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

[Burnside]

It's been Point Buy in EA, but I feel like they may have mentioned a rolling option on launch.

Also it seems like they may be implementing the "floating +2 and +1" Tasha's option at launch as well, rather than the static racial bonuses which EA has.

 

[CommodoreKong]

If they do add rolling I imagine they'll add an achievement for re-rolling your stats 100 times or something like that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As an aside I have to admit The Dark Urge is not something I'd normally ever consider playing, being mostly a Paragon type but... it's kind of intriguing.

My current character is a ruinbound dwarven aberrant mind sorcerer, a neutral artefact smuggler with a chaotic evil symbiont living in his right eye socket.

So, pretty much exactly the type of character I play...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Spoilers, based on information pieced together from EA, trailers and other sources:

It appears The Dark Urge is

Spoiler

Bhaal.

And creepy goblin is his prophet.

The return of gods killed in the Time of Troubles seems to be a major theme in BG3. There are several books dealing with the topic, as well as a servant/avatar of Jergal who offers to assist the party.

Just how this relates to mind flayers and the Absolute is unclear, but it wouldn't surprise me if she was another dead god.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

BG3 kind of makes me think of Babylon 5 season 1. You are the commander, but you have a hole in your memories. Your prospective party members are Londo, G'kar, Delenn and Kosh.

 

[Seramus]

I just saw what all the fuss us about.

Lol Larian might just break the internet with that.

It was so funny. The crowd was pushing hard, and I was laughing so much my ribs still hurt!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've played the EA. So have others. This is absolutely not Tyranny levels of "hard to be good". It's not even Pillars of Eternity levels of "hard to be good"! Both the Pillars games make it considerably harder to be fully good that BG3's EA Act 1. What BG3 though does well that Tyranny also did pretty well, and Pillars much less well (sorry Josh), is tempt the player with evil options that sound pretty cool or exciting or like they'd solve a problem or just get rid of an annoyance. Most RPGs are terrible at this, because they typically only have three modes - Altruist, Mercenary, and Puppy-Kicker. It's been a problem since literally BG1 in 1999. But BG3 actually threads the needle pretty well here and you rarely have to go to those extremes unless you want to. It's rather reminiscent of Fallout 2 in that regard. In Fallout 2 it was easy to do bad things for good reasons, and BG3 offers both that and more trad Puppy-Kicker options (evil for evil's sake).

Very important to stress this. I'm reminded of things in various games, like Mask of the Betrayer and KotOR2, where there is an obvious, facile, for lack of a better term "nice" option, but which doesn't actually lead to the best outcome. Sometimes this is done in a heavy-handed way (e.g. arriving on Nar Shaddaa for the first time in KotOR2), but often it is more nuanced. It is both more interesting and more effective for a story to require such thought, doubly so because it adds replay value to a game.

However, I do think there's a serious risk of going too far in the other direction. I have not, personally, played the Witcher games. But I've known multiple people who have. From what I hear, they are extremely well-written....but they also tend to be utterly soaked in misery, to the point that it's literally not possible to make a choice one could remotely parse as "good" in at least some of the quests. I no longer remember enough details to point to something specific, so I'll just say that I've had extensive conversations with fans of the games who have agreed that more than occasionally, there are literally no good answers and at times no good deed goes unpunished.

Now, from what else you said, it sounds like the person leading this presentation likes to focus heavily on the darkness, which can make it seem like the good isn't there, when in truth they just aren't talking it up as much. On the flipside, I know I've also seen criticism--from you, among others--that at least at the start of EA, things leaned a bit far in the grimdark direction, with many of the companions being almost totally unlikable bastards or horrifically grating carpers. You've been quite clear that that has changed, and Larian has genuinely listened to feedback and understood "oh...we actually do need to make these folks likeable...and making things grimdark is not actually going to be well-received." So I have hope that things which seem superficially grimdark because of presentation or limited information will be less so in actual play....but I still think it is reasonable to be concerned about it.

Depth of story and character, making the narrative feel worthy of investment, and reflecting both realism (sometimes, stuff just sucks) and fantasy (that is the genre, after all--doing what should be impossible), they're all important. It sounds like Larian has done a decent job of balancing those goals. Of course, only time will tell. I'm hopeful.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

BG3 kind of makes me think of Babylon 5 season 1. You are the commander, but you have a hole in your memories. Your prospective party members are Londo, G'kar, Delenn and Kosh.

That's...a really fascinating analogy, assuming it holds true for the subsequent stuff. Because Londo and G'kar, at the very least, are absolute jerks in season 1, and yet by season 3 at least and possibly earlier, they're beloved (if very flawed) characters. I would be okay with that being how BG3 plays out.

The fear at the back of my mind, of course, is that they just stay that way. Or, worse, that they simply flip like a lightswitch from "jerk" to "gentleman" because of a single heartfelt conversation with the commander...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's...a really fascinating analogy, assuming it holds true for the subsequent stuff. Because Londo and G'kar, at the very least, are absolute jerks in season 1, and yet by season 3 at least and possibly earlier, they're beloved (if very flawed) characters. I would be okay with that being how BG3 plays out.

The fear at the back of my mind, of course, is that they just stay that way. Or, worse, that they simply flip like a lightswitch from "jerk" to "gentleman" because of a single heartfelt conversation with the commander...

And by season 4, Kosh is the jerk.

 

[Seramus]

Dark Urge does seem like the most direct path to Bhaal content, with no way to access some of it since there is no true origin character for it.

So a Resitant Dark Urge might have the most overall access to content for a first playthrough.