Baldur's Gate 3- What does fried Nautiloid taste like?

[Keltest]

I was playing a wood half-elf and one of the Drow NPCs was racist towards me, which was a nice touch. Used words I haven't seen since the early Salvatore novels.

Lae'zel is interesting to me in that she's very obviously a fish out of water, and reacts to that by... I guess reinforcing the correctness of her worldview. And not just on me. Shadowheart isn't having any of it, and it actually came to blows... then they talked it out enough to not actively murder each other, without my intervention.

[Rising Phoenix]

I think I am approaching the midgame now. Level seven Dark Urget multiclass Paladin of Vengeance/Bard. It's fun.

As for the companions all I can say is that they have layers upon layers for you to peel back.

I am using Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Gale and Astarion. Of the four Lae-zel is the one that's impressed me the most. She's a fanatic, but she is not stupid and if presented with evidence will change her stance. I appreciate that. She can also be ignorantly funny. All in all a good character I'd say.

Astarion is slimy, petty and pretty. He has taken the longest to warm up to me not surprising given that I am playing a goody two shoes. Accept him and he becomes much more honest with you. I wouldn't say I like him, but I can respect his behaviour. Heck it seems that my Tav may be rubbing off on him.

Shadowheart is not nearly as sharp as she appears to be. In fact if you ask her she flat at tells you that she's not heartless. There's something warm and bright inside and I definitely want to see if I can make it shine .

Gale is uh a smart idiot or was a smart idiot and very straightforwardly good. I haven't seen anything surprising yet with him.

Wyl appears to be much better written then EA, but I've not used him. Karlach appears to be an utter sweetheart that would cleave you in half if you looked at her or her friends wrong. Will need to use them in a future play through.

As for world building. The Sword Coast is generic fantasy line. You don't really need much apart from that and imo the game does plenty to provide you with the information you need when you need it.

Music is decent and the game is very pretty. I have to say that I am encountering a lot more lag in full release in crowded areas then I did in EA. I hope they fix this.

Am having a blast overall defo GOTY material in my opinion.

[Eurus]

I really like the class based dialogue options. I'm sure they get old on a replay, but being able to just Monk at people in conversations feels like I'm playing a D&D Jedi, which is kinda great. I've heard Barbarian gets good dialogues too.

[Zevox]

If you look online, for instance on youtube, you see nothing but glowing reviews. And not just "this game good" - no, we are talking in superlatives. "Masterpiece", "best RPG ever" and even really stupid stuff like "BG3 is setting the bar to high" or "other developers fear/are angry at BG3 for being too good".

Worth noting on that point, particularly for people on Youtube: the internet heavily encourages superlatives. The more strongly you're praising or condemning something in the thumbnail/title, the more clicks you're likely to get, which partially translates into revenue/subscribers/etc.

That said, I haven't played the game yet - waiting on the console release next month - so I can't speak too specifically to the subject. I would suggest though that the game being 5e D&D likely helps it there. 5e is popular, and for a reason - it's simple and effective. Speaking for myself, for comparison, the big reason I haven't even tried the Pathfinder games is the fact that they're Pathfinder, and I know that was made by people who really liked the optimization element of 3.5e. Which I did enjoy to a degree at one point, but nowadays I feel like it's simply excessive and more effort than it's worth. What I used to like about multiclassing in 3.5e I find I get in full just from the subclass system of 5e - I can have my Fighter/Mage hybrid in various flavors with different degrees of each element (Eldritch Knight Fighter, Bladesinger Wizard, Valor Bard, etc) without needing to bother with multiclassing anymore, for example, and that's great to me, far preferable to planning out how many levels of each different class to take. I therefore need to spend less time planning my "build" and get to spend more time just playing the game, which is more enjoyable.

[Dragonus45]

So. If it isn't the world building and lore, if its neither the characters, nor the character building, nor the combat and game mechanics, not the music or the whole audio-visual design - what IS then what makes BG3 a masterpiece?

This is not a rhetorical question. I really want to understand.

Pretty much nothing, you hit the nail on the head for certain. Especially the samey jerkass quotient of the companion pool. I dislike almost all of my options so far being evil *******s who have a disapproval popup every time I try and do anything nice for anyone especially though. Also the romance is kind of boring, one of the reasons I dislike "player sexual orientation" as the new default for these things is it tends to lead to vaguely boring and samey romances since the characters lack any real character.

The ready action is sufficiently open ended that they probably just couldn't feasibly put it in. You have to specify an action, and a trigger, and also spend your reaction. Thats an unbelievable amount of moving parts.

If Solasta could manage it on 5 dollars and a quarter of a subway sandwich for a budget then Baldurs Gate 3 should be able to pull it off.

[LaZodiac]

I was playing a wood half-elf and one of the Drow NPCs was racist towards me, which was a nice touch. Used words I haven't seen since the early Salvatore novels.

Lae'zel is interesting to me in that she's very obviously a fish out of water, and reacts to that by... I guess reinforcing the correctness of her worldview. And not just on me. Shadowheart isn't having any of it, and it actually came to blows... then they talked it out enough to not actively murder each other, without my intervention.

