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

[Henadic Theologian]

Some notes from today's community update:

PC is getting the game on Aug 3. No more "act 1 72 hours early."

Act 1 makes up less than a quarter of the total content that will be available at launch. And compared to the start of Early Access, even Act 1 has roughly 33% more content in it beyond what's currently in EA.

No ability score prerequisites for multi-classing.

There is an alchemy crafting system I will largely ignore.

The third major villain is Orin the Red, who seems to be a doppleganger/changeling. She is voiced by Maggie Robertson, known to many as the voice of Lady Dimitrescu.

I thought Orin looked like a Changeling. She is the first major character in the Forgotten Realms to be a Changeling.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

It's also way less stressful for more casual or less mechanically-inclined players.

A lot of people find just creating one character a sweat-inducing nightmare (I admit almost none of those people likely post on this board!) so tend to be terrified of mercenary options in BG-style games (especially the Pathfinder ones, jesus). So if the race/class/stats (and possibly subclass) are already picked, you're good. I imagine most of these guys, it's just "accept and go", and you can respec them if you want to change them.

You can fully respec, seemingly including classes, everyone in your party (though you don't seem to be able to change races).

You can't change the race of Companions or Origins (including custom origin), but at least once you will be able to change the race of Hirelings.

Hirelings are really just the Mercany mechanic from DOS2, and in DOS2 they mercs had names, races, classes, bios, just like in BG3, but you could change the names, race, and classes of a Merc.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In the forum of D&D:Beyond jokes about dating female halflings aren't allowed.

And we can't forget the mods for the creation of NSFW scenes.

What if I want to create a female gnome artificer based in Tiny Tina from Botherlands saga? Or a female ranger halfling as an affectionate parody of Dora the explorer? The original creation was totally family-friendly, but other gets the same picture, this is retouched...

I wonder if BG3 could become the "Final Fantasy-Killer". Even it could cause and before and after in the JRPG industry. And some videogame studio paying the licence for the Japanese TTRPG Dragon Sword with the goal to mark the difference.

Could the same software be reused for a Planescape:Torment II?

 

[nevin]

no it can't become the final fantasy killer. Too harsh, too painful and not enough high fantasy. It's all crawl through the mud old school suck it up buttercup stuff.

 

[Ondath]

And we can't forget the mods for the creation of NSFW scenes.

What if I want to create a female gnome artificer based in Tiny Tina from Botherlands saga? Or a female ranger halfling as an affectionate parody of Dora the explorer? The original creation was totally family-friendly, but other gets the same picture, this is retouched...

I mean, this has been a distinct possibility since high fidelity character creators have been a thing, so I don't see why it would be a particular problem for BG3.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now I am thinking about after the future DLCs the next title will be Planescape 2, and later Dragonlance. And why not after this Dark Sun but more focused into survival?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wonder if BG3 could become the "Final Fantasy-Killer".

Nope, I wouldn't even see them as direct competitors. Different types of game. However, it is possible to raw narrative parallels with the Final Fantasy series. I'm mostly thinking of FF7 here, since it's the one I know best. We have:

• amnesiac protagonist. BG3 has two of these, as options;
• morally dubious protagonist. In FF7, a mercenary working for a terrorist group;
• morally dubious allies. Barratt is a terrorist;
• monstrous allies;
• no one is who they seem - lots of this in both;
• morally ambiguous antagonists. Might they actually be right?
• soppy romantic scenes sitting in a high place, legs dangling, under moonlight;
• And I'm sure I could find more in time.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I don't know the last FF titles but the gameplay of BG and D&D was more tactical. It was not only a sequence of attacks, but you had to worry about the place of the characters could be useful or an adventage in the fight. In FF some magic attacks are true spectacules, until you do it dozen of times, and then the emotion is lost, and even you wanted to skip the animation scene.

