BG3 Baldur's Gate 3 News Thread

PCGamesN: Can you walk us through how Baldur’s Gate III came about, and how you won the trust of Wizards of the Coast?

Swen Vincke: After the first Divinity: Original Sin, I flew to Seattle to pitch the idea of Larian making BG3 to Wizards of the Coast [publisher of Dungeons and Dragons]. They didn’t immediately buy it, but they did listen to us, and to what our vision for the game would be.

Time went by, and we kept bumping into each other at trade shows and player shows. At some point I got a message from Nathan Stewart [director of strategy for Dungeons and Dragons], and he said “do you still want to do this?” And so I said “yeah, of course I still want to do it!”

He invited me to go have dinner in Seattle. He had a PowerPoint that he wanted to present to the board [of Hasbro, who own Wizards of the Coast] on why it would be a good idea for us to make this game, and he remembered all the stuff that I’d told him. And that was that, the board said yes, and we started working on the story together with Mike [Mearls, creative director of D&D and co-creator of its current edition].

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Baldurs Gate 3 is clearly, without question a diamond… but that diamond is one of the roughest I have seen in quite a while and it already has the pristine price tag of 60 dollars for Early Access. Its true you will not have to purchase again, if you are a fan of the genre and have a history with D&D its hard to find a reason you wouldn't fall in love… but an early access game for 60 dollars with some very prominent issues has to be evaluated for what it is… not for what it will inevitably become. I have the utmost faith in Larian Studios but the present is where I live.

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Zoe Delahunty-Light is back with 10 secret encounters you might have missed in Baldur's Gate 3! These encounters are off the beaten path and are (mostly) spoiler free, and are the memorable asides to the main quest that you should absolutely check out if you want to wring your Baldur's Gate 3 gameplay dry. From secret abodes to hidden characters, you'll find some nifty encounters in this video - just make sure to keep those health points maxed out as a fair bit of fighting will come your way…

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Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access reviewed on PC by Leana Hafer.

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Larian Studios landed the monumental task of picking up the long-dormant Baldur's Gate series, a project that tasks the team known for its own recent fantasy RPG series success Divinity Original Sin with both reviving a decade-dormant franchise and working the mechanics of the TTRPG Dungeons & Dragons into a game for modern audiences.

With the game now a week into its Early Access cycle, Larian Studios lead systems designer Nick Pechenin sat down with Gamasutra to discuss how the early days of that open development process has gone and offer a D&D-driven dive into how something as core to the tabletop experience as rolling a twenty-sided die becomes ever more complicated in the context of a video game's narrative, combat, and more.

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Last night one of the writers, Kevin VanOrd (the writer for Lae'zel and Wyll, and he also wrote Kagha, Dror Ragzlin, and all of the myconids), streamed himself playing the game and was answering a lot of questions about it, so I figured I'd put down some of what he said here. Thanks to u/Loimographia for sharing the stream yesterday, otherwise I wouldn't have known about it!

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It does not eat, it does not sleep. But unlike the Terminator, the quality assurance AI that Larian Studios uses to help test old-school RPG throwback Baldur’s Gate 3 is meant to help people build the most solid video game possible, at a pace much faster than a human could achieve alone.

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With the recent release of Baldur's Gate 3 in early access, fans of Dungeons & Dragons, the world's oldest roleplaying game, have been analyzing how well the latest publication of Larian Studios has recreated the storytelling and drama of tabletop D&D in a virtual environment. Fewer fans have been talking about Larian's translation of tabletop rules for certain spells and character classes, not only making them workable in Baldur's Gate III, but also improving the utility of previously suboptimal abilities through rule changes that could be retro-applied to D&D 5th Edition.

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I don’t know where to begin when talking about Baldur’s Gate 3. Do I start with the illegible user interface, numerous technical glitches, or the lukewarm introduction to the narrative? Maybe my headline has already said more than enough in summarizing my experience with Larian Studios’ entry to the Baldur’s Gate series. Baldur’s Gate 3’s Early Access is disappointing.

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Despite using the Fifth Edition rules of D&D, Larian Studios changed the formula here and there. Some alterations pick up the pace, others alter game balance, and a few take the guesswork out of interpreting vague rules and wording — no more wondering if the Dragon's Breath spell can turn your pet rat familiar into a mobile flame turret.

While Baldur's Gate 3 is still seemingly destined for every "video games to play if you like D&D" list, here are some ways it tweaks the standard D&D rules.

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Checking out Baldurs Gate 3 in Early Access. The newest Turn based RPG game from Larian Studios.

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Hello everyone, It's big patch time. But this time, not only are you going to feel the improvements, you're also going to see them. As we've previously said, Early Access is about improving and iterating on every single facet of the game, and that includes all of the things you see and hear.

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The road to Baldur's Gate III has been a long one. The original Baldur's Gate was developed way back in 1998, seeking to distil the magic and wonder of Dungeons & Dragons table top gameplay into a video game setting.

Baldur's Gate and its sequel Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn were both runaway successes, and developers BioWare and Black Isle Studios originally planned for a third title to come out in 2003, but the game was cancelled when Black Isle was shut down after facing financial crisis.

The intellectual property rights for Baldur's Gate have been hotly sought after in the years since, but ultimately fans had to wait over a decade to return to the Sword Coast, with the Baldur's Gate I and II enhanced editions launching in 2012 and 2013.

After the phenomenal success of Larian Studios own Baldur's Gate-like title, Divinity: Original Sin II, released in 2017, it came as no surprise to players that Larian had been picked by D&D owners Wizards of the Coast to at last expand on the Baldur's Gate universe.

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It's not just in this situation that players are becoming frustrated with Baldur's Gate 3 dice rolls. The system - based on tabletop Dungeons & Dragons use of D20-based skill checks - has proven divisive in the BG3 player base. Many players are not used to a dice roll governing their successes or failures; random number generation (RNG) disrupting a sneaky attempt to deceive someone or foiling a heroic deed can feel at odds with roleplay. There are people who have had difficulties with that,� says Vincke. They want to be able to manipulate it.

We opted to just go pure RNG for the initial release in early access just to see what was going to happen,he explains. We see the people that have really bad luck, and they are really, really angry over it. So, we're going to help them. We're going to add modes to the game that are going to go with things like a loaded die, and that's going to be a bit more manageable. We'll still keep the option of having full RNG in there. We'll experiment with that throughout early access, and see what we should make the default option. That's one of the things that will be driven by the analytics.

RNG isn't the only thing that Larian has realized needs to be adjusted.Giving players things to do at the beginning is something that we've been struggling with,admits Vincke, referring specifically to the limited collection of skills and abilities a low-level character has access to. Once again, this is due to the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset from which Baldur's Gate 3 is adapted; low level characters on the tabletop have very few combat options compared to a low level character in most digital RPGs.

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Corwin said:

The question for me is does a dice roll negate a skill level, or merely modify it? If I have a skill of 7 and roll poorly does than mean I fail, or does it simply lower my skill level by a point or two in that instance. I could live with that. The reverse should then also be true; if I have a skill level of 4 and roll well then it should increase my skill level for that instance so I might actually pass the skill check. Thoughts?

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