Baldur’s Gate 3

[radiofloyd]

I played the first hour or so of this. The game has a very bombastic opening although I think it was largely shown when they first revealed the game. The opening “escape” sequence is snappy, much faster than the opening of DOS2.

 

Dialogue scenes now play out Mass Effect style which gives the game a slightly more AAA feel.

 

Character creation is pretty breezy, I didn’t spend too long on it. You can choose from five different penises. I just made my character a human fighter.

 

My main takeaway is - no crashes or performances issues. Long may it continue. After a few more hours I should be able to comment more on the differences between this and Divinity, but so far so good.

[one-armed dwarf]

I can't really have a super informed take on it but my impression of what I played was it was a Divinity OS II sequel in Baldur's Gate.

 

The game looks pretty good, lighting a bit last gen in parts but character models look excellent. However it doesn't really feel suited to TV gaming, not cause of M&K input (which I find fine on TV) but cause the tooltip text is so tiny. You need a monitor, or an absolutely massive TV (or sit really close) cause the text scaling options are only for subtitles for some reason and the UI scaling isn't something that seems to be included right now. 

 

One thing I liked in character creator is there's a slider for how grey your hair is. Something like that is usually a completely binary option in games, so I liked that you could just have it so that you're greying rather than the binary of very young/very old.

 

edit tried it on steam deck with my save just now, imo it runs and looks like total shit on this and feels really laggy, even with low settings. I don't recommend it on deck right now, but maybe DF will have a good video on the best way to play it like that

[radiofloyd]

Ok, this is really fucking good. Clearly, it’s an iteration on their existing formula. But there are a lot of new things. You can jump when exploring now. You can shove enemies back in combat. You can dash to move further. Combat abilities are divided into actions and extra actions, and they use different points. Dice roll challenges are displayed on screen and can be affected by your stats and various bonuses (cue save scumming). Character classes have optional subclasses.

 

I’m about 3 hours in and I have a full party of four members. This gets off to a much better start than DOS2, in my opinion. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I've played about the same amount I think in terms of progress and am ambivalent. DnD is a thing I've tried before and not totally clicked with, so that's not unexpected. But I find elements here obtusely frustrating, not sure what to get into about why though because of spoilers. 

 

I guess to keep it as vague as possible, there's a character that can join your party that makes life really fucking hard for you if they die in battle, and that's what happened here. I completed a really cool larger scale fight with lots of ranged attacks, buffs, sneaking around for sneak attacks and using the high ground for advantage. But this one person died, and afterwards something happened which made it so difficult to progress that I just threw away that save entirely and went back

 

Spoiler

If Gale dies and is revived, he has this disease called necrosis which spreads to others, and so after the fight all my party regrouped and he killed all of them over and over. If I go over to revive them, he kills them again with his zombie bullshit. I couldn't figure out how to remove it, so I just started over and I'm never using this cunt again. I might actually try to kill him for real if the story allows, so he stays fucked off for good

 

Yeah, I'm writing this post on a sort of tilt, and with a bit of clarity of mind there's probably some mechanic that I've missed out on here that makes it more easy to manage. But 

Spoiler

Gale

can git to fuck. cunt

[DANGERMAN]

I started this yesterday and played a few hours, I'm really enjoying it, but there's a couple of things I haven't got my head around it. I've got myself a full party, and got to the camp that was under attack from goblins, but haven't done anything there yet. 

 

I'm playing as the lizard guy, The Dark Void or whatever he's called. My party is a little too magic heavy, including a human character that basically has the exact same skill set as me, so he needs to get kicked for someone else more melee focused. 

 

So far, bar 1 fight, I've not had too many problems, but there's still some of the rule set I don't get. My character had these points to spend that I thought meant I could add a spell to my skill bar, but I think instead it's to let you use a spell again once it's been maxed 

[one-armed dwarf]

Having a better time with this. It's a very slow burn, and again if I provide the DnD neophyte perspective (I've tried it in real life a bit, and PST is the only video game of it I've completed), it's that you've really got to be patient with it. It's not likely to be something you just click with initially but that doesn't mean you should sod it off too hastily.

