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

[cbwjm]

I was hoping for a full 1-20 campaign, level cap at 12 seems too low.

 

[MockingBird]

Just to add to the post asking if it plays like BG1/2. Pillars of Eternity plays very similar to the old BG games, it's just a different rules system though. I really wished Obsidian could have gotten the rights to a new BG game. Not knocking the developers of BG3. If BG3 comes to Xbox I'll definitely play it but I'm not expecting a continuation of the old BG games.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I was hoping for a full 1-20 campaign, level cap at 12 seems too low.

That's what expansions and/or sequels are for! The original BG1 only got to level 8 - 9 or so.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not even slightly.

I though you said you hadn't played BG1 because you didn't like it, so on what basis are you making the comparison?

The most bizarre decision remains that they've basically made the terrain look like one of the rockier quasi-arid parts of Spain

I think that was purely for mechanical reasons. That kind of terrain was easy to build and cram lots of stuff in. And it's some hundred miles upriver from Baldur's Gate anyway. But BG1 put some desert-like regions within a day's march of Baldur's Gate, and it always looked more like Canada (where Bioware where based) than the London area, which you might be lead to expect from the original FR sourcebooks.

I would say that Owlcat's Pathfinder games are closer in tone to BG1 than the Pillars of Eternity games. And in writing style Larian are more like Obsidian (irritating companions, morally grey, doom and gloom, black humour).

Or, to get a handle, BG3 is perhaps more like the Dragon Age games, but with D&D rules and setting. DA1 was Bioware's "BG3".

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don't mind some dialog loops but abhor cut-scenes and usually try to skip them even the first time playing a video game - so that just seems like an absurd and annoying amount to me.

I am with you there. But many people like them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Lot of talking in BG3. Lot of reading too. If you aren't into story and character and just want to kick some monster butt then Solasta is a better bet.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I though you said you hadn't played BG1 because you didn't like it, so on what basis are you making the comparison?

What the hell? How would that even work?

I've never said that. You're confusing me with someone else or very, very badly misremembering.

I played BG1 and finished it (my review is still up on a certain site), and I was rather unimpressed with it because I'd just played Fallout 2. I also completed BG2 though I'm not sure I ever finished the expansion fully. BG2 was wildly more impressive than BG1, and an actually good game.

I think that was purely for mechanical reasons. That kind of terrain was easy to build and cram lots of stuff in.

There's no reason to make it rocky and arid-looking to do that though - you can have that sort of terrain in wetter regions, and with less exposed rock.

Rather I think think their art team was used to it, and just approached it that way without even looking into what the BG region was actually like. Because the starting area of DOS2 is nigh-identical - rocky, arid, Mediterranean-looking terrain. And they made a lot of other similar missteps in early development - the tone was very dark, very grey, exactly like DOS2. The characters were universally complete wankers, exactly like DOS2. The options you had were 100% morally grey bollocks. Basically is seems like they had little initial regard for the FR and its lore, and absolutely none for D&D and how that tone differed from the DOS games.

But they got pushed back so hard and so immediately on that did change, and now it's much closer to what you'd expect from something set in the FR, albeit with some of the residual sort of unnecessary bleakness and often-unfunny "black humour" characteristic of Larian (again though, a lot funnier than it was in the DOS games, esp. as it's not basically going through a translator and was "funny in French/Flemish" but utterly humourless in English like a lot of DOS1).

It's a totally different tone to BG1/2, which were sort of weirdly almost soap-opera-y or Telenovela-ish at times, with all these overwrought high-strung characters bickering and dramatic reveals about parentage or trauma and so on. There's some bickering and of course reveals, but they're done very differently, and weirdly seem much more, well, British - everyone is more reserved and less "snarky" (the largely British VAs change the tone a bit too).

I would say that Owlcat's Pathfinder games are closer in tone to BG1 than the Pillars of Eternity games. And in writing style Larian are more like Obsidian (irritating companions, morally grey, doom and gloom, black humour).

