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

[IlyaP]

39 minutes ago, Relic said:

Thanks for the info. I think I'll hold off doing much else in this game till that patch. 

Like, it seems to be mostly fine, aside from these weird, bizarro-land bugs that come out of nowhere, like I've had in Act 2, and like the egregious stuff that Forbes has reported on in Act 3. But apparently not everyone is experiencing them, which is equal parts fascinating and strange. 

[karaddin]

I continue to find things I've missed in these comments, some of it even back in act 1 lol. I'm nearing the end of the game again on the second play through and some of the quests really don't feel like they're designed to be done in different orders

Spoiler

If you ignore Gortash inviting you to his coronation until after you deal with the Steel Watch and Iron Throne the entire fortress is already hostile, the guests slaughtered and Wyll's dad is dead... But it didn't feel very well put together. 

On the other hand doing Gortash before the house of hope makes more sense as there's a note in his safe about breaking into hell.

On that note some of the max level fights are definitely showing more difficulty on tactician, both the Absurd and especially Raphael fights were very tricky.

 

[Fez]

40 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Like, it seems to be mostly fine, aside from these weird, bizarro-land bugs that come out of nowhere, like I've had in Act 2, and like the egregious stuff that Forbes has reported on in Act 3. But apparently not everyone is experiencing them, which is equal parts fascinating and strange. 

It's a mix. There's some bugs that are very random, especially the more technical ones (I had a conversation last night where the NPC's head rotated around like Linda Blair's). But there are also bugs that everyone is experiencing, it's just that some people don't realize that it's a bug (like with a certain companion being too quiet).

And there's the cut content. Some of it seems like normal cuts that happen during game development due to changes in design decisions. But the Act 3 stuff that was cut literally less than 2 weeks before release (and was being actively promoted at a PR event at that 2 week mark) feels like it was absolutely meant to be in the game but was so broken that it had be excised to ensure that there was a shippable product. To me, it feels like a reasonable assumption that such content will eventually be put back into the game once it's working correctly. Probably not in the first patch, but at some point. And it sounds like, if/when it is, Act 3 in general would flow a lot better.

[Heartofice]

Knowing about the cut stuff from Act 3 gives me even more incentive to take my time with this game. If I'm lucky I can slow down even more and everything will be patched by the time I get there.

[Relic]

58 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Like, it seems to be mostly fine, aside from these weird, bizarro-land bugs that come out of nowhere, like I've had in Act 2, and like the egregious stuff that Forbes has reported on in Act 3. But apparently not everyone is experiencing them, which is equal parts fascinating and strange. 

Forbes dot com is a SEO mill, btw. 

[Arakasi]

6 hours ago, karaddin said:

If the other party members aren't in sight when combat starts they stay out of it (and out of turn based mode) until they enter combat. You can use this by ungrouping and having everyone hiding, initiate combat on your character with the best initiative and then use sneak attacks/sneak fireballs etc from everyone else so they're joining the fight on terms you want. You simply click on the portrait on the left to switch to the out of combat party members and you can move them like normal.

There was! Not too late to go back and get it if you want, it gives off light. It triggers a trap unless you've done a puzzle first, but I've just triggered the trap then taken out the components of the trap in time to disarm it.

  Reveal hidden contents

The puzzle is on the roof of the monastery, the mace is behind a hidden doorway after the Gith Inquisitor/your chat with Vlakith. One of the storage rooms on the side has a couple of statues in it, you turn one to face east and the other to face west and it opens the secret door - the plaques indicate which one should face which.

 

The full group was already in combat. Everyone had already taken 1-2 turns of fighting. 

[IlyaP]

2 minutes ago, Relic said:

Forbes dot com is a SEO mill, btw. 

*Stares blankly*

*Asks software developer wife*

"Dunno."

*Resumes staring blankly at @Relic* 

...A what?

[IlyaP]

10 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Knowing about the cut stuff from Act 3 gives me even more incentive to take my time with this game. If I'm lucky I can slow down even more and everything will be patched by the time I get there.