 

One thing that helped with me is I went and downloaded the guidebook for DnD 5e, the tabletop version. You can google it. It's obviously not a like for like, but at the same time the interpretation of those rules in this game are closer than you'd imagine. Near every gameplay concept I find in the game that I want to read up more of, it's in the guidebook as well. Even better, the guidebook has lore for each of the races, which helps to get into the role playing experience of what you choose. For me, I did not understand some of the stuff people were saying to Tieflings. Now that I read it up, there's a backstory involving an ancestor selling the race out to infernal gods (context for the race, not a spoiler), and that can inform my dialog choices here out. 

 

As mentioned the gameplay interactions can be fun. These aren't story spoilers, but I'll hide them anyway in case people want to make their own combat strategies. I'm playing a rogue, so in this one combat encounter I had

 

Spoiler

shadow heart buff my stealth check ability and 'ungrouped' from the party so I could solo sneak by some goblin spotters and pickpocket the one at the door, then took my chance as well to just murder him (unnecessary given I pick pocketed, but whatevs). Then went on the roof and sneak attacked another archer, which gave everyone 'surprise' which means you're spotted but still have initiative, then had Gale (the cunt) enter the fray and put one of the surprised goblin's back to sleep. So I could push the fucker off the roof and guarantee passing my athletics check with my low STR rogue, and then shoot the fucker on the ground with my 'high ground' advantage, an interaction that will never not be fun. Then I used my fire arrows I pickpocketed to shoot some other goblins who came up and where near some explodey barrels, and they got exploded.

 

You can also respec, which is good cause I accidentally took on a barbarian level for my rogue, which I definitely don't want or need. 

 

---

 

late edit but the respec lets you completely change your class. So you're free to completely fuck things up early on, though your background really should gel with whatever class you pick and that's a thing you can't change

 

Overall impression is the game tries to be accessible and forgiving with aspects such as these, but all without being dumbed down in any shape or form. Definitely turning around on it in a big way and getting impressed by the reactivity and interactivity. If it keeps it up, well maybe it's another GOTY and 2023's quality for releases can hardly be in dispute at this point

[one-armed dwarf]

Sleep deprivation debuff, can't stop playing Baldur's Gate. -1 to concentration and work performance.

 

Spent hours on this optional quest where I got to make a permanent, and extremely stupid decision to my character. But I'm here for the consequences. 

 

Spoiler

Had a witch pluck my right eye out and give me a -1 to perception and +1 to intimidation. My character looks more edgy. 

 

 

Also this quest goes on and on and the unique assets and story beats are very good. Fuck Witcher 3. pff

 

I'm taking it very slow as I'm on tactician difficulty, but I had a thing where I forgot to kill someone in some base full of enemies and because of actions I took there were too many aggroed enemies to get back inside. It was a literal army. So I split the party and had 2 members just hang out in the druid's grove and had to send off my two rogues by themselves to sneak in and use a certain assist 

Spoiler

mercenary ogres

to kill the NPC for me. It was like Sam and Frodo creeping into Mordor, and I used flight scrolls to sneak underneath the drawbridge and stealth attacks to kill some pissing and/or pissed goblins. 

 

also

Spoiler

the hired merc ogres got killed in the process, so I didn't have to pay them lmao

 

emergent gameplay init

 

(All act 1 spoilers btw)

[radiofloyd]

Had my first go since Hotfix 2 and downloading new Nvidia game drivers (second time I’ve been prompted to do that since launch) and lo and behold the crashes that ruined my playthrough of Original Sin 2 have come back. I got the same error message related to DirectX. BG3 gives you the option of playing with DirectX or Vulkan so I switched to Vulkan and it hasn’t crashed yet. Fingers crossed.

 

Other than that, I’m loving it. It seems like Larian have set a new high water mark again. The games is full of secret tunnels and passages and things off the beaten path. I had been playing with the party members that I initially recruited (Shadowheart, Gale and Astarion) but I’ve switched out Gale and Astarion for Wyll and the githraki character whose name I’ve forgotten, just to see what they’re like. I’d like to experiment with all of the characters this time.

By the way Dwarf, what’s your username on Steam?

