@DinoDin You do realize a lot of people here are devs themselves (including those that work for Beamdog), right?
Regulations are in place to prevent that exact thing you are advocating for. Not just in gaming, but in most areas. Dictatorships in the name of art are no better than dictatorships in other walks of life. It's not a good enough excuse to just say "But creative control!!!!"
Video games are not paintings. Many people work on them, and synergy between fans and developers has always been key to a flourishing industry (contrary to what you seem to think). There has to be at least some semblance of a hive mind, because you are selling your product to possibly millions of people. That doesn't mean sacrificing your creative input. It means tuning it to the same frequency as the community you are representing. Otherwise you are just making video games *you* would like to play....and that makes absolutely no sense.
Developers making games they would want to play sounds like the best formula for churning out truly classic titles. Pretty sure if the unknown at the time studio of Bioware announced they were making a D&D game with realtime combat it would have been vetoed by that era's fanbase.
I'm aware some Beamdog employees comment here. And, coincidentally, they're the ones who actually post the most optimistic and open-minded takes on what Larian is doing.
thats a bad example. besides fallout 1 and 2 crpgs were kinda dead before baldurs gate 1. if anything it revived them.
It's not a bad example. There's a certain subset of CRPG gamers and tabletop fans who, to this day, still decry realtime combat as a dumbing down of the genre. It's not a point of view that has validity, imo. But it is just as narrow of a view as one that insists BG has to have realtime.
Editing to add: To be a bit pedantic about the history here, it's true CRPG's went through something of a market crash in the mid 90s, but it's not like there wasn't a fanbase there, that had certain expectations. Especially expectations about a tabletop system that went back to the 70s! Which had numerous successful CRPG titles under its banner. I mean classics like the two Ultima 7 games released in 1992 and 1993, the final Gold Box titles came out in 1992, and BG came out in 1998. It's not like there was some whole generational gap where people simply stopped playing these games. We're talking about nothing more than a five year gap here.
My original feeling about this game was annoyance, as I saw it as another example of something that I might at most have a passing interest in unconvincingly masquerading as something I would deeply care about. However, that was some time ago and the feeling has passed, leaving apathy in its place.
What's still disappointing for me (and perhaps some others) isn't that the game is not going to be what I personally would have wanted to play. I already have tons of really good games to play and my backlog is enormous. Rather, it has to do with legacy and what we value in works of art.
I can't speak for anyone else, but to me, Baldur's Gate represents an assortment of values that transcend mere fandom and cross the threshold into whatever it is that people feel when they call things masterpieces because their grasp on language fails them every time they try to describe what it is that makes them special. It's the sort of values that might make you play through a long format game a hundred or more times, regard it as a companion that helps you through the struggles in your life, and have an affinity for it that closely approximates what you feel for a person you love. These are values that helped shape us into who we are, and that we'll hold dear as long as we live.
So the actual source of my disappointment isn't that there won't be another one of that truly special thing for me to appreciate, that would be an absurd thing to expect. Rather, it's that whoever decided to make a descendant to that work of art, using its name and identity to create something new, had the unique opportunity to take those values that make it special, cherish them like so many of us clearly do, reintroduce them into a world where they're mostly forgotten, and teach them to a new generation of future art connoisseurs so that they too may grow to cherish them and carry that flag forward.
Instead, they decided to throw those values away and substitute them with ones that are far more common and ubiquitous. It's apparent that whoever did that doesn't have the same appreciation for those values, and that's perfectly fine, we all value different things. However, that does mean that as far as I'm concerned, they weren't the right people for the job.
To be clear, I don't blame the people at Larian Studios, they're just making the game they were tasked to make. The blame falls on whoever it was that set—or failed to set—the priorities and expectations for that task, because they were so preoccupied with business decisions that they either didn't notice or didn't care that they were doing a disservice to an outstanding artistic legacy.
In an attempt to better understand your disappointment, @Adul - can you specifically define or enumerate those values that the Baldur's Gate franchise had as a work of art, and which you believe that BG3 has thrown away?
It seems to be they must be discreet things if we know BG had them and that BG3 doesnt (In fairness, so you know - I plan to follow up by asking how we know that BG3 will not have those values. So you can head me off at the pass, if you'd like).
However, they are bringing back iconic BG companions, ie minsc and jaheira.
Minsc after 100 years? I am really curious how Minsc will show up after 100 years. Hopefully they don't just change his race from a Human into an Elf...
So much of this is that we can't escape our own nostalgia. I am guilty of it as well. I doubt ANY RPGs are ever going to do for me what Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Might and Magic VI and Morrowind did. Because my iron-clad perception is that gaming was more "pure" then than it is now. It's the same way no album by a modern band will ever be as legendary as Led Zeppelin IV or Sticky Fingers. We've moved out of the time when anything had mystique. Everything is dissected and torn apart long before it's even released. On day one, we have build and boss guides for everything. The world has shifted. But does that mean the games are worse?? I think there is an ARPG (Grim Dawn) that is legitimately better than Diablo 2, but I still don't "feel" the same about it.
It's the same reason people are disappointed when new Star Wars movies aren't what they remember. You encountered them at your MOST impressionable, and you played Baldur's Gate at what you viewed as the absolute pinnacle of PC gaming (and hey, I think it was too). Nothing is ever going to satisfy anyone who insists on viewing it through this lens. I know firsthand, because I do it with music. Anything made after the turn of the clock onto the year 2000 is persona non grata to me. Occasionally, I do find things I think are wonderful that have been made in the last 20 years, but I don't find a 1/10th as much as I could because I am absolutely certain in my mind that what was made from 1950-1999 is better and my listening habits reflect that.
However, they are bringing back iconic BG companions, ie minsc and jaheira.
Minsc after 100 years? I am really curious how Minsc will show up after 100 years. Hopefully they don't just change his race from a Human into an Elf...
