D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access

Baldur's Gate III is now available for early access on Steam and on Stadia.

I couldn't get the Steam version working on my Mac, but the Stadia version works just fine. The opening tutorial level is pretty gruesome (at one point I had to squish somebody's brain) and the mind flayer airship you're trying to escape from beings to mind the movie Aliens a lot.

Character creation is quick and easy, although options in the early access are limited. The gameplay is like Divinity Original Sin 2 with the 5E rules layered over it. I've only played an hour or so of the game, and as an early access game, it is occasionally a bit buggy, but nothing showstopping (yet).

This isn't a review (I haven't played enough of it to do that, and I don't think it's fair to review an early access version anyway); it's mainly just an alert to the few people who don't already know it's available. If any such person exists!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No option to play RTwP? No thanks.

Because real D&D is real time with pause...

Wait, no it isn't, it's turn based.

 

[Aldarc]

This makes me want to play Divinity: Original Sin 2 again.

 

[MaskedGuy]

It's currently very easy to take a "slaughter everyone" approach at the moment. I expect more non-homicidal ways of overcoming obstacles will be added later.

As for the companions, they don't have alignments printed on their character sheets, but, broadly speaking, two are good, two are evil, and one is neutral.

Yeah as far as I can tell: Wyll and Gale are either good or EXTREMELY good leaning neutrals. Laez is definitely evil(miliritastic xenophobic racist to whom intimidation and violence is first option) and so is Astorian(who seems to find principles absurd and is gleefully trolling towards everyone and seems to disapprove pretty much all options involving being selfless or decent person unless they are funny) while Shadowheart is evil leaning neutral(they are pragmatic and don't mind you doing good guy things if you justify it being about working towards the cure and while they have selfish traits they do have standards They are annoyed by you acting goody two shoes "but what if they need help" when you yourselves need help)

 

[Horwath]

Because real D&D is real time with pause...

Wait, no it isn't, it's turn based.

well, turn base in real D&D(or any tabletop) is necessary evil, as otherwise it would be chaos.
But when AI is working many things in background and you could pause if you want to execute complicated orders, then turning Baldur's Gate to turn based game is lazy design.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

well, turn base in real D&D(or any tabletop) is necessary evil, as otherwise it would be chaos.
But when AI is working many things in background and you could pause if you want to execute complicated orders, then turning Baldur's Gate to turn based game is lazy design.

5e is designed for turn based play, with lots of choice each character has to make each round. It would be impossible to stay even vaguely close to the 5e ruleset using RTWP (See: Sword Coast legends). 2e was much simpler, with many characters having nothing to do but auto-attack each round. The casting time and interrupt rules also made 2e more suitable to RTWP.

The original Baldur's Gate adapted the 2nd edition ruleset using 1998 technology. Baldur's Gate 3 adapts the 5th edition ruleset using 2020 technology. It is ridiculous to expect them to work the same way.

Solasta: Crown of the Magister is also turn based, because that is the only way to stay close to 5e rules.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Laez is definitely evil(miliritastic xenophobic racist to whom intimidation and violence is first option)

Githyanki racial stereotyping!

so is Astorian(who seems to find principles absurd and is gleefully trolling towards everyone and seems to disapprove pretty much all options involving being selfless or decent person unless they are funny)

Vampire racial stereotyping!

 

[Horwath]

5e is designed for turn based play, with lots of choice each character has to make each round. It would be impossible to stay even vaguely close to the 5e ruleset using RTWP (See: Sword Coast legends). 2e was much simpler, with many characters having nothing to do but auto-attack each round. The casting time and interrupt rules also made 2e more suitable to RWIP.

The original Baldur's Gate adapted the 2nd edition ruleset using 1998 technology. Baldur's Gate 3 adapts the 5th edition ruleset using 2020 technology. It is ridiculous to expect them to work the same way.

Solasta: Crown of the Magister is also turn based, because that is the only way to stay close to 5e rules.

Don't give examples of one of the worst adaptation of D&D ruleset(SCL). What about Pillars of Eternity? It's RTwP and made on modified 3.5e ruleset. And lets be honest 5E is closest to 3.5E than any other edition.

I just hope they make RTwP mode for BG3 sometimes, like they made TB mode for PoE2(but let's hope that they will make better modifications). It's easier to go from TB->RTwP than to RTwP->Tb

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Don't give examples of one of the worst adaptation of D&D ruleset(SCL). What about Pillars of Eternity? It's RTwP and made on modified 3.5e ruleset. And lets be honest 5E is closest to 3.5E than any other edition.

Pillars of Eternity is:

a) Nothing like 3rd edition;
b) Has a horrible and constantly shifting ruleset;
c) Worked so badly that POE2 had a turn based mode patched in.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a RTwP game that uses a version of the 3.5 ruleset. It's a game I love (823.7 hours logged), but it doesn't actually work very well - in particular the lack of precise control over movement means melee characters are hammered by attacks of opportunity and flanking attacks. It has also been updated with a turn based mode.

 

[MaskedGuy]

I honestly don't see point of trying to claim either real time or turn based is superior and I say that as someone who prefers turn based

I do agree though that with how 5e works, it would be hard to make it real time. You have movement(which isn't action, you can move, attack and continue moving), you have your action and bonus action instead of "just" move and standard/full round action. Trying to "move, hit enemy, continue moving, get attack of opportunied by enemy, drink potion with bonus action" would be pretty hard when the enemy would just continue moving after you at same time you are moving.

And even then, in real time its hard to see effectiveness of swift actions and such, for some players,(this is especially problem in kingmaker) real time is too hard to micromanage because everything happens at same time. You want to charge at enemy? Well since it happens in real time, enemy moves closer to you and suddenly they are too close to charge at. You want to use fireball, but then your party member kills enemy and moves right into fireball range. Some players on otherhand are really good at handling information and pausing a ton, but for lot of players real time comes across as too chaotic.

 

[Azzy]

How do they expect anyone to play this game properly unless you have the latest PC that's like $1,000+? This is why I can't get into PC games. Either you spend as much as a car down payment, or you deal with playing on a used/refurbished 3 year old system. And there's several PC games I want to get into but, sadly, cannot because of the expensive tech barrier.

You pretty much described all AAA games.