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.

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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.

 

[jgsugden]

You'll all be eating your words when you find the Arrow of Telekinetic Stabilization and Movement.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This complaint really makes no sense. I was unaware that the Realms, and particularly the Sword Coast, had a "look" it was supposed to conform to. What is that exactly?

Yeah the city looks exactly like I imagine when I think of Baldur’s Gate or Waterdeep.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This complaint really makes no sense. I was unaware that the Realms, and particularly the Sword Coast, had a "look" it was supposed to conform to. What is that exactly?

So, you preemptively dismiss this as "makes no sense", then sneer a bit, then ask a question which you've already dismissed the answer to? That doesn't feel like you're operating in good faith or want an actual answer.

In case, you do, and were just being clumsy, FR art has been pretty consistent on this, including previous games. People on the Sword Coast dress colourfully, in a slightly Ren Faire way. The Sword Coast is a pretty green/verdant area. Elves in the FR are unusual colours (Gold/Sun Elves, Silver/Moon Elves, etc.). Typically elves also look like elves, with angular features, angled eyes, and so on. And the Forgotten Realms famously, and utterly undeniably has a specific style of naming. It's such a thing that some people get pissed off by it.

From BG3 so far, it appears that literally the only thing here they're follow is the ren-faire-ish clothes. But they're monochrome or earth tones instead of the colourful stuff we'd expect. The Sword Coast looks like a scrubby bit of desert-adjacent Spain, strangely very similar to certain areas in previous Larian games. None of the elves we've seen appear to fit with FR Elf appearances, instead looking like normal humans with elf ears stuck on. None of the characters have FR-ish names, which is downright bizarre, especially as several have extremely un-FR-ish names, and it's not exactly hard to come up with appropriate names.

The city might be fine - what we saw in the first teaser looked okay, but it wasn't game footage. But apart from that, all the stuff that looked good has been non-FR stuff - Githyanki, Illithids and their gear, and so on.

My expectation is that this is a BG game and a game set in the FR in name only. It might still be a perfectly good game, but it's pretty weird to choose such a specific setting, then ignore the aesthetics, especially when WotC are helping.

 

[Demetrios1453]

So, you preemptively dismiss this as "makes no sense", then sneer a bit, then ask a question which you've already dismissed the answer to? That doesn't feel like you're operating in good faith or want an actual answer.

In case, you do, and were just being clumsy, FR art has been pretty consistent on this, including previous games. People on the Sword Coast dress colourfully, in a slightly Ren Faire way. The Sword Coast is a pretty green/verdant area. Elves in the FR are unusual colours (Gold/Sun Elves, Silver/Moon Elves, etc.). Typically elves also look like elves, with angular features, angled eyes, and so on. And the Forgotten Realms famously, and utterly undeniably has a specific style of naming. It's such a thing that some people get pissed off by it.

From BG3 so far, it appears that literally the only thing here they're follow is the ren-faire-ish clothes. But they're monochrome or earth tones instead of the colourful stuff we'd expect. The Sword Coast looks like a scrubby bit of desert-adjacent Spain, strangely very similar to certain areas in previous Larian games. None of the elves we've seen appear to fit with FR Elf appearances, instead looking like normal humans with elf ears stuck on. None of the characters have FR-ish names, which is downright bizarre, especially as several have extremely un-FR-ish names, and it's not exactly hard to come up with appropriate names.

The city might be fine - what we saw in the first teaser looked okay, but it wasn't game footage. But apart from that, all the stuff that looked good has been non-FR stuff - Githyanki, Illithids and their gear, and so on.

My expectation is that this is a BG game and a game set in the FR in name only. It might still be a perfectly good game, but it's pretty weird to choose such a specific setting, then ignore the aesthetics, especially when WotC are helping.

Climate-wise, the Sword Coast goes from tundra to desert. In the original BG game, you could explore dry grassland and desert zones all within a few days travel from Baldur's Gate itself.

Elves within the Realms can have odd skin coloration, but don't have to.

 

[Oofta]

Climate-wise, the Sword Coast goes from tundra to desert. In the original BG game, you could explore dry grassland and desert zones all within a few days travel from Baldur's Gate itself.

Elves within the Realms can have odd skin coloration, but don't have to.

Hey now, obviously the game will be horrible because it doesn't exactly fit someone's imagined picture of a fictional region. Game play? Story? Fun encounter structure? Details that almost no one will ever notice based on specific art when there are thousands of images to choose from? Meaningless!

I have no idea if this will be a good game or not. I hope it is because I enjoy this style of game now and then. I'd love to see a resurgence of this style of CCRPG. While no game (video game or table top) is ever going to work for everyone, Larian's previous games have been generally well received.