This but in reverse; someone told Azaroth that she's quote "brave" for walking about without her face covered so people can tell she's a drow, in that condescending "genuinely means this positively but it's coming from such a racist starting ground that I was actually ****ing baffled".

[warty goblin]

So, one and a half days of gaming in I have range of emotions regarding BG3 but for the most part I'm puzzled.

If you look online, for instance on youtube, you see nothing but glowing reviews. And not just "this game good" - no, we are talking in superlatives. "Masterpiece", "best RPG ever" and even really stupid stuff like "BG3 is setting the bar to high" or "other developers fear/are angry at BG3 for being too good".
User reviews on GoG and Steam are similar overwhelmingly positive.

What I'm puzzled about is: in which way does the game capture the fascination of so many reviewers and players? What are the aspects that are so great?

So I've played all of like 3 hours (and won't get to play anymore for a couple days as I'm housesitting for the parents) and therefore do not want to bill myself as some sort of BG3 expert. But here's my answer, for what it's worth:

BG3 lets you do stuff.

The last cRPG I really tried to play was Wrath of the Righteous, which manifestly did not let me do stuff. It let me walk into a 20x30 room, kill two trash mobs, loot some vender junk, then walk into the next room and do it again. If gibbing mooks in an endless attrition of resources is your thing, WoTR has you covered. I find it stupifying.

I got to make more skill checks and interesting decisions and environmental interactions in the the first fifteen minutes of BG3 than in hours of WoTR. Many of them are obviously bad ideas, I've failed some of them, but I can try to do stuff and have things happen.

Lets go over a number of aspects that are usually important for a game like BG3. They are important to me, at least.
These conclusions are obviously informed by my own preferences and by what I have seen so far from the game.

I think the short version is that most of these don't matter to most people all that much.

Worldbuilding and lore.
There are games that are brimming with worldbuilding potential. Where you can feel the writers going "Ooh, ooh, I have this really cool setting here, please let me show it to you, PLEASE!".
Worlds full of history, concepts big and small, places, people, cultures, factions, religion. Games like Morrowind, Mass Effect and Tyranny.
BG3 doesn't do that. It picks some elements from the greater D&D lore and throws in some Realms references without elaborating on anything. Yes, I know what the Tears of Selune are. I know what Ilithids and Gith(yanki) are. And I know the history of these two races because another game spend a whole lot of effort in telling me 23 years ago.
It is not just a lack of exposition. From everything that I have seen so far I genuinely believe that there really is no rich and vibrant setting for me to explore in this game.

Know what worlds full of history and concepts and lore sound like? Either the game narrating an RPG manual to me, or me reading an RPG manual. Aka I'm not doing stuff. I really cannot overemphasize how tedious and repellant the emphasis on lots of lore and setting details can be in in RPGs, it's getting assigned homework about ridiculous goddamn fake history. I like history, I read a lot of history, but reading history is work, and it's not work I'm willing to put into magic sword elves anymore, particularly when the payoff is "go kill Lord Evil McVillainpants."

What BG3 seems to be doing is what I like to call 'fantasy nonsense.' I love fantasy nonsense, just unbriddled cool stuff thrown around for the joy of having cool stuff, but without the endless background and codex entries* that keep me from doing cool stuff with the fantasy nonsense.

*I will never forgive Mass Effect the Codex.

Characters - Comapanions and otherwise.
I agree with the above poster: Lae Zel is great. Easily my favorite companion so far. I like her intensity and her vivid descriptions. She is a fish out of the water and acts all high and mighty and arrogant but is actually rather humble and respectful. She has values and believes, some of them are strong, others are already cracking. There is subtlety in her character and conflict.
Sadly Lae Zel is the exception. Shadowwhatshername has the charisma and presence of a cardboard cut-out. And that's good! She's kinda just there without getting on my nerves. And that is more than what can be said about the rest of the team.
Gale, Asterion and Wyll all meld together where I have trouble telling them apart. I feel they are just variations of the same archetype: flamboyant, full of themselves, "witty" and oh-so-mysterious. And this archetype can be seen in many NPCs as well. So let's talk about non-companions characters.
The writing and acting of the NPCs is all over the place. Many are unremarkable. Then you get the ones of the archetype mentioned above. Others are surprisingly interesting, sensible or likable (the bard who has trouble composing a song, or the couple deliberating which tavern to visit in Baldur's Gate). More of those, please. Many act and sound like teenager. Less of those, please. Then we have the Oi-punk style parody goblins. Blech. They feel out of place for Faerun and I'm not a fan of the trope in general.

Haven't gotten far enough in yet, can't really speak to the companions.

The tone straddles between serious and overt parody.

Yes. Larian has been doing this since forever, because they have a goofy sense of humor. Very much a taste thing, but I do love fantasy that both takes itself seriously and admits just how utterly silly it is.