IIRC - it's nothing like that. I think there was a comic in which a wild mage accidentally transformed a statue of Minsc in Baldur's Gate into a flesh and blood version. The kicker is: It's not clear that it was actually Minsc (who must have been turned into stone at some point if that's the case) or if its a statue that thinks its Minsc due to the wild magic.
Philosophically, it's an interesting idea. Conceptually - I'm pretty meh on it. High fantasy is high fantasy, but if you're setting a game 100 years into the future, shoe-horning the most popular character in when he has no real reason to be there seems like its pandering. I'm not a fan.
(For the record - I didnt read the comic. If I got part of that wrong, I'm sure someone will come correct me - but I think the broad strokes are correct).
I am very dissapointed as well. There is literally nothing in the BG3-preview that reminds me of Baldur‘s Gate. I understand they have to change a lot of stuff to create a modern look and feel. But I get the feeling that this game was already done before it got the BG-license.
Since Fallout was mentioned earlier in this thread I would like to take this game as a good example how to transcend an old game into a new gaming era.
I was a huge fan of Fallout 2 and loved Fallout 3 right from the start. They changed the gameplay completely, but the look and feel was still 100% Fallout. There were vaults, that humor, the VATS and the factions for example. There was a lot of reminiscence and respect right from the start for the franchise Black Isle created so many years before.
After watching the BG3 premiere I would be so happy to find only one small hint that there is a reason why it deserves the name Baldur‘s Gate, but there is 0d0.
And the combat system of the demo slows down gameplay to 20% of the original BG-gameplay. After one hour in BG2, chances are great you would have emerged from Château Irenicus - while in BG3, you are still stuck in some minor turn-based fight.
Let‘s not waste time on idle battles.
Instead, they decided to throw those values away and substitute them with ones that are far more common and ubiquitous. It's apparent that whoever did that doesn't have the same appreciation for those values, and that's perfectly fine, we all value different things. However, that does mean that as far as I'm concerned, they weren't the right people for the job.
To be clear, I don't blame the people at Larian Studios, they're just making the game they were tasked to make. The blame falls on whoever it was that set—or failed to set—the priorities and expectations for that task, because they were so preoccupied with business decisions that they either didn't notice or didn't care that they were doing a disservice to an outstanding artistic legacy.
Personally, I just don't see any evidence for these claims. We haven't played the game yet. And the one gameplay video now available is a tiny window into the final product. I'd be curious to know what specifically violates the "values" of the original BG series.
And it's just not the case that what Larian is pursuing in the game is something "more common and ubiquitous" in gaming. Action RPG's like Assassin's Creed or Skyrim out sell the turn-based RPG's by quite a factor. So, the big feature break from the previous titles isn't much of a move towards something that's all that common. If Larian wanted to go the cash grab route, that would have been the path.
To me, the gameplay footage we just saw shows a game that's combining inspiration from the original series, the Sin games, and Dragon:Age Origins. I dunno man, a lot of hardcore tabletop fans are what helped boost sales for Sin series. It seems like Larian has found something that appeals to the same thing that drew fans to BG back in the late 90s.
In an attempt to better understand your disappointment, @Adul - can you specifically define or enumerate those values that the Baldur's Gate franchise had as a work of art, and which you believe that BG3 has thrown away?
If time was not a factor, you could look at a painting forever and keep getting new, increasingly refined impressions from the experience. Even after a thousand years it would still inspire new thoughts. Artistic experiences—or really experiences of any kind—are not definable through any finite medium, such as a forum reply. What you're asking me to do is impossible.
When you look at footage from Baldur's Gate, how do you know that you're looking at footage from Baldur's Gate? Is it the party size of six? Is it the movement of the viewport? Is it the birds chirping in the forest? Is it the sinister music you hear while the party is traveling in the night? Is it the real time combat that you can pause? Is it the fireball spell that finishes off legions of xvarts before the battle even begins? Is it the atmosphere of lighthearted adventure? Is it the weirdly anachronistic plot about corporate corruption in a high fantasy romp? Is it the similarly anachronistic 70s style sofas you see in almost every house? Is it the sound the stone buttons on the GUI make when they're pressed? Is it the highly unintuitive way attack rolls are calculated? Is it the realistically rendered trees? Is it the Candlekeep watchers holding their quarterstaves? Is it the horns sticking out of the helmets of every party member? Is it the striking juxtaposition of cosmopolitan and rural environments? Is it the duality of the game's writing taking itself very seriously and not at all seriously at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence? Is it the ogre chunking one of the main characters? Is it the thief party member failing to hide in shadows twenty-five times in a row?
No, it is all of those things and literally millions more.
Let's be clear here, the impressions that we receive from experiencing any work of art are a subjective affair. However, they are inspired by an object—the work of art itself, in this case a piece of code that makes up a program that runs on a piece of hardware. When you compare two works of art, your impressions of the similarities and differences between them are subjective, but they're inspired by real similarities and differences between the objects that you're examining.
When I look at the footage from BG3 that was posted here, it reminds me of Divinity: Original Sin, and to a lesser extent it reminds me of Dragon Age. What it doesn't remind me of is Baldur's Gate. That's because the game shown has more apparent meaningful similarities with Divinity and Dragon Age than it has with Baldur's Gate. You could say that sure, the footage shown looks like it has very little in common with Baldur's Gate, but it's possible that there are many other similarities between the two games that are not shown in the footage. However, that's wishful thinking and you have no reasonable cause for assuming that. It's more logical to work off the assumption that what they're showing us is largely representative of what the whole game is like and they aren't hiding all the Baldur's Gateness in some other parts of the game.
