Baldur's Gate 3

[Rendakor]

Would any of you have kept playing a Bioware game where your first playthrough required you to play Evil Shep etc? In most western RPGs, the evil playthrough is what you do on replay, unless it's an especially well-implemented branching system with a more subtle idea of evil/jerkass than the usual.

Do most people actually play the Good route first? I play Evil almost always, and only occasionally replay as Good or Neutral. Jerk Shep not being evil enough was one of the biggest reasons I couldn't get into Mass Effect, honestly.

[Tebonas]

Don't know about most people, but I for one certainly do. I can't bring myself to being evil really. I know, its only a game, but it still makes me feel shitty and I don't enjoy it.

[Cyrrex]

I think I always do Good Guy first.  My FemShep had a rough spot during ME2, but she came back around. 

[Mosesandstick]

The only comprehensive stats I've seen were for Mass Effect, and I think it was around 80% paragon.

[jgsugden]

For a game like this, I usually play it through with a remake of an established RPG character. As such, they're usually not just 'good or evil', but characters … and I find it frustrating when the dialogue options do not align reasonably with something he'd say or do.  I'm not talking about exactly what he'd say or do, but just something in the ballpark. 

[Khaldun]

I think with evil being "dickface jerk who needlessly pisses people off" it's mostly not fun to do on first run, and also it's typically really really hard. When we encode "good" as "naturally inclined to cooperate and mutually support" and "evil" as "self-centered, relentlessly hostile, etc." any game that is about team-building FTW isn't going to work well. If "evil" was "smooth highly functional sociopathy" or "rational pursuit of a malevolent ideology", then that might be more fun/same difficulty.

[jgsugden]

If "evil" was "smooth highly functional sociopathy" or "rational pursuit of a malevolent ideology", then that might be more fun/same difficulty.

This is not the politics forum.

[Mosesandstick]

I think Khaldun is making a point about how "evil" is represented in RPGs, and whether people enjoy playing them. It's mainly a social and gaming point.

[eldaec]

Exactly - in most RPGs the 'evil' route is the 'be needlessly rude to everyone you are trying to get stuff from' route.

Most RPGs an actual psychopath would play the 'good' route first.

[Khaldun]

Yes. Exactly. Thank you.

[jgsugden]

I think Khaldun is making a point about how "evil" is represented in RPGs, and whether people enjoy playing them. It's mainly a social and gaming point.

I was making a joke.  It's mainly a bad one.

[Mosesandstick]

Hah, sorry. I can see the joke in retrospect.

[Sky]

I think Disco Elysium ruined dialog-based rpg for me. It set the bar so much higher than the rest.

[Korachia]

If the incentive is strong enough and I have a specific build planned that needs a certain item which can only be aquired through evil deeds, then I can play as an evil character. Otherwise it gets boring or too conflicting.

I am not a good roleplayer...

[Mandella]

I like Ars, but they are absolutely not my go-to gaming review site. It's not that they suck, I'm just not their type of gamer.

That said, really mixed feelings about this one. The stunning look of the graphics is a big draw for me, and gameplay is something I just adapt too, usually.

But the fact that there doesn't seem to be any way to play through without having to murder innocents -- that's a problem. This isn't a Dark Side/Light Side thing, it's just a shitty DM. One who won't even let you run, or strike to disable or stun.

But boy it all looks pretty. Maybe in a year or three on sale.

[jgsugden]

It is not looking that pretty on my screen.  Lots of graphics issues.  Their attempt at hair looks like flies buzzing around the faces.  There are large patches of ground that are just black because the texture did not load.  It has a ways to go.  

With regards to the story - For nostalgia sake I'll be playing this, but I feel like you need to play their premade PCs to get the story, and they're all grimdark psychotics.

[Khaldun]

Tyranny was honestly a good attempt at making a RPG that was basically the Black Company novels--the people making it just ran out of money so the game finishes ridiculously abruptly.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker has some sort-of-evil pathways that kind of make sense that aren't just "I'm a dick and I do dickish things hah hah" but still they mostly don't work that well. The basic trade-off the game proposes is "evil gets you stability, whereas good gets you community and loyalty".

It can be done! But it's hard. It is definitely not what I'd showcase in a Western RPG that's intended to be open to lots of play-styles that is also based on a beloved prior series. That suggests some really "we don't know what we're doing" vibes.

