Baldur's Gate 3: Quicksave is my favourite spell

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

 

Fuck AI is scary…are any of us in the tech industry gonna have jobs left in the next decade or so ? :/

Edited April 9 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Ser Lany]

I have successfully incorporated 2 mods, while 2 others require additional stuff to make them work that is beyond me.  Spawn #2 will be home in 2 weeks, so I'll have them help me.

Bard sub-class College of Charm and Basket of Equipment are both working so far. It's awesome to be able to wear a sexy dress and still have a decent AC.

The two I really wanted though, No Party Size Limit and No Romance Limit are the two I still can't get to work.

Also went back to an abandoned game that was in Act 3 with the sole purpose of sexy fun time with Mizora. (I just learned yesterday that was even possible)  Don't know if I have the words describe it   Y'all know me, I'm up for pretty much anything, game wise, but this was a bit much. It's not something I'm likely to repeat any time soon. It was all about the pleasure of torture and the torture of pleasure.  The best part was the Tav reaction afterwards. Very lazy, ultra satisfied, like a 10 o night when you just can't manage to pick yourself up off the floor.  

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

7 hours ago, Ser Lany said:

I have successfully incorporated 2 mods, while 2 others require additional stuff to make them work that is beyond me.  Spawn #2 will be home in 2 weeks, so I'll have them help me.

Bard sub-class College of Charm and Basket of Equipment are both working so far. It's awesome to be able to wear a sexy dress and still have a decent AC.

The two I really wanted though, No Party Size Limit and No Romance Limit are the two I still can't get to work.

Also went back to an abandoned game that was in Act 3 with the sole purpose of sexy fun time with Mizora. (I just learned yesterday that was even possible)  Don't know if I have the words describe it   Y'all know me, I'm up for pretty much anything, game wise, but this was a bit much. It's not something I'm likely to repeat any time soon. It was all about the pleasure of torture and the torture of pleasure.  The best part was the Tav reaction afterwards. Very lazy, ultra satisfied, like a 10 o night when you just can't manage to pick yourself up off the floor.  

Ya I have a save file called “Devil Sex” for that same moment….great minds think alike ! I’ve used a bunch of mods so hit me up for doubts

[Werthead]

Baldur's Gate 3 won 5 BAFTAs tonight.

 

Edited April 11 by Werthead

[Kalbear]

BG3 is apparently the very first game to sweep all 5 of the major game awards since they were created. A bunch of games got close but most of them actually didn't make it with the BAFTAs, largely because BAFTAs are often too late the following year. That's pretty cool. 

In other news, a wrestler cosplayed as Karlach in one of her matches:

https://www.ign.com/articles/ring-of-honor-wrestler-athena-baldurs-gate-3-karlach-cosplay

 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1086940/announcements/detail/4172097464031362568
 

Update on Larians final major patch for the game. Beyond this one, we’re gonna have bug fixes,performance improvements,cross play ,picture mode and continued mod support. But this is the final major content patch. They’re adding in new endings and Wyll content along with the start of mod support. It’s still a few weeks away as they’re hosting a closed beta first for it.

Its a good time to start an evil playthrough, which is gonna be my 3rd and final play through of this game…until there are enough new quest mods added in  the next 3-5 years.

Edited April 18 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

https://www.polygon.com/24133289/baldurs-gate-4-sequel-hasbro-larian-studios-video-games
 

Hasbro’s been shopping around BG3s sequel to other studios, wants to move ahead regardless of Larians involvement. Hope there’s a chance Obsidian gets a crack at it. Which studio would you guys want to see ? They also want to continue using the BG3 characters in other media, so we might have a slim chance of a tv/movie series in the future as well!  Meanwhile Larian is moving ahead with two new games of their in active development. I’m guessing one of em is probably gonna be DOS3. 