On the other hand, when you compare Baldur's Gate with Pillars of Eternity, sure, many, many aspects of the game are still as far away from BG as BG3 is. But other aspects are much closer. If you view footage from PoE, it is immediately obvious that the developers made many attempts to conserve what they felt made Baldur's Gate... well, Baldur's Gate, through their work. And to a limited extent they've succeeded. If PoE took place somewhere in the Forgotten Realms and they slapped the Baldur's Gate 3 title on it, I wouldn't be as disappointed, as I can immediately tell they obviously put a lot of thought and effort into taking values from a 20-year-old game and translating them into a modern format. With Larian's BG3, that is simply not the case.
It is pretty much D:OS3 with 5th Edition D&D rules. For some people this is good news, for others not so much. Some people are challenging this, so let's look at some things that explain my thoughts on this. I won't talk much about TB vs RTvP because I think this has been discussed a lot.
UI: this is pretty much D:OS2. Some people say the UI is easy to change, but I think whether you go for a minimalistic approach as in BG 1&2 or an all information on screen approach like D:OS and BG 3 is a pretty fundamental decision. We see a lot of information overlaid on the game window: detection ranges, health bars, minimap, character names, etc.
Art-style: BG relied a lot of hand-painted elements for the UI, for character portraits, maps, etc... now everything seems to go through the 3D Rendering pipeline. While the use of hand-painted art was partially due to technical limitation in the old games, but I think POE 2 has some really beautiful combination of hand-painted elements and 3D.
Mobility: this one is fairly specific, but one of the definining elements of D:OS2 combat is super mobility. Almost every character and enemy has either a short-range teleport, a jump, some sort of shadow-step or tunneling ability. Now in BG 3 every characters gets the tadpole powered jump ability which feels very similar to me. I think it is significant to mention this as here they actually add on top of the DnD 5th edition rules to make the gameplay effectively more similar to D:OS.
Epicness: it starts on a very epic note. This is not a good thing for me - I think a campaign starting at low level should be much more down to earth in the beginning, instead of introducing Mind Flayers and Dragons from the very start. I feel this is also relevant for the characters and their origin stories: every single one of them screams I am very special. None of them feels like they should be level 1 characters.
Origin Stories: they are straight out of D:OS 2 of course. I know a lot of people liked those, but to me it always felt like a choice between playing a character created by someone else or missing out on important content.
Some good things regardless of whether you want D:OS 3 or a more classical BG.
Graphics: they look really nice, except the halfling enemy looked really weird and the arrow arcs are very off at short range.
Rules: I think one of the main weakness of D:OS was the rule-system for character development and combat. Using DnD 5th edition should be a real improvement.
Finally, one thing I really noticed: at no point during the presentation they talked about the original series. But they referenced their own games a lot.
For me it more or less confirms my expectation: will probably be a good RPG, but it won't be Baldur's Gate.
One thing that really jumps out to me in the screenshots is the little Magic Missile Icon and some of the other icons that really bring that Baldur’s Gate feel. I know it’s only a small thing and that most of you in here will find reasons to be negative about this but the magic missile symbol alone makes me nostalgic
I mean, part of this is that Obsidian may have jumped the gun by about 5 years. Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 are in every way MEANT to be modern Infinity Engine games. That is not only the core of their gameplay with real-time pause, it's the core of why they even EXIST in the first place. This is no market for that series without real-time with pause nostalgia, just like there isn't much of a market for Ion Fury or Dusk if you aren't already familiar with Duke Nukem and Quake.
I don't know if they were even interested in the D&D license. With as much care as they put into making an entirely new world with those games (including a totally separate physical card game if you can believe it), it seems to me they were content to move forward without doing so.
Baldur's Gate 3 isn't really a nostalgia product. It's not really selling itself as a gateway to 20 years ago like alot of the other games from the Kickstarter-era have. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a legitimately established modern title. Of course it has DNA of everything that came before it, but Larian's last two games were not totally relying on feelings about old titles like Pillars and Tides of Numenara were. Those games were successful because they were explicitly selling you a hall-pass to your youth. Baldur's Gate 3 is using the name, but they don't clearly don't feel bound by having to ONLY cater to people who have been doing no-reload SCS runs for the past decade.
It is pretty much D:OS3 with 5th Edition D&D rules. For some people this is good news, for others not so much. Some people are challenging this, so let's look at some things that explain my thoughts on this. I won't talk much about TB vs RTvP because I think this has been discussed a lot.
UI: this is pretty much D:OS2. Some people say the UI is easy to change, but I think whether you go for a minimalistic approach as in BG 1&2 or an all information on screen approach like D:OS and BG 3 is a pretty fundamental decision. We see a lot of information overlaid on the game window: detection ranges, health bars, minimap, character names, etc.
Art-style: BG relied a lot of hand-painted elements for the UI, for character portraits, maps, etc... now everything seems to go through the 3D Rendering pipeline. While the use of hand-painted art was partially due to technical limitation in the old games, but I think POE 2 has some really beautiful combination of hand-painted elements and 3D.
Mobility: this one is fairly specific, but one of the definining elements of D:OS2 combat is super mobility. Almost every character and enemy has either a short-range teleport, a jump, some sort of shadow-step or tunneling ability. Now in BG 3 every characters gets the tadpole powered jump ability which feels very similar to me. I think it is significant to mention this as here they actually add on top of the DnD 5th edition rules to make the gameplay effectively more similar to D:OS.
Epicness: it starts on a very epic note. This is not a good thing for me - I think a campaign starting at low level should be much more down to earth in the beginning, instead of introducing Mind Flayers and Dragons from the very start. I feel this is also relevant for the characters and their origin stories: every single one of them screams I am very special. None of them feels like they should be level 1 characters.
Origin Stories: they are straight out of D:OS 2 of course. I know a lot of people liked those, but to me it always felt like a choice between playing a character created by someone else or missing out on important content.
Some good things regardless of whether you want D:OS 3 or a more classical BG.
Graphics: they look really nice, except the halfling enemy looked really weird and the arrow arcs are very off at short range.
Rules: I think one of the main weakness of D:OS was the rule-system for character development and combat. Using DnD 5th edition should be a real improvement.