Is it cut material whose cutting impacts the logic of anything in that act? Like, is it like, non-necessary content? Or....

[IlyaP]

(This, btw, is the Forbes article. They - and Eurogamer - warned us about performance issues. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/08/20/two-warnings-about-baldurs-gate-3-review-scores/amp/)

[Fez]

1 minute ago, IlyaP said:

Is it cut material whose cutting impacts the logic of anything in that act? Like, is it like, non-necessary content? Or....

Act 3 design and gameflow, but not story, spoilers

Spoiler

Originally, Act 3 was supposed to have two massive areas: the lower city and the upper city. However, the upper city was cut from the game sometime in the final two weeks before release. So instead, Act 3 is the lower city and heading to the upper city just triggers the final boss fight.

The most important locations that were supposed to be in the upper city seem to have been shoe-horned into the lower city instead (via loading screens, like the goblin's shattered sanctum in Act 1 being a loading screen away from the main map). Which sounds like it sorta works, but it means the pacing of quests can be pretty off-balance.

Also, only the most important upper city stuff made the transition in what I assume was an incredibly hectic time at the studio. Everything else is just absent from the game. For instance, one companion literally can't get the good ending to their personal questline and the endings you can get are supposed to be the different fail-states for ignoring the quest. This is because their quest relied on talking to someone from the upper city.

And, the endings themselves seem to have been screwed up by the quick transition to this new design flow. There are 56 minutes total of narrated ending slides in the game files (someone uploaded them to youtube) describing the impact of the various major decisions you make. However, none of them actually play right now. Instead you get a quick ending and then cut to credits.

 

[karaddin]

18 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

The full group was already in combat. Everyone had already taken 1-2 turns of fighting. 

Hmm, I wonder if it's split into 2 different combats or something 

14 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Is it cut material whose cutting impacts the logic of anything in that act? Like, is it like, non-necessary content? Or....

It's pretty significant based on reading between the lines that I've read, with significant impact to companion stories and major impact to at least one. 

I think anyone that's thinking about stopping until it's in a more complete state is unlikely to regret that decision. I've enjoyed it a lot, but I've definitely got mixed feelings now. I continue to be struck by the comparison to Cyberpunk - there was a complete lack of extending any benefit of the doubt there where Larian are getting a lot here, but there's enough that it the narrative of this release was negative it would be getting dragged to shit. I'm glad it's not, those narratives are dumb, I just wish others got more of this as well.

This thread is talking about it, most of the later game spoilery stuff is tagged I think

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15xob24/give_it_to_us_straight_larian/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1

ETA: The majorly impacted companions ending state is discussed without spoiler tags though

Edited August 22, 2023 by karaddin

[Fez]

11 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I think anyone that's thinking about stopping until it's in a more complete state is unlikely to regret that decision. I've enjoyed it a lot, but I've definitely got mixed feelings now. I continue to be struck by the comparison to Cyberpunk - there was a complete lack of extending any benefit of the doubt there where Larian are getting a lot here, but there's enough that it the narrative of this release was negative it would be getting dragged to shit. I'm glad it's not, those narratives are dumb, I just wish others got more of this as well.

I liked Cyberpunk, though I understand many of the complaints. I think the difference is that Act 1 of BG3 is so good, and is exactly what the complaints want the whole game to be, that there's a lot more good will towards Larian than CDPR. Also, because Act 3 has the biggest issues, and the game is so, I think a lot of players just haven't experienced the issues yet. I wouldn't be surprised if there starts being a growing backlash over the next couple weeks though (unless Patch 1 is very big indeed).

[karaddin]

5 minutes ago, Fez said:

I liked Cyberpunk, though I understand many of the complaints. I think the difference is that Act 1 of BG3 is so good, and is exactly what the complaints want the whole game to be, that there's a lot more good will towards Larian than CDPR. Also, because Act 3 has the biggest issues, and the game is so, I think a lot of players just haven't experienced the issues yet. I wouldn't be surprised if there starts being a growing backlash over the next couple weeks though (unless Patch 1 is very big indeed).

