Bear sex. Not what I would expect from this game but I haven’t played any in the series. It does make me want to play it just to see how this fits into the story tbh. Good marketing.
I’d actually rather love some sort of different campaign or some adventure packs, similar to how D&D does it with their expansion books.
Either that or a great mod tool that would allow for something like that. Doesn’t even need support for added races, classes or traits. Just a map editor with a mob editor slapped on top would be a gamechanger
Even a D&D campaign at this level is hard to DM, I cant imagine the complexity in trying to really gameify this when especially at the end your players are gods.
Cast wish, may as well just let players write their own code for what they want.
Sure bigger stronger enemies are available but parties become so powerful i can’t see it being easy.
I would say just leave those aspects out of the game, or put strict limitations on their usage. You could isolate higher magic abilities to specific items (e.g. deck of many things).
It is complex, however I think if you look to games like Neverwinter as a template for moving forward (absent microtransactions).
The biggest requirement, imo, is probably just having an SSD for the game. There's a LOT of pop ins and textures that just don't load until a few minutes later. It does have a "slow HDD mode" but it hasn't really done much from what I can see.
That's pretty normal for modern AAA games. There's just a lot of texture streaming going on and that requires a lot of bandwidth that HDDs don't have. You can be lucky if it is just blurry textures & pop in and not also strong stuttering.
I've gotten away with even harder to run games on a HDD but even if it is on an SSD, I've found it to be inconsistent plus only BG3 acts up compared to everything else I have going.
It does run on steam deck (though at lower settings with FSR to get 40 mostly stable).
Open world games with some complexity generally take a decent amount of power. You have to load a good number of surrounding objects at any given time, with a pretty wide view on the zoomed out view. There are also other characters/animals doing stuff, environmental effects, and a healthy dose of passive checks on the environment against various traits of your party to see if your character identifies any of the secrets all over the world.
One of my coworkers got one recently and absolutely loves it. I really want one, but I’m waiting until the next version eventually comes out, since the current one is slightly too heavy for me to hold easily.
I too am waiting on the next version. I need a new phone and laptop before I can think about a steamdeck. So hopefully a new one will be out by the time I am ready to buy it.
Support the Steam Deck, Valve is doing everything right. Right to repair, virtually all parts replaceable, Linux, Rma's to name a few. Not to mention it's a monster of a small machine, it could very well be a desktop replacement as well as a portable gaming system.
Bard is always the first thing I play in D&D crpgs that let me. It’s a great class that lets you do a little bit of everything. Plus it’s great to do a face-melting lute solo as the last thing you do before ending your turn, since Performance is a free action.
Especially if you’re playing a class not covered by the default companions. My paladin has been awesome, smashing goblins with a Warhammer, and still able to talk her way through just about anything. Playing a wizard, rogue, or cleric feels like it would make it tough to justify bringing someone along.
I tried a rogue that I built into heavy crossbows and line-holding while also having Ass Orion, there are definitely times I feel that it was redundant/wasteful (such as skill checks) but it pays off during stealth fights.
Having 2 characters that can move, enter stealth, and sneak attack in the same turn is extremely powerful.
[SPOILERS BELOW] Beat the cenobite doctor and the toll house lady back to back using this at lvl6, neither bosses got any attacks off on my guys. Idk if this is supposed to be impressive or anything, but In both cases I used both rouges to exploit the bosses AI, although admittedly the toll house fight was clearly designed for stealth.
My bard and Astarion work as a team to do the robbing. When you perform, crowds gather around you, so it’s very useful for redirecting prying eyes so Astarion can pick pockets.
I had been planning to play as a bard (I’m normally a rogue in RPGs, but we’ve got one in the party), then watched part of a Let’s Play where someone did, and the sight of the bard pulling out a violin in the middle of a battle was so ridiculous I immediately dismissed the idea because I knew I went be able to take my character seriously 🤣
I just finished downloading it and am playing as a ranger, and I’m not quite far into it enough to see how I like it, but I picked it because another Let’s Play I watched (I watched the first hour of several to see what it was like before I decided to get it) played as a ranger and it seemed interesting.
Maybe next playthrough I’ll give bard a go, just because I know they’re a good class.
My Drow Warlock has been a ton of fun. A lot of the NPCs react differently to you for being a Drow. I’ve been able to deceive or intimidate my way through a lot of dialog. Also Eldritch blast just feels very satisfying to cast in game.