Finally, one thing I really noticed: at no point during the presentation they talked about the original series. But they referenced their own games a lot.
For me it more or less confirms my expectation: will probably be a good RPG, but it won't be Baldur's Gate.
Maybe I will have more thoughts to share later.
Wasn't one of the main complaints about 4th Edition was that it was becoming too much like a video games (instead of the other way around)?? Specifically MMOs like World of Warcraft?? 5th Edition dialed that back, but it certainly didn't dial it ALL the way back. The break between 3rd Edition and what came after is that the game become almost exclusively focused on combat and "builds". 2nd Edition doesn't have builds at all. It has kits (or classes) but they are what they are. The most you can do is pick what weapons you'd like to master. Diablo 2, frankly, more than anything else, changed the mindset of planning in RPGs forever with it's skill-tree. It was so influential it altered the tabletop game itself.
Finally had time to watch the gameplay. Doesn't look good like BG1/2 BUT at the same time looks better than what modern bioware would do to BG. I will probably purchase the game. The visuals are "dosized" but that is it.
Honestly i an so disappointed with modern games that only by not seeing a dialog wheel, it gives a little hope to me. The fact that seens that they are using vancian magic instead of wow magic is another huge plus. I was constant pausing in mid of combat to see if i can read what spells do and found no cooldown. The unique problem is this attacks with 99% of chance to hit. Looks like they are rolling the dice 3 times and picking the higher value...
At 30:00 - He trew his boots in the enemy. Amazing. I love when RPG's give that type of freedom. Rests to know if i can be a necromancer raising armies or is will be a one summon limit. The ranges of bow seens to be very short TBW. But even PF:KM has this problem.
At 36:00 - Be able to use the scenario fire to ignite arrows. Another amazing gimmicky
I had little to no expectations for the game to be anything like Baldur's Gate, and I must say I have not been diappointed (alas!). On the other hand, however, the gameplay presentation is so adorkable that it really endears me to Larian Studios, whose games I have never had a go at. I mean, it takes some chutzpe to go on stage with such an early beta, and to actually go in blind and die to the first group of enemies to boot. Call me naive, but a dev who does this clearly has an honest love for the game he is making, and that's usually a good indication that the game is going to have that bit of "soul" we are all so fond if in the BGT.
In fact, what the game *might* just be is a spritual successor to DA:O, at least that is what the gameplay reminds me of most, with some wonderful environment interactivity as well. No need to get into the RTwP/TB discussion; what matters nowadays is that there is interesting, non-twitchy tactics in the first place and I will happily take that.
So, even though instead of this marketing ploy I would have rather had them release it under a new franchise, which it clearly is in terms of both gameplay and story, I am not sure it is fair to blame the devs for this rather than WotC. I am now looking forward to the first interesting FR game since IWDII. And is that not something to feel positive about?
I hope the final product loses that jump move. Its not consistent with pnp. Especially not when everyone can do it. A jump is a movement normally and would make you open to opportunity attacks.
Also I'd like to see the art style in that intellect devourer area end up grittier. Its a bit too cartoony at the moment.
I don't think they are going to remove it. Firstly, this kind of super mobility is very Larian. Secondly, something like this is hard to take out of a game once you have started. You would need to redesign every encounter and level design created with the ability in mind.
I hope that they give the option to roll one D20 instead of 3(it explains the 99% chance to hit in certain parts) and that modders will put the pnp summoning and archery range into the game.
Playing a Githyanki could prove interesting. We'll see how much they do with race-based interactions.
I really hope they will add race/class reactions. It's not every day you see a paladin, for instance. Other races like the genasi, may be quite common in big cities but in a small village they may never have seen one.
Also skill/stat based dialogue. Your character's intelligence/charisma should open new dialogue options for instance. Your high dexterity/strength should give you other action options not available to a clumsy or weak character.
Otherwise I liked what I saw. I'm still going to wait for a complete edition before buying anyway.
I don't think they are going to remove it. Firstly, this kind of super mobility is very Larian. Secondly, something like this is hard to take out of a game once you have started. You would need to redesign every encounter and level design created with the ability in mind.
You wouldn't have to redesign a single encounter. This is already more about the disengage aspect of it (where monsters can't attack you when you do it). Not the mechanical act of jumping. People would still be free to jump but they would have the chance to get hit by doing it. Escaping without getting hit already would exist provided they have implemented some other kind of disengage action.
Playing a Githyanki could prove interesting. We'll see how much they do with race-based interactions.
I really hope they will add race/class reactions. It's not every day you see a paladin, for instance. Other races like the genasi, may be quite common in big cities but in a small village they may never have seen one.
Also skill/stat based dialogue. Your character's intelligence/charisma should open new dialogue options for instance. Your high dexterity/strength should give you other action options not available to a clumsy or weak character.
Otherwise I liked what I saw. I'm still going to wait for a complete edition before buying anyway.
I would argue skill based dialog goes against the design of BG 1/2. Only a handful of cases use it. Instead its up to the player to make the right dialog choices (which i prefer).
I'm pretty heartbroken tbh. The thoughts of others here mirror my own and are better worded than I am capable of right now.
I need to gather my thoughts, and composure, but I'll say this:
While I do have it, because I wanted to give it a chance, I haven't played a lot of D:OS. It does not pull me in like Baldur's Gate does, like Dragon Age does. And everything that is not pulling me into D:OS is also not pulling me into BG3.
I don't think they are going to remove it. Firstly, this kind of super mobility is very Larian. Secondly, something like this is hard to take out of a game once you have started. You would need to redesign every encounter and level design created with the ability in mind.
Hmm... I dunno, something like this could be easily balanced to offset its benefits, i.e. have it involve dexterity checks so it's limited to be effective on certain builds. I wouldn't look at any particular skill or ability as being locked in place as always useful right now.