Character building.
It's 5e. You have some choices, some possibilities. You can do some character building. It's alright in what it offers. But simply by virtue of using 5e it is not outstanding compared to Original Sin 2 or Pathfinder.
In fact I get the impression that the game doesn't even want me to enact in the character building minigame. I had to watch a youtube video explaining how to multiclass because I did not find the button on my own. The button is easy to overlook and not advertised by the game at all. Races are little more then a cosmetic choice. And the real kicker: the game does not tell you class features of the classes! It only shows what you get from taking the level. But there is no class overview.

Look, it's 2023, every bloody game is an RPG now. I am incapable of getting excited about planning a build anymore. Honestly, being able to press level up and just, like, getting some new cool abilities is a heavenly relief. I've had playthrough in WoTR stall out because leveling up is so complicated and unfun.

Combat and game mechanics.
It's 5e. You have your fail brigade because of the way too high reliance of the d20 spread (problems that other d20 games DO NOT have since D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder actually allow characters to be good at something). Character power is subdued. Larian does spice things up with adding some more actions and also environmental effects as seen in the Original Sin's. But not as complex or integrated into the rest of the game mechanics.
The combat encounters can be surprisingly punishing. There is some good and interesting stuff here. But I don't think it surpasses or even equals Larians previous work in Original Sin 2 or other games like the carefully constructed scenarios of an Expeditions: Rome.

The flipside of having characters be able to be really good at stuff is that then you are very strongly encouraged to only do things you are good at. If I have +15 in one thing and +1 in another, anytime I have a choice between using one ability or the other, I'm gonna do the +15, which means I realistically don't actually have options. I have a single choice I made pretty much at the start of the game to dump everything into option A instead of option B. Because I'm here to play a game and do cool stuff in the game, I don't like this.

The liberating thing about 5E is that you can do what you want and not suffer huge opportunity costs for not choosing the strictly optimal thing. If your primary pleasure in an RPG is to have the biggest numbers, this is bad. If your pleasure is trying whatever looks interesting or fun or cool and rolling with the outcome, this is great.

Music.
Is entirely forgettable. Next.

Seems fine, but I don't think very many people play games because the music is just that good. Buy the soundtrack maybe.

Audio-visual design.
BG3 is a pretty looking game. The animations are a bit hit-and-miss but especially the environments are great. But there is no common style, no design-language binding things together.
Take Witcher 3 for instance. Also a pretty looking game, I would argue. But there is more to it. The music you hear in Velen is carefully composed. As is the palette, the way the sun glimpses through the trees, the sounds of the birds and the wind. Velen looks, sounds and feels miserable and desperate. Contrast this to Novigrad or Skellige. What the player sees and hears is used to create a specific atmosphere. That is audio-visual design.
BG3 doesn't do that. Things just exist. Music just plays. Sound effects are just there.

It's a high fantasy nonsense game. The appeal of high fantasy nonsense is precisely because it doesn't even really bother trying to cohere, it can put lots of cool stuff in. Witcher 3 is borderline grimdark low fantasy, it needs a coherent atmosphere of everything being awful and probably covered in mud.

So. If it isn't the world building and lore, if its neither the characters, nor the character building, nor the combat and game mechanics, not the music or the whole audio-visual design - what IS then what makes BG3 a masterpiece?

This is not a rhetorical question. I really want to understand.

BG3 is a game that lets you do stuff. The environment is highly reactive (shockingly reactive for an RPG), and its packed with things that the player can try. It doesn't require you to read lots of background information, work out a 20 level character build from the word go, or otherwise get in its own way. It isn't tonally limited to being a farce or a self serious exercise in the sorta buddy Tim who's DMing's writer's 5,000 pages of background lore, and instead delivers cool and weird fantasy stuff to interact with.

All of these are maybe not good features if you are a super hardcore RPG person, but most people who like fantasy are not hardcore RPG people. I love fantasy, I've got 3 ceiling high bookshelves full of nothing but fantasy and sci-fi novels (plus another bookshelf in the basement packed double deep with mass market SF&F mass market paperbacks), I've backed fantasy movies on Kickstarter, I like dragon miniatures, and I love the idea of using a game to step into a cool fantasy world and have fun adventures. But most cRPGS treat the RPG mechanics as an end even of themselves, not a tool for letting you interact with the fantasy world. I haven't played enough of BG3 to be sure, but it sure feels like it gets out of its own way and lets me do stuff in a fun fantasy world without worrying too much about the exact way I make my spreadsheet numbers bigger.

The ready action is sufficiently open ended that they probably just couldn't feasibly put it in. You have to specify an action, and a trigger, and also spend your reaction. Thats an unbelievable amount of moving parts.

I can't actually think of any turn based cRPG or tactics game that gives you a freeform readied action system. The trigger + action would basically require giving the player some sort of (probably visual) programming language, which is a design nightmare and a huge amount of work for a pretty marginal action. A lot of games give you something like Overwatch, which has a single obvious and pre-determined trigger, and even the more complex variants where you set the field of fire and range are easy to make instantly player-legible. I also suspect that this covers like 80% of the general uses of a Ready action (shoot the first bad guy to walk through the door), with more complex uses probably turning into exploits pretty easily.