Yeah the comparison isn't perfect, all else aside it didn't launch on old gen consoles which were functionally unplayable. It just comes to mind because the way the game was talked up I was expecting the same level of reactivity to what the player has done that you see in some of the Cyberpunk quests and it really doesn't have the same feel to it.

You might be right about not enough players even being into act 3 yet, I guess we'll see over the coming weeks.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Knowing about the cut stuff from Act 3 gives me even more incentive to take my time with this game. If I'm lucky I can slow down even more and everything will be patched by the time I get there.

So it's good I've taken more than a week off then.

[Werthead]

13 hours ago, IlyaP said:

I tried keeping whatserfacename that Marcus wanted, but every time I got him down to a certain level of health, the game auto-cut to a cut-scene with him walking into a room with her in arms and flying away. 

Marcus is fully 100% defeatable but you also need to take out his minions. The first time I found the fight impossible, but the second time it was very easy, mainly because Isobel ran out onto the exterior walkway, so I was able to stick 2 characters on one side of her, 2 on the other and they prevented anyone from meleeing her, and aggroed the enemies into attacking them. It also helped that the first time, Jaheira got side-tracked into fighting some random enemy on the ground floor, but the second time shot straight into the main fight and killed Marcus almost completely single-handedly.

[Relic]

6 hours ago, IlyaP said:

*Stares blankly*

*Asks software developer wife*

"Dunno."

*Resumes staring blankly at @Relic* 

...A what?

A garbage website. Search based click bait, that basically anyone can write for.  A far cry from the magazine of yore. 

Edited August 22, 2023 by Relic

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

A garbage website. Search based click bait, that basically anyone can write for.  A far cry from the magazine of yore. 

You're not wrong there! But that doesn't prevent them from occasionally writing something accurate, as with the above link. The few good gaming-relates articles end up being like hail mary's 

[Werthead]

Completed the Gauntlet of Shar. Quite a nice, massive dungeon to play through. However,

Spoiler

The fight at the end is a total bastard, especially because it's so easy just to get punted off into oblivion.

 

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Completed the Gauntlet of Shar. Quite a nice, massive dungeon to play through. However,

  Hide contents

The fight at the end is a total bastard, especially because it's so easy just to get punted off into oblivion.

 

I think that might have gone quite different for you than it has for me, 

Spoiler

Which fight? I guess you might be talking about the demon, I never had any punting issues with that one

 

[IlyaP]

13 hours ago, karaddin said:

I think anyone that's thinking about stopping until it's in a more complete state is unlikely to regret that decision. I've enjoyed it a lot, but I've definitely got mixed feelings now.

Have taken your suggestion and done exactly that. It's already a struggle for me with its turn-based gameplay, so playing through it a second time is not something that appeals to me in the slightest, so I'm happier to wait till it's patched and content has been reintroduced. 

13 hours ago, karaddin said:

I continue to be struck by the comparison to Cyberpunk - there was a complete lack of extending any benefit of the doubt there where Larian are getting a lot here, but there's enough that it the narrative of this release was negative it would be getting dragged to shit. I'm glad it's not, those narratives are dumb, I just wish others got more of this as well.

I was thinking about this last night as well, after work. The difference between this and Cyberpunk is down to several, I think, factors: 

1. CDPR really made a lot of marketing noise with CP77 - perhaps too much.
2. Trying to launch across multiple platforms rather than staggering releases did them a disservice.
3. The egregiousness of bugs on some platforms was far worse than anything experienced so far in BG3, which amplified the hateclick signal
4. The assorted controversies that plagued the game before release (the transphobia concerns in particular stands out in my memory) probably didn't help either. 

Larian's of course had the occasion numpty grumble about the game being "woke", whatever that even means anymore - but even that's been minor by comparison in terms of its volume. I do think that CP77 got a bad rap, and got dragged to shit, as you said, as I found CP77 to be a far more engrossing game and one that for me was bug-free and had a complete beginning, middle, and end. BG3's scenario reminds me a bit of KOTOR 2, which famously shipped with an abbreviated ending, before Aspyr famously restored all the cut content (as did fans in a fan-patch, I think?).