"I'm critical of real-time-with-pause because I think that it looks messy. It's like a miss, pause, give three orders, a miss, pause," says senior designer Edouard Imbert. "Also, I don't believe that sticking to the old system can expand to a greater audience. The thing with turn-based logic is that everybody understands it. It's my turn, it's your turn. And we have this experience with it—it worked for us with DOS1, it worked for us with DOS2, and D&D is turn-based. Your characters are the tools you'll use to solve a puzzle, and the puzzle is a lot more messy if everything is moving at the same time."
To tackle one of the criticisms of the turn-based model—that it's slow or laborious—Larian's made some tweaks. Instead of characters going in order and getting an attack or an action, you can swap between them, using attacks and bonus actions to create a combo. Your party effectively moves simultaneously. If you love the turn-based combat so much you want it on even when you're out of battle, however, you can force turn-based mode. This should make it easier to sneak around, since you won't have to avoid guards in real-time."
@JuliusBorisov
I really dislike this statement. It would be one thing to say he prefers turn-based for reason x, y and z - perfectly fine. But here he is pretty much directly saying that the combat system used by the loved predecessors is messy and bad. This seems arrogant is not going to win anyone over from the skeptical crowd.
On the other hand, the comment provides excellent insight into the motivation of the dev. If you see combat as just a puzzle to be solved, then turn-based is potentially a fine way to go. Go and Chess are turn-based and extremely deep games. But RPGs are not chess and go. Combat should not be simply a puzzle; it should be exciting, and it should be immersive. There should be spells that have the power to shift the entire course of a battle. And here the problems with TB begins: if you have these spells, the battle can be decided by the first action taken. Moreover, in direct contradiction to what Imbert is saying: sometimes battle should be chaotic and messy. It shouldn't be easy to place a fireball, so it does not harm your comrades.
For what it's worth, I have played a lot of RPGs over the years. At the beginning those were all turn-based, and I was very skeptical of RTwP, but it won me over at some point. Try to take an honest look back at Wizardry and high-level Goldbox games: how many of the battles in those games were already decided by one side winning initiative?
From my experience a lot. For a modern example look at XCOM: 90% of the tactics in that game is maneuvering your team into a position so that you go first (i.e. win initiative). That works and is fun in XCOM where movement is in tactical mode all the time and combat is the entire focus on the map - but for an RPG with an equal focus on exploration and interaction?
Many of the design decisions in D:OS 2 seem like they were made to address outcome being decided by initiative: the forced interleaving of friendly and enemy characters as well as the immunity to status effects until armor is depleted both worked to reduce the initiative effect. Their new game has no mechanics like that and initiative on party level the "combat is decided by who wins initiative" issue is back full force. With RTwP you always have time to react.
Like others here, so far I'm not really seeing anything to mark BG3 as a true sequel to the series. (Maybe if Larian hadn't tried to co-opt the brand name there'd be less bitterness around these parts, but I digress...) That being said, I AM interested by what I've seen so far. It looks like Larian's made what can be a fun 5E D&D game (which, honestly, is mainly what I'm looking for.) I only had time to watch about half of the gameplay reveal video tonight, but following are some of my thought bubbles:
Origin Stories: So if you don't pick an origin story, does that mean your character will be less "intertwined" in the game? For example, in Dragon Age: Origins, your origin often meant that various NPCs would have a radically different relationship and reaction to you. I'm concerned that going in with your own original character means that you might miss out on various things, more so than what you would normally expect from limitations from race/class/alignment choices.
Camera: Camera seems OK. A part of me wanted it to be an isometric game like the previous BG games, but I think that going with a more modern camera system was inevitable in order to better appreciate the environments, allow for more cinematic cutscenes etc.
Dialogue: I've mentioned this before, and while I do like the descriptions of actions in the options, I'm not sure how to feel about the "speaking in past tense" thing. It reads... clunky, although I suppose I can get used to it in time. I'm also interested in the fact that none of the dialogue options appear to be voiced. In RPGs, I much prefer silent protagonists because it allows me to project my own voice (either my own or one that I imagine for my character) into the avatar, but it also seems that they have voiced soundbites at specific places. That might be specific to the origins or races though.
Combat: So BG3 is turn-based. Well... It's not what I was hoping for, but I've played and enjoyed other TB-games before, so I think I'll survive. One thing that I would like to see however is dynamic initiative; currently it looks like all the enemies take their turns, then all the party members take their turns (although that might be just for this particular fight). I'd prefer it if different initiative rolls (if they still exist in 5E, that is) means you can actually plan ahead based on who's where in the initiative order. For example, suppose the Fighter goes before the Wizard, but you're planning to throw a Fireball into the enemy group, so instead of charging the Fighter forward to engage, you have them move to block a ramp instead so the enemy (2nd in the order) will have a harder time reaching the Wizard (3rd in the order) before he moves.
Comments
It's not a bad example. There's a certain subset of CRPG gamers and tabletop fans who, to this day, still decry realtime combat as a dumbing down of the genre. It's not a point of view that has validity, imo. But it is just as narrow of a view as one that insists BG has to have realtime.
Editing to add: To be a bit pedantic about the history here, it's true CRPG's went through something of a market crash in the mid 90s, but it's not like there wasn't a fanbase there, that had certain expectations. Especially expectations about a tabletop system that went back to the 70s! Which had numerous successful CRPG titles under its banner. I mean classics like the two Ultima 7 games released in 1992 and 1993, the final Gold Box titles came out in 1992, and BG came out in 1998. It's not like there was some whole generational gap where people simply stopped playing these games. We're talking about nothing more than a five year gap here.
What's still disappointing for me (and perhaps some others) isn't that the game is not going to be what I personally would have wanted to play. I already have tons of really good games to play and my backlog is enormous. Rather, it has to do with legacy and what we value in works of art.
