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Baldur's Gate III released into Early Access

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  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    Pretty much
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    edited May 2020
    @kanisatha we will have to just agree to disagree on that I’m afraid. Whilst this small clip is not much to go by I feel like the gameplay footage Sven shows gave me a very Baldur’s Gate/Forgotten Realms feel. Whilst you are 100% correct that there are people in the twitter feed saying it feels like Divinity you fail to point out that here are also people that are speaking very positive about it. All down to opinion at the end of the day ?
    Post edited by byrne20 on
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    It's because they're using the same engine and there's only so much they can do to make things feel different, although I feel based on what we've seen, they do a decent job of making the character models look different and having their own style, but the environments are basically identical to Original Sin 2, there's not been any attempt to try and change the colour pallete, which I think is too vibrant, but mainly its difficult to differentiate these games at a glance, even when they're not the same series. On the other hand Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment managed to look quite different from Baldur's Gate in terms of their environmental design despite being the same engine and being subject to a lot of the same limitations and processes.

    byrne20ThacoBellSjerrie
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    edited May 2020
    @hybridial

    I think we haven’t seen enough scenery to fully judge that yet but yes I do think so far the colour palette is very similar. I don’t think it’s a bad thing but I’m not bothered either way by there being similarities in that department. They are using an upgraded engine as you point out at the end of the day so I think the scenery’s are going to stay similar but I 100% disagree that the Art style is the same as DOS as @kanisatha claimed. The character models alone are totally different. The scenery Is similar as you say but I am waiting until we see how the city of Baldur’s Gate looks in game at the moment until I fully judge this one. I think once I see the city in game and some more towns and actual landmark places that I may possibly recognise or have heard of I will feel pretty good about it. The bright colours do look similar to divinity however but I have no issue with that. I understand that at glance the forests do look similar but as soon as I see a character models it just doesn’t look like divinity to me I’m afraid. And the scenery is not what makes it look like a DOS game to me, it’s the character models that make DOS stand out to me and I don’t see that issue with BG3, They have captured the D&D races and how they look very well in my opinion. The halfling heads looked a tad large. But the Tieflings look amazing. Elves look good as well as Elves are probably one of the things I was not keen on in DOS. I found them a bit creepy to look at lol and I’m happy to see the forgotten realms elves looking a bit more how I imagine them. The female half elf in character creation looked great. And the drow as well.

    Just on the off chance does anyone happen to know if the Friendly Arm in still exists 100 years later after BG2? As I would also love to see that in this game.
    Post edited by byrne20 on
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    byrne20 wrote: »
    @hybridial And the scenery is not what makes it look like a DOS game to me, it’s the character models that make DOS stand out to me

    I look at it the other way, I do agree they've done a good job with the character models, but the scenery is the dominant factor because it is what you're going to be looking at most of the time when you're actually playing and doing that with a top down camera.

    It's not really a big deal, just something I can't help but notice.
    byrne20
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    edited May 2020
    hybridial wrote: »
    byrne20 wrote: »
    @hybridial And the scenery is not what makes it look like a DOS game to me, it’s the character models that make DOS stand out to me

    I look at it the other way, I do agree they've done a good job with the character models, but the scenery is the dominant factor because it is what you're going to be looking at most of the time when you're actually playing and doing that with a top down camera.

    It's not really a big deal, just something I can't help but notice.

    Yes the environment is totally D:OS cut-and-paste. But I also fully stand by my description of the character models being completely D:OS. They do not look D&D at all. They don't look even in the slightest to be different from D:OS characters.

    Plus, same engine should not matter at all. Many games are made in the industry using the same engine. For example, Unreal or Unity. Do those games all look the same? No, they don't. The engine does not matter. It's a matter of whether Larian wants to put in the effort and resources to create artwork unique to this game. And going by the comments made in several interviews, they themselves agree the game "looking" like a D:OS game is a criticism they're aware of and want to avoid that situation. But it seems to me they just want to have it both ways: keep the game looking like D:OS but have people perceive that it doesn't look like D:OS.
    SjerrieThacoBell
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    environment is DOS like BUT the mechanics seems very D&Dish.
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    environment is DOS like BUT the mechanics seems very D&Dish.

