Achilles and the Grognard: Special Unexpected BG3 Preview Edition

By Bob Case Posted Saturday Feb 29, 2020

Filed under: Video Games 45 comments

The Grognard: Hello everyone, and welcome to our special Baldur’s Gate III preview edition!

Achilles: Who are you talking to?

The Grognard: I sometimes talk to an imaginary talk show audience. It helps with my anxiety over all my various witty remarks going underappreciated.

Achilles: Good idea. I do the same thing with podcasts.


Link (YouTube)

The Grognard: Just to catch our studio audience up, over the last several days a bunch of new information has come out about Baldur’s Gate III: a gameplay demo, the opening cinematic, and the basic premise of the story. The video above is from Fextralife’s channel, which is a good place to go for just-the-facts-ma’am information about RPGs.

Achilles: What are these facts?

The Grognard: The premise of the plot, for one. Opening cinematic: our heroes are in a nautilus-looking, tentacled mind flayer ship, very Spelljammer. Illithid Bae puts a freaky tadpole with teeth into our brain, presumably starting the cerromorphosis process. HMS Spelljammer starts attacking a city, doesn’t look like Baldur’s Gate, probably some off-brand Sword Coast dump that doesn’t even rate a tie-in novel, and dragons come out of a portal to attack it. One rider, Githyanki, Lady of Pain knows they don’t get along with flayers, looked like, three dragons, maybe some kind of exfiltration op, one of the captives was a Gith, she’ll probably be a party member. Anyway, the dragons corner the nautiloid in the Elemental Plane of Sure Looks Cold Around Here before it escapes, cut to title screen.

Achilles: A lot of those words you just said were articles, like “the,” and conjugations of common, everyday verbs, like “are” and “went.” So those ones I understood, just now, but the others you’re going to have to explain.

The Grognard: Instead of me explaining, maybe I’ll just show you the video without my commentary first.


Link (YouTube)

The Grognard: I’ll put it in terms you can understand. The flying squid thing? That’s Irenicus’ dungeon. Illithid Bae is Irenicus. He probably has some kind of tragic past we’ll gradually learn about. You’re one of the trapped people in the pod things; the others are Imeon, Minsc, and all of them. The grumpy one with the pointy ears is probably Jaheira. The dragons attacking it are the shadow thieves. You’re charname. Instead of having a magical whatsit in your blood that will turn you into the god of murder, you have a magical whatsit in your brain that will turn you into a psychic tentacle monster. And, as the devs have strongly hinted at in interviews, at some point the main quest will stop and wait until you do some side quests, such as, for example, gathering a certain amount of money in hopes of rescuing your sister from the bad guys.

Achilles: So it’s Baldur’s Gate II.

The Grognard: I’ve lost track of whether I’m an even number of layers of sarcasm deep, or an odd one. I’ll come back up for air: the plots appear to be quite similar.

Achilles: And you’ve conscripted me to figure out for you whether this is a good or a bad thing.

The Grognard: Look, my therapist and I agree that our conversations may be a net positive for my mental state. I’m very worried about this game.

Achilles: Allow me to be your therapy animal. You’re worried that, in an SAT-style analogy, Baldur’s Gate III: Potential Subtitle TBD will be to Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn as Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens is to Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope. And you are worried, by extension, that this increasing pace of creative recycling portends some kind of entropic doom for all of society, like a raven, black as midnight, perching ominously upon the bust of Pallas just above your chamber door, perching and sitting and nothing more. Am I close?

The Grognard: Yes, and I appreciate you typing that SAT analogy out so clearly. Doesn’t it seem derivative to you?