(There's an argument that games like Frozen Synapse or other simultaneous turn based WEGO sort of games are at some level purely about readied actions. I also find them unplayable micro hell, and assuming I'm not alone in this may be why they never particularly seem to catch on outside of hardcore combat simulation.)

[Dragonus45]

Look, it's 2023, every bloody game is an RPG now. I am incapable of getting excited about planning a build anymore. Honestly, being able to press level up and just, like, getting some new cool abilities is a heavenly relief. I've had playthrough in WoTR stall out because leveling up is so complicated and unfun.

Not having a class overview so a person can plan out their character is a fundamentally broken oversight. I should not have to google a guide to what the class does in Larian 5e to check what I am going to get at later levels, just because you don't personally want to deal with it doesn't make it in general a huge draw of these kinds of games to plan characters out.

The flipside of having characters be able to be really good at stuff is that then you are very strongly encouraged to only do things you are good at. If I have +15 in one thing and +1 in another, anytime I have a choice between using one ability or the other, I'm gonna do the +15, which means I realistically don't actually have options. I have a single choice I made pretty much at the start of the game to dump everything into option A instead of option B. Because I'm here to play a game and do cool stuff in the game, I don't like this.

The liberating thing about 5E is that you can do what you want and not suffer huge opportunity costs for not choosing the strictly optimal thing. If your primary pleasure in an RPG is to have the biggest numbers, this is bad. If your pleasure is trying whatever looks interesting or fun or cool and rolling with the outcome, this is great.

Yea 5e achieves that by just not giving you any meaningful choices past choosing your race and your archetype. And then they made every race a copy paste with slight flavor differences so I won't knock this game specifically for the sins of the game it is adapting it's not like this isn't a strong ongoing issue with 5e itself that probably should have been massaged a bit more for adaptation to a new medium.

I can't actually think of any turn based cRPG or tactics game that gives you a freeform readied action system.

Doesn't need to be some totally freeform thing, Solasta managed just fine with "fire selected thing at first enemy in range."

[Jophiel]

It's a D&D game, generic fantasy, set in the Forgotten Realms, the generic-ist of settings, on the Sword Coast, the generic-ist of regions in the Realms. It's up to the player if that's what they want or not but it's definitely intended as Feature, not bug, and no one playing it with any RPG knowledge should be surprised or disappointed that it's exactly what it says on the tin. Honestly, even the TTRPG version of the Sword Coast in all its generic-ness is a Feature as it lets DMs and players get rolling with a typical basket of fantasy knowledge and without getting bogged into tons of exposition to explain how Our Elves Are Different. With most people it seems to be working.

But, hey, the game has sold a ton of copies. If it sold 2mil (to make up a number; it had over 700k players yesterday so it seems reasonable enough) and a 91% positive rating, that's still 180,000 people to legitimately not like stuff about this and that.

[Psyren]

I can live without Ready (though I agree with Dragonus that even just doing Solasta's scaled down version should have been both feasible and functional.) But the Dodge action is literally suggested as the default for players who don't know what else to do on their turn, and there's plenty of builds that make liberal use of it like Dodge Cleric. Its omission is all too noticeable.

I also agree with Dragonus that a preview of the subclasses available to each class would have been nice, but as long as the rebuild isn't too far into the game I don't think that's a big deal. Like if I didn't realize Valor Bard gives medium armor proficiency before giving myself 16 Dex for example.

[LaZodiac]

I can live without Ready (though I agree with Dragonus that even just doing Solasta's scaled down version should have been both feasible and functional.) But the Dodge action is literally suggested as the default for players who don't know what else to do on their turn, and there's plenty of builds that make liberal use of it like Dodge Cleric. Its omission is all too noticeable.

I also agree with Dragonus that a preview of the subclasses available to each class would have been nice, but as long as the rebuild isn't too far into the game I don't think that's a big deal. Like if I didn't realize Valor Bard gives medium armor proficiency before giving myself 16 Dex for example.

I can't say I miss dodge at all because it uses an action, and the prescence of quick weapon swapping, ranged moves, and elves just getting to shoot a firebolt for free, means there's always AN action to perform. I'm sure dodge is fine though- Monk's and Rogue's who can do it for bonus actions definitely would miss it I think.

That, I fully agree with. I'd love to see the full progression table of each class just so I can like, know in advance. In retrospect I probably could just look at my Player's handbook for most of them...

[Psyren]

I can't say I miss dodge at all because it uses an action, and the prescence of quick weapon swapping, ranged moves, and elves just getting to shoot a firebolt for free, means there's always AN action to perform. I'm sure dodge is fine though- Monk's and Rogue's who can do it for bonus actions definitely would miss it I think.

That, I fully agree with. I'd love to see the full progression table of each class just so I can like, know in advance. In retrospect I probably could just look at my Player's handbook for most of them...

I know there are other actions to perform, but sometimes Dodge is the right action, e.g. Doorway Dodging. What's worse is that they programmed it in for Monks (Patient Defense) so it's not like they couldn't do it for everyone. I'm hoping they patch it in later.

Another thing I went outside the game to look up was feats (I was really hoping BG3 included Skill Expert, but no dice.) 1st-level feats in backgrounds would have been really nice to have.