I can't speak for anyone else, but to me, Baldur's Gate represents an assortment of values that transcend mere fandom and cross the threshold into whatever it is that people feel when they call things masterpieces because their grasp on language fails them every time they try to describe what it is that makes them special. It's the sort of values that might make you play through a long format game a hundred or more times, regard it as a companion that helps you through the struggles in your life, and have an affinity for it that closely approximates what you feel for a person you love. These are values that helped shape us into who we are, and that we'll hold dear as long as we live.
So the actual source of my disappointment isn't that there won't be another one of that truly special thing for me to appreciate, that would be an absurd thing to expect. Rather, it's that whoever decided to make a descendant to that work of art, using its name and identity to create something new, had the unique opportunity to take those values that make it special, cherish them like so many of us clearly do, reintroduce them into a world where they're mostly forgotten, and teach them to a new generation of future art connoisseurs so that they too may grow to cherish them and carry that flag forward.
Instead, they decided to throw those values away and substitute them with ones that are far more common and ubiquitous. It's apparent that whoever did that doesn't have the same appreciation for those values, and that's perfectly fine, we all value different things. However, that does mean that as far as I'm concerned, they weren't the right people for the job.
To be clear, I don't blame the people at Larian Studios, they're just making the game they were tasked to make. The blame falls on whoever it was that set—or failed to set—the priorities and expectations for that task, because they were so preoccupied with business decisions that they either didn't notice or didn't care that they were doing a disservice to an outstanding artistic legacy.
It seems to be they must be discreet things if we know BG had them and that BG3 doesnt (In fairness, so you know - I plan to follow up by asking how we know that BG3 will not have those values. So you can head me off at the pass, if you'd like).
Minsc after 100 years? I am really curious how Minsc will show up after 100 years. Hopefully they don't just change his race from a Human into an Elf...
It's the same reason people are disappointed when new Star Wars movies aren't what they remember. You encountered them at your MOST impressionable, and you played Baldur's Gate at what you viewed as the absolute pinnacle of PC gaming (and hey, I think it was too). Nothing is ever going to satisfy anyone who insists on viewing it through this lens. I know firsthand, because I do it with music. Anything made after the turn of the clock onto the year 2000 is persona non grata to me. Occasionally, I do find things I think are wonderful that have been made in the last 20 years, but I don't find a 1/10th as much as I could because I am absolutely certain in my mind that what was made from 1950-1999 is better and my listening habits reflect that.
IIRC - it's nothing like that. I think there was a comic in which a wild mage accidentally transformed a statue of Minsc in Baldur's Gate into a flesh and blood version. The kicker is: It's not clear that it was actually Minsc (who must have been turned into stone at some point if that's the case) or if its a statue that thinks its Minsc due to the wild magic.
Philosophically, it's an interesting idea. Conceptually - I'm pretty meh on it. High fantasy is high fantasy, but if you're setting a game 100 years into the future, shoe-horning the most popular character in when he has no real reason to be there seems like its pandering. I'm not a fan.
(For the record - I didnt read the comic. If I got part of that wrong, I'm sure someone will come correct me - but I think the broad strokes are correct).
Since Fallout was mentioned earlier in this thread I would like to take this game as a good example how to transcend an old game into a new gaming era.
I was a huge fan of Fallout 2 and loved Fallout 3 right from the start. They changed the gameplay completely, but the look and feel was still 100% Fallout. There were vaults, that humor, the VATS and the factions for example. There was a lot of reminiscence and respect right from the start for the franchise Black Isle created so many years before.
After watching the BG3 premiere I would be so happy to find only one small hint that there is a reason why it deserves the name Baldur‘s Gate, but there is 0d0.
And the combat system of the demo slows down gameplay to 20% of the original BG-gameplay. After one hour in BG2, chances are great you would have emerged from Château Irenicus - while in BG3, you are still stuck in some minor turn-based fight.
Let‘s not waste time on idle battles.
Personally, I just don't see any evidence for these claims. We haven't played the game yet. And the one gameplay video now available is a tiny window into the final product. I'd be curious to know what specifically violates the "values" of the original BG series.
And it's just not the case that what Larian is pursuing in the game is something "more common and ubiquitous" in gaming. Action RPG's like Assassin's Creed or Skyrim out sell the turn-based RPG's by quite a factor. So, the big feature break from the previous titles isn't much of a move towards something that's all that common. If Larian wanted to go the cash grab route, that would have been the path.
To me, the gameplay footage we just saw shows a game that's combining inspiration from the original series, the Sin games, and Dragon:Age Origins. I dunno man, a lot of hardcore tabletop fans are what helped boost sales for Sin series. It seems like Larian has found something that appeals to the same thing that drew fans to BG back in the late 90s.
If time was not a factor, you could look at a painting forever and keep getting new, increasingly refined impressions from the experience. Even after a thousand years it would still inspire new thoughts. Artistic experiences—or really experiences of any kind—are not definable through any finite medium, such as a forum reply. What you're asking me to do is impossible.
When you look at footage from Baldur's Gate, how do you know that you're looking at footage from Baldur's Gate? Is it the party size of six? Is it the movement of the viewport? Is it the birds chirping in the forest? Is it the sinister music you hear while the party is traveling in the night? Is it the real time combat that you can pause? Is it the fireball spell that finishes off legions of xvarts before the battle even begins? Is it the atmosphere of lighthearted adventure? Is it the weirdly anachronistic plot about corporate corruption in a high fantasy romp? Is it the similarly anachronistic 70s style sofas you see in almost every house? Is it the sound the stone buttons on the GUI make when they're pressed? Is it the highly unintuitive way attack rolls are calculated? Is it the realistically rendered trees? Is it the Candlekeep watchers holding their quarterstaves? Is it the horns sticking out of the helmets of every party member? Is it the striking juxtaposition of cosmopolitan and rural environments? Is it the duality of the game's writing taking itself very seriously and not at all seriously at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence? Is it the ogre chunking one of the main characters? Is it the thief party member failing to hide in shadows twenty-five times in a row?
No, it is all of those things and literally millions more.
