Baldur's Gate 3 - Reveals Races and Classes for EA Day 1

Gameffine has some info about the Baldur's Gate 3 launch:

Baldur's Gate 3 reveals Races and Classes for Early Access day 1

Larian Studios today announce the races, variations, and classes of Baldur's Gate 3's Early Access. Players will be able to select from 16 races/subraces, as well as 6 classes from day one of Early Access, October 6th.

On launch, players will be able to create humans, githyanki, elves, drow, half-elf, dwarves, halflings, and tieflings, including subraces of each race. Early Access of Baldur's Gate 3 provides around 25 hours of content, designed for multiple playthroughs. On October 6th, players will be able to create their own characters and play in either single-player, or as a party of up to four players in multiplayer, each with their own character.

Races more alien to the Sword coast - like the Drow and Githyanki - are so rare to the average NPC that you'll find their interactions to be unique as well. The world of BG3 is a highly reactive one, so this single choice will have huge ramifications across your play experience.

Baldur's Gate 3's character creation features photorealistic fantasy races, based on 3D scans of actors and models (blemishes and all), selected because their features roughly resembled the direction for each race in the game, as well of course for diversity and variety in the human-like races. Our team spent much of pre-production carefully selecting, scanning, and moulding these scans, to become the base heads for character creation. Launched into Early Access is a total of 150 heads to pick from, across the 16 races & subraces.

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More information.

Sounds nice. I have been back and forth on this game. But Tieflings … that may swing it over to a purchase for me.

Oh man I am protesting no gnomes. They better get added stat.

Definitely hope no gnomes or halflings, or other immersion breaking pedo races. I can get my comic relief from clever writing, don't need a barefooted midget to tell the lines.

PS: I'd be happy with an option to allow people to create gnome/hafling PCs and interact with gnomes/halfling NPCs, but having them completely removed from my game if I so choose. Not gonna happen but hey.. imagine if we could all be happy.

So gnomes & halflings are now pedo races? Thanks for the laugh.

Edit: Given how today's political climate affects games I'm not surprised.

Oh well at least female dwarfs have beards.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
So gnomes & halflings are now pedo races? Thanks for the laugh.

They obviously are!

PS: Not really, I'm just full of contempt.

Also before I forget thanks @yemeth for another good article.

Also,

https://twitter.com/Cromwelp/status/…rc=twsrc%5Etfw

Wait, so the EA version is 80 gigs? Am I reading that right?

If the file is 80GB it sounds like there's more than just the Early Access content in the download, but it's encrypted/locked until ready/polished.

PS: Dwarves are fine, I love them. Real, solid race, with more purpose than being the circus midgets in the party.

80 GB, that's already more than Divinity: Original Sin 2 o.O

Nice article, though they are mostly repeating Larian's Gazette. Looks like people are over-excited about this one

I am too, I'm especially eager to see D&D 5 on CRPG, though Solasta already gave a great preview. I hope Larian is not ruining it with the type of grotesque effects they put in D:OS, such as sneaking represented like hiding in a barrel, characters buncing up and down to show they're in combat mode (or just to show animation), and so on. It's funny for a while but a bit overdone. Perhaps it's just me, but I'd rather see this one looking more serious, to improve the immersion into the story and to avoid breaking the mood.

Baldur's Gate 3 Community Update #8 - Character Creation

What defines you? Is it who you are, or the journey you’re on? In Baldur’s Gate 3, it’s both. Creating a character in Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t the moment the world decides how to treat you, but it’s the very beginning of the shaping of your story. BG3 is a world with great player agency, and the most important character in that world is you. We’ve created not only a character customization system that allows that player agency to shine, but also a world that constantly reacts to how your character develops.

In BG3 you can start your journey by choosing your race, subrace, background and class. In certain cases you also get to choose a subclass, perhaps a deity. These choices will ripple out across the story, affecting how you roleplay throughout the game.

Oh by the way the game has Halflings.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
80 GB, that's already more than Divinity: Original Sin 2 o.O
.

BG3 EA is 150GB on Steam when I looked yesterday!

Originally Posted by SpoonFULL
BG3 EA is 150GB on Steam when I looked yesterday!

Check danutz_plusplus's post above, Larian's tweeted about it. The tweet is not very clear but I understand Steam's estimation is quite off. If it downloads stuff that needs uncompressing, it may temporarily take more, depends whether the installer does that properly or not.

PS: do we say "tweeted", or "twitted"? Always hated this platform anyway, this is another example of how little informative those messages are.

Originally Posted by SpoonFULL
BG3 EA is 150GB on Steam when I looked yesterday!

Half of that space is probably textures, sounds, videos, and animations. Hopefully they crunch that number down as I foresee the game doubling or tripling in size.

Seems were getting into the MMO range with newer games.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
Check danutz_plusplus's post above, Larian's tweeted about it. The tweet is not very clear but I understand Steam's estimation is quite off. If it downloads stuff that needs uncompressing, it may temporarily take more, depends whether the installer does that properly or not.

The final size will probably be close to that when it's finished & out of Early Access.

Edit: Divinity Original Sin 2 needed almost 60GB and this will surely be larger in size.

Originally Posted by Nereida
If the file is 80GB it sounds like there's more than just the Early Access content in the download, but it's encrypted/locked until ready/polished.

That's what's puzzling me. I see no reason to put stuff into the EA download, if it's not used. Technically, it's even more complicated to just leave encrypted stuff around if it's not meant to be used.

EDIT: Actually scratch that. It’s probably harder and more error prone to untangle content and references to all that content to make it a clean version. It’s probably easier to just introduce a logic gate into the game to not allow going over a certain story point and just encrypt all rest of the content. So I take back what I said.

So, 80 gigs for just the first chapter of the game? Sounds insane. But in a good way. I hope there's as much content as possible.

EDIT: Am I the only one that constantly read EA as Electronic Arts? Constantly confusing.

Originally Posted by FurtiveNyctophile
Oh man I am protesting no gnomes. They better get added stat.

So I can toss them to the mind flayers as my cool races get away.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
EDIT: Am I the only one that constantly read EA as Electronic Arts? Constantly confusing.

Well it technically means both and took me a while to get used to as well.

As EA was used only for Electronic Arts before the rise of Early Access.

Originally Posted by Hastar
So I can toss them to the mind flayers as my cool races get away.

Nah my orc NPC would eat them for breakfast if they were allowed in the game. Which they aren't it seems. So disappointing just the usual classes and sub-classes.

This Larian project is becoming "Keeping Up With the Lardashians.."

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
EDIT: Am I the only one that constantly read EA as Electronic Arts? Constantly confusing.

You're not alone!

What, wicked tieflings but no saintly aasimars? Not even a paladin class either. Maybe later? Or does goodliness just not fit this game?