[Errorname]

I will never forgive Mass Effect the Codex.

You know if you don't like the codex, you don't have to read it and you can still follow what's going on. It's there for people who want to know more about an original setting.

[Psyren]

Idly poking through Nexus Mods (I was hoping to make a custom background or retrain my proficiencies , I dislike all the listed proficiency combinations for my character) and I found two interesting things:

1) Somebody already figured out how to add the Bladetrips to the game

2) Apparently wizard ritual casting in the base game requires the spells to be prepared rather than just in your book? Come on Larian!

[Dragonus45]

I can live without Ready (though I agree with Dragonus that even just doing Solasta's scaled down version should have been both feasible and functional.) But the Dodge action is literally suggested as the default for players who don't know what else to do on their turn, and there's plenty of builds that make liberal use of it like Dodge Cleric. Its omission is all too noticeable.

I find myself almost every combat wishing I could use a ready action.

That, I fully agree with. I'd love to see the full progression table of each class just so I can like, know in advance. In retrospect I probably could just look at my Player's handbook for most of them...

Sure but things are different some places from the PHB so it's not a replacement. I had to google the classes to find out what I get when I level and that's unacceptable game design.

[Zombimode]

@warty goblin
Thank you for taking the time to provide this perspective. I think I do understand things a bit better now.

I think the short version is that most of these don't matter to most people all that much.

Apparently. And that makes me sad.


For the game: I'm not ready to give up. I will play at least until I get to the city proper. Maybe things will get more interesting for me then. And Lae Zel has given me the hope that maybe I will find more companion characters that I actually like.

[Errorname]

For the game: I'm not ready to give up. I will play at least until I get to the city proper. Maybe things will get more interesting for me then. And Lae Zel has given me the hope that maybe I will find more companion characters that I actually like.

I think there's 6 origin companions, 4 potential companions and 12 hirelings? That was my understanding.

[Dragonus45]

Apparently. And that makes me sad.

I wonder how many people calling it a masterpiece have had a chance to play Larian's other games. Because honestly Divinity 2 is a real masterpiece and generally a lot better then this has been so it might just be a result of the 5e boom pulling in newer people who just happen to have this be the game that gets to blow their minds before they find the rest of the genre.

[Psyren]

I'm pretty impressed with it so far. My gripes are ultimately minor, and when I first started playing 5e I was convinced that converting it to a CRPG would be much messier than what they managed to do.

The LGBT-inclusivity in particular is a breath of fresh air.

[warty goblin]

Not having a class overview so a person can plan out their character is a fundamentally broken oversight. I should not have to google a guide to what the class does in Larian 5e to check what I am going to get at later levels, just because you don't personally want to deal with it doesn't make it in general a huge draw of these kinds of games to plan characters out.

Yeah, that probably is an oversight. But if you're interested in planning out a build, aren't you going to look up the class table online anyway? T

Yea 5e achieves that by just not giving you any meaningful choices past choosing your race and your archetype. And then they made every race a copy paste with slight flavor differences so I won't knock this game specifically for the sins of the game it is adapting it's not like this isn't a strong ongoing issue with 5e itself that probably should have been massaged a bit more for adaptation to a new medium.

Yeah, 5E isn't big on the chargen minigame, news at 11. The thing I think needs to be understood is that having strong chargen is not a neutral choice or cost-free add-on, it kinda warps the entire rest of the game to accommodate it - DCs and ACs and saves all have to go up so that the experts can be meaningfully challenged which locks everybody else out and now the chargen minigame isn't optional it's mandatory homework. So if you do not find great joy in making the numbers go up, it inflicts a substantial cost on the rest of the game.

Doesn't need to be some totally freeform thing, Solasta managed just fine with "fire selected thing at first enemy in range."

i.e. Overwatch, a mechanic that has a strong tendency to turn games into a lot of not actually doing things on your turn. Not having an equivalent to it is a pretty defensible design decision. I don't think it'd really hurt BG3 much to have an Overwatch equivalent, but I also am fine with it not having that, as it's mostly a buff to ranged characters and ranged combat is already quite strong in 5E.

You know if you don't like the codex, you don't have to read it and you can still follow what's going on. It's there for people who want to know more about an original setting.

Yes, in theory you don't. In practice, particularly in post Mass Effect 1 games, the Codex often becomes pretty non-optional, because in voice acted titles it's way cheaper to offload almost all the exposition into it. I shouldn't have to dig into the lore for the story to make sense, and all too often I have to do that.

@warty goblin
Thank you for taking the time to provide this perspective. I think I do understand things a bit better now.

Welcome, hope that was useful and not too contrarian.

Apparently. And that makes me sad.

Why? Different people have different tastes, and this is a good thing because it means we get a diversity of stuff. One of the great things about this is that nothing has to be for everyone, and the more likely it is that there's something that really works for you. The flipside is that there's also things that aren't, but that's the price you pay for things that are. After dozens of hours of trying, I've pretty much concluded that Wrath of the Righteous isn't for me because I find the chargen overdone and I really don't like its endless fights against trivial enemies and dear god one more pointless random encounter trying to get from A to B and I will actually chew my hands off at the wrists. But a lot of people really love it, and that's great, I'm glad it exists and works for them.

