Greenwood sent to TSR when they bought the setting. A few of the details in those typescripts contradict the "official" version of the Realms. But the vast majority of the book is just more FR lore written by Ed, totally consistent with the published Realms. The book presents "Ed's Realms" mostly just in the sense that it focuses on the kinds of "street-level" (and pure fluff, nonmechanical) things he's celebrated/disdained for emphasizing, with sections on slang, cuisine, trade goods, etc. Ever want to read a full two-columned page about mechanically useless fantasy perfumes? This is the book for you!

Anyway, there isn't really a "Greenwood canon." Or rather, "Greenwood canon" is an overlay on top of "WotC canon," a supplement and not an alternative to it. When Greenwood answers lore questions, whether on Twitter or elsewhere, he always assumes all published lore as a basis and goes from there—unless he says something like "In my original version of the Realms," usually after providing a published-Realms answer to the question. Even when there are elements that he publicly dislikes, such as the barely disguised real-world analogues Kara-Tur and Maztica, he still incorporates those elements into "the Realms" when he answers lore questions, though often he'll decline to provide/invent a detailed lore answer when the question pertains to one of those.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Original creators don't tend to feel the same way about "canon" that fans do. After all, they were there when it was all made up out of thin air.

 

[Ibrandul]

Original creators don't tend to feel the same way about "canon" that fans do. After all, they were there when it was all made up out of thin air.

Right. Which is what makes it remarkable (to me, anyway) that Greenwood adheres so closely to "canon" when answering lore questions.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Even "Elminster's Forgotten Realms" includes references to the Spellplague.

WotC marketing at the time made "Elminster's Forgotten Realms" sound like it contained an alternate FR based on Greenwood's original vision. There are some photos in that book of archival documents such as original typescripts Greenwood sent to TSR when they bought the setting. A few of the details in those typescripts contradict the "official" version of the Realms. But the vast majority of the book is just more FR lore written by Ed, totally consistent with the published Realms. The book presents "Ed's Realms" mostly just in the sense that it focuses on the kinds of "street-level" (and pure fluff, nonmechanical) things he's celebrated/disdained for emphasizing, with sections on slang, cuisine, trade goods, etc. Ever want to read a full two-columned page about mechanically useless fantasy perfumes? This is the book for you!

Anyway, there isn't really a "Greenwood canon." Or rather, "Greenwood canon" is an overlay on top of "WotC canon," a supplement and not an alternative to it. When Greenwood answers lore questions, whether on Twitter or elsewhere, he always assumes all published lore as a basis and goes from there—unless he says something like "In my original version of the Realms," usually after providing a published-Realms answer to the question. Even when there are elements that he publicly dislikes, such as the barely disguised real-world analogues Kara-Tur and Maztica, he still incorporates those elements into "the Realms" when he answers lore questions, though often he'll decline to provide/invent a detailed lore answer when the question pertains to one of those.

Thanks, makes sense.