Baldur's Gate 3: On the Highway to the Nine Hells

[Trebla]

Or at least the first level of Avernus. This is the opening scene of the game:

After nearly 3 years of early access on pc, the game goes live tomorrow, August 3rd. I've played all the way through the early access, which is roughly one quarter of the game which capped at lvl 5. I played most of the classes and suprisingly, my usual favorite class seemed to be one of the strongest: paladin. In most games I've played, pallys were either weak tanks or low dps. In this game, they are amongst the strongest dps thanks to their powerful smite attacks. There also did not seem to be an issue so far with alignment problems with companions, a drawback with the previous BG games. 

Overall, the game is incredible. Graphics are phenomenal and the story is great. I really love the combat which is turn-based but very similar to the Tactics games. Terrain and distance really matter. The games that it reminds me of most are the Pathfinder games which I enjoyed. The game is going to be MASSIVE. Just playing a quarter of the game was roughly 30 hours, though I explored everywhere and completed nearly every quest.  Oh and one little spoiler:

 

Spoiler

Minsc and Boo!

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Trebla

[Whiskeyjack]

Can't wait.  Game looks amazing.

Think I'm going to play as The Bloody Nine my first time through.  Seems like pretty much any type of character is possible.

But will be playing on PS5, so going to have to wait until September.  

[Relic]

Eagerly awaiting download. 

[Which Tyler]

Love the old Baldur's Gates and Icewind Dales - and still play the revamped versions.

Not sure my system can cope with a modern resource hog game though

 

My other consideration, is that (through BG and ID) I've got my wife playing actual table-top D&D, so that's definitely my higher priority for any gaming currently.

[sifth]

Me and my friends, plan to play this game at some point. Just not right away, since one friend still needs a PS5.

[FalagarV2]

Counting down the hours. Bought the early access version three years ago, but only ever played a couple of hours and haven't touched it since then, not wanting to spoil it. And luckily my paternity leave starts in a few weeks...

[Heartofice]

13 minutes ago, FalagarV2 said:

Counting down the hours. Bought the early access version three years ago, but only ever played a couple of hours and haven't touched it since then, not wanting to spoil it. And luckily my paternity leave starts in a few weeks...

The idea you are going to get the chance to spend hours playing Baldurs Gate when on paternity leave! Sorry to disappoint you.

I might well consider getting this actually, the enormous download is putting me off from making a snap decision though.

[FalagarV2]

Well, in contrast to our four-year old, this one has been sleeping a lot - so far. Fingers crossed!

[DanteGabriel]

Hot damn, three years is a long time to beta. I wondered if that was an error in the Steam store. I had no idea it has been available and playable that long, though I guess I should have been able to figure that out from the BG3 link in Larian's launcher for Divinity: Original Sin II.

I wonder what it's like to have as long as you need to develop the game.

Seems kinda fitting for me that the Diablo IV thread got closed the same time, as I'll probably be sinking my spare time into this now.

[Poobah]

It's very irritating and seems poorly thought out to require people to uninstall completely in order to redownload the full game. I have good enough internet that I can probably manage it in a few hours but it's still annoying and seems very wasteful; a lot of it will be textures, music, dialogue etc. which will be the same as in the full version and many people still have shit internet or download limits.

[horangi]

1 hour ago, Poobah said:

It's very irritating and seems poorly thought out to require people to uninstall completely in order to redownload the full game. I have good enough internet that I can probably manage it in a few hours but it's still annoying and seems very wasteful; a lot of it will be textures, music, dialogue etc. which will be the same as in the full version and many people still have shit internet or download limits.

I'm guessing it saves them weeks of debugging reports from corrupt patching. 

Three of us finally got a session of the early access version going a couple of weeks ago and we were pretty blown away.  And by that I also mean we died like three times due to getting too curious with various liquids and traps.  Its as close to a real D&D table top as I've seen except the GM is sadistically incapable of saving you from yourself!  One moment two of us were yelling at a third not to go prancing down the middle of a corridor that just screamed traps only for them to Leeroy Jenkins it and cause a party wipe.  So far its definitely met the Dwarf Fortress definition of "Fun."

ETA: We also managed to kill at least one of the main companions in the initial escape from squidville.  The game pulls no punches, I wonder what the consequences later on would have been.

Edited August 3, 2023 by horangi

[Trebla]

3 hours ago, Poobah said:

It's very irritating and seems poorly thought out to require people to uninstall completely in order to redownload the full game. I have good enough internet that I can probably manage it in a few hours but it's still annoying and seems very wasteful; a lot of it will be textures, music, dialogue etc. which will be the same as in the full version and many people still have shit internet or download limits.

Yeah, I agree. I'm on my 3rd uninstall and reinstall for  an extra file here or still clicked on patch 8 there. Hopefully 3rd times a charge cause I'm ready to start smiting stuff!

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Poobah said:

It's very irritating and seems poorly thought out to require people to uninstall completely in order to redownload the full game. I have good enough internet that I can probably manage it in a few hours but it's still annoying and seems very wasteful; a lot of it will be textures, music, dialogue etc. which will be the same as in the full version and many people still have shit internet or download limits.