Achilles: It’s derivative in the way that putting paintings in frames is derivative. The frame’s a good one: here’s the villain, here are the party members, here’s the campaign hook, now which side quest do you want to do first? Probably after two and a half sidequests or so there’ll be a cutscene or something, and Octopus Guy will do something evil. So yeah, the frame is the same, but the painting is different. Instead of Irenicus, the sonorous stage actor type with the boohoo dead wife story, we’ll get Octopus Guy, freaky body horror, psychological horror, hopefully a bit of comic relief and maybe some kind of agonizing choice. Or, better yet, a choice that’s supposedly agonizing but really everyone knows which ending is the good one, and the post-release arguments are nice and civilized. The moderators really step up this time, you know? And if they don’t, the internet is a big place, there’s always another tumblr or something to read, there’s more than just reddit, and you know what? A few weeks later some other interesting sequel will be released. The Disco Elysium people will announce something, maybe, or someone else. So much good indie stuff, and quality writing and design always eventually get noticed, even if it’s frustrating how long it takes. Would you like some chai? I make it like cappuccino, with one of those milk frothers, and put cinnamon on top.

The Grognard: I would like that, yes, thank you.

Achilles: Would you like to talk about Vancian magic now?

The Grognard: No, I’m too worked up about this preview stuff. We haven’t even talked about the gameplay yet. I’m going to spend at least another entry on that.

 


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45 thoughts on “Achilles and the Grognard: Special Unexpected BG3 Preview Edition

  1. Ancillary says:

    I’m not too genre savvy, but it seems premature to mark the mind flayer as the Big Bad. Maybe he’s just the instigating incident. Maybe there isn’t a Big Bad, at least not an external one; maybe the central conflict is internal, or at least intra-party. I never made it to the end of D:OS2. Was there a main antagonist in that game? I remember an old lady popping into the plot for the occasional boss fight, but her appearances were very sporadic.

    1. I’m with you, I’m not sure the mind flayer came off as distinctive enough to merit “big bad” status in a Baldur’s Gate game. He has a Nautiloid, he’s collecting subjects for Ceremorphosis, the Gith are hunting him. That’s almost any mind flayer. My money’s on something a little more spicy, even if it’s just whichever Elder Brain that guy answers to.

      As to other suggestions that the game lacks “Baldur’s Gate”-ness… Mm, maybe? I don’t understand the suggestion I’ve heard that it’s too colorful and cheery, the first two games were Capital H High Fantasy, with brightly dressed troubadors and flower-filled wilderness areas. I’m not really bothered that the action isn’t immediately at Baldur’s Gate, since it took most of the first game to get there, and the second game was somewhere else entirely. We don’t even know the story DOESN’T relate to the Bhaalspawn in some way. Isn’t Avernus next door to Bhaal’s old stomping grounds in Gehenna?

      On the other hand, I do see certain elements that fly in the face of older presentation. Not just the turn-based thing, which I’m personally bummed about, but I’m kind of the minority. The shift to a cinematic style for dialogue and cutscenes away from the richly narrated voiceovers of the original games certainly presents more… bombastic. I would say the literary style is one of the things I’d characterize as being iconically Baldur’s Gate, and I’m sorry to see it go. On the same note, the “Past Tense” dialogue looks really clunky to me, and doesn’t even fit in the tense of the old narrations.

      Finally, I’m really confused about who you’re actually playing. The live demonstration had Vincke playing as a very specific character, but the two NPC companions appear to also have been selectable as player characters. Was that section an “origin” specific to that character? Do you just have the option of playing the whole game as a premade character? What exactly are the “origins” that Vincke alluded to?

      1. Gautsu says:

        Assuming similar to Divinity: Original Sin 2, where you can pick one of 6 origins with “extra” story points or make a completely original character with no character specific beats

    2. BlueHorus says:

      Divinity: OS 2 had a couple of clear antagonists/bosses, one reveled in a very late plot twist. At the same time, the central conflict was kind of intra-party, and kind of a magical natural disaster that is linked to the antagonists.
      (If this sounds vague and confusing, it’s because I’m avoiding spoilers.)

      If anything, D: OS 2 reminded me of Pillars of Eternity, where the antagonist/final boss was…related to the plot, rather than a major driving force in it.

