Baldur's Gate 3 is defying game industry trend-chasers — and is being rewarded for doing so | Windows Central
The more annoying aspects of modern gaming are completely absent in Baldur's Gate 3.
For anyone else who is wondering - the game works great on the steam deck. I actually prefer it over my macbook pro because it’s easier to read the screen. I’ve gotten hours logged into the game so far.
It is a perfect update of the franchise. The storylines and writing are top notch, and the technology is blowing me away with how they managed to update everything while keeping the feel.
Thank you for sharing this awesome news! Time to go pick up this game, huzzah.
Does it save to the cloud so I can play on both?
Yes, and if you wind up moving to a console (once console versions come out) it will support those saves on console as well - if the launcher is to be believed.
how’s the current state of controller support? i played a bit during EA but had been planning on waiting til the PS5 release cuz I figure the layout options would be in a better state by then.
The cool Thing about playing with Controller is, that you can play it like a 3rd Person game, which is a cool option to experience the gane in a different way. But yeah problem is that all the skills and spells are not as essy to manage as with Mouse and keyboard.
Different than D:OS2, which means I've skipped a couple turns accidentally while adjusting to the new scheme. And there is some level of "I have 30 actions I could do so have multiple screens of choices to sort through", but it's not bad to get used to and I think it mostly works reasonably well. There are a couple changes vs D:OS2 I would have rather seen reverted (I like the old inventory better), but for the depth of the options you have it's done pretty well. As much as I personally want to play everything with a controller, there's a reason certain games don't bother supporting them. They do a good job of showing that controllers are capable with good design.
There's a controller layout from someone with some thousand hours of playtime that imitates a more traditional mouse setup where you move the cursor with the right track pad and then right and left click with the triggers (like you would in desktop mode). I've switched to using that and I like it more, even though the official controller layout does a decent job, it gets a bit annoying going through all the combat actions.
The only problem I’ve run into is my own muscle memory difference between the switch and deck layouts. The way they’ve done the radial menus, and especially the turn-based combat, make controller confusion much less of a factor. My thumb still gets confused between A and B more than. anything else, but BG is very forgiving.
As a point of reference Cyberpunk to be pretty tough in the real time parts. Stray is a bit more forgiving and had been my most played deck game before BG.
I can already tell I’m going to play this one through the end though.
@InfiniteLoop@lemm.ee English1•
how’s the current state of controller support? i played a bit during EA but had been planning on waiting til the PS5 release cuz I figure the layout options would be in a better state by then.
Haven't played it myself, but this article on PCGamer seems to imply that it's good support since they switched to using controller completely: https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-controller-playthrough/
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Baldur's Gate 3 just hit half a million concurrent players, and is already on track to challenge mega-franchise Harry Potter's Hogwarts Legacy for this year's Steam sales crown.
While old-school tactics franchises like XCOM vanish from purview, series like Final Fantasy drop turn-based gameplay altogether chasing broader audiences, and classic names like Diablo go always-online rammed with in-app purchases — Larian said no.
It's also a turn-based RPG that follows cRPG traditions carried forward by a shrinking number of studios who seem to have convinced themselves in various ways that players don't want this kind of game.
Forget for a moment that the game is just insanely good, with great writing, endless Dungeons & Dragons-inspired depth, and quite polished, optimized PC performance.
As such, I'm similarly nervous for Dragon Age 4, which according to leaks, has dropped tactical play in favor of chasing more action-oriented combat, doubtless with trend-chasing in mind.
Larian's respect for its audience, the relentless pursuit of quality over quarterly targets, and the rejection of trend-chasing in favor of elevating classic gameplay conventions are being rewarded by gamers in droves.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
People are just tired of the anti-consumer bullshit and it shows. I'm glad Larian are thinking ahead instead of grabbing the cash now and running unlike most modern day triple A developers.
Really shows that they care for the games that they make and the audience they've amassed.
Hopefully this helps kill MTX, lootboxes and Battlepasses.
Good concise bot
Dragon Age Inquisition was already a giant pile of shit, why would anyone expect anything else from a studio that hasn't released a decent game in over a decade?