[Goumindong]

I like Ars, but they are absolutely not my go-to gaming review site. It's not that they suck, I'm just not their type of gamer.

That said, really mixed feelings about this one. The stunning look of the graphics is a big draw for me, and gameplay is something I just adapt too, usually.

But the fact that there doesn't seem to be any way to play through without having to murder innocents -- that's a problem. This isn't a Dark Side/Light Side thing, it's just a shitty DM. One who won't even let you run, or strike to disable or stun.

But boy it all looks pretty. Maybe in a year or three on sale.

If you’re using melee there should be an action to knock people out instead of killing them

[Mandella]

I like Ars, but they are absolutely not my go-to gaming review site. It's not that they suck, I'm just not their type of gamer.

That said, really mixed feelings about this one. The stunning look of the graphics is a big draw for me, and gameplay is something I just adapt too, usually.

But the fact that there doesn't seem to be any way to play through without having to murder innocents -- that's a problem. This isn't a Dark Side/Light Side thing, it's just a shitty DM. One who won't even let you run, or strike to disable or stun.

But boy it all looks pretty. Maybe in a year or three on sale.

If you’re using melee there should be an action to knock people out instead of killing them

Interesting. If that is an option in the specific encounter that the reviewer is talking about then that would take away my objection.

As I said, Ars reviewers can often focus on things that don't matter a lot to me. I actually, er, trust the experiences of folks here to get a better idea of the enjoyability of a game...

[Cyrrex]

Finally got around to putting a couple of hours into this.  First impressions>

-Definitely feels like DnD.  They did a pretty impressive job adapting the 5E rules. 
-Thank you thank you thank you thank you for the Turn Based mode.  Actual initiative rolls on turns.  Phew.
-Looks like a Larian game for sure, visually, though a notch or two improved

I could never really get into Divinity, but this pulled me in immediately.  Very cool opening sequence.  I have very recently started playing DnD in real life for the first time at 47 years of age, so I am pre-disposed to like this.  But that said, it is already better than what I was expecting.

[jgsugden]

...  I have very recently started playing DnD in real life for the first time at 47 years of age, so I am pre-disposed to like this.  But that said, it is already better than what I was expecting.

Welcome to the Jungle.

[Reg]

Does anyone else have a pet intellect devourer?

[Kageru]

The only comprehensive stats I've seen were for Mass Effect, and I think it was around 80% paragon.

"I'm not evil, I'm efficient, this is a war for survival and you are in my way".

Context (and writing) matters a lot. The Larian writing was like a GM way too impressed with themselves. Though even then I would not be surprised that most people trend towards not being or putting up with evil characters unless that is the explicit focus of the game.

But yeah, this sounds way too close to DOS to tempt me.

[Khaldun]

So I think this is pretty good so far. It feels like tactical D&D in the combat in a good way. There isn't a lot of absolute nonsense with poisons and elemental effects. The cut scenes are good. The characters are so far pretty good. I'm enjoying it.

[Cyrrex]

There isn't a lot of absolute nonsense with poisons and elemental effects.

Is this some reference to Larian's other games (which I have only barely played)?  I find that the elemental stuff here is more or less true to how it should be, although there is a lot of fire being splashed around - doing AOE and leaving a big fire puddle - by early level mobs.  I think they are just throwing little fire bottles at me all the time.

[jgsugden]

There are a lot of ways to pump out damage using the environment.  For example, in the first 'big battle', you can actually bring a huge number of explosive bombs with you and drop them in the battle area, resulting in a huge explosion and lots of damage to the big combatants.  Later, you might light a crease spell on fire, or do some other things that don't normally spell put to work in D&D as written, but kind of make sense.  

So far, it is like playing with a bipolar DM that is super permissive in certain ways, but is sticking to a railroad script and won't let you deviate from his grimdark tale of woe.

[Khaldun]

There's a lot of flexibility in the tactical set up, at any rate. You also don't have to kill everything to progress, in fact, you can just skirt along a lot of fights. No need to interrupt a certain bugbear and ogre, for example.

I do find the contrivances on "you can't go this way or that way" sort of annoying but that is bog-standard D&D/RPGs.