  2. tmtvl says:

    I am still seething that Larian slapped the Baldur’s Gate label on their ENTIRELY UNRELATED Dungeons & Dragons game instead of giving it a Spelljammer name. The only Spelljammer game that exists is disappointing, so there is no problem using that name. And it comes without having to ruin the good name of a series by suddenly adding an unrelated game after the main trilogy is finished.
    It’s like if Bioware had called Andromeda “Mass Effect 4” instead.
    It’s like “sure, we only have a different main character, different side characters, a different setting, and an unrelated plot; why not call it BG3?”

    1. Gunther says:

      Yeah, I’m mildly surprised that anyone’s take-away could be “It’s too much like BG”, when from the livestreamed gameplay it looks way more like a very thin coat of D&D on top of a D:OS2 expansion .

      I mean, it looks fine, I just don’t get a BG vibe from it at all.

      1. I’m curious how the game system is going to work . . . are they actually using some recognizable edition of D&D? Because the “2nd edition” rules are so ghastly dated now that it’d be really unpleasant to go back into that straightjacket. 5th edition will be completely unrecognizable gameplay-wise for fans of the original system. 3.0/3.5, while my favorite edition(s), are probably the LEAST suited to being made into a computer game (and I say this knowing full well that my favorite computer game is kinda based on that edition).

        And if it’s not a recognizable edition of D&D a la Neverwinter, what the heck is even the point?

        1. Grudgeal says:

          The voiceover said it would be 5th edition adapted by Larian. The gameplay looked like D:OS to me, though granted that’s mostly because the interface and graphics are identical.

        2. Hal says:

          There’s an irony that one major complaint about 4th edition was that it was too similar to MMO mechanics, but they never made a video game using said mechanics.

    2. Kyle Haight says:

      I agree that calling this BG3 is odd… because calling any game BG3 would be odd. The BG games told a specific story about a specific protagonist, and that story wrapped up in the Throne of Bhaal expansion. It’s done. It doesn’t need a sequel. That said, I’m also not going to get up in arms about it. It would make no sense to say “this game looks amazing, but I refuse to play it because they didn’t call it ‘Forgotten Realms: The Illithid Wars'”.

      From what I’ve seen this thing looks to fall somewhere inside a triangle whose points are labeled “Baldur’s Gate”, “Original Sin 2” and “Dragon Age: Origins”. Since I really enjoyed all three of those, I find it hard to look on this as a bad thing.

      1. GloatingSwine says:

        On the other hand they also had relatively little to do with the city of Baldur’s Gate, since you spend about a fifth or so of the first game there and never see it again…

        Baldur’s Gate is an established part of the Forgotten Realms, and this game is, apparently, somehow related to the recently released Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus tabletop module.

    3. SupahEwok says:

      I don’t know why you’d call the game Spelljammer either, as it doesn’t seem as if you get to have a Spelljammer ship to explore the cosmos and battle space hippo pirates.

    4. Bloodsquirrel says:

      I’d care a lot more about that if there was any real prospect of us actually getting a Baldur’s Gate 3 that was even kind of sort of faithful to the first two games. Obsidian is the only company I can think of that might have made such a game, but they were bought by MS and are making things like Outer Worlds now.

      At least it isn’t going to Dragon Age 2’d. We couldn’t have realistically expected any better than that.

  3. King Marth says:

    I know that the joke is that The Grognard’s recap is unintelligible, but it’s arguably even more confusing if you understand the jargon. It took two or three rereads to figure out why anyone would imagine The Lady of Pain setting foot outside of Sigil let alone as a dragon rider, before I settled on the tenuous assumption that it was an off-hand attempt at “God only knows” in a setting with plenty of actual Gods to name. I guess that the goal was to transcribe a real manic rant, but this goal didn’t make reading that rant pleasant. My recommendation is to err on the side of clarity in the future; Achilles is welcome to call out that a description only makes sense if you already have the missing context, but The Grognard should make sense to herself.