Edited April 23 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

https://www.polygon.com/24133289/baldurs-gate-4-sequel-hasbro-larian-studios-video-games
 

Hasbro’s been shopping around BG3s sequel to other studios, wants to move ahead regardless of Larians involvement. Hope there’s a chance Obsidian gets a crack at it. Which studio would you guys want to see ? They also want to continue using the BG3 characters in other media, so we might have a slim chance of a tv/movie series in the future as well!  Meanwhile Larian is moving ahead with two new games of their in active development. I’m guessing one of em is probably gonna be DOS3. 

Any takers for the other game's name? I'm going with....Divinity: Beyond Sin. What's beyond sin? Wouldn't *you* like to know?!

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

35 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Any takers for the other game's name? I'm going with....Divinity: Beyond Sin. What's beyond sin? Wouldn't *you* like to know?!

Apparently it’s gonna be a new IP unrelated to Divinity. I’m just impressed they’re able to develop 2 huge games at once.

[IlyaP]

43 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Apparently it’s gonna be a new IP unrelated to Divinity. I’m just impressed they’re able to develop 2 huge games at once.

Four offices/teams across Europe and North America and over 250 staff members? With enough smart project management and good communcation tools, I can see how it'd be feasible to manage two projects and organise production pipelines and project milestones.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

9 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Four offices/teams across Europe and North America and over 250 staff members? With enough smart project management and good communcation tools, I can see how it'd be feasible to manage two projects and organise production pipelines and project milestones.

Yeah and they want to pump them out in 4 year cycles. Kinda makes you wonder about EAs shitty mismanagement with BioWare. And Bethesda also taking waay too long for games of a similiar scope.  Ever since Fallout 4 their timelines have been sloppy.

Edited April 23 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Fez]

6 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Apparently it’s gonna be a new IP unrelated to Divinity. I’m just impressed they’re able to develop 2 huge games at once.

I don't think its 2 huge games. I'm pretty sure it's one huge game (described as being even bigger than BG3) and one smaller game. Sort of like how Rockstar worked on Max Payne 3 and GTA V at the same time.

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Kinda makes you wonder about EAs shitty mismanagement with BioWare.

There was a lack of communication overlap between Edmonton and Gothenburg, and no tools in place to foster improved information sharing, and no teams in-between both timezones, to allow for an overlap in communications and creative production. Not sure if Slack, Teams, Jira, Trello, Miro, and Mural were in place back then to faciliate the kind of workflow management needed to get the best out of everyone.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

There was a lack of communication overlap between Edmonton and Gothenburg, and no tools in place to foster improved information sharing, and no teams in-between both timezones, to allow for an overlap in communications and creative production. Not sure if Slack, Teams, Jira, Trello, Miro, and Mural were in place back then to faciliate the kind of workflow management needed to get the best out of everyone.

Also isnt frostbite like the worst engine to make a RPG in ? 

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Also isnt frostbite like the worst engine to make a RPG in ? 

It's not ideal. I don't know it's the worst, but it's an engine designed and optimized around not a ton of interactivity, a ton of multiplayer/networking support and lag-tolerant, a matchmaking system, poor communication tools and a large-scale amount of state transferrence from other disconnected entities. The good parts are that it's great at rendering and keeping in scope large scales of areas and does a decent job of interior and exterior systems. 

The real problem is that the tooling and modifications and systems that a RPG would want - NPCs moving around regularly, location and event triggering, large amounts of objects being modified in state, in-game cutscene rendering, inventory management, a large amount of different actions and interactions with environments - are things that basically none of the other users of Frostbite want. Which means you have to branch off and hope that the core frostbite engine doesn't break all your shit. 

[Werthead]

6 hours ago, Fez said:

I don't think its 2 huge games. I'm pretty sure it's one huge game (described as being even bigger than BG3) and one smaller game. Sort of like how Rockstar worked on Max Payne 3 and GTA V at the same time.

