{"id":49507,"date":"2020-03-14T12:05:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-14T16:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=49507"},"modified":"2020-03-14T12:06:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T16:06:37","slug":"achilles-and-the-grognard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=49507","title":{"rendered":"Achilles and The Grognard: BG3 Gameplay Preview Materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> All right. I&#8217;m set.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> Set? What do you mean?<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> I have supplies laid by for two weeks, with room to spare. By my calculations, with proper rationing I can survive up to eight days on a single roll of toilet paper, even if it&#8217;s one of those store-brand ones. I also hit up the grocery outlet store. I bought nine pounds of dried black beans, eight pounds of frozen tilapia, seven sticks of butter, ample salt, red and black pepper, chili powder, oregano, and two entire crisper drawers full of premade southwestern salads, with dressing, which can keep for two weeks refrigerated according to the expiration dates. I&#8217;m ready.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> Are you quarantining? Have you caught the Coronavirus? I noticed you touching your face that one time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> Coronawhat? Oh, that. No, I mean I&#8217;m ready to talk about gameplay.<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IZ0LJ5BqYrk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IZ0LJ5BqYrk'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n(From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/rockpapershot\">Rock Paper Shotgun&#8217;s Youtube<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> Let&#8217;s just tear the band aid off here: it&#8217;s turn based, not real time with pause. Now me, I don&#8217;t really have a dog in this race. But I&#8217;m guessing you do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> I have dogs in races you&#8217;ve never even heard of. In this one I actually have two. I&#8217;m infuriated that they&#8217;ve betrayed the legacy of the series, but I also would have been infuriated if they hadn&#8217;t. Both of my positions are articulated fairly well in these two PC Gamer articles: <a href=\"http:\/\/pcgamer.com\/it-rules-that-baldurs-gate-3-is-turn-based\">pcgamer.com\/it-rules-that-baldurs-gate-3-is-turn-based<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/pcgamer.com\/it-sucks-that-baldurs-gate-3-is-turn-based\">pcgamer.com\/it-sucks-that-baldurs-gate-3-is-turn-based<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> It&#8217;s crazy how you can just talk in hypertext like that. Personally, I&#8217;m fine with it. The way I see it, <em>XCOM<\/em> was fun, and that was turn-based, and this looks like that. It should be fun if they can avoid the September problem.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> The September problem?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> In <em>XCOM<\/em>, the game starts to drag around September. Right around the time you start getting guerilla ops full of sectopods. I call it &#8220;eternal September.&#8221; Keep in mind that I&#8217;m referring to the original <em>XCOM<\/em> here, not its sequel, <em>War of the Chosen<\/em>. Are you all right? That vein on your forehead is bulging again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> Don&#8217;t worry, I have breathing exercises for that. You&#8217;re on to something here, though. What about the game drags in September?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> It just gets repetitive. Like in a real time with pause game, you can do trash fights mostly on autopilot. But in turn-based, you keep doing the same things over and over again. The hundredth time you flashbang a sectoid isn&#8217;t as exciting as the first.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> So the hundredth time you hit &#8220;attack&#8221; on a trash mob&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> Exactly. And then there&#8217;s the animations. <em>XCOM<\/em> &#8211; the original, I mean &#8211; has animations that last forever, unless you use the &#8220;Stop Wasting My Time&#8221; mod. At first they&#8217;re not so bad, but after twenty hours or so they get to you. And I&#8217;m guessing <em>Baldur&#8217;s Gate III<\/em> is gonna be longer than twenty hours long.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> Timing is tricky in a game like this. Of course more game is better, but too much of the same can creep up on you. You need variety &#8211; variety in gameplay, variety in encounter design.<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u0mdQF92N_w\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=u0mdQF92N_w'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n(From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/rockpapershot\">Rock Paper Shotgun&#8217;s Youtube<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> I don&#8217;t know about encounter design, but I see gameplay variety here. The crime and punishment system is right up my alley. To me, nothing is more satisfying than getting away with pretend crime. In <em>Skyrim<\/em>, my house in Whiterun had a bigger hoard of contraband than Alduin could ever dream of.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> Those mechanics do sound promising. Just as similar ones sounded promising all those years ago, from Peter Molyneaux, or those others, from Todd Howard. I may have been hurt too many times to hope again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> Look, we&#8217;ve discussed this. If one game disappoints you, just forget about it immediately and entirely and get worked up about the next one. That&#8217;s what I do. The anticipation is half the fun!<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> No. Not half. Twenty percent, at most, and it should be excruciating moreso than fun. However, certain of these changes have promise. The crime system, the verticality of the levels. And I was also encouraged by what we&#8217;ve seen of the camping\/resting system.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> Like I&#8217;ve said about every RPG since the first <em>Dragon Age<\/em>, why haven&#8217;t they done this in every RPG since the first <em>Dragon Age<\/em>? You camp out, you get a little campsite, you get to talk to your people, check their gear, and make sure you haven&#8217;t missed any dialog.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> It&#8217;s spelled &#8220;dialogue.&#8221; But other than that, I agree. And as for encounter variety, they&#8217;re working off an established ruleset with a good-sized library of sourcebooks, and the inclusion of dimensional travel in the storyline means you can basically send the players anywhere.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> And think how crazy things will get in the sequel!<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> Sequel? Isn&#8217;t that a little premature?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> The level cap is only ten. D&amp;D goes up to twenty, even I know that. There&#8217;s definitely going to be a sequel. Not to mention mods. There&#8217;s going to be mods for days! Look at what they said in their community update:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We\u2019ve built an engine that allows all 250 people at Larian collaborate to become the ultimate DM. Allowing for near-limitless reactivity, responsiveness, and a memory that never forgets who you are, or what you\u2019ve done. No matter who you roll, dice-rolls, modifiers, and physical simulation have all been designed to simulate a D&amp;D experience that feels as though it\u2019s straight from the imagination, where no matter the dice roll the story will continue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> That definitely means mod tools. This clinches it, I&#8217;m getting &#8220;SWEN LIFE&#8221; tattooed across my stomach in gothic lettering.<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HTy2J84HvTo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HTy2J84HvTo'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><br \/>\n(From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/Fextralife\">Fextralife&#8217;s Youtube<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> Before you make any big decisions, remember that sometimes you read things into marketing materials that aren&#8217;t always there. This is the game&#8217;s pre-honeymoon, when promises, real and imagined, are thick on the ground. And also remember that we haven&#8217;t even started to discuss the story yet.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> Yes we have. The story is <em>Baldur&#8217;s Gate II<\/em>, but with Octopus Guy instead of Evil Bald Elf Dude. You said so yourself.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> That paraphrase is inconvenient to my point, so I&#8217;ll ignore it. What I meant was we haven&#8217;t started to <em>speculate<\/em> about the story yet, which is even better than discussing it. That same community update promised &#8220;an epic adventure that subverts the binary morality found in many RPGs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> That just means there&#8217;s either going to be some kind of fake out or they&#8217;re not going to do a reputation system.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Grognard:<\/strong> It&#8217;s more than that. Now it&#8217;s my turn to read too much into marketing materials. We&#8217;re doing it all: writing, camerawork, voice acting, the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Achilles:<\/strong> Good thing we have all these supplies, then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Grognard: All right. I&#8217;m set. Achilles: Set? What do you mean? The Grognard: I have supplies laid by for two weeks, with room to spare. By my calculations, with proper rationing I can survive up to eight days on a single roll of toilet paper, even if it&#8217;s one of those store-brand ones. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49507"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49513,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49507\/revisions\/49513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}