    I like the ‘different story, similar feel’ approach to video game sequels. It’s cool when you have direct story continuity, especially with outright save-game transfer, but that’s hardly necessary in the same way movie sequels need to have the same characters. Movies need to share story to be connected, but games can be connected purely based on mechanical structure. More often, the link between games in a long-running franchise has more to do with feel than any given character or mechanic; case in point, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

    1. CBob says:

      I had the same reaction to that bit Grognard dialog. I read it, then watched the video (for the first time), and was thinking “Where’s the Lady of Pain? I thought she said the Lady of Pain was among the people chasing the illithid?”

      Wasn’t until I went back and reread it carefully that I figured out that “lady of pain knows” was a stand in for “God knows”. The way “Lady of Pain” backs right up against the list of things chasing the illithid, combined with the exotic substitution derailing recognition of a common pre-baked phrase made it read like one sentence with a couple typos in the middle rather than as two separate thoughts.

      1. Chris_ANG says:

        I understood it first time. Being able to understand that density of jargon probably says bad things about me <_<.

  4. Xander77 says:

    Shame unavoidable delays meant that A&G never made it to the Iillithid dungeon proper, just for a point of comparison.

  5. Grudgeal says:

    I was a huge BG fan — still am, in many ways — and yet after watching that I find I’m still more hyped for Wrath of the Righteous (Owlcat’s next Pathfinder game, currently being kickstarted) than I am for an actual, official, new BG game.

    I don’t know what that says about me, or the game. I always found Larian’s Divinity setting to be one of the biggest weaknesses of the series, and yet even when transported to Spelljammer/the Forgotten Realms I can’t seem to muster any additional hype.

  6. Lino says:

    As someone who hasn’t played any of the Baldur’s Gate games, I was initially interested in this one, but I’m currently on the fence. For one, I don’t like turn-based combat. Even if there are other redeeming qualities about the game, I just don’t like it. The only place where I’ve liked it is Heroes of Might and Magic, and that’s probably due to my fond memories of Hot Seat with my friends when we were kids.

    With this one, I might end up giving it a go, because I’m kinda drawn to the world, story, main characters, and the environmental aspect of combat. The only aspect I really don’t like is how they gimped their main villain right from the get-go. Why would you show your Big Bad get bested in the opening cinematic? And if Squid-Dude isn’t your Big Bad, then it would be very weird not to show said Big Bad in lieu of his kind of incompetent servant, who couldn’t even take over a defenseless city.

    1. Gethsemani says:

      I think there’s a solid argument to make that the Illithid is only an instigator and not an antagonist. I imagine the initial story will go something like: You and important Gith lady (who is also a party member) both need to get nasty tadpole out of your brain before it eats it and takes over your bodies, so the first act of the game is simply to find a way to get the tadpole out before you both die. During this questing it is revealed that Gith lady is important for some reason and once tadpole is out you and Gith lady have a mutual bond/made an important discovery/been raised to Godhood and thus you need to stick around and help Gith lady and her allies fight the larger Illithid threat.

      I can’t say anything about the story itself obviously, since it is still unrevealed, but I will say that I’m sick of seeing Githyanki and Illithids every time a computer game wants to adapt Forgotten Realms. There’s literally hundreds of interesting story hooks in the FR but all computer games wants to play with are Illithids, Githyanki or Drow. And frankly, I find neither of them particularly interesting since they are all pretty one note in terms of race portrayal.

      1. John says:

        Every time?

        There are zero illithids in either the original campaign for Neverwinter Nights or its first expansion, Shadows of Undrentide. (There are, it must be said, some illithids in the second expansion, Hordes of the Underdark, but they’re confined to the second act and are mostly skippable.) And, while I’m no expert, not having played the games myself, my impression from reading about the Gold Box games on the CRPG Addict blog is that the Gold Box games are also largely illithid-free.

        Which games, exactly, are so chock-full of illithid that you’re sick of them?

        1. SupahEwok says:

          I’d complain more that the last good D&D (expansion pack, anyhow) came out 10 years ago. D&D game with illithids, D&D game without illithids, no D&D game at all? Illithids isn’t the worst option on that list.

