Baldur's Gate 3 Omnibus Thread

[Casey]

I caved and bought it for SteamDeck. Even on a handheld this thing is pretty gorgeous. Only drawback is you have to change a lot of settings so it doesn’t look like shit by default, which in turn causes the game to run at (a steady) 24fps. Which is… well, I mean, oddly enough you get used to it and it’s not that jarring somehow.

But yeah I spent a good hour in character creator making a non-binary Lolth-Sworn Drow (Druid Charlatan).

[J.T.]

13 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Yeah - in searching the Devs said the XBOX version probably won't release until sometime in 2024

So we got nothing but time

Nothing but time is a good thing. 

Between Starfield, Phantom Liberty, and Sea of Stars, I will be heavily invested in time consuming RPGs and when FFIV comes to S/X, that will probably be the MMO I destroy the rest of my free time with if I don't finally cave and get ESO when Gold dies and I sign up for Game Pass Core.

Edited August 9, 2023 by J.T.

[JLSigman]

17 hours ago, odessasteps said:

You will spend at least a day in the character creation section.

I wish they would release the character creator as a demo. I would blow up my computer just to try it out.

[Craig H]

This game rules. I swear I'm finding so much more in just the starting area after you crash than I did whenever I would play around with the early access version. This time I wound up picking the lock to the door by the crash site. I did that after clearing out the crashed Nautilus. I got incredibly lucky with my roll because you need to roll a 20 to pick the lock. I rolled an 18 and with my modifier that was enough to pick the lock. That brought me into a crypt and I won't say anything more about it, but the entire layout of the crypt and how you immediately go into combat even though there's no enemies around reminded me exactly of the D&D campaigns I play with my friends.

They have completely nailed down 5E. Everything about it is awesome and I even find myself reading my own character's dialogue in my head in the type of voice I would give him if it were a Wednesday night and I was playing D&D. And honestly, that's also my one complaint. There are only a few voice options for your own character and none of them sound particularly good. That was the case in early access where I rolled an elf entertainer or a tiefling and all of the voice options, the few that are there, didn't remotely match the character or their role. I'm hoping the modding community is able to add in more voice options and I can just override whatever voice option I currently have.

But yeah, this game rules so hard. I'm really itching for it to be available on the Xbox or if that takes to long, the PS5 in September, so I can play this from the comfort of my couch and on my bigger tv. 

[Casey]

this game supports cross save between PC and PS5 I’m pretty sure, with just a quick Google search, so yeah I’ll be buying this on PS5 too. I love the controller layout for the game, and I’m dying to play this in full 4K 60fps. I can’t imagine how good it’ll look on a good TV, when it looks this good on a 800p handheld already.

I never thought I’d get into this game, but here we are.

[Craig H]

Yeah, it's a seriously beautiful looking game and while the voice acting for your main character is limited and sorta poopy, the rest of the voice acting is great. It's one of those games where only a few hours in I can say, yeah, this is probably going to take all of the game awards. It reminds me a lot of Elden Ring where it's just a very special game. Who knows, maybe Starfield really blows everyone away and Bethesda actually makes good on all of their promises and releases a game that's not terribly buggy. 

Oh, and my one other nitpick, and the biggest one, is still the camera control when you're not in combat. I'm totally fine with how the camera works during combat and anything turn based, but when you're in the free roam sections, it would be nice if that were controlled via WASD for character movement and using the mouse for camera movement instead of having the push the mouse wheel in to move the camera. It's just cumbersome and annoying. It never really feels good in the free roam sections.

[Craig H]

Holy shit. Well. Things certainly went tits up for me last night. Time for tales from BG3.

After a long rest, I reform my party and we venture out. We hear some screaming in the distance and it's goblins attacking either elves or tieflings at a kinda fortress. We take care of the goblins and go inside. There's an issue going on where tieflings can't really defend themselves, but the druids inhabiting this place want to cast a protection spell and kick the tieflings out. My heart goes out to the tieflings and I go about talking to a lot of folks. I'm firmly on the side of letting the tieflings stay instead of either letting them die once the protection spell is cast or kicking them out and letting them get butchered by goblins. I wind up making my way to the main druid woman who is in the process of torturing a poor tiefling girl. I get the torturing to stop and the girl is sent free and I'll just connect with her parents afterwards to tell them what all happened. In the meanwhile, it's time to discuss with the main druid woman what can be done.

This is where I fucked up.

She suggests that since we're basically just sellswords/mercenaries that we just protect the tieflings and everyone but the druids should just GTFO. I disagree and again think that everyone would be much safer behind the gate and in the walls of the fortress or in the depths below. I'm eventually left with 3 options: Either agree to escort the tieflings, agree to just leave the place and go about my business elsewhere, or attack the druid woman. Now, we're also here because there's a druid who can possibly help us remove the tadpoles from our brains. So...I choose...