Haha I would just think about what sounds the most fun to you and play that. You can have 3 other npcs in your party that you control so you can have them fill in the gaps that your character may struggle in
Bards are objectively the best if you want the full breadth of options to move the story around. If you want to kick ass in combat or sling more spells, other classes are better at those aspects of the game, but Bards are going to give you a lot more to play with in terms of the RP.
Not spoiling anything either, but you can always try bard and change your class later, as there is a mechanic in the game for that.
The sheer number of high level enemies and bosses I've killed as a Warlock with one hit of my Eldritch Blast charged with Repelling Blast that throws them down a pit begs to differ. There's no ukulele strumming or bongos banging that'll top the fun and laughs I have every time I see an enemy relatively close to a big fall.
Other than that, the game is VERY generous with healing items and options all around. There's so many dialogue options which gave me DC 5 or less to pass, along with many inspiration sources that you'll barely need Bard's "essential" skills.
I fucking loved playing as a Great Old One Warlock in 5e. Eldritch Blast with Agonizing Blast (I assume that’s an option in BG3?) is so versatile. Maybe I’m just easily persuaded because now I’m leaning toward Warlock again lol.
How is it for role-playing? I think that was my favorite part with the character I had.
I don't know how much Larian has changed BG3 from the classical tabletop, but it feels like everything is the same. To be fair, just pick the class and race you most like and play it, ignore all the minmaxing gatekeepers and articles like this, just have your own fun and come to your own conclusions.
How is it for role-playing? I think that was my favorite part with the character I had.
I have about 30 hours and I haven't even left the first area, but from what I've seen, you never go long without a dialogue choice with a skill/race/class check. The charisma and wisdom based checks are constant, so my Warlock is always useful no matter what.
One of the biggest changes is ranges of attacks. An Eldritch Blast has a range of 120ft in 5e. In BG3 all ranged attacks have been significantly shortened (less than half for Eldritch Blast) so they can’t be targeted “off screen”.
As a design philosophy, Larian dislikes people being hit by attacks from off screen so they limited the length of ranged attacks.
I'm skeptical of any article like this on its face. The whole beauty of a well done RPG, especially a CRPG, is that you get choices on how to build your character and how you handle encounters and can be successful with many of them.
If bard is the most fun for you, awesome. If it's "objectively better", the game is flawed.
Arguably, that’s the whole point. I never played the original Fallout thinking I could play every option. I’ve seen people complaining about “you have to use savescumming or you miss half the dialogue.” No, that’s called “replayability” so when you go back and try as a different type of character, there will be paths you’ll be locked out of, but there will also be paths that were previously closed now open.
that's something I've noticed about bg3 (only 1-2h in) vs the old ones and even ps:torment.
in most of those you can continue the dialog and usually circle back to the other choices.
in bg3 its seems much more like, you say one option you're stuck with it - which seems much better.
i'll be interested to see on the replay - but i guess itll be up to me to play it differently.
Bg3 makes you feel like your choices matter. I havnt progressed very far (10 hours in and mostly exploring) and there have been points in dialog or exploring the open world when I pass a “point of no return”. This is where I can tell there will be a consequence (good or bad) to my choices, but perhaps it’s not immediately seen. I havnt had most of these choices pay off yet, but it builds anticipation and makes me want to see how this will play out and wonder if it will come up further down the line when I least expect.
That’s actually my biggest criticism of D&D. Bards are better choices than rogues or fighters or wizards. Same goes with clerics or druids. sprinkle on a bit of paladin, a couple feats, and some magic gauntlets, and they can invalidate whole swathes of staple fantasy archetypes entirely.
if by better you mean, more fun, i think that's slightly up to you.
you can have just as much fun with a more constrained character who keeps losing dice rolls - it might be harder work though.
no, i mean more empowered to interact with the game world. They have more agency in more arenas of play. You can play a goober of any class and have fun, i agree, but a goober who picks a “better” class will be able to create more comedies of errors beyond “Player fails to hit thing with a big stick”.
That's the issue with how combat oriented D&D is. While there is a wide assortment of abilities between classes and their roles in combat, a lot of non-combat situations are reduced to just roling high on a skill check, not many choices and approaches to be made. There might be the odd utility spell, but even that isn't a choice for martial classes. Because of that, Bards dominate non-combat encounters, with Jack of all Trades and Expertise.
It’s not a problem for a videogame, but D&D5e (actually most D&D editions) is not a balanced game at all. In fact the only RPG that I’ve played and would call balanced is Pathfinder 2e.
So I was not expecting Baldur’s Gate to be balanced at all given it’s based on D&D5e.
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