          Besides, I can’t think of a single D&D game where mind flayers were the main villains before now, or even a major faction. What’s next? Complaining about how we’re sick of all the dragons in these Dungeons and Dragons games? I hope they learn some damn restraint and cut down on the dungeons as well.

          1. Geebs says:

            Anyone fancy a game of Cellars and Cockatrices?

            1. tmtvl says:

              Oh, BBI, well… while Dragon’s Dogma is my favourite game ever I kind of had my fill of Bitterblack Isle for the time being. I wouldn’t mind a bit of Catacombs & Ogres, though.

    2. CBob says:

      It didn’t look to me like taking over the city was its goal. It was just popping by to kidnap enough people to fill that tadpole chamber on its ship. The dead illithids on board implied (to me) that this was a running pit stop to replenish crew killed in an earlier off-screen fight with those guys who were chasing it.

      I agree with the impression Gethsemani got regarding this scene’s place in the plot. Illithids to me have always felt like a threat one deals with (conceptually) as a dangerous species rather than in terms of specific villain characters, so I read this scene as establishing an “oncoming storm” rather than a “big bad”.

      1. Lino says:

        Even if he isn’t the main villain, he still felt very weak. I don’t know who any of these characters are, and my main thought was “Squid-Dude is the only bad guy I’ve seen so far. They haven’t even hinted at another villain. Since this is an RPG, I’ll start out very weak, while these three guys riding the dragons seem pretty strong and capable. Since they seem to have things covered, why should I even bother going on an adventure? I’ll only get in the way”.

        1. SupahEwok says:

          …because you have a tadpole eating your brain?

          1. Lino says:

            We have a tadpole eating some character’s brain. This isn’t a Bethesda-style RPG where you spend hours creating your character, and then see them going through an ordeal (usually – escaping prison :D). Here we see some characters we know nothing about have tadpoles put into their brains.

            While all the characters are extremely interesting (and I plan on playing one of them, rather than create my own), until I read the preview material, I had no idea these characters were playable.

            1. Cbob says:

              I do agree with this. There’s nothing in the video that in any way implies any of the people shown are meant to be story characters, good or bad. If it weren’t for other sources confirming that the lady we see getting tadpoled is a party member, I’d have thought this was just another “vignette of the invasion” scene like the first trailer.

              1. Peter says:

                Well, in the mean time a new demoplay (done by somoe CEO?) has come out and the ppl trapped in the mind flayer transport thingy are indeed some of the starter characters. Apparently you can also start your own race-class-subclass combo, but those are the defaults.

        2. Cbob says:

          The guys riding dragons don’t have it covered. Three dragons failed to stop a busted ship with a one-monster skeleton crew. They arrive too late to prevent it kidnapping a bunch of people to grisly fates (and wrecking a bunch of buildings), and in the end, they fail to catch it before it could warp away, twice.

          If they have a way to keep following it, then they might eventually win, as this this did seem to be a running battle of attrition the illithid is getting the worse of (from the slice we saw, at least: we have no idea what K/D ratio it takes to whittle down a nautiloids crew to one, but it seems fair to assume a properly crewed ship is a much harder target), but as far the city and the non-dragon riding people are concerned, they made little to no difference.

          Taken in combination with the earlier teaser video, it looks like this incident is a canary for a much larger incursion in which the dragon guys are either MIA, defeated, or some other form of catastrophically not having it covered.

    3. BlueHorus says:

      I’d be surprised if that one Illithid/Mindflayer is the big bad. From what I remember, Illithids live in communities run by massive brains in jars…

      …now THAT’S a Big Bad. Can’t go wrong with a brain in a jar!

  7. Mattias42 says:

    …Man, a D&D game where they actually have at least some of the crazy movement abilities. Never thought I’d actually see that at this rate.

    Not counting, say, Pathfinder: Kingmakers text-boxes and such, of course. They’re a fine ‘good enough’ style thing, but not nearly as exciting as actually getting to… well, cast that Jump spell and actually see your character jump up the nearest wall old-school Super-man style with actual animations, or whatever.