Apparently not so much. A lot of textures, music and dialogue has been thrown out and redone, the story and quests are reportedly different and the game has to handle numerous more species and classes that were not in the early access version.

There's also a few reports that some of the first reviewers sent code were able to just patch their existing EA install to the full game but reported problems, which Larian decided they just don't have time this close to release to get in and fix, hence the recommendation to do a full uninstall of the EA version first.

The annoyance here is more down to Valve, since they won't allow Early Access games to have a separate preload system.

[Arakasi]

Due to the adult nature of the story I won’t be able to play on PS5. So I’ll pick it up for my steam deck once I’ve confirmed there is no issues with running it.

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

Due to the adult nature of the story I won’t be able to play on PS5. So I’ll pick it up for my steam deck once I’ve confirmed there is no issues with running it.

Why cant you play on ps5?

[Werthead]

3 hours in, pretty good so far. I've basically just done the opening sequence and into the first open world bit and, er, the map is huge and there's a ton going on and this is like the opening 3% of the game. Some really good, morally murky decisions, and contrary to my usual preference, the game does a good job of giving you interesting outcomes for failing checks, rather than just some kind of screaming awful outcome that makes you reload instantly.

In 4K with everything on Ultra, the game is almost ludicrously pretty. There's barely a discernible difference between in-engine and cutscene (if anything, the cutscenes are a touch lower in quality because they bit on a film filter thing).

I would say, apart from the AAA+ presentation and thankfully massively-better writing, the actual moment-to-moment gameplay is not massively different to Divinity: Original Sin II. I do like the dramatic "SHIT'S GOTTEN REAL, WE'RE ROLLING A DICE!" moments, although they might get wearying over the long term. 

There's some very nice callbacks to BG1+2, including the exact same icons for spells and many of the same books can be found (some updated for post-Spellplague Faerun, some not, and some new books, including an awful pop history of the Bhaalspawn).

I did pick up several useful pieces of basic advice:

• At the very start of the game, when selecting your MC, you can bring up each of the main NPC companions and hit "Play Introduction." Each character then gives you a 60-ish second monologue on their backstory, motivation and ethos. Good way of getting a sneak preview of what they're about before committing to the full game.
• High-strength characters can jump further than they can move in combat. More than once, jumping instead of walking/running was the difference between being able to hit an enemy or not. For lower-strength characters, jumping is either equal or worse than standard movement. But! Jumping is great for evading Web or Grease.
• Shove is also an easy action to forget about, but very useful for controlling the battlefield or just doing a little more damage (or even outright kills) by pushing an enemy over a ledge.
• Chokepoints are a very viable strategy. Particularly good is being able to stand next to a door and keep closing it, preventing enemies from hitting you or forcing them to smash the door down before they can attack, wasting actions.
• Remember that special moves are only recoverable via short or long-rest actions, so don't waste them on low-level minions. Save them for the tougher engagements.
• Similarly, spells can only be regained through rests, but cantrips are once-per-round actions and can deal out reasonable damage.
• The old "give everyone a missile weapon" tactic remains viable, and there's even a nice button you can hit to automatically switch between a ranged set up and a melee one.
• In a pinch, you can lob healing potions at wounded allies to heal them. Amusingly, although normal heal spells are not area of effect, smashing a healing bottle generates a small AoE and you can heal several allies at once that way.
• As usual with Larian games, Talk with Animals/Dead makes the game far more entertaining.
• As far as I can tell, the game always goes with the person you've selected to talk to NPCs. Make sure you have your most Charismatic/Persuasive or Main character selected before talking to someone you need to rally to your cause, not the arsehole githyanki (GRRM's lawyers stirring) who treats absolutely everyone like a piece of shit. Although that can be quite funny.

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Why cant you play on ps5?

It's a shared family space? Worth noting that there's a big button right at the start of the game that says, "HIT THIS TO TURN OFF ALL DEPRAVITY."

Edited August 3, 2023 by Werthead

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Why cant you play on ps5?

I'm guessing because the PS5 is in the living room and they can't play games like that in front of everyone. That's the same setup I have with my Xbox. 

[Werthead]

 

[Arakasi]

4 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Why cant you play on ps5?

Because I have young children? I don’t want to explain bear human sex to an eight year old.

[Trebla]

43 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

Because I have young children? I don’t want to explain bear human sex to an eight year old.

Yeah, or..

Spoiler

The hot bugbear on ogre action the party seesbehind a door.. Ive seen two different positions on different characters: missionary and doggie style. I wonder if it should be called Gnolly style ???

I started and re-started when I found out there was way more character options like getting to pick your type of genitals. That was DEFINITELY not in the early access, nor was the option to show nudity or not!

Wert gave good advice above. One thing I would add is to constantly be pressing left alt which highlights objects you can pickup. There is a TON of stuff lying around; from treasure chests to alchemy ingredients. A lot of it is random, I just picked up a topaz on the mind flayer ship which I had never done before.

ETA: Oh and one more thing, make sure you always have a shovel in your inventory. There are a bunch of hidden treasures under the ground that you can only dig up with a shovel if you or a party member can notice them.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Trebla