I find this sort of thinking is particularly necessary for things I'm moderately to actually pretty hardcore about. Most people by definition aren't hardcore, and that's fine. I don't begrudge the naval history world the 3,000 interchangeable histories of Bismarck, even though Bismarck: A Design and Operational History renders them all at some level utterly obsolete. Most folks with a passing interest in the subject, or who just want a readable history, are not going to spend $80 on a 9 pound slab of book that spends a couple hundred words talking about how the forward and aft 105mm AA guns had different stabilizers, which meant that the fire control directors were miscalibrated for half of them. I want to know that, because 20th century naval history is a thing I find interesting enough to be hardcore about, but it would be a dreadful mistake to try to force that on anybody with any interest in the subject at all. For one thing it's a self-defeating strategy, because a lot of people who might find the super hardcore stuff interesting eventually won't start there, as it's too dense and weird and alienating and assumes too much background knowledge.

I think this has kind of been true for cRPGs lately, that they've generally been designed for the hardcore. As I said above, I love fantasy, but I don't actually love RPGs on their own; I think they're a good way to experience fantasy, but there's a lot of mistaking the forest for the trees in the genre from that perspective. My sense of BG3 is that there's a lot more fantasy, and a lot less RPG, and to me that's a good thing.

[Errorname]

Yes, in theory you don't. In practice, particularly in post Mass Effect 1 games, the Codex often becomes pretty non-optional, because in voice acted titles it's way cheaper to offload almost all the exposition into it. I shouldn't have to dig into the lore for the story to make sense, and all too often I have to do that.

I can't recall a single moment where a thing didn't make sense in Mass Effect until I dug into the codex. Some stuff like Cerberus and the Collectors had stupid elements, but those are just badly written parts of the story which don't really make sense even after reading the codex.

I think having supplemental codex entries or something like Tyranny's mouseover text system are broadly positive features in the same way having a map is. They're useful tools, both for fleshing out a setting beyond the playable space and for helping a player orient themselves within it.

[Dragonus45]

I'm pretty impressed with it so far. My gripes are ultimately minor, and when I first started playing 5e I was convinced that converting it to a CRPG would be much messier than what they managed to do.

The LGBT-inclusivity in particular is a breath of fresh air.

I kind of prefer characters to have a defined sexuality rather then just be amorphous shape shifters happy to romance literally anyone. Which has kind of been the standard since Dragon Age 3 anyways so it's not really new.

Yeah, that probably is an oversight. But if you're interested in planning out a build, aren't you going to look up the class table online anyway?

Why would I if it was in the game and easy to look up.

Yeah, 5E isn't big on the chargen minigame, news at 11. The thing I think needs to be understood is that having strong chargen is not a neutral choice or cost-free add-on, it kinda warps the entire rest of the game to accommodate it - DCs and ACs and saves all have to go up so that the experts can be meaningfully challenged which locks everybody else out and now the chargen minigame isn't optional it's mandatory homework. So if you do not find great joy in making the numbers go up, it inflicts a substantial cost on the rest of the game.

I agree strong characters options isn't neutral, as long as the game itself is designed well it's inherently a positive at all times. 5e did everything it could to stamp down on it and you still have people who optimize breaking the system so none of what you describe was stopped the game was just made more dull in the long run once you have made a few characters.

i.e. Overwatch, a mechanic that has a strong tendency to turn games into a lot of not actually doing things on your turn. Not having an equivalent to it is a pretty defensible design decision. I don't think it'd really hurt BG3 much to have an Overwatch equivalent, but I also am fine with it not having that, as it's mostly a buff to ranged characters and ranged combat is already quite strong in 5E.

Overwatch, an important mechanic that in indefensible not to have in this game. Especially when a readied action is already something from the system it's porting over. It allows a person who wants to to play defensively and helps avoid situations where your whole turn is wasted because you went wrong in initiative order and had no targets you could safely reach. I don't understand how Larian got all the way through early access without this becoming an i

Yes, in theory you don't. In practice, particularly in post Mass Effect 1 games, the Codex often becomes pretty non-optional, because in voice acted titles it's way cheaper to offload almost all the exposition into it. I shouldn't have to dig into the lore for the story to make sense, and all too often I have to do that.

Mass Effect is a great example of how not to do a codex wrong.

Why? Different people have different tastes, and this is a good thing because it means we get a diversity of stuff. One of the great things about this is that nothing has to be for everyone, and the more likely it is that there's something that really works for you. The flipside is that there's also things that aren't, but that's the price you pay for things that are. After dozens of hours of trying, I've pretty much concluded that Wrath of the Righteous isn't for me because I find the chargen overdone and I really don't like its endless fights against trivial enemies and dear god one more pointless random encounter trying to get from A to B and I will actually chew my hands off at the wrists. But a lot of people really love it, and that's great, I'm glad it exists and works for them.