    Fair enough. I am happy to grant you that. And I know you well enough to understand that mechanics is the most important consideration for you. But for me, the setting is the most important consideration. By that I mean it is more than using FR names and words. It needs to look and feel like I'm in the Forgotten Realms. And by definition, if it looks and feels like I'm in Rivellon, then it automatically means I'm not in FR.
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    edited May 2020
    @kanisatha Well like I said we will have to agree to disagree because the character models do not resemble DOS in the slightest and look very much D&D to me.

    Also whilst I agree that the colours and scenery look similar they are not a total cut and paste as graphically they are much improved. So you happen to be factually incorrect there I am afraid.

    But you’re entitled to your opinion :smile:
    Adam_en_tium
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    kanisatha wrote: »
    They don't look even in the slightest to be different from D:OS characters.

    hj58g7olo9qk.png

    g6qo07u4cxtn.png

    I dunno, they don't really look identical to me.
    byrne20Adam_en_tiumBallpointManSkatan
  • DinoDinDinoDin Member Posts: 1,567
    Hard to say anything about the scenery at this point, for me. But the characters do not like the cutesy style that is now the signature of the OS games, for me. If anything the game still strikes me as looking very much like Dragon Age Origins.

    Frankly, I dunno how anyone splits hairs between Rivellon, FR at this stage. I don't think it's surprising that people have come to a conclusion that they previously intimated they would arrive at. These are both high fantasy realms, so I'm not sure what specifically defines FR about the backgrounds versus Rivellon.
    byrne20BallpointMan
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    edited May 2020
    @hybridial very nice example. And the exact reason why I find elves a bit strange in DOS lol There is just something very alien about the design.
  • CahirCahir Member, Moderator, Translator (NDA) Posts: 2,819
    kanisatha wrote: »
    environment is DOS like BUT the mechanics seems very D&Dish.

    Fair enough. I am happy to grant you that. And I know you well enough to understand that mechanics is the most important consideration for you. But for me, the setting is the most important consideration. By that I mean it is more than using FR names and words. It needs to look and feel like I'm in the Forgotten Realms. And by definition, if it looks and feels like I'm in Rivellon, then it automatically means I'm not in FR.

    And what exactly is FR looks and feel for you? This is genuine question, not a bait. I curious, because for me IWD arts looks much more FR-ish than BG/BG2 arts. I find IWD graphics and arts to be one of the most atmospheric on the market. I guess since I'm completely unfamiliar with 5ed FR lore, to feel proper FR vibe, BG3 would need to give it to me more by arts and music, than by lore references. But to be honest, to capture this IWD feeling... I'm not sure if any studio could pull it off.
    DinoDin
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    @Cahir the first time I played Icewind Dale it was honestly mesmerising. The music and the setting are just so atmospheric.
    CahirRedRodentThacoBellKamigoroshi
  • CahirCahir Member, Moderator, Translator (NDA) Posts: 2,819
    byrne20 wrote: »
    @Cahir the first time I played Icewind Dale it was honestly mesmerising. The music and the setting are just so atmospheric.

    This and also location design. In BG1 and BG2 there are a couple of top-notch location designs, but I feel that location design in IWD is top-notch from the beginning to the very end. There is literally no location that feels out of place or unnecessary. There is always a nook and cranny to check, there is always something interesting to happen, a well-placed monster or a group of monsters, an interesting infopoint, an useful item. What seems to be the main gripe for many is that it's much more fight oriented than BG(2), but honestly I find it surprisingly refreshing. It's simple yet entertaining. Boy, I just literally can boot it up just for the music. But where I really think IWD shines in terms of FR vibe is that it's FULL of lore, a wet dream for FR enthusiasts. I remember there was a fantastic topic by @Grond0, who dissected the lore and story behind The Severed Hand. This was very illuminating and showed how much truthful to the FR lore was this game.
    RedRodent
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    @cahir

    Yeah I love Baldur’s Gate 1&2 but I also love Icewind Dale. The music is amazing. And I agree that the locations are great.

    The sword Coast from BG1 will always hold a special place in my heart as it was my first real forgotten realms experience but I 100% appreciate Icewind Dale for the great game that it is. That music when when you walk into Kuldahar is a stand out for me. I always loved it.