Let's be clear here, the impressions that we receive from experiencing any work of art are a subjective affair. However, they are inspired by an object—the work of art itself, in this case a piece of code that makes up a program that runs on a piece of hardware. When you compare two works of art, your impressions of the similarities and differences between them are subjective, but they're inspired by real similarities and differences between the objects that you're examining.
When I look at the footage from BG3 that was posted here, it reminds me of Divinity: Original Sin, and to a lesser extent it reminds me of Dragon Age. What it doesn't remind me of is Baldur's Gate. That's because the game shown has more apparent meaningful similarities with Divinity and Dragon Age than it has with Baldur's Gate. You could say that sure, the footage shown looks like it has very little in common with Baldur's Gate, but it's possible that there are many other similarities between the two games that are not shown in the footage. However, that's wishful thinking and you have no reasonable cause for assuming that. It's more logical to work off the assumption that what they're showing us is largely representative of what the whole game is like and they aren't hiding all the Baldur's Gateness in some other parts of the game.
On the other hand, when you compare Baldur's Gate with Pillars of Eternity, sure, many, many aspects of the game are still as far away from BG as BG3 is. But other aspects are much closer. If you view footage from PoE, it is immediately obvious that the developers made many attempts to conserve what they felt made Baldur's Gate... well, Baldur's Gate, through their work. And to a limited extent they've succeeded. If PoE took place somewhere in the Forgotten Realms and they slapped the Baldur's Gate 3 title on it, I wouldn't be as disappointed, as I can immediately tell they obviously put a lot of thought and effort into taking values from a 20-year-old game and translating them into a modern format. With Larian's BG3, that is simply not the case.
It is pretty much D:OS3 with 5th Edition D&D rules. For some people this is good news, for others not so much. Some people are challenging this, so let's look at some things that explain my thoughts on this. I won't talk much about TB vs RTvP because I think this has been discussed a lot.
UI: this is pretty much D:OS2. Some people say the UI is easy to change, but I think whether you go for a minimalistic approach as in BG 1&2 or an all information on screen approach like D:OS and BG 3 is a pretty fundamental decision. We see a lot of information overlaid on the game window: detection ranges, health bars, minimap, character names, etc.
Art-style: BG relied a lot of hand-painted elements for the UI, for character portraits, maps, etc... now everything seems to go through the 3D Rendering pipeline. While the use of hand-painted art was partially due to technical limitation in the old games, but I think POE 2 has some really beautiful combination of hand-painted elements and 3D.
Mobility: this one is fairly specific, but one of the definining elements of D:OS2 combat is super mobility. Almost every character and enemy has either a short-range teleport, a jump, some sort of shadow-step or tunneling ability. Now in BG 3 every characters gets the tadpole powered jump ability which feels very similar to me. I think it is significant to mention this as here they actually add on top of the DnD 5th edition rules to make the gameplay effectively more similar to D:OS.
Epicness: it starts on a very epic note. This is not a good thing for me - I think a campaign starting at low level should be much more down to earth in the beginning, instead of introducing Mind Flayers and Dragons from the very start. I feel this is also relevant for the characters and their origin stories: every single one of them screams I am very special. None of them feels like they should be level 1 characters.
Origin Stories: they are straight out of D:OS 2 of course. I know a lot of people liked those, but to me it always felt like a choice between playing a character created by someone else or missing out on important content.
Some good things regardless of whether you want D:OS 3 or a more classical BG.
Graphics: they look really nice, except the halfling enemy looked really weird and the arrow arcs are very off at short range.
Rules: I think one of the main weakness of D:OS was the rule-system for character development and combat. Using DnD 5th edition should be a real improvement.
Finally, one thing I really noticed: at no point during the presentation they talked about the original series. But they referenced their own games a lot.
For me it more or less confirms my expectation: will probably be a good RPG, but it won't be Baldur's Gate.
Maybe I will have more thoughts to share later.
I don't know if they were even interested in the D&D license. With as much care as they put into making an entirely new world with those games (including a totally separate physical card game if you can believe it), it seems to me they were content to move forward without doing so.
Baldur's Gate 3 isn't really a nostalgia product. It's not really selling itself as a gateway to 20 years ago like alot of the other games from the Kickstarter-era have. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a legitimately established modern title. Of course it has DNA of everything that came before it, but Larian's last two games were not totally relying on feelings about old titles like Pillars and Tides of Numenara were. Those games were successful because they were explicitly selling you a hall-pass to your youth. Baldur's Gate 3 is using the name, but they don't clearly don't feel bound by having to ONLY cater to people who have been doing no-reload SCS runs for the past decade.
Wasn't one of the main complaints about 4th Edition was that it was becoming too much like a video games (instead of the other way around)?? Specifically MMOs like World of Warcraft?? 5th Edition dialed that back, but it certainly didn't dial it ALL the way back. The break between 3rd Edition and what came after is that the game become almost exclusively focused on combat and "builds". 2nd Edition doesn't have builds at all. It has kits (or classes) but they are what they are. The most you can do is pick what weapons you'd like to master. Diablo 2, frankly, more than anything else, changed the mindset of planning in RPGs forever with it's skill-tree. It was so influential it altered the tabletop game itself.
Honestly i an so disappointed with modern games that only by not seeing a dialog wheel, it gives a little hope to me. The fact that seens that they are using vancian magic instead of wow magic is another huge plus. I was constant pausing in mid of combat to see if i can read what spells do and found no cooldown. The unique problem is this attacks with 99% of chance to hit. Looks like they are rolling the dice 3 times and picking the higher value...
At 30:00 - He trew his boots in the enemy. Amazing. I love when RPG's give that type of freedom. Rests to know if i can be a necromancer raising armies or is will be a one summon limit. The ranges of bow seens to be very short TBW. But even PF:KM has this problem.