I at least think it's sad because of this. Mostly because a lot of what was done well in this game was just better elsewhere in Divinity mechanically and the companions are mid tier at best on the RP and the writing and setting building isn't totally great either. So when it gets such disproportionate praise it feels like it's both not living up to it's potential and bringing the bar down that low at the same time.

[Jophiel]

Apparently. And that makes me sad.

Counterpoint: Nine out of Ten of people are having a bunch of fun while not worrying about the sort of things that are preventing you from having fun. Feels like they're coming out ahead.

[Dienekes]

I kind of prefer characters to have a defined sexuality rather then just be amorphous shape shifters happy to romance literally anyone. Which has kind of been the standard since Dragon Age 3 anyways so it's not really new.

Dragon Age 2 had everyone is bi for Hawke. Except Aveline and Varric who were uninterested in your character in that way. Amusingly, both my favorite companions in that game. Oh, also I think the DLC companion wasn't. But I didn't play with him and I'm not going to bother looking that up.

Dragon Age 3 had specific romance options depending on sex and species.

Personally, I agree with that take. Giving companions distinct personalities and preferences make them seem more real, and does that great thing in games that should happen more: when they tell you "No."

But honestly, I don't do the romances in these games. Always feels weird to me. So, meh. Isn't precisely something I tend to get bent out of shape about.

[Dragonus45]

Dragon Age 2 had everyone is bi for Hawke. Except Aveline and Varric who were uninterested in your character in that way. Amusingly, both my favorite companions in that game. Oh, also I think the DLC companion wasn't. But I didn't play with him and I'm not going to bother looking that up.

Dragon Age 3 had specific romance options depending on sex and species.

Personally, I agree with that take. Giving companions distinct personalities and preferences make them seem more real, and does that great thing in games that should happen more: when they tell you "No."

But honestly, I don't do the romances in these games. Always feels weird to me. So, meh. Isn't precisely something I tend to get bent out of shape about.

I may have had them backwards then it has been a while since I played either.

[Zevox]

Dragon Age 2 had everyone is bi for Hawke. Except Aveline and Varric who were uninterested in your character in that way. Amusingly, both my favorite companions in that game. Oh, also I think the DLC companion wasn't. But I didn't play with him and I'm not going to bother looking that up.

Said DLC companion, Sebastian, is indeed the exception in Dragon Age 2, being romanceable only by female Hawke.

[Psyren]

I have never heard the ME codex described as "non-optional" before. From the years and years of ME discussions and arguments I've had, I'm convinced that only a vanishing minority of players have ever read it.

I kind of prefer characters to have a defined sexuality rather then just be amorphous shape shifters happy to romance literally anyone. Which has kind of been the standard since Dragon Age 3 anyways so it's not really new.

Huh? I wasn't even talking about the romance options I was talking about gender expression for your custom PC, which exists whether you choose to romance anyone or not. I have no idea which NPCs are romanceable in this game, as I'd rather find out through play.

[Dragonus45]

Huh? I wasn't even talking about the romance options I was talking about gender expression for your custom PC, which exists whether you choose to romance anyone or not. I have no idea which NPCs are romanceable in this game, as I'd rather find out through play.

Ah, the buzz about the romance able companions and LGBT rep have been synonymous to the point where if I hear someone talking about it I just assume they are talking about companions.

[LaZodiac]

I had to google the classes to find out what I get when I level and that's unacceptable game design.

To each their own on this one- almost no RPG tells you what you're gonna get when you level up, it's far stranger to know every single thing you're gonna get and be able to plan in advance for massive meta-game building.

I wonder how many people calling it a masterpiece have had a chance to play Larian's other games. Because honestly Divinity 2 is a real masterpiece and generally a lot better then this has been so it might just be a result of the 5e boom pulling in newer people who just happen to have this be the game that gets to blow their minds before they find the rest of the genre.

Honestly, while I do love Divinity OS2, I do feel like the fights dragged on a fair bit. Almost every fight is An Event, which I really don't think it should be. Made the last two acts a slog, and early game kinda stressful.

Yeah, 5E isn't big on the chargen minigame, news at 11. The thing I think needs to be understood is that having strong chargen is not a neutral choice or cost-free add-on, it kinda warps the entire rest of the game to accommodate it - DCs and ACs and saves all have to go up so that the experts can be meaningfully challenged which locks everybody else out and now the chargen minigame isn't optional it's mandatory homework. So if you do not find great joy in making the numbers go up, it inflicts a substantial cost on the rest of the game.

i.e. Overwatch, a mechanic that has a strong tendency to turn games into a lot of not actually doing things on your turn. Not having an equivalent to it is a pretty defensible design decision. I don't think it'd really hurt BG3 much to have an Overwatch equivalent, but I also am fine with it not having that, as it's mostly a buff to ranged characters and ranged combat is already quite strong in 5E.

Yeah, that's one of the things that makes it difficult for me to revisit Dragon Age 1. You basically have to plan things out in advance if you want to like, do things with any degree of success- and you DO want to do that, the game can snowball pretty heavily if you don't do things "right".

