D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 will now be releasing August 3rd on PC and September 6th on PS5, increased level cap, race & class details and more

[Ruin Explorer]

There is quite a lot of race and class (and even background) specific dialogue in BG3, as well as stuff specific to the seven origin characters. That's going to push the dialogue count up, and probably need a lot of playthroughs to see it all.

I think origin characters will push it up most, at least based on act one, there's significantly less race/class responsiveness than one might expect - it's there, but it's not huge and is mostly one short line.

Also yeah re: playthroughs, yes this looks more like a "multiple playthrough" CRPG than I think any one I've ever played (bear in mind I haven't played Disco Elysium yet though), because even in act one, there are some fairly huge choices you can make re: who to side with (which will lock out a bunch of stuff or hugely change how you experience it), and a lot of stuff it's very easy to miss, even if you're fairly systematic.

Of course the key thing to multiple different playthroughs is they have to actually be fun - and some CRPGs have been better at that than others (DA2 is a lot more replayable than DA:O imho, esp. if doing it differently, because the different choices in DA2 feel better than DA:O where it tends to be "right thing/wrong thing").

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They've announced the likely playthrough time is 75-100 hours - so extremely long.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Standard Playthrough Takes 75 to 100 Hours, Larian Says - IGN

If you want to squeeze in a standard playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 before Starfield comes out, you'll need to put in 75 to 100 hours.

www.ign.com

That's mostly cool but given the level cap is 12, it seems like levels will be very, very widely spaced, time-wise. Even if we say, hit 12 90% of the way through those 100 hours, that's an average of 1 level every 7.5 hours of play, which might be fine or even quick on tabletop, but I think is going to feel pretty rough in a videogame, even with 4 characters to manage. Hopefully there will be enough interesting loot or other ways to advance that it doesn't get to be a problem.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I wonder if we can see romance between characters of radically different height. Something style Holga the barbarian and her former husband. Or this and his new wife.

 

[Vael]

I wonder if there's level caps during the game, like, you can't get past level X until you complete Act 1? Just so the completionists aren't hitting level 12 before they get to Baldur's Gate.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I wonder if there's level caps during the game, like, you can't get past level X until you complete Act 1? Just so the completionists aren't hitting level 12 before they get to Baldur's Gate.

I mean, in the original game, you could easily hit the level cap around the time you got to Baldur's Gate if you were pretty thorough on exploring and doing all the quests you could find in the earlier secrions...

 

[DarkCrisis]

Does it have the same feel as BG 1 and 2?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Does it have the same feel as BG 1 and 2?

It 5e vs 2e so it will feel a bit different. But I feel it keeps to the spirit pretty well.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Does it have the same feel as BG 1 and 2?

It is in early access on Steam so you can buy it and play it right now if you want to.

 

[Lidgar]

I played the heck out of the early realease. And while it does not follow the 5e ruleset as closely as, say, Solasta does, I feel it plays better. But where it really shines is the story, PC interactions, and a crazy amount of depth.

I played early release three times over and was still finding new stuff to uncover. I only wish the mac version was also early release.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Does it have the same feel as BG 1 and 2?

Not even slightly.

It's a completely different tone, because Larian have very different writers to Black Isle 20+ years ago.

Initially the writing had a downright nasty tone, nigh-identical to Divinity: Original Sin 2 (DOS2) (where every option tended to be a bad option, just bad in a different way), but the Early Access gave a massive pushback against this and steadily over the course of EA the writing and events got tweaked and changed and modified and you gained a ton of options to be nice, or pleasant, or reach a purely-good outcome (rather than having constant morally-grey compromises forced on you). NPCs became less needlessly antagonistic - a prime example being Shadowheart, who changed so much people were saying they kind of missed her unnecessary jerk-ish-ness (you can still get it if you treat her poorly - but before she acted like that no matter how kind you were).

Also in Act 1 it's considerably less "Forgotten Realms-y" than BG1/2. However, again I have to note that as the Early Access went on, this situation did improve somewhat, and it's even possible that Baldur's Gate itself will be more accurate.

The most bizarre decision remains that they've basically made the terrain look like one of the rockier quasi-arid parts of Spain. Literally everything we know about the Baldur's Gate area in the various RPG supplements which discuss it indicates it's extremely wet (like, constant rain) and very green, which the game absolutely is not. Nor has there previously been any suggestion that the area is rocky. In fact the direct contrary - it's supposed to be rolling hills and flatlands.

There are other major differences, which I would say were largely for the better. The primary one is that BG3 is more like Ultima 6/7 or an immersive sim* in that you can actually use the world and things in it do achieve stuff, and you can often come up with some pretty tricky shenanigans - though more working out ways to do things or approach places than the mindless and repetitive "LOL I SURROUNDED THE NPCS WITH EXPLOSIVE BARRELS BEFORE TRIGGERING THE FIGHT I AM THE SMARTEST AND MOST ORIGINAL MAN ON THE PLANET" which characterised virtually all of D:OS1 and some of D:OS2. There are also far more solutions to most situations just written in and coded for than in BG1/2.

So if you're looking for another BG game like the old ones, BG3 ain't it.

If you're looking for what is, so far, an extremely good CRPG, albeit one that started off not very BG/FR/D&D-ish (before improving), though, BG3 is it.

* = The one major thing missing compared to them is there is no day/night-cycle - it is perpetually about noon outside of rare scripted scenes - and there is, at least in Early Access, no dynamic weather, just a tiny bit of scripted weather.