Rockstar made Max Payne 3, Red Dead Redemption 1, GTA5 and LA Noire simultaneously. In fact, they spun up work on RDR2 immediately after RDR1 shipped, so were early in work on that alongside GTA5, LA Noire and Max Payne 3.

Later on, the same number of people they used to make 3-5 games simultaneously (2,000) were needed to make just RDR2 and then GTA6.

Video games have become exponentially more time, manpower and cash inefficient with each generation, which is clearly unsustainable, until we get to games that take twice the length of a console generation to come out.

[Gorn]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Rockstar made Max Payne 3, Red Dead Redemption 1, GTA5 and LA Noire simultaneously. In fact, they spun up work on RDR2 immediately after RDR1 shipped, so were early in work on that alongside GTA5, LA Noire and Max Payne 3.

Later on, the same number of people they used to make 3-5 games simultaneously (2,000) were needed to make just RDR2 and then GTA6.

Video games have become exponentially more time, manpower and cash inefficient with each generation, which is clearly unsustainable, until we get to games that take twice the length of a console generation to come out.

Rockstar didn't make LA Noire, they just published it. I would think a major part of their resources over the last decade has been tied into ongoing maintenance and adding content for GTA Online, which is their primary moneymaker product.

Also, a lot of super-long game development times are caused by failures of developer management to properly, well, manage and plan their projects, and also to properly coordinate huge resources and multi-continent development teams. Say what you want about Ubisoft, but they still manage to put out new Assassin's Creed games every 2-3 years, while simultaneously juggling multiple other AAA projects and series.

Edited April 23 by Gorn

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Gorn said:

Rockstar didn't make LA Noire, they just published it. I would think a major part of their resources over the last decade has been tied into ongoing maintenance and adding content for GTA Online, which is their primary moneymaker product.

LA Noire was developed by an initially external team (Team Bondi), but that team was incompetently managed, as was very well covered at the time, and Rockstar had to step in to save the project, with all four Rockstar studios at the time having to pitch in and help get it over the finish line despite them also working on - at different times during that period - GTA4, its DLC, Bully, RDR1, Max Payne 3 and GTA5.

GTA Online has a significant support staff, I believe around 200 people, or slightly less than 10% of Rockstar's workforce.

The rest of Rockstar's workforce - ~1,800 people - worked on Red Dead Redemption 2 and are now working on GTA6. Even the GTA Online staff did double-duty on Red Dead Online but eventually Rockstar decided they couldn't support both and RDO's takeup was relatively small, so they decided to refocus on GTA Online. Presumably the GTA Online team are also working on GTA6's online component.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

The Perfect Durge

[Ser Lany]

I managed to keep the romance with Astarion going through his ascension, but he broke up with Tav when we refused to become a vampire (or Tav with him, it was confusing, I was angry  about a comment by the narrator) It was a 90% good playthrough, yet I had a very high rating from Astarion. First time it was that high, ever.

It would be a fair thing to say that I sometimes have a hard time separating my feelings from my characters'. I thought I was doing better on this playthrough, we killed a guy we shouldn't have and Tav was making all sorts of comments about power and such, while still mostly being good, but there was a totally uncalled for comment by the narrator that absolutely pissed me off. This threw my game way off.

When Astarion was killed on our way to fight Orin, I simply didn't resurrect him.  (no worries, Withers took care of it at the end scene)

When we saved Orpheus, I initially made the Lany choice, not the Tav choice and was very unhappy with my ending. I might have cried. It had been an emotional finale for me. After giving myself a couple of days, I went back and made the proper Tav choice. She wasn't mean, but she was a bit selfish and self serving. That lead to a much better ending. Overall, I think I prefer NOT saving him.

They finally updated the final scene with Halsin so you can go with him, however, they failed to update the Epilogue

Got the no party size limit mod to work just before the final battle, so that was cool, except the last person kept failing to follow when I jumped or climbed ladders or anything other than just walking. Still, it was nice not to exclude anyone.