    The Severed Hand is a great part of the game. I would always search every corner and read all the descriptions of every unique item I found to get more of the history.

    The vale of Shadows was also a personal favourite of mine as well :)
  • hybridialhybridial Member Posts: 291
    edited May 2020
    I find that there hasn't really been any 3D CRPG that has the kind of natural location design that the Infinity engine games had. Remember how most older CRPGs before the Infinity games were rather prone to very grid like level design? Well that was returned to hardcore in Neverwinter Nights in 3D. Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny and Torment Tides of Numenera are probably the closest, given their use of 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. They were more detailed but often smaller in scope.

    I'm playing Icewind Dale just now for the first time properly, I've made it to Upper Dorn's keep. Really enjoying it so far.

    Oh and the sound design and music of the Infinity Engine are so damn amazing I think they summoned Apollo somehow to do it :p
    byrne20DinoDinThacoBell
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    edited May 2020
    @hybridial Oh and the sound design and music of the Infinity Engine are so damn amazing I think they summoned Apollo somehow to do it :p

    Ha ha love this ? But also very true :smile:

    I have not played Tyranny or Torment Tides of Numenera but I have heard good things. I will try to get around to giving them a try at some point I think.
  • DinoDinDinoDin Member Posts: 1,567
    Tyranny is decent. Definitely held me long enough for one playthrough. And it's not a major commitment of time, you can beat it, while seeing most of the content in 20-30 hours. Good usage of choice, very similar in its RP elements to New Vegas, very much about faction alignment. Even the world building is kind of similar.

    It really suffers in the combat system however. Just an extremely weak aspect of the game. It's both quite easy and quite repetitive. The small bestiary is a problem. The usage of cooldowns is also pretty bad.

    It's unfortunate because they also crafted a highly interesting spell casting system. You sort of construct spells out of phrases, it's all very intuitive, fits with the world, and pretty original in the subgenre. But the problem is you never need to test that at a high level.
  • BallpointManBallpointMan Member Posts: 1,659
    edited May 2020
    Statue looked janky AF - but that doesnt really matter a whole lot to me. Hopefully it'll be polished up a bit more before release. The magic effects look outstanding, and that's exciting.

    I love the sense of verticality such as the scene of the character walking along the rafters. That's super cool, and very D&D.

    The color palette is pretty vibrant, but I really dont have any issue with that. BG didnt invent FR, and while the water color style of palette was a little more faded in the BG franchise, I think it's fine to have more vibrancy in the environment. It wasnt ostentatious - just less faded. It didnt look bad, so I dont think this is something I'm going to care overly much about.

    At the end of the day, it looks like a game made by Larian. That's what we knew we were getting. As long as they do a good job with it, I'll be happy.
    byrne20DinoDin
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    byrne20 wrote: »
    Also whilst I agree that the colours and scenery look similar they are not a total cut and paste as graphically they are much improved. So you happen to be factually incorrect there I am afraid.

    But I very clearly did not say anything about graphics quality. I'm talking about art-style, not graphics. You can take the same art-style and improve the graphics quality of it, but it still remains the same art-style.
    Cahir wrote: »
    And what exactly is FR looks and feel for you?

    This is a good question, and I would agree with you and others that the answer is not any one thing. For me, it is not really about what it should be as it is about what it should NOT be. So I cannot tell you definitively this is what the FR should look like. I can tell you it should NOT look like Rivellon. But going further, the FR was fashioned on medieval Europe, but BG3 looks more renneissance period.

    Having said this, though, over on the Larian subforum this same topic is being discussed. There, someone posted artwork from D&D 5e for githyanki, tiefling, etc., and the images from the trailer look pretty close. So I am willing to concede the issue may be more about what 5e D&D artwork looks like rather than this looking like Rivellon. For me, that 5e D&D artwork just looks hideous and horrible, a complete departure from the art-style of previous D&D editions. I can always accept incremental changes over time, but the 5e art-style is literally anime/comic book style artwork, and I hate it. So the blame may not be on Larian, but rather on WotC and the extent to which they have bastardized the D&D art-style in 5e. Larian may be faithfully following 5e D&D art-style, with the problem being that the D&D art-style in 5e has become something hideous, awful, and over-the-top cartoonish.
    ThacoBellSjerrie
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    Kanisatha wrote: Yes the environment is totally D:OS cut-and-paste.