Spoiler

To attack. My thought was that we're in the depths and if we can take this woman out then we can reason with everyone else and get everyone to agree to seal the place shut and defend against the goblins that way. So we enter combat and after a bit we wind up killing the main druid woman and her assistant that was in the area too. We leave the room and...it's a fucking massacre. There's just dead tieflings everywhere, the parents of the girl I rescued are murdered, there's some druids who were also killed, but they're just overwhelming the tieflings that are left. In the process, the druid woman who could maybe help us remove the tadpoles is killed. So we set out to kill the druids who just went ham on the defenseless folks taking refuge in this place. Everywhere we go is just a bloodbath. I loot some bodies, which includes stealing some goods because no one is alive to stop us. Then after assessing the damage and questioning my decisions, I decide to exit the fortress and take another long rest.

I was legit really, really fucking bummed about everything that happened. I wound up feeling like it was good stopping point so I saved my game and closed it out. I mean, I'm 5 or 6 hours into this thing and this all turned into a disaster. And I still need to connect with some folks that fled the area and break some bad news to them.

I just never expected things to play out in that way. And I never expected for a game to actually make me feel sad that early on. It's a lesson learned and going forward I'll have to be more thoughtful about my actions. I also have to see what happens the next town I go to and see if we're going to get attacked or sent to jail for what happened. It's all very fucked up.

And that's why this game rules and is such an accomplishment. I'm barely scratching the surface and this thing is showing that you can do whatever you want. It's incredible. I really didn't expect such a pure tabletop experience from this, but it comes so close to pulling it off that it's good enough for me. 

So for now, I press on. No save scumming. No redoing what I did. I'm just going to have to live with my choices.

Oh, and I tried to hook up with one of the women in our party and was told no because my Dragonborn scales wouldn't exactly feel good. So that's neat.

[Casey]

The healer at that camp that you mentioned:

Spoiler

She poisons you. If you have to roll the dice to be able to get the cure for it. Then she also sends you on a quest to find her master, or whatever. The actual healer who has been studying this and might have a solution for the mindflayer worm.

Also, main Druid lady’s assistant is the guy, yes? He’s not exactly keen on her. So yeah. I pissed her off but it didn’t come to a fight. But now the main camp leader with the devil horns wants me to kill her. So I can either do that, or find the main healer guy somewhere out in the woods.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Casey

[Craig H]

Fuuuuuuck me. Royally fucked up and already broke my rule about re-loading a save. Wandering around and happened upon a couple freaking out about their friend being mauled by a bugbear. Said I would go and kill the bear, but then I noticed some vines on a nearby rock wall and decided to climb those instead. That lead me to a village being run by goblins. At first, I was able to intimidate the first goblin I bumped into and he let us just wander about. And then I started stealth killing each goblin I could find without triggering combat. There's also this larger house in the village with a big hole in the floor. I burn away the spiderweb covering it, drop down, and I'm immediately in combat with the most OP fucking spiders ever. These sons of bitches are teleporting all around, hitting AOE attacks on my group, and quickly fucking us up. So I load a previous save.

I do everything all over again, make my through the village this time, and bump into some goblins torturing a gnome that they've tied to a windmill. I thought it was pretty funny, but they didn't seem to give a shit that I thought it was funny and they wanted me to pay ONE THOUSAND GOLD to pass. I used intimidate again and they jacked up the price to...5 gold. I ignore the dialogue prompt that points out that 5 is far less than 1000 and agree to pay the 5 gold. The goblin says he'll let me pass, but if he sees me again then it's going to be a fight. I proceed on my way and it immediately stops me and the goblin is like, "what did I tell you? I said if I see you again there's going to be trouble." That immediately starts a fight, one of the goblins gets first in initiative, hits a massive AOE on my entire group because I didn't think in advance to spread everyone out, and the attack nearly kills all of us. After that, it took one round of combat for them to kill us. They weren't even particularly strong. I'm guessing if I looked at the combat log that they critted us. All of the goblins were in the 20 to 30 HP range so it's not like it would have been hard to kill them, but man, they fucked us up. I re-loaded my previous save again and decided to call it a night.

Nextlander spoke about how mean this game is when it comes to combat and while it holds very true to 5E, you need to get all of your experiences with your friends DM'ing  out of your head because the DM behind the scenes in this game is a complete fucking asshole. It will take every attempt to just motherfuck you. And I did make that mistake because of my experience with my friends DM'ing and not being assholes that combat wouldn't be so brutal at times. No man. If you're downed, enemies will still attack the fuck out of you to make sure you die. In my D&D sessions that rarely happens. In this though, it happens all the time. I sort of appreciate the level of difficulty, but sometimes on the medium difficulty it's like you're playing X-Com on the hardest difficulty setting.