    Really glad to hear The Warlock is already in the game. They have some really cool options with that sort of stuff in P&P, and them being one of the ‘core’ classes (IE, one of the companions is going to be one) hints that Larion is taking fleshing them out seriously.

  8. Mako says:

    I, for one, am really excited about this reimagining of Mass Effect 2.

  9. John says:

    People keep complaining that Baldur’s Gate III isn’t Baldur’s Gate-y enough. I’m not sure how they can tell, given that the game isn’t out yet. There’s been one whole preview event which mostly just showed off the combat and at which journalists didn’t even get to play the game. But even supposing that the complainers are right, I can’t bring myself to care. I’ve never played Baldur’s Gate. The franchise means nothing to me. I have, however, played Divinity: Original Sin, which I loved. I’m interested in Baldur’s Gate III not for the Baldur’s Gate-ness (whatever that means) or even the Dungeons & Dragons-ness of it all, but because it’s a new Larian game.

    1. Joshua says:

      Yeah, lots of strangely negative people here. Kyle Haight pointed out up above that having the name Baldur’s Gate is somewhat strange as the first game takes awhile to get there, and the second game and its expansion don’t go there at all, IIRC. At this point, the legacy titles will be Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights (I don’t think we’re going to see a Pools/Curse game this much later.

      1. SupahEwok says:

        Something that a lot of people miss is that Baldur’s Gate 2 drops a LOT of hints of some kind of illithid conspiracy. Off of the top of my head,

        1) for Jan Jansen’s character quest, you seek help from some highly placed shadow source, which turns out to be a mind flayer
        2) hidden mind flayer mini-dungeon in the sewers with a note that calls themselves parts of a certain organization (I don’t remember the name)
        3) note in a noble estate from that same organization conspiring to take over tbe city (or something like that)

        Whether it was intentionally left open or was tied-in to a cut or cut-down plotline (such as involving the Slaver Lords or the Twisted Rune) is something of a mystery, but it was definitely the intention to portray the mind flayers as attempting a behind the scenes takeover of Athkatla, beyond the scope of the main character’s plot. Is that what Larian is drawing on, or did they just pick illithids out of a hat? Don’t know, but I’m not discounting a deep reach into BG2 lore as part of their BG3 setup.

        1. GloatingSwine says:

          I doubt it. This game is set in the “current” continuity of 5th edition Forgotten Realms, which is about 150 years after the era of the Time of Troubles, and any conspiracies that were going on back then will have been derailed by all the spellplague and second sundering and all the other events that yanked the cosmology of the realms hither and yon to update it to new editions.

          1. Hector says:

            Forgotten Realms is one of the few game settings I can think of where the average deity has a shorter life expectancy than the average mortal. Thanks purely to the need to somehow upend the place for s pointless “event” every few years.

      2. tmtvl says:

        Well, the Baldur’s Gate main series is known as the Bhaalspawn Saga, so despite it not involving the city al that much it still has a certain element tying the games together. Why didn’t they call it the Bhaalspawn Saga to begin with? Maybe because they wanted the OG to have an interesting plot twist.
        There is a spin-off series called Dark Alliance, so maybe BG3 could instead be Baldur’s Gate: The Illithid Conspiracy and start a series of its own.
        But no, Larian is the most arrogant and egotistic developer this side of the Local Cluster, so why not just usurp a series and take its name for their own creation?

        1. John says:

          I dunno man. It’s not like Baldur’s Gate is in the public domain. The way I see it, there are two possibilities. One is that Larian made an unsolicited pitch for Baldur’s Gate III to Wizards of the Coast. The other is that Wizards of the Coast hired Larian to do a Baldur’s Gate III. I can’t find a definitive answer online. I note, however, that Wizards of the Coast has at least a couple of Baldur’s Gate-branded tabletop campaigns. One of them is an explicit prequel to Baldur’s Gate III and was developed simultaneously with the video game, so I’m leaning towards the second scenario.