    @kanisatha My point was as you clearly said above that it cannot be a total cut and paste job otherwise it would look identical. That is factually incorrect as whilst it does resemble DOS environments, they are not cut and pasted as you very clearly indicated above otherwise I would be able to recognise exact areas from DOS and point them out. Can you do that? I don’t think so. The environments are clearly original in design.

    I appreciate however that you have now clarified that it is the art style that you think is the same in which case as far as the environments go I shall not provide an argument because I don’t actually disagree yet. I would like to see how they are rendering a lot of the towns and cities before I make a full judgement. However I would like to point out the the crash site that Sven started at in the gameplay demo was artistically nothing like anything I’ve seen in DOS before so this fact alone gives me a positive out look and I hope that when we see the City of Baldur’s Gate in game that it’s gonna look great.
    DinoDin
  • kanisathakanisatha Member Posts: 1,308
    byrne20 wrote: »
    @kanisatha My point was as you clearly said above that it cannot be a total cut and paste job otherwise it would look identical. That is factually incorrect as whilst it does resemble DOS environments, they are not cut and pasted as you very clearly indicated above otherwise I would be able to recognise exact areas from DOS and point them out. Can you do that? I don’t think so. The environments are clearly original in design.

    Oh common on. This is nitpicking. When I said cut-and-paste, it should have been obvious I was exaggerating to make my point and not saying it was literally cut-and-paste. Of course they haven't literally cut scenes out of D:OS and put them into this game. But the art assets seem to me to be the same ones used in the D:OS games, for example the art assets for things like trees and bushes and rocks and walls, etc. And that also then goes to what else I said, which was that when this point was brought up earlier, not just by me but also by others including gaming journos, the counterargument offered was that the use of those same art assets from D:OS were placeholders, and that eventually they would be replaced with art assets specifically created for this game. That, ultimately, was my point, that they did not appear to be placeholders but rather the actual final versions of the art assets.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    hybridial wrote: »
    kanisatha wrote: »
    They don't look even in the slightest to be different from D:OS characters.

    hj58g7olo9qk.png

    g6qo07u4cxtn.png

    I dunno, they don't really look identical to me.

    If somebody showed me this and said that it was the same character in two different games in a series, I'd totally believe it.
    kanisatha
  • scriverscriver Member Posts: 2,072
    I dunno man. So far I don't think elves in BGIII look particularly like the weird proportion elves of DOS2. Might need a few full length pictures to make a real comparison though.
    DinoDinbyrne20
  • SjerrieSjerrie Member Posts: 1,234
    scriver wrote: »
    I dunno man. So far I don't think elves in BGIII look particularly like the weird proportion elves of DOS2. Might need a few full length pictures to make a real comparison though.

    The game footage Sven showed a while ago did make them seem like more "normal" elves. D:OS-elves kinda look more like 3.5e tieflings to me.
    scriver
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    @kanisatha fair enough. We obviously got our wires crossed.

    Even if they use the same assets for some of their trees, rocks, grass I see absolutely no issue with this. As long as the actual cities and areas are well designed then it’s fine by me. The environments are clearly upgraded graphically anyway so I personally don’t see the issue as long as the actual things that matter like the landmarks, towns, cities stay true to the forgotten realms which so far we can’t really judge as we haven’t seen any.
  • byrne20byrne20 Member Posts: 503
    @scriver you are indeed correct. The elves in DOS have a very different look (especially body shape) to the ones we have already seen from BG3. The ones seen in the BG3 footage so far are much more forgotten realms/D&D accurate. Anyone saying otherwise is grasping at straws in my personal opinion as those two pictures shown above don’t look anything alike.

    Another thing to point out is the armour designs worn by elves In DOS. They look very unique as shown in the picture above.
    DinoDinBallpointManscriverSjerrie
  • scriverscriver Member Posts: 2,072
    If I decide to pay into the EA, who's with me for starting a campaign to make the halfling heads less rugratsy?
    BallpointMan
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