Still loving the fuck out of this game, but I need to stop going into this thinking about my tabletop D&D campaigns because this is way, way harder than that when you get to combat.

[Casey]

Lol, the goblins at the windmill backed down immediately for me when I walked up because I’m a Drow.

Also I’m not entirely sure, but it seemed like I walked into a barn and interrupted two orcs fucking while one of them was eating a dead body.

[Craig H]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

Lol, the goblins at the windmill backed down immediately for me when I walked up because I’m a Drow.

Also I’m not entirely sure, but it seemed like I walked into a barn and interrupted two orcs fucking while one of them was eating a dead body.

I walked into a barn and interrupted a goblin and an orc fucking.

[Casey]

Oh, also be warned that if you downloaded the fourth hot fix they pushed out, and you’ve saved since then - you won’t be able to access those saves until they re-deploy the hotfix due to an error in the patch.

[SirFozzie]

hotfix 4 has been redeployed.

 

[Casey]

Yeah that was like 2 days ago.

Also fuck this Goblin camp. I’m a Drow so the sleep potion doesn’t work on me so combat is just automatically triggered and the entire camp becomes aggressive. And I can’t find a way to get to the bear without triggering combat.

I hate when RPGs like this do that. With so much dialogue and stuff, there should always be a way to avoid combat. Ugh.

[Kevin Wilson]

I'm having fun with the game, even though I've made a few... non-ideal choices I just rolled with it (no pun intended) and kept going. I'm trying to look up online as little as possible but one wall I am hitting is I am not getting a lot of weapon or armor upgrades. Maybe I'm missing something but I always buy the latest stuff from any shop owners I find and of course open lots of chests, but I don't even have enough rings (that do something) to give all my members and even if they are rare/uncommon my weapons still tend to do 2 to 7 damage (not counting the Barbarian). Which doesn't seem ideal since I am now level 5. Maybe I'm just used to non-D&D inspired games but I still struggle in battles I feel I shouldn't as with a bad roll I only do 4 or 5 damage.

So I either need to do better at finding upgrades or do better at "plotting" my attack plans so I do more damage by using spells/potions/etc.

[Craig H]

I finally had to look something up instead of just saying fuck it and moving on. Went into the Owlbear cave where there was a chest being protected by some kind of magic spell. There's a prayer sheet nearby and I figured I would just have to read it and the spell would go away and I could open the chest. I finally figure I'll look it up and see what to do. Holy shit. There's no way in hell I would have been able to figure that one out on my own.

It's maybe the one big failing with the game so far and it's not even a big one, but it does highlight an issue with having a game try to be like tabletop 5E. Without spoiling the solution, you have to have such a deep knowledge of the characters and you just don't have that knowledge as of yet. Now, if this were an actual tabletop game where everyone knew everything about their characters and the items they were carrying, then yes, someone in the group would know what to do. Ultimately, it's fine, and I don't expect many scenarios like this to happen, but it was pretty annoying if just because the fucking chest did so much damage to us that I wound up having to take another long rest.

Tried my hand at being a firefighter. Boy. That didn't turn out well.

And then I had maybe the biggest laugh in a game since Fallout 4's Last Flight of the USS Constitution. It wasn't as funny as that as that may still be one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a game, but this comes close. Again, without giving too much away, it happens if you ever lose Gale during a fight.

[RIPPA]

Baldur's Gate will hit XBOXs by the end of the year.

Apparently after meeting with Phil Spencer - they have reached an agreement where split screen co-op will be dropped for the S

The XBOX version will support cross saves with Steam (but not PS5)

[J.T.]

On 8/24/2023 at 1:55 PM, RIPPA said:

Baldur's Gate will hit XBOXs by the end of the year.

Apparently after meeting with Phil Spencer - they have reached an agreement where split screen co-op will be dropped for the S

They think I will be done with Starfield and Sea of Stars in a mere four months?

Edited August 26, 2023 by J.T.

[Kevin Wilson]

I am plowing ahead into Act 2. There are a few mission results that are.... not working out how I intended and a few others I have no idea what to do next. I've only re-loaded a prior save a couple of times, but that is due to my own stupidity, not to re-do die rolls. Otherwise I am mostly rolling with the punches. I am really curious about how to find this one person I am looking for but don't want to look it up, I am hoping I stumble across a clue as it has me pretty stumped.