God right yeah that's why readied actions aren't in this- they're basically like overwatch, and that kinda messes with the game flow a lot. I do agree that I don't think it'd be game breaking, but it'd definitely influence play in a way that wouldn't feel right.

Personally, I agree with that take. Giving companions distinct personalities and preferences make them seem more real, and does that great thing in games that should happen more: when they tell you "No."

But honestly, I don't do the romances in these games. Always feels weird to me. So, meh. Isn't precisely something I tend to get bent out of shape about.

I honestly agree with that take too... except in the case of every party member I've met so far, they do all seem like they'd reasonably be bi. Astarian's a decadent vampire, he'd have to like, actively TRY not to be bisexual. Wyll seems bi in the way a dashing hero who saves the day would be- he doesn't sleep with you because you're a man or a woman, he sleeps with you because he saved your life. Shadowheart meanwhile just... strikes me as bi. Something about her hair. Gale is the only one I can't quite put my finger on why I feel this way... just got the right vibe.

[warty goblin]

I can't recall a single moment where a thing didn't make sense in Mass Effect until I dug into the codex. Some stuff like Cerberus and the Collectors had stupid elements, but those are just badly written parts of the story which don't really make sense even after reading the codex.

Mass Effect is a great example of how not to do a codex wrong.

I have never heard the ME codex described as "non-optional" before. From the years and years of ME discussions and arguments I've had, I'm convinced that only a vanishing minority of players have ever read it.

Ya'll know what the word 'post' in 'post Mass Effect 1' means, right? Games that come after ME1, i.e. I'm specifically not talking about Mass Effect 1. I'm not talking about any of the other ME games either, I only played enough of 2 to get entirely turned off by turning my perfectly reasonable character becoming Space Assault Rifle Jesus, and never touched 3. I'm not particularly wild about the proliferation of codex type systems after Mass Effect, mostly because I think it's a sign of failed writing if you need to provide footnotes for the story to make much sense.

Why would I if it was in the game and easy to look up.

If I'm looking up a lot of information, like say multiple different class progressions for a multiclass, having those in multiple tabs is very handy.

I agree strong characters options isn't neutral, as long as the game itself is designed well it's inherently a positive at all times. 5e did everything it could to stamp down on it and you still have people who optimize breaking the system so none of what you describe was stopped the game was just made more dull in the long run once you have made a few characters.

Here I strongly disagree. Having more options is not inherently better; from my perspective it often makes a game worse and less interesting because it forces encounters to be designed around a sort of blank whatever character who has no particular strengths or weaknesses or specific abilities. It is true that having a lot of options can boost the replayability in the sense that you can do different stuff a second time through, but I've never found this sort of replayability remotely compelling. I'd far rather sacrifice that for more meaningful options within a single playthrough, and very often more player options comes at the expense of within-game options.

I don't think this is a universal value; it's a good thing that games with lots and lots of options exist for players who like those. It's just as good a thing that games with fewer options exist for players who don't like to spend hours leveling up their dudes though.

Overwatch, an important mechanic that in indefensible not to have in this game. Especially when a readied action is already something from the system it's porting over. It allows a person who wants to to play defensively and helps avoid situations where your whole turn is wasted because you went wrong in initiative order and had no targets you could safely reach. I don't understand how Larian got all the way through early access without this becoming an i

If no Overwatch is the hill you want to crucify your enjoyment of the game on, go ahead, I can't really say you're wrong. I can say I absolutely do not miss it, and I play a lot of tactics games, so I'm hardly against Overwatch in principle.

I at least think it's sad because of this. Mostly because a lot of what was done well in this game was just better elsewhere in Divinity mechanically and the companions are mid tier at best on the RP and the writing and setting building isn't totally great either. So when it gets such disproportionate praise it feels like it's both not living up to it's potential and bringing the bar down that low at the same time.

I have played the other Divinity games (except Beyond Divinity, but I will absolutely go to bat for Divinity 2) and they're certainly more hardcore feeling than BG3. If you like more detailed numbers and stuff, they're probably games you will prefer. That's not a universal and uncontested value though; I think preferring a simpler system is an entirely reasonable preference. I'm not saying I do prefer BG3 to DOS2, I haven't played enough of it yet, but I don't think it's a particularly invalid opinion.

I also suspect, given that DOS2 is one of the most highly rated cRPGs of all time, that a lot of people singing the praises of BG3 have played it. Not all of them obviously, but a good chunk.

Yeah, that's one of the things that makes it difficult for me to revisit Dragon Age 1. You basically have to plan things out in advance if you want to like, do things with any degree of success- and you DO want to do that, the game can snowball pretty heavily if you don't do things "right".

There really is a lot to be said for a game you can just, like, play.

God right yeah that's why readied actions aren't in this- they're basically like overwatch, and that kinda messes with the game flow a lot. I do agree that I don't think it'd be game breaking, but it'd definitely influence play in a way that wouldn't feel right.

Yeah, I could go either way, but I don't think it'd add much to the game, so I think there's some virtue to not having it. Less overhead, more focus on the action. Not having Overwatch or delayed actions isn't exactly weird in the cRPG space either, quite a few don't have it.