Baldur's Gate 3

[peter]

Okay, I've been back a few pages and I can't find anything on this game, so I assume it's safe to start a designated thread.

I'm about, mmm, twenty hours in, but the first ten were just completely lost in bumbling around in a completely lost way, during which I had absolutely no clue as to what I was doing (or indeed why I was doing it). But slowly, slowly, I'm starting to get it. And the 'it' is looking very much like it's going to be worth the getting.

Let's start from scratch.

BG3 is an rpg designed around a tabletop system of gaming - specifically that of the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Rules - and attempts to replicate the tabletop experience as closely as it's possible to do, on a screen.

You get to either play a specific character from a list of pre-prepared types (you get about a dozen to choose from), or you can build your own character from scratch, setting class's and abilities as you will. In game, you will have a group of 4 assistants who roam with you, and these will be chosen from the same dozen that you could have chosen your pre-built character from.

This is a fantasy rpg set in the Forgotten Realms universe, that some may remember from novelisations back in the what, eighties and nineties. I was not aware of this until I began to discover similarities between my in game character (a Drow) and a character named Drizzt Do'Urden who had been the central protagonist of a series I'd read in the past. It was a nice discovery.

The game plays as a dice rolled tabletop game, but with much of the dice-rolling done by the game's AI behind the scenes. When you feel that the game is cheating you (when you've just failed to shoot an enemy in the face from 2 feet away, say) you can, I'm told, actually pull up all the data that led to your missing - the abilities and relative strengths of each character, the luck element of any action etc, etc - and you will see that the game is playing fair. Mostly, saying in combat, you don't see the dice rolls, but in dialogue choices - and much depends on what choices you make - you will do so, and even get to possibly alter the results by electing to add in limited use advantages or whatever, to beat an otherwise superior opponent in terms of abilities.

Use of the map is crucial to navigation of the world, and huge sections become available or not, depending on the choices you have made and the spells you have available. An example would be that you might find a mouse-hole in a corner, and if you don't got a shrinking spell you ain't going in. The replayability of this game is tremendous given that so much of how it progresses is dependent upon your own character choice and the answers you give in dialogue. You may for example, by a 'wrong' answer kill Strider in the Prancing Pony in Bree (not really, but you get my drift) and in one swoop Aragorn dissapears from TLOTR. Except that it isn't wrong if you do. It's just your game.

As I say, I'm only barely scratching the surface, but I've got a good feeling about this. It isn't Skyrim. It's totally different. But I suspect that if I stick with it, if I take the trouble to learn the intricacies of the game, I could be in for a comparable gaming experience. And that is no small thing!

[Avatar]

Ah, well, Baldur's Gate was one of the very first computer RPG's. And this long awaited next instalment has certainly gained critical acclaim.

I'll get it, but I'm happy to wait for some time for it to be hugely discounted.

Party-based games, particularly turn-based party games, have never really been my cup of tea, although I do and have played them, it is not my favourite "mechanic" by a long shot. (Apart from my recent foray into Pathfinder: Kingmaker, another table-top based game famous for its possible breadth (you can literally become the king and manage your kingdom), my next most recent game of that type was...Dragon Age: Inquisition, which I didn't completely finish, although I was nearly done before I lost interest.

BG3 is particularly famed for the number of possible actions the developers foresaw, the eternal limitation in all games (at least until AI is good enough, and computers powerful enough, to respond on the fly to non-programmed actions).

Personally I prefer sandbox games and emergent story telling, where there is no real end-goal apart from whatever you set yourself. (I've just gone back to my 800 hour X4: Foundations save, since they just released a new (so-so) DLC, but I quickly got re-immersed in my enormous and self-sufficient empire. )

But I'll play it once it's 75% off or something.

--A

[peter]

You probably won't have that long to wait these days Av. The shelf-life of games is pretty short these days, given the rate they come out.

[peter]

I see Mount and Blade: Bannerlord is available as a free download for PlayStation members (amongst myriads of other games). Got to be worth the membership fee pretty much on its own I'd think, but the trouble is, if I jump between games I struggle to remain 'immersed' in any one and my interest drifts. I'm more likely to move on and never return to a game, than come back to it at a later point.

On the game limitation thing BG3 suffers with this dialogue limitation problem - the answer you would want your central character to make is often not there as an option - and it can be quite annoying. The more a game goes for attempting to cover all the options, the more alas you want it to, and the more vexing it is when it fails. It becomes part of the game that you are playing your character as you see it, rather than the game designers did.

On this, I saw a short YouTube video in which someone had linked ChatGPT with the npc's in Skyrim such that you could pretty much hold any conversation of your choice with them. Now that was a cool thing! It can't be that far away if 'amateur developers' are on to it, but I wonder if it would really work in a traditional gaming sense? You'd possibly loose the direction of the game too easily, but in fairness, in sandbox games it could really add some extra dimension. But then you move into the realm of adding action into the mix. How do you get around the limitations of what an npc will do, when they have unlimited ability to converse?

[Avatar]

I'm a big fan of Bannerlord...I have well over 1,000 hours in its predecessor, "Warband" and probably more than half that so far in Bannerlord itself. Download it now and save it for later.

Yes, I did see the AI dialogue mod for Skyrim. Once that becomes linked to a broader "gameplay" than just dialogue, (as you say, the "action" side of things), then games like that will really be worth playing.

--A

[peter]

Having notched up a few hours in BG3, I'm now in a position to report more fully on my thinking.

The game is slow and requires you to take it slowly. Maybe - in fact certainly - this has to do with my not being a D&D player and having, as it were, to 'start from scratch'.

But it's fine. I'm getting a grip slowly as I say, and the experience is turning out to be worth the effort. I'm not quite so taken with the artwork in terms of the presentation - I've always preferred games with muted colours rather than the neon coloring of say Horizon Zero Dawn (think Death Stranding) and I like fairly realistic scenery. But in fairness this ain't our world - it's the world of Forgotten Realms. It's the Underdark, Faerie and all that. I can't expect it to be AC Valhalla and Walt Disney combined. And I do like the building interiors - well fleshed out with lots of loot and hidden spaces to ferret out.

One thing, the inventory is driving me nuts. The time required to find things is ridiculous, and half of the time you simply cannot do it. Things that you've fought to win simply don't seem to be anywhere to be found. It's a jumble of small and nearly indecipherable squares that you can't recognise as anything useful, or must read a shit-ton of stats to get a handle on. And when you call up the stats, they obscure the rest of the inventory pics so that you have no idea what else is there to compare the item you are looking at against. This needs sorting badly.

The quests are good however. They are not just fetch and carry, but thought out little side adventures that take you to places that you'd otherwise miss. And there is so much. I mean so, so much. Wherever you are, there are caves and hidden places, little cracks and mouse holes you cannot fit into without the necessary shrinking spells (ala Alice in Wonderland). And the choices you make open up one part of the map, while closing off a whole other area. The replayability is immense, with whole new vistas and places to see on any playthrough. And you become invested. The role-playing element works. You've got enough leeway in your decisions - and they have such consequences - that it really makes you think. What should I answer here? Which turn should I take? A wrong move will turn a major allie into an enemy who you have to kill, and the game (your game) is changed, off at a different tangent. It's all about choices, and the choices you make matter. You can be good or bad and reap the rewards of either.

So yes. I'm a Baldur's Gate 3 fan. Not a fan-boy quite yet....but definitely a fan. And what thirty plus hours in, I'm still really only scratching the surface. Where I'd be say, on my first or second day of playing Skyrim as a noob.