[Kevin Wilson]

I reached Act 3. About the decision at the very very end of Act 2 (so don't read this until you get the "you finished Act 2" award as Act 2 didn't end when I thought it did initially), which I read nothing about before diving into it:

Spoiler

I don't know if there is a "right" or "wrong" decision about taking the second tadpole, or if it impacts the end game (I'll read about it once I beat the game, since I am not doing a second playthrough). I did what I thought my character would do and I would do, which is not wanting another fucking tadpole in me so I squashed it. I am hoping at end game this means I can turn back into a normal person and not into a mind flayer, but it certainly wasn't a decision I was expecting to make. I hope I am not missing out on cool super powers tho.

Course, Starfield comes out tomorrow. I am hoping sometimes my brain will want a break from it and I will finish Baldur's Gate slowly over the next month. I like it, but its not super gripping me so I tend to only play a few hours a day.

[Craig H]

11 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

I reached Act 3. About the decision at the very very end of Act 2 (so don't read this until you get the "you finished Act 2" award as Act 2 didn't end when I thought it did initially), which I read nothing about before diving into it:

  Reveal hidden contents

I don't know if there is a "right" or "wrong" decision about taking the second tadpole, or if it impacts the end game (I'll read about it once I beat the game, since I am not doing a second playthrough). I did what I thought my character would do and I would do, which is not wanting another fucking tadpole in me so I squashed it. I am hoping at end game this means I can turn back into a normal person and not into a mind flayer, but it certainly wasn't a decision I was expecting to make. I hope I am not missing out on cool super powers tho.

Course, Starfield comes out tomorrow. I am hoping sometimes my brain will want a break from it and I will finish Baldur's Gate slowly over the next month. I like it, but its not super gripping me so I tend to only play a few hours a day.

I'll ask you because I still want to avoid going to any website to see what to do or see any sort of spoiler. Does Act 1 end when you go to take the road to the next zone and you get a message saying to wrap whatever you have left up?

If that's the case, holy shit, Act 1 is really short then. Short for a game that I thought would be over 100 hours long. I think I'm just at 15 hours on my playthrough and I didn't proceed because I didn't want the act to end and I wanted to see if there was anything more to do in that area.

And it feels like that was the right choice because that led to two really interesting encounters/cut scenes...

Spoiler

One with Raphael when I crossed the broken bridge and another with a Dwarf who was psychically speaking to me when I did a long rest.

I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to do with some of the quests I have that are incomplete, like the book of Thay, a weapon mastery quest, and some other character specific quests.

[Kevin Wilson]

21 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I'll ask you because I still want to avoid going to any website to see what to do or see any sort of spoiler. Does Act 1 end when you go to take the road to the next zone and you get a message saying to wrap whatever you have left up?

If that's the case, holy shit, Act 1 is really short then. Short for a game that I thought would be over 100 hours long. I think I'm just at 15 hours on my playthrough and I didn't proceed because I didn't want the act to end and I wanted to see if there was anything more to do in that area.

And it feels like that was the right choice because that led to two really interesting encounters/cut scenes...

  Reveal hidden contents

One with Raphael when I crossed the broken bridge and another with a Dwarf who was psychically speaking to me when I did a long rest.

I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to do with some of the quests I have that are incomplete, like the book of Thay, a weapon mastery quest, and some other character specific quests.

To answer your Act I question:

Spoiler

Act 1 doesn't end when you go to the next area. I don't know the exact moment that Act 2 starts but I do know that you can do the Underdark and the Mountain Pass entirely (I assume you are aware of those locations since they are in Act 1, hopefully names of regions isn't too much info), those are still Act 1. Its the *next* region you go after that, that is Act 2. So the message you get while going into the Mountain Pass doesn't end Act I. But if you've already finished up the Underdark/Mountain Pass and mean the message before the next place after that, then you're going into Act 2.

I will say I am getting through the game faster than I was expecting as my playtime is about ~45 hours. And I think I am being pretty thorough but a Baldur's Gate expert would probably telling me I'm missing a lot of shit. I also don't spend a lot of time on inventory management which probably speeds things up.

[SirFozzie]

Extra content coming? Apparently all the Voice Actors were together today.

 

 

[RIPPA]

Leakers are claiming that game will finally hit XBOX on Dec 6th

Larian responded basically saying that was news to them

So who knows

EDIT - it should be noted that Larian is still claiming it will be before the end of the year so we really could just be splitting hairs here

[J.T.]

1 minute ago, RIPPA said:

Leakers are claiming that game will finally hit XBOX on Dec 6th

Larian responded basically saying that was news to them

So who knows

I have like $60 in Micro$oft cred and I'll probably get at least one gift card, so I'll be ready whenever it drops.