D&D General New Baldur's Gate III Teaser Trailer

Larian Studios posted a teaser trailer for Baldur's Gate III on Twitter, showing off both apparent cutscene and gameplay footage.


The trailer ends with the statement "Join us on the road to Baldur's Gate Starting June 6" This date is the first date of the Guerrilla Collective Indie Game Showcase, taking place online from June 6-8. Larian Studios is a participant in the event and previously promised Baldur's Gate III news at the showcase. This statement lends further credence to industry speculation that the big announcement will be the date of early access, and it may hint that early access will start on June 6. But it looks like we still have another week before we know for sure.

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Darryl Mott

Darryl Mott

Legio is arguing in an outright bad faith way. I'm not going to play with a bad faith actor, just because you want me to.

I'm trying to interpret your post as charitably as possible, but it's quite hard because you've built an argument that relies on you misquoting me. Was that intentional or an accident? I don't know. I can't know. But I never said Edwin wasn't an English name, like you claim. I said it wasn't a "popular English name". And it isn't.

It is as I said, "incredible stuff" to claim that Edwin is a "popular English name". Now if you want to argue with what I actually said, great, go ahead, but literally none of your argument is relevant to whether Edwin is a popular English name. It's extremely unpopular - around the 500th most popular name in the UK (where long ago, it was popular). Claiming it is "popular" is a good example of kind of needless and pointless bad faith stuff some people are using.
Except it is fairly common. The 500 most popular boy name is still pretty reasonably frequent. You want to argue that it isn't and popular is subjective, so fine.
You can make a reasonable argument without misleading people like that. But some people choose not to. And you trying to get me to engage with a bad faith argument, whilst misquoting me? That's not a great look.
I bow to your expertise in the matter.
Further, what is even your argument? Are you claiming that the FR does not, generally, have a specific style of naming? Or are you merely saying "Well no-one has clearly codified it"? I'm unclear so I'm not even sure what response you want. I would assert that anyone claiming the FR doesn't, generally and broadly, have a specific style of naming (even if there are plenty of exceptions, which are still certainly a minority, as the FR wiki will quickly show you), is either not someone who knows much about the FR, or not someone who is interested in a straightforward discussion of this. If you're saying merely that it's not codified, as far as I know, that's correct, but it doesn't make it any less of thing.
There is no code. There are some trends, but they are not pervasive across the vast majority of the names unless you generalize them to the point of meaningless. This has been shown to you, over and over - yet you cling to your view.

Putting it this way: Ralvatore, the most pervasive Realms author, has introduced a huge number of non-conforming names. Over and over and over and over. How do I know they're non-conforming if there is no codified rules? Because they're all over the friggin place. If the most frequent contributors to the names of the Realms do not follow a set of rules you think exist about how to name something in the Realms...

And, by the way, do you know who was on special assignment to make sure that this game fit the D&D, FR and Sword Coast setting? Go look it up if you don't.
And it's particularly ludicrous to claim it's not a thing given how many people who aren't keen on the FR use it as a stick to bash it.
Hint: When you take a minority position in an argument, ludicrous is not a word that strengthens your position.
EDIT - Also really unimpressed with how you're treating Paul, who is just trying to be honest, and the faux-outrage and claims of "insults" re: him saying it is unpopular and likely to lead to bullying (both of which are true) looks really like you're trying to attack people rather than to discuss the issue.
Well, I'm certainly returning you to the block group, as well. Defending someone that is blindly insulting people and justifies it twice... bad look. I try to give prolific posters a second chance on occasions they tend to start threats on topics I care about, and it is annoying to need to work around them doing so, but this is ridiculous.
 

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Legio is arguing in an outright bad faith way. I'm not going to play with a bad faith actor, just because you want me to.
I find it absolutely hilarious that you accuse me of arguing in bad faith when, (1) I've sincerely asked you multiple times to provide sources and evidence on what these FR naming conventions supposedly are, and you either refuse to provide them or you can't, (2) multiple people within this thread also haven't seemed to discern what they are, and (3) your response to my very clear point that many previous FR-based games have characters that don't seem to have whatever your definition of an "FR name" is, is to nitpick at one innocuous statement on one of the names I mentioned and derail half the damn thread for it.