Agree. Owlcat does the same bickering tone and characters who make you want to say "Don't make me come back there!" or "I'll turn this party around!" as BG1/2. Everyone is incredibly high-strung. Even the chillest party member in an Owlcat game is minutes away from a tantrum. But despite horrific things happening they generally have a fairly positive tone. Whereas in DOS1/2 Larian had companions who were all terrible people, everything was morally grey to the point of accidental self-parody, and yeah tons of black humour, much of which fell flat. DOS1 also features a sort of side-order of unexamined misogyny (weirdly common in eurogames) and general heartlessness/lack of empathy that made it feel kind of sociopathic even by CRPG standards. But Larian have continually improved - particularly as they hired more and more writers (and Swen got involved with the story less and less), and specifically writers who were primary English speakers (they've got a big writing team in Ireland IIRC) - there's even a significant difference between release DOS2 and EE DOS2, because they re-wrote virtually the entire script. That combined with the pushback on their most stereotypical elements has changed BG3 (at least in Act 1) significantly for the better.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Agree. Owlcat does the same bickering tone and characters who make you want to say "Don't make me come back there!" or "I'll turn this party around!" as BG1/2. Everyone is incredibly high-strung. Even the chillest party member in an Owlcat game is minutes away from a tantrum. But despite horrific things happening they generally have a fairly positive tone. Whereas in DOS1/2 Larian had companions who were all terrible people, everything was morally grey to the point of accidental self-parody, and yeah tons of black humour, much of which fell flat. DOS1 also features a sort of side-order of unexamined misogyny (weirdly common in eurogames) and general heartlessness/lack of empathy that made it feel kind of sociopathic even by CRPG standards. But Larian have continually improved - particularly as they hired more and more writers (and Swen got involved with the story less and less), and specifically writers who were primary English speakers (they've got a big writing team in Ireland IIRC) - there's even a significant difference between release DOS2 and EE DOS2, because they re-wrote virtually the entire script. That combined with the pushback on their most stereotypical elements has changed BG3 (at least in Act 1) significantly for the better.

This is a bit surprising to read; perhaps I was only exposed to the EE version of DOS2. Never completely finished the game, but at least up through the part I played (I remember an island area full of demons?), I felt like I had more than a few opportunities to actually be heroic. I'm a total sap, so I always go for the most goody-two-shoes options, and it actually felt really good playing as the Red Prince and talking to the Lady Vengeance; if you've gotten the..."hero" tag, IIRC, you have the option of more or less saying, "This island has taught me how absolutely horrible it is to be a slave. My people are wrong. No one deserves to be treated that way, and that includes you. So I'm setting you free." That's obviously a massive paraphrase, but it felt like a really quite awesome bit of character development, and reasonably positive too.

But perhaps I happened to fall into some of the only relatively positive choices by accident? Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Given how buggy most games are even after their release was delayed, I can't see anything good from a game being released earlier than planned.

They were originally just holding the PC version back because they wanted to release it at the same time as the Playstation version which they started on after the PC version.

They then realized that if they did that, they'd be releasing only a week before Starfield hits, putting BG3 in the same shoes as DADHAT. So all they did is decide to not release the PC & Playstation versions at the same time, but instead when each version was finished.

They've been working on the PC version for longer.

Also its going to be ready in the Xbox series X, but they can't release it until the Xbox series S works with splitscreen mode, S
Microsoft policy, so both are getting delayed. This is so embarrassing and self inflicited by Mircosoft's own policies, that a hoard of Microsoft engineers have been sent by Microsoft to Larian Studios to get it working on the Xbox series X.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Its also coming eventually to Mac, a porting being handled by another company.


In the meantime you should be able to use GForce Now to play BG3 on Macs, Smartphones, Tables, and more until it gets full Mac release.

I have it for PC, but I use GForce to play EA and Star Trek Onlibe it on my smartphone or a work computer at the job I Dog sit at.

Its an hour of free play or you can pay for 6 hours of priority time or more for 8 hours. I would never use more thn six, and for now the free daily hour is fine fir EA.