At 36:00 - Be able to use the scenario fire to ignite arrows. Another amazing gimmicky
In fact, what the game *might* just be is a spritual successor to DA:O, at least that is what the gameplay reminds me of most, with some wonderful environment interactivity as well. No need to get into the RTwP/TB discussion; what matters nowadays is that there is interesting, non-twitchy tactics in the first place and I will happily take that.
So, even though instead of this marketing ploy I would have rather had them release it under a new franchise, which it clearly is in terms of both gameplay and story, I am not sure it is fair to blame the devs for this rather than WotC. I am now looking forward to the first interesting FR game since IWDII. And is that not something to feel positive about?
Also I'd like to see the art style in that intellect devourer area end up grittier. Its a bit too cartoony at the moment.
I really hope they will add race/class reactions. It's not every day you see a paladin, for instance. Other races like the genasi, may be quite common in big cities but in a small village they may never have seen one.
Also skill/stat based dialogue. Your character's intelligence/charisma should open new dialogue options for instance. Your high dexterity/strength should give you other action options not available to a clumsy or weak character.
Otherwise I liked what I saw. I'm still going to wait for a complete edition before buying anyway.
You wouldn't have to redesign a single encounter. This is already more about the disengage aspect of it (where monsters can't attack you when you do it). Not the mechanical act of jumping. People would still be free to jump but they would have the chance to get hit by doing it. Escaping without getting hit already would exist provided they have implemented some other kind of disengage action.
I would argue skill based dialog goes against the design of BG 1/2. Only a handful of cases use it. Instead its up to the player to make the right dialog choices (which i prefer).
I need to gather my thoughts, and composure, but I'll say this:
While I do have it, because I wanted to give it a chance, I haven't played a lot of D:OS. It does not pull me in like Baldur's Gate does, like Dragon Age does. And everything that is not pulling me into D:OS is also not pulling me into BG3.
Hmm... I dunno, something like this could be easily balanced to offset its benefits, i.e. have it involve dexterity checks so it's limited to be effective on certain builds. I wouldn't look at any particular skill or ability as being locked in place as always useful right now.
To tackle one of the criticisms of the turn-based model—that it's slow or laborious—Larian's made some tweaks. Instead of characters going in order and getting an attack or an action, you can swap between them, using attacks and bonus actions to create a combo. Your party effectively moves simultaneously. If you love the turn-based combat so much you want it on even when you're out of battle, however, you can force turn-based mode. This should make it easier to sneak around, since you won't have to avoid guards in real-time."
https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-gameplay-preview
I really dislike this statement. It would be one thing to say he prefers turn-based for reason x, y and z - perfectly fine. But here he is pretty much directly saying that the combat system used by the loved predecessors is messy and bad. This seems arrogant is not going to win anyone over from the skeptical crowd.
On the other hand, the comment provides excellent insight into the motivation of the dev. If you see combat as just a puzzle to be solved, then turn-based is potentially a fine way to go. Go and Chess are turn-based and extremely deep games. But RPGs are not chess and go. Combat should not be simply a puzzle; it should be exciting, and it should be immersive. There should be spells that have the power to shift the entire course of a battle. And here the problems with TB begins: if you have these spells, the battle can be decided by the first action taken. Moreover, in direct contradiction to what Imbert is saying: sometimes battle should be chaotic and messy. It shouldn't be easy to place a fireball, so it does not harm your comrades.
For what it's worth, I have played a lot of RPGs over the years. At the beginning those were all turn-based, and I was very skeptical of RTwP, but it won me over at some point. Try to take an honest look back at Wizardry and high-level Goldbox games: how many of the battles in those games were already decided by one side winning initiative?
From my experience a lot. For a modern example look at XCOM: 90% of the tactics in that game is maneuvering your team into a position so that you go first (i.e. win initiative). That works and is fun in XCOM where movement is in tactical mode all the time and combat is the entire focus on the map - but for an RPG with an equal focus on exploration and interaction?
Many of the design decisions in D:OS 2 seem like they were made to address outcome being decided by initiative: the forced interleaving of friendly and enemy characters as well as the immunity to status effects until armor is depleted both worked to reduce the initiative effect. Their new game has no mechanics like that and initiative on party level the "combat is decided by who wins initiative" issue is back full force. With RTwP you always have time to react.
Origin Stories: So if you don't pick an origin story, does that mean your character will be less "intertwined" in the game? For example, in Dragon Age: Origins, your origin often meant that various NPCs would have a radically different relationship and reaction to you. I'm concerned that going in with your own original character means that you might miss out on various things, more so than what you would normally expect from limitations from race/class/alignment choices.
Camera: Camera seems OK. A part of me wanted it to be an isometric game like the previous BG games, but I think that going with a more modern camera system was inevitable in order to better appreciate the environments, allow for more cinematic cutscenes etc.
Dialogue: I've mentioned this before, and while I do like the descriptions of actions in the options, I'm not sure how to feel about the "speaking in past tense" thing. It reads... clunky, although I suppose I can get used to it in time. I'm also interested in the fact that none of the dialogue options appear to be voiced. In RPGs, I much prefer silent protagonists because it allows me to project my own voice (either my own or one that I imagine for my character) into the avatar, but it also seems that they have voiced soundbites at specific places. That might be specific to the origins or races though.
Combat: So BG3 is turn-based. Well... It's not what I was hoping for, but I've played and enjoyed other TB-games before, so I think I'll survive. One thing that I would like to see however is dynamic initiative; currently it looks like all the enemies take their turns, then all the party members take their turns (although that might be just for this particular fight). I'd prefer it if different initiative rolls (if they still exist in 5E, that is) means you can actually plan ahead based on who's where in the initiative order. For example, suppose the Fighter goes before the Wizard, but you're planning to throw a Fireball into the enemy group, so instead of charging the Fighter forward to engage, you have them move to block a ramp instead so the enemy (2nd in the order) will have a harder time reaching the Wizard (3rd in the order) before he moves.