          1. Gautsu says:

            To be fair, I seem to remember Sven saying that they just wanted to make a D&D game and that Wizards suggestes BG 3 in an interview about the time the initial announcement came out. And of they tie in with any kind of tabletop project, mind Flayers are one of the untapped villains for any kind of uncoming campaign book (they maybe had some in Rage of Demons and Dragon Heist but not as the primary antagonists). Plus factor in Stranger Things; how many non D&D players could point out an Illithid, but now at least a few have an idea that a mind flayer is a bad guy. Plus with the tadpoles and ceremorphesis happening we get a rare chance for some body horror in a non-Book of Vile Darkness project. And unless the game sucks, which is probably too early to tell, how is naming the game Baldur’s Gate 3, going to do anything to harm the reputation of the first 2 and their expansions?

  10. Zaxares says:

    Like many others here, I think that Larian/WotC made a big error in deciding to call this game “Baldur’s Gate 3” when it appears that this game has nothing to do with the Bhaalspawn saga. It’d be like announcing that you were going to make Back to the Future IV, but it turns out that the movie has absolutely nothing to do with Doc Brown, Marty McFly, time travel, or the DeLorean (although it might make a cameo), and the only connection it has to the previous movies is that it’s also set in Hill Valley. All in all, it just feels like the name was a cynical attempt to snare player interest from long-time fans of the BG series, so it’s quite understandable that they’re feeling pretty betrayed at the moment.

    That said… From what I’ve seen of the gameplay demo, this game looks like it’ll be quite a fun 5E D&D game, which is why I’m most likely still going to get it. While I would have preferred the game to be RTwP, I’ve also played and enjoyed other TB games before, so that’s not reaaaally a big point against it. I do still have some minor concerns here and there, but they’re not dealbreakers as yet. Funnily enough, what sold me on the game was the point in the demo where Sven said “I’m throwing my boots at the Devourer!” and actually killed it with the pitiful damage. That was SUCH a tabletop D&D thing, and I’m glad it got included. :D

  11. GargamelLeNoir says:

    I also feel like that the gameplay demo showed us a very promising Forgotten Realms themed Divinity Original Sin game, and that it was a bad idea to call it Baldur’s Gate 3. This reddit post is giving some very good ideas on how to give a more BG feel to the UI and gameplay side.
    Story wise many people are saying that we shouldn’t give our opinion because we only saw the early game but
    1) What’s the point of gameplay reveal if nobody’s allowed to comment on it and criticize? and
    2) The early game is exactly where a sequel bridges itself with the previous games. And in the gameplay demo we hear about the town Baldur’s Gate, but absolutely nothing about the events of the previous games, and no indication that the Illithid attack has anything to do with the Bhaalspawn story.

  12. Ramsus says:

    I for one do not care whether BG3 has anything to do with the plotlines of BG1 and 2. In fact, it’s better to leave narrative works by other authors ages in the past well enough alone. Assuming everyone guessing is correct and the plot isn’t related to the old BG plotlines, then it’s just a series name for the sake of a sense of continuity/familiarity. One that makes sense since there are only so many “well known” city names in the setting. I don’t know if Waterdeep has any video game stuff currently going on, but at the very least they couldn’t have used Neverwinter as there’s a D&D videogame thing of some kind that currently exists for that.
    So if they want to use one of their well known video game series names, Baldur’s Gate seems like the logical choice.

    Mainly the thing that I noticed was that they made choices which make me very happy. 100% turn based, so actually a game that functions remotely like D&D. We’ve had enough real-time with pause D&D-like games for me to know I don’t enjoy those nearly as much as I do turn based combat. The second was basing it as much on a specific edition of D&D as possible, and best of all the one I like best, instead of weird half way one system half way another. And the third thing, simplifying out of turn actions. Reactions really are the main way to slow the game down (video game, tabletop, and especially play by post) and not really get your time’s worth from it.

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