 

[one-armed dwarf]

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197996470719/

[one-armed dwarf]

I'm still in Act 1. A lot of the big encounters in tactician can take me an hour or more to figure out. One in particular involving a particularly mean granny took me nearly a whole weekend. There's optimal synergies to find between classes, prepared spells and player positioning, but your approach has to be watertight or at least your way of adjusting to RNG curveballs has to also be very good. Right now, I'm finding that buffing the barbarians' jump, equipping them with a jump AOE and letting them go to town with rage attacks is a very brainy way of doing things

 

There's certain things that annoy me. Alluded to this about the poor onboarding, but I think the game needs a bit of a guiding hand when it comes to completing quests and exploring. Even with the freedom, there is clearly an intended path more or less through its world and quests. You notice this if you do a bunch of activities in act 1 and then activate a much earlier quest later on. You get dialogue options which indicate that you've not learned things you've learned (eg, 'Who is the Absolute?' when talking to these random guys in the forest, also asking for tips on finding this druid when that quest was done). For a game that is praised for its reactivity, these issues do stick out like a sore thumb. To be fair, I've also had quest lines where NPCs clearly have unique reactions to things that have occurred that would not happen if I attempted things in a different order, so I just think it's a case of where they miss a few things at times.

 

The way the different quests, both side and main, interweave and develop the story and characters as you progress is really impressive. But it might be a very delicate construction. One tip I heard was to regularly use 'long rest', as this also activates other NPC interactions and main story events which unlock options to deal with main quest objectives that you otherwise would not have if you did not (one of the most interesting main story spoilers concerns this). Tactician has forced me to long rest regularly enough, once I've completely drained everyone's spell slots. So at least that side of things has worked out well enough. But I think the game needs to offer a level indicator like most RPGs do for side content, cause simply throwing some level 6 fighter menace at you when you're level 4 and had no idea to expect that kinda takes you out of it, and encourage long rest if optional solutions or story beats are going to be lost. 

 

You have to be careful with long rest as well tho, as there might be some quests which lead to bad outcomes if a lot of time passes (not sure on which, or how long, or how often this occurs. But I know it's a thing)

 

The game is very good but there's clearly some badly needed design optimisations there. Not even going to get into the inventory management, it's horrible. Trust me (on keyboard anyway)

 

Other than all those problems tho, still might be a 10 or near to it? Depends on how the rest goes.

[one-armed dwarf]

I got basically to the end of Act 1 but put this down a few days ago, just cause of how many reports there are of quest destroying bugs and inconsistent storylines in act 3 (characters saying to rescue people who already got killed in a cutscene, stuff like that). There's too many reports of that in reviews (eurogamer, metro) and online discussion forums for it to just be a coincidence or bad luck

 

That's such a bummer, it was really good but I don't want to put up with that. I'll wait for some patches, and in the meantime I'm playing Baldur's Gate 1. That'll take some time lol (i'm a level 4 Dwarven Defender, of course). Determined to get back when patches are out

[shinymcshine]

The Gamecentral review indeed mentions things get wonkier after the 1st Act, and are almost derailed in Act 3 (in terms of choice/and alternative actions being greatly restricted).

 

Which is a bit like I found with D:OS2, where later battles became overwhelmed by enemy numbers and the irksome overuse of the necrofire effect.

 

Still it's one for the future anyway for me (assuming it will come to Series S)

 

Now I can definitely recommend "Pathfinder: Kingmaker" if you want some D&D CRPG action (without dipping back to BG/BG2).

[one-armed dwarf]

Interestingly I read a really positive impression on act 3 from someone who did 'Dark Urge', which means you're a serial killer who does things so unspeakable that limits the kinds of allies you can have. They speculate that the reason act 3 worked so well for them is the relative lack of NPC interactions cause they had so few friends and less reason for quest scripts to bug out due to there not being as many. So both the lack of bugs and streamlined content kind of helped in this instance

 

Anyway I'm enjoying figuring out the low stakes adventuring of BG1 but Pathfinder was also on my list. Might just start BG3 all over again in a few months, there's enough meat in Act 1 to just do it all over again anyway. See if I can do it without save scums

[Craymen Edge]

Had an interesting moment today, where a character I pushed off a bridge to her death earlier turned up leading an attack on the druid camp at Emerald Grove.

[radiofloyd]

Amazingly I hadn’t touched this for two weeks because I’ve been so busy with work. I booted it up and I was in a place called the Blighted Village near the Emerald Grove. The second I walked in I got attacked and two characters were wiped out instantly. Luckily the enemies themselves were quite weak and I managed to win with my two remaining characters. That was my first encounter with Gale’s death which led to a quite a funny sequence.

[DisturbedSwan]

Fired this up on Saturday night and I'm already very impressed by it its fair to say.