Someone's a bad faith actor in this thread, and it ain't me, chief. It also confirms my observations that a majority of the BG3 whinging out there is bad faith acting.
 

Where in the Anglosphere is it "popular"? Specifically?

If it's outside the top 100, I can't take a claim that it's popular seriously. It's lower than 500 in the UK. Lower than 600 in the US. I can't find data for it in NZ/Canada/Australia (perhaps I'm being dumb or bad at Google though).

In the UK, the last time it was in the top 100 was 1944 (89). That's before my dad was born, and he's over 70. The last time it was seriously popular, in the top 20, was 1860.

It's at least not uncommon, or unheard of. It's popularity level is certainly not relevant to what a hodgepodge FR naming conventions are (the convention is mostly the whims of Ed Greenwood or any other writer, near as I can tell).
 

There is no naming convention in FR.
it might be common for people to have a random coupling of sounds as a first name and a
Adjective+noun last name.

Gurand Hotforge.

But really... if the issue with BG3 is ‘teh namez are rong!!’ Then I’m in.
 



Someone's a bad faith actor in this thread, and it ain't me, chief. It also confirms my observations that a majority of the BG3 whinging out there is bad faith acting.

This is amazing and totally proves my point. Your second sentence is completely wild. Like, what exactly do you think is going on? I feel like I'm about to get told I'm a "paid troll" or something wonderful.

Well, I'm certainly returning you to the block group, as well. Defending someone that is blindly insulting people and justifies it twice... bad look. I try to give prolific posters a second chance on occasions they tend to start threats on topics I care about, and it is annoying to need to work around them doing so, but this is ridiculous.

Wow. Really doubling down on that "being realistic about how names get you treated is ABUSE!!!" eh? I mean, I thought FR naming style was a silly hill for me to die on, but you sure found a sillier one, so I guess that's a thing. Good job?

The FR wiki and getting it to do things like list all the names of Moon Elves should show that there are pretty clear style to FR names.

It's at least not uncommon, or unheard of. It's popularity level is certainly not relevant to what a hodgepodge FR naming conventions are (the convention is mostly the whims of Ed Greenwood or any other writer, near as I can tell).

It's certainly uncommon. Literally 82 kids were called that in 2016 (less more recently), out of nearly 700,000 born in the UK, and it's been in steep decline since the 1940s. A bunch of names I guarantee you think are uncommon are higher up that 500. There are dozens of mispellings of names that are, even by themselves, vastly more common.

The naming convention is Greenwood's style, certainly, yes. Some authors can naturally ape it and mostly do names in the same style. Some can't. I can, personally (not going to perform like a monkey in such a bad-tempered thread though).
 

This is such a weird argument.

The idea that it matters if the major NPCs in a BG game have names like Silverhand and Wyvernspur is absurd. Equally, the idea that those two names aren’t examples of a general type of name that is common in FR is also bonkers.

Agreed. I'm not saying it "matters" in the sense that like it'll make it a good game or not. I'm saying it's not likely to be a very FR-ish game. It's Larian. I give it 70/30 on that it's a good game, i.e. fun to play. Though based on previous efforts I would never buy near release - both DOS games got so much better in their re-release/enhanced versions that I felt like a total idiot buying them on release.

What I am skeptical of is that it will be in any meaningful way either:

1) A Baldur's Gate game. I think a lot of people are pretty skeptical about this.

2) A game set in the Forgotten Realms.

With the latter point, I guess my feeling is that this is like one of those shows set in "New York", but shot in Toronto, with Canadian actors (replete with Canadian accents), and not using any actual NY places or themes. Does that stop them being a good show? No. But it is a bit weird.

So is my obsession with this point, to be fair! :p
 


Stirring the hornet's nest a bit further.
A minor percentile of players (single digit) owning BG2 on Steam played it for over an hour.
Well below Steam average.