And I don't remember in FF you could create your main character, but if it is a MMO.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't know the last FF titles but the gameplay of BG and D&D was more tactical. It was not only a sequence of attacks, but you had to worry about the place of the characters could be useful or an adventage in the fight. In FF some magic attacks are true spectacules, until you do it dozen of times, and then the emotion is lost, and even you wanted to skip the animation scene.

And I don't remember in FF you could create your main character, but if it is a MMO.

Most of the Final Fantasy games you do not create your character, you are assigned one. And the narratives tend to be far more linear than any of the Baldur's Gate games. Combat is a mixture of tactical and twitch, and not at all like D&D.

I wouldn't criticise the FF games, they are good (FF7 is great) in their own way. But D&D they are not.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In the forum of D&D:Beyond jokes about dating female halflings aren't allowed.

And we can't forget the mods for the creation of NSFW scenes.

Yeah...this is always going to be a fraught topic. You get similar issues with FF14's lalafells. Who literally look like toddlers.

I wonder if BG3 could become the "Final Fantasy-Killer". Even it could cause and before and after in the JRPG industry. And some videogame studio paying the licence for the Japanese TTRPG Dragon Sword with the goal to mark the difference.

FF killer? Unlikely. While there's been a little controversy regarding FF16's launch, the game has done relatively well and as Paul Farquhar says, the combat is a real time action kind of thing, and hasn't ever really looked like D&D combat.

That said, if BG3 is wildly successful and Creative Business Unit III (the studio responsible for FF16) takes notice, you might see influences from it on future FF games. Naoki Yoshida has a well-known habit of watching the industry overall and trying to learn from it, that's part of how he turned FF14 around.

Could the same software be reused for a Planescape:Torment II?

God I hope not. Sometimes, a story should be just allowed to end. Either it would be an attempt to continue the previous story, which would be bad, or it would be a totally unrelated story simply wearing the first one's skin, and I don't like either of those options. Given how beloved PS:T is, an unneeded "sequel" would need to be absolutely amazing simply to get a lukewarm reception. And if it's not actually about anyone or anything from the original game...why not just give it its own title and let it stand on its own merits? You could always include references and easter eggs without having to go all the way to "PS:T2," e.g. have the Brothel for Slaking of Intellectual Lusts appear at some point.

Creating new stories is always riskier than adopting something people already know. But, as the absolute flood of "live action remakes" and the poor reception of many of the new Star Wars films has shown, relying on name recognition is in fact also risky, it's just long-term risky rather than short-term risky. Disney tried to milk the cash cow of Star Wars much, much too hard, and damaged the brand as a result. It'll recover--it takes a lot more than "too many back to back movies and a botched trilogy" to truly ruin a societal phenomenon like Star Wars--but in the meantime, they spent a lot of money on some of those films and made poor returns (not negative, AIUI, but much below expectation) on them.

I don't know the last FF titles but the gameplay of BG and D&D was more tactical. It was not only a sequence of attacks, but you had to worry about the place of the characters could be useful or an adventage in the fight. In FF some magic attacks are true spectacules, until you do it dozen of times, and then the emotion is lost, and even you wanted to skip the animation scene.

And I don't remember in FF you could create your main character, but if it is a MMO.

In FF15 and FF16, you do not create any of the playable characters, they are given to you. Fairly sure that's true for every game in the series except the MMOs. Those MMOs, FF11 and FF14, do allow you to create your own character.

FF16 manages to preserve most of the spectacle by having the game ramp up your powers over time. You have to slowly unlock bits and pieces of different options for your character, and finding ways to link them together into powerful combos is a big part of the draw. Further, for the biggest spectacle fights, you basically run around as a Godzilla-like fire monster and fight other, even bigger monsters. Each fight has unique components alongside shared ones, so the emotional appeal is distinct each time. I don't own a PS5 and FF16's story isn't really for me (it's...really dark and pretty depressing most of the time), but I've been enjoying watching some other people stream their experience of it.