 

There's a helluva lot to take in and learn I think it's fair to say, I watched numerous 'beginner' style videos on YT to try to prepare myself and avoid potential pitfalls that may arise within the first few hours, I was even bewildered by the choice of classes, races, sub classes, spells, genitalia options (lol) at the beginning of the game, I didn't want to pick a shit class/race that would work against me and not for me so I did some prior research in that regard too.

 

I ended up going with a Female Bard Githyanki Charlatan which I now regret slightly as since then I've read some other stuff that said a Bard High Elf Entertainer would've been better. Nonetheless I'm stuck with her for now until I can respec, but by that point I'm not sure I'll be arsed anymore. 

 

Like others have said the game starts off really strong, that CGI cutscene at the start is pretty bonkers and I really didn't expect to find myself in such a strange ship right off the bat with tons of shit flying about outside, it was pretty crazy, I really didn't expect graphically for it to look this good, but yeah it is a sight to behold, all the particle, smoke, fire effects etc. are top notch as is the mo cap, voice work and all that, the characters look absolutely incredible during conversations.

 

Everything was pretty linear until getting off the ship, after that I woke up on the beach, found the one of my companions from the ship and I've gone off exploring with her. I'm not quite sure where I'm meant to be going yet or if I should've found some more companions so far, but yeah it's just me and Shadowheart thus far. 

Combat in this beach area has been extremely challenging, even up against some mini-demon looking things one wrong dice roll or shot missed and that would be it, I managed to set myself on fire quite a few times already too, once when I'd just defeated said mini demons too which was annoying. Thank god for save scumming lol, it felt bad to do this so early on but I don't really see how I could've got through that encounter without it. 

 

More exploring after that and found some ruins with a couple of treasure hunters, managed to convince them to work away using deception and then spoke to someone behind a door who let us inside. Took me numerous attempts to knock this guy out before he sounds an alarm to his buddies, but I managed it after more save scumming. 

 

There is just so much to take in it's overwhelming, the world seemingly branches out in all directions, I'm still not sure what a lot of stuff does, not accessed the inventory yet or anything, there pretty much isn't a tutorial, it just throws you in at the deepend, which is cool in a way but at the same time makes things all the more bewildering and less easy to suss out. I love learning though and feeling daunted at every turn and that's pretty much how I feel when I'm just walking down a bit of beach in this, hoping I don't encounter too many enemies. 

 

It has intrigued me and made me think way more than a lot of games recently, I can't wait to dive back into it and try to learn some more about it, it's almost like a dense long tome I need to read up on at this point, but yeah, in terms of RPG systems and all that good stuff it is pretty spectacular, likewise graphically. The console controls I haven't quite mastered yet but they are a lot better and more intuitive than I thought they'd be.

 

I streamed my first 3 hours of the game (the first part is largely me making my character) if anyone is interested, also a couple of photos below:

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

[shinymcshine]

I didn't think it came out on PS5 until 06 Sep - was there an early access ?

[DisturbedSwan]

6 minutes ago, shinymcshine said:

I didn't think it came out on PS5 until 06 Sep - was there an early access ?

 

Yeah, came out on the 2nd for Deluxe Edition Owners, was only an extra £8 or so so I thought why not really.

[one-armed dwarf]

So, wrt save scums, there is an in-game mechanic called 'Inspirations'. It lets you re-roll a failed dice roll, essentially an in-game justified version of 'save scum'. You unlock 'Inspirations' by achieving objectives which align with a characters own role playing properties. So for instance, Astorian might approve of you come up with a sneaky solution to a problem, or just being a dick. Certain characters with other alignments will have different reactions, though they have to be in your party

 

Mention it mainly as I found it a great way to incentivise 'keeping' the failed roll cause it was interesting to bank a few 'Inspirations' for that purpose. It also encouraged me to take some strange choices in the game to give me a +1 and help get a good dice roll in the first place. The way this part of the game interacts with player decision making is well done I think, and it's mainly done for the reason of 'save scumming' IMO cause it allows you to do it while also maintaining role-playing objectives

[shinymcshine]

29 minutes ago, DisturbedSwan said:

 

Yeah, came out on the 2nd for Deluxe Edition Owners, was only an extra £8 or so so I thought why not really.

 

Oops, sorry, I'd have seen that if I'd have looked more closely at your post in the 'purchased' thread from Saturday.