Triangulating that, most people claiming to be offended by it being turn based, statistically can't have played it on Steam, let alone completed it. Must have used their original physical copies ;)

RTWP doesn't lend itself well to a tactical game. If it requires hand-eye coordination and requires permanent attention to manage cooldowns, react on time and can screw you by having your camera positioned slightly off the action, there's room for improvement on the tactical layer.
RTWP doesn't lend itself well to Ironman runs/achievements. If you want a similar DnD experience to playing IRL with your friends, you'd want this feature.
That doesn't work in RTWP without stressing yourself out constantly and/or creating completely untouchable broken builds that can't be hit/killed by NPCs, yay immersive.
To make it possible for a 50+ hour campaign to be realistic with a single save, turn based just fits the bill better. A single miss click will cost you a stressful second while you wait for the roll on an attack of Opportunity you missed or worst case a diamond for a rezz.
Failing to notice a caster on the other side wind up a Fireball in RTWP means TPK - time to restart.

While I'm more on the against side regarding group Initiative, it definitely works better for multiplayer, speeds up turns, enables player combos (which is rewarding), and adds a layer of challenge if the AI can utilize it properly.
If the encounters are designed around it by making sure enemies spread out or add a CR or 2 over the DND "default" to compensate for player Advantage, I can see this working nicely. If anyone played XCOM Long War, the game is surprisingly fair at even the highest difficulty. You have all the tools to kill, disable or abuse AI, Aliens aren't much stronger than even on the Classic (Medium) difficulty (although every little bit can matter a lot due to how much RNG can swing if you ad a +1 in this game).
I'm hoping they can achieve something similar with BG3 or Solasta. Difficulty through well designed encounters and slightly stronger/more opponents/better AI would be great. Rather than the garbage attempt at difficulty that Pathfinder: Kingmaker or RPGs like Witcher 3 linke to think off as a job well done. Simply Increasing numbers - making builds and perks irrelevant that don't work with them.
When everything other than you has high HP and hits like a truck, an avoidance tank build will always outperform a high HP/Reduction/Resistance build (Touch AC was a particularly jarring problem with inflated to-hit numbers). Fortunately bounded Accuracy was pretty much designed to not go that route.
I'm looking forward to be unable to reduce dangerous opponents below 30-40% to hit (and then stackable with Disadvantage) rather than looking at something like 5% + Mirror Images.

The only thing necessary to make difficulty levels in a DnD 5E game work is to keep the Encounter XP the same on every difficulty. Even if Easy has one less Goblins than normal and Hard has one more. Same for Legendary Actions and Resistances for "bosses".

I personally find prebuffing as a default option for every second fight, you see coming grating. Either because it encourages you to reload for a besser result or because the game becomes a mile easier after you know exactly when a fight is coming after your first playthrough. "Ok lets redo that ambush, with precasted Spirit Guardians and Haste before I move into the tile that triggers it".

The one other thing aside from "bigger numbers is more hard, lol" that basically every RPG did wrong for the last few years is to equal more comfort options with a better experience.
Fast travel is a nice utility option in Skyrim and Oblivion, yet it takes away the few minutes it took you to get to the next Silt Strider and to the location you wanted to visit from there. You had a sense on wonder in Morrowind because you always had to leave from Civilisation into the wild. If you wanted to go to the deepest darkest places you had a bit of time to get into the mood for an expedition took a little detour and found an interesting landmark or dungeon you never knew was there. Most things were encountered while planning to go elsewhere and you had to find them for yourself. You didn't get 3 quests to fetch a Macguffin, kill a dude and fetch some berries from every place the devs wanted to show off their shiny reused assets like in Skyrim. There wasn't a collect X and set up your flag on every landmark quest or handy camp to rest in like in Dragon Age Inquisition.

I'd really like to see a game that strips down on the questing. Just points you in a general direction and encourages to go find things nobody told you to look for on the way again. We're never going to get our childlike sense of wonder back, but a big part of it was that no one assumed we need to held by the hand along every step of the way in the CRPGs we played as kids. Same thing for loot. Taking away the ability to pick up every iron dagger or sweetroll and the option to rob every merchant right where he stands is nothing you'll miss.

Combat is obviously the glue that holds most RPGs together (at least DnD based ones). 5E makes me pretty unconcerned about that though. It just lends itself to scaling very well by nature, bad rolls can be reasonable mitigated, you can fight things below your CR without getting bored and stuff way above without feeling completely outmatched.
 

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