I actually loved Dragon Age Inquisition. Definitely more than Dragon Age 2 (though I liked all of them).
EXCEPT it uses a launcher, that’d be my only complaint. When I click ‘Play’, I want my game to launch, not take me to another screen where I have to click ‘Play’ yet again.
"--skip-launcher" added to launch options in steam should skip straight to the game
I literally read this while waiting for shaders to process on first run. Good timing and thanks!
In Linux it is pretty much mandatory, it asks for NVIDIA 536 drivers, max on linux is 535... skip the launcher, and suddenly my drivers are okay (and tbf, aside from my card not being extra good, and a couple texture bleed in portraits and some weird texture loading issues (like, some times faces look like they were hyper pimpled, for a lil while, then looks normal) it plays amazingly
On one hand though, it at least offers something with the launcher: cross-saving. Not for everyone, but kinda neat if you also play in a console.
Paradox launchers allow you to manage your mod playsets, it's pretty useful. That's the only ones I know that have utility though.
add --skip-launcher to the launch options
You can add --skip-launcher to the game launch options. I actually did it while debugging an issue getting the game to launch and have never even seen the launcher despite playing quite a few sessions!
It'd be nice not to have to tweak things like that but at least the option is there similar to Cyberpunk
Any other reason to not like launchers other than 2 clicks? Just wondering...
An own launcher does not fit at all to what is reported about Larian. Steam has monopoly position and that will probably not change so quickly. Another launcher will only annoy the users. I personally avoid even games that need an extra launcher on steam like from Ubisoft or EA.
The paradox of homogeneization... The more the industry trends towards chasing what's considered to work and be safe, the more room it leaves for the truly bold like these guys to be successful by doing what's considered to not work anymore.
Always beautiful to see.
It's true. Kevin Feige (of the Marvel movies) once said something like, "People love chocolate ice cream, but if that's all you offer them every day, they'll start to hate it." and for a time, it seemed like he and Disney / Marvel understood that, which lead to such a wide range of movie genres for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the breakout successes... but now I feel like they've forgotten that, and now we get the formulaic "Marvel Movie" template shoveled out, and now they're slowly starting to fail.
And for good reason. People need variety, and it's because entertainment producers don't understand this need that so many major studios are flailing. Hence the recent purge at Pixar for example, and why Ubisoft is struggling lately, etc. It's not just game publishers that have this issue, it's movies, tv, and comics too. Like the recent "Death" of Ms. Marvel which is eerily similar to all the extremely temporary crap that happened to Peter Parker's Spiderman in the past, like the "death" of his aunt, or his "marriage" to Mary Jane.
You seem like someone I could talk to at a party for hours
Adding onto this, it also doesn’t help that executives go “hey, this movie/game/show has proven to work in the past and generated X amount of money, let’s do it again but slightly different,” which also contributes to everything feeling the same and formulaic due to corporate entities wanting their investment back on a “creative” entertainment product.
That's how you succeed, you make a great game, and be pro customer. Not complicated.
This is great news. Hopefully their success will inspire more studios to hold onto the genre.
Divinity OS2 had a dungeom master/builder and workshop support. Im assuming that will be expanded upon and put into BG3. I cant wait for peoples custom campaigns. The game is pure creative excellence and exactly what gamers have been wanting for a long time. A game you buy once.
Great to see baulders gate 3 doing well. A perfect storm of development conditions and we get rewarded at the end of it with a fantastic game. Hopefully heaps of extra extra content down the track to keep it going
Why do people say "perfect storm of conditions"? Larian has worked hard to perfect their style of crpgs through the divinity series. They put an emphasis on good storytelling and listening to fan feedback. They do early access to perfect their systems. They hire writers, composers and developers based on merit. They care about what they are creating. This is not a perfect storm but good management and development cycle. There is nothing random or lucky about it.
Of curse there is a lot of great Management and skill in Larian and they worked Hard to reach the Level of skill they have Shown of. However there are also certain eternal Faktors. AFAIK there have been several Times in the past where the Studio have easily gone bankrupt were it Not for certain Events. Also they have reached a critical point of exposure where enough People know them. There are several Studios which Do great games but you have never Heard of them. As an example i think Unknown Wordls (Subnautica) are creating a great game with Moonbreaker but it seems to miss the critical mass and might die during development
Do people know this game was in early access for more than a year. They were fine-tuning and really paying attention.