We won't know until we can actually play the game and see more than an alpha build snippet here and there.

 

[jgsugden]

So, you preemptively dismiss this as "makes no sense", then sneer a bit, then ask a question which you've already dismissed the answer to? That doesn't feel like you're operating in good faith or want an actual answer.

It sounds like there is a lack of respect for the comment to which they are responding.

In case, you do, and were just being clumsy, ...

Speaking of lack of respect...

FR art has been pretty consistent on this, including previous games. People on the Sword Coast dress colourfully, in a slightly Ren Faire way. The Sword Coast is a pretty green/verdant area. Elves in the FR are unusual colours (Gold/Sun Elves, Silver/Moon Elves, etc.)...

Within 200 miles of the Baldur's Gate you have the Troll Claws and Troll Hills, both of which would match the scenery seen... which is relevant because...

...The city might be fine - what we saw in the first teaser looked okay, but it wasn't game footage. But apart from that, all the stuff that looked good has been non-FR stuff - Githyanki, Illithids and their gear, and so on...

The city was not Baldur's Gate. It was Yartar, located 800 miles north from Baldur's Gate. One of the videos clarifies that point. All the action seen to date takes place a good distance from Baldur's Gate as part of the adventure will be getting to Baldur's Gate. 800 miles is the distance from San Francisco to Seattle, roughly.

The starting story - your PCs are kidnapped from Yartar, far from Baldur's Gate. They're infected with an illithid worm and then the nautiloid the illithid are piloting crashes. They are trying to find curative magic to kill the tadpoll in them before they die. At this point in the story, Baldur's Gate has not even been referenced.

 

[Var]

Between this and Solasta: Crown of the Magister we're bound to get at least 1 decent game, right?
For me personally turn based with 5E rules is both a massive improvement over DOS split armor system (never got quite over how much I hated that an optimized party is focused on targeting the same kind of defenses) and AD&D/3.5/Pathfinder rules slapped into RTWP.
The only time that ever worked properly for me was Dragon Age Origins, when you could program the AI so it would act like you wanted most of the time without requiring attention.

inb4 "mUh RTwP" and "iTs DOS3 oMg"

Gotta be honest the perfectionist in me just doesn't want to lose an Ironman run by messing up my reaction time. Or Ironman runs being based around impossible to hit brainafk builds slogging through hours of watching meaningless combat play itself out.
XCOM Long War, Ironman Impossible, that's my jam. Turn based 5E rules and a big moddable game are gonna be the closest thing to hope I had for the last 5 years to scratch the itch.

Surely pure coincidence that PoE Deadfire had turn based mode added and Pathfinder 2 is gonna have have turn based (after the mod providing it for Kingmaker inexplicably got popular for now apparent reason, weird).

Just getting too old to play Mobas, FPS and pay attention all the time man.

 

[Zaukrie]

Between this and Solasta: Crown of the Magister we're bound to get at least 1 decent game, right?
For me personally turn based with 5E rules is both a massive improvement over DOS split armor system (never got quite over how much I hated that an optimized party is focused on targeting the same kind of defenses) and AD&D/3.5/Pathfinder rules slapped into RTWP.
The only time that ever worked properly for me was Dragon Age Origins, when you could program the AI so it would act like you wanted most of the time without requiring attention.


Gotta be honest the perfectionist in me just doesn't want to lose an Ironman run by messing up my reaction time. Or Ironman runs being based around impossible to hit brainafk builds slogging through hours of watching meaningless combat play itself out.
XCOM Long War, Ironman Impossible, that's my jam. Turn based 5E rules and a big moddable game are gonna be the closest thing to hope I had for the last 5 years to scratch the itch.

Surely pure coincidence that PoE Deadfire had turn based mode added and Pathfinder 2 is gonna have have turn based (after the mod providing it for Kingmaker inexplicably got popular for now apparent reason, weird).

Just getting too old to play Mobas, FPS and pay attention all the time man.

I have high confidence in Solasta after playing the demo and watching all their updates.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I have high confidence in Solasta after playing the demo and watching all their updates.

Yeah the graphics aren’t quite there for me, but the gameplay looks great!

And to be clear, my issue with the graphics is simply that it isn’t AAA level quality “video game realism”, but seems to be trying to get there. I’d prefer them just go with a little more stylized look and make it look good. The characters just look...vaguely weird and wooden in the face.

But that isn’t gonna stop me playing it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

World of Warcraft got a lot of crap back in the day for not trying to be hyperrealistic with their graphics, as EverQuest 2 and others were trying to do, but in the long run, that looks like the right choice to me. State of the art gets dated very fast -- look at the cinematics for Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, which were considered incredibly realistic at the time and now are nightmare fuel for all the wrong reasons.