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]

Yes, I like the ranger. I went with Ranger Knight and Beast Tamer. A few comments:

• I believe Thieves' Cant is a tag, that might open up a certain quest.
• True Strike does not suck as much in BG3 as it does in PnP.
• Ranger Knight is not as good as it sounds, as good heavy armour is hard to find in Chapter 1. My History prof told me Szass Tam was a Lich, which I knew anyway.
• "as a ritual" means you can cast it as often as you like outside combat, so the familiar is an expendable minion (more so than a wizard, who doesn't have ritual casting yet, so they have to burn a spell slot). I found the raven most useful.
• Tool proficiencies are not in - Thieves' tools are keyed to Slight of Hand skill, and Disguise Self is a 1st level spell. It gives you slight of hand, but it doesn't give you the Disguise Self spell at level 1. It might add it to your ranger spell list at level 2. I assume the text is out of date.
• Beastmaster (level 3) summons another expendable minion, stronger than the familiar - very similar to Neverwinter Knights.
• Hunter works as PnP.

 

[Seramus]

I'm not seeing the humor that endeared Larian to me as a studio. And when looking at BG and BGII, there was plenty of humor present. So I am hoping more of the "miniature giant space hamster" type of jokes are in the game more than the everything will die and land in ruin that the current game has given me the vibe with playing a few hours in.

I am withholding judgement so far. Early Larian games were out and proud with their humor. DOS2 was a big change, since quite a bit of humor was hidden behind optional things like Pet Pal.

I suspect BG3 will go the same way. More serious in tone, with the big humor slightly hidden... but still accessible if you look for it.

 

[Gladius Legis]

I suspect BG3 will go the same way. More serious in tone, with the big humor slightly hidden... but still accessible if you look for it.

Spoiler

Ogre. Bugbear.

I will say no more.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm glad they are playing the adventure straight, rather than treating is as a parody or spoof. The thing I disliked most about the DOS games was the sense I was playing a genre parody. BG1 was full of stupid pop culture jokes though, many of which are now so badly dated that people don't even realise they where jokes.

BG3 has humour, but it arises out of the situation, rather than being forced in. Such as right at the end of the act when
Someone jumps onto the boat you have just liberated and accuses you of steeling it. The bottom dialogue option is - shove.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I'm glad they are playing the adventure straight, rather than treating is as a parody or spoof. The thing I disliked most about the DOS games was the sense I was playing a genre parody. BG1 was full of stupid pop culture jokes though, many of which are now so badly dated that people don't even realise they where jokes.

BG3 has humour, but it arises out of the situation, rather than being forced in. Such as right at the end of the act when
Someone jumps onto the boat you have just liberated and accuses you of steeling it. The bottom dialogue option is - shove.

I doubt anyone under 40 will get what the Larry, Darryl, and Darryl joke was about in BG1...

 

[Seramus]

I doubt anyone under 40 will get what the Larry, Darryl, and Darryl joke was about in BG1...

I'm just waiting for the drizzt and elminster cameos.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm just waiting for the drizzt and elminster cameos.

I've already come across a mention of Elminster (in Volo's diary).

 

[MaskedGuy]

Look you might be all about subjective morality but:

Lae'zel is a member in good standing of a culture of raiders
Shadowheart belongs to a church that requires the murder of an innocent achieved through deception in order to join
Astarion is a freaking Vampire

I am not touching the "I made a deal with the devil guy" or the "I'm a walking bomb that might go off at any moment yet I'm OK with moving around innocent bystanders"

To be fair, Gale IS heroic character, but their main goal seems to be not to die before they have disarmed the super nuke. Which apparently is supposed to be large enough to destroy entire nation(key word on apparently) so uh, they can't really avoid bystanders dying unless they find way to enter space, so avoiding crowded locations won't help much, he just needs to avoid dying. Like even if he went to middle of wildeness, presumably radius of netherese destruction orb would still be large enough to reach settlements not to mention all ecological damage and weird magic stuff that happens with magic nukes

On sidenote, Laez and Astarion are definitely evil, Shadowheart seems to be neutral(they are more self serving, but feel sick when doing something truly evil and apparently have memory gap problems with intention that they are supposed to regain their memory once they fulfill their missions), Wyll is super heroic(only one in party who turns agaisnt you if you join with goblins to kill druids) but has vindictive streak.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Lae'zel is evil in a ruthless "end justifies the means" way, but the "end" she seeks is "good". Consistent with canonical lawful evil for her race.

Shadowheart is evil by way of following the teachings of an evil god, however it is unclear if she is acting voluntarily or under some compulsion.

Asterion is Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

[Nymrod]

Shadowheart's problems do feel very "Shar". Memory gaps when you worship Shar? It couldn't be that the goddess of forgetfullness is manipulating you . . .
I think it would be possible to have her change gods or at least heavily reconsider her relation with her goddess down the line.

I think I've done a decent chunk of the EA by now. Imo, very enjoyable game, feels like D&D, great graphics. I'll enjoy it much more with more companion options; right now I feel very limited. Doesn't really feel like a Baldur's Gate successor though. If it had been Neverwinter Nights 3 it would have made far more sense to me. Perhaps it gets closer to that feel when we get to actual Baldur's Gate.