A lot of factors lead to this reward. But Imo, it's them building what could have been a 7/10 game (Divinity games), spending a lot of time polishing and then Publicly releasing a 10/10 game
Do you think that the divinity games were 7/10? I thought the first was fantastic.
Does anyone know if you had to have played the first two games to understand the story? Or is it standalone, or do they catch you up on lore?
It seems completely separate, as it should be tbh. I am sure there will be sone references but this title has nothing to do with the narrative events of bg1 and 2. It is just the setting afaik.
As someone who has played BG1 and 2 and is now 21 hours in the game ... so far there are no references. But the story, the worldbuilding and the characters are sooo gloriously brilliant
I haven't played much, but I assume you don't need to at all, considering how old those previous games are. It would be a big mistake considering the vast majority wouldn't have played them.
Would you guys recommend this for a casual gamer I love playing Zelda but rarely progress the story because I just like exploring. I know they aren't the same game but just giving an example of how I play games. Also, never played the other games before.
I'm gonna be the guy that says no. It's not an open world exploration game, it's more of an exposition game. Playing in small bits is likely gonna leave you stuggling to remeber where the story left off and what you were trying to do. Maybe if you did chunks of the story at once but even short sessions for me turn into hours.
By that do you mean it autosaves often and many autosaves, and you have to prepare to figure out the autosave you need? I'm not really sure the difference meant but that's all I can think of compared to current games. Though if so I'd add, you get to pick how many autosaves it will do so you can increase / decrease as needed.
Also as someone who played 90s and previous older RPGs having multiple autosaves rocks, there weren't always multiple autosaves so you tended to reload back to your manual save and try again from that point. Save scumming wasn't considered a bad thing way back when, just how you'd figure out the hard stuff heh.
No, probably not for casual. The D&D combat takes a good bit of time spent.
It's one of the newest D&D like games out there, so UI wise it's probably one of the best to start on. But there are other similar games (e.g. Pathfinder Kingmaker / Pathfinder Wrath of the righteous) that I'd start on first.
Both of those last two we're a great overall introduction into what TRPGs can be like
Definitely. I also don't have much time to play but then you just take a slower pace. BG isn't some competitive online game that forces you to commit unreasonable amounts of time to it if you want to enjoy it. Although you'll be occupied for quite a while if you take it slow because the game is huge.
I'm very happy to hear that make fantastic video games without any nonsense attached is still a business model that works today. Good to hear Larian and BG3 are doing great. Very well deserved.
The only thing I could complain about is that I am still downloading. Due to the games size of over 100GB and no preload, the launch player numbers are very falsified think it will be much more. As I say I am still downloading.
I really hope PS5 gives a demo of this. I wanna give it a try, but not sure how I'll like the gameplay with turn based stuff, and not sure how much I'll like the view. I'm not a fan of aerial views, but if I can zoom it in and out, like WoW, I might like it.
When you play with a controller, the UI is completely different. Menus are simpler; you control your character movement with the left stick, camera rotation and zoom (from third person, perspective and tactical view) with the right stick; you don't have a hotbar with your skills, instead you access everything with the shoulder buttons that open a radial menu; you can use the dpad to change what your target is (enemies, items, world clutter).
In general, you can play the game without any problems with a controller.
Oh I would probably use a KBM if it's available on PS5, but I like that camera control sounds similar to WoW.
Still hoping for a demo, so I can tell if I'll like the turn based play. I'm really stingy when it comes to buying games, more so after the CP77 debacle. I know it's not the Devs, but still, it's left a bad taste in my mouth with how games are handled from the top.
You can zoom in and out as well as have a direct overhead view
Just started playing myself, annoyed that I had to start over because people who join you in multiplayer PERMANENTLY JOIN THE PARTY! No way to dismiss them meaning you're permanently locked out of Story Based Party Members...
Brilliant...
Whoever came up with that should be fired, out of a cannon and into the sun.