[jgsugden]

There is also a lot of content, and the content changes meaningfully if you have different people in the party. 

I'd suggest they add a combat tutorial that covers things like "how can you target creatures that are within range, but hard to get on screen" or "how do you add upcast spells to your toolbar so that you can cast a higher level version of a spell"?  They're simple to do, once you figure it out.

[Rendakor]

I do find the contrivances on "you can't go this way or that way" sort of annoying but that is bog-standard D&D/RPGs.

This is certainly standard for video game RPGs but the complete opposite of actual PnP RPGs.

[Khaldun]

Yes. But so far I'd say the game does a good job modelling as many things as possible in the combat in a fairly PnP way--terrain is destructable, you can climb a lot of places to set for a fight, you can use spells in some creative ways, etc. You're never going to be able to fully model the wackier side of PnP creativity in terms of combat and class abilities in any solo computer game. The only thing I'd say is that it reminds me a bit of how stupid tactical AI in RPGs usually is, because so far in BG3, I've had a number of combats where the enemies relentlessly target the wizard and the cleric, which is smart but also frustrating in that you have just got to set up a fight where they're way back or hard to get at if it's not a single target. I am hoping that if there are animal/monster opponents that aren't smart, they're not quite that tactically adroit--a bear shouldn't know to try and get at the squishy wizard in the way back. But so far it's all intelligent enemies, I think: goblins, gnolls, ogres, bugbears, an enemy party. Even intellect devourers are arguably "intelligent".

I was worried at first about the time element w/the brain parasites but now it's kind of clear that there's something going on such that the parasites aren't doing their usual thing and you can kind of go at your own pace...

[jgsugden]

After reading a recent article where developers admitted that the AI that had been lauded for being so smart was highly random, I was curious about how random the monsters were acting.  I picked a combat at third level against an unintelligent, but beefy, enemy and played it through a few times. My conclusion - there is a mix of plan and chaos in their tactics.

The monster had some clear instructions on how to start the fight, as the first two things it did were pretty much always the same regardless of how I approached the combat or what I did in those first two rounds.  Then it went into a random frenzy.  Sometimes it went after the fighter, sometimes the warlock, sometimes the cleric, and sometimes the wizard.  I think there is a lot of randomness.  There is a shoreline combat against 4 of the same creature (all of whom can fly) that I also played through a few times while trying to figure out the targeting tricks.  Those combatants seemed to use great tactics the first time through, but then reversed those approaches and acted entirely different in subsequent run throughs. 

[Khaldun]

Hm! It really felt to me like the goblins were going after the squishy.

One thing I do hope they fix is the pathfinding, which is goddamn perverse sometimes--trying to manage a party through a jump is a serious pain in the ass, but also sometimes characters will take off in the opposite direction because they somehow think you can't get from one place to the next.

Also am I missing it or is there no way to order an entire party to stealth, etc.? So far I only seem to be able to do it one character at a time.

[jgsugden]

...
Also am I missing it or is there no way to order an entire party to stealth, etc.? So far I only seem to be able to do it one character at a time.

I do it one at a time. 

I tried to have the majority of a party wait at high ground and then start a combat with the last PC entering into the conversation that triggered the combat, but that magically teleported the entire party to the spot where the conversation took place.  There is a lot of navigation issues for them to improve.
 

[Khaldun]

I think you cannot preset a combat that's triggered by a dialog, yeah. But you can separate the party and put them on high ground out of sight range and then send in Lae'zel to set it off.

Honestly, there are very few combats where you can just rush in and smack shit, and that could get tedious if they put too much trash in the later parts of the game (as I feel Larian has done in the past).

The other thing I kind of hate is the camera, which needs serious work. I'll be going along thinking it's basically fine and can handle a lot of Z-axis stuff and then suddenly I'll be camera-locked on the inside of a mountain or something.

[jgsugden]

...
The other thing I kind of hate is the camera, which needs serious work. I'll be going along thinking it's basically fine and can handle a lot of Z-axis stuff and then suddenly I'll be camera-locked on the inside of a mountain or something.

Same.  I had the entire party die because I couldn't get the camera to see what terrain they'd entered. 

Anither navigation issue is sudden height changes.  More than once I've had the group teleport to the ceiling and then fall (taking damage and ending up prone).