Think most people are more interested in what Larian is cooking up, the IP barely matters.
Yeah anyone apart from Larian making BG4 is basically fucked. Maybe if they wait 5-10 years and a studio with an established brand comes in, but that isn’t what’s going to happen.
Prior to BG3 I held BG1&2 somewhere in the top 5 games of all time. BG3 had an impossible bar to meet and they not only met it, but far surpassed it.
I’m genuinely sad at whatever BG4 releases as. It’s like someone who loved Diablo 1&2 looking at Diablo 3&4. Diablo 3 was a shell of Diablo 2 and I literally just had to check if Diablo 4 was a released game. Maybe it’s fun to someone, but I’ve completely checked out of the series.
So here’s to BG4, BG:TCG, & BG:Mobile, shells of the greatness that came before them.
OblivionObsidian is the only other company that can hold expectations currentlyObsidian’s last open world game, The Outer Worlds, was best described as “whelming”
It was great, just sadly felt more like a demo of a game they wished they had the funding to flesh out further.
Hopefully 2 is that game.
Thanks for the chuckle, this comment helped brighten my day a little!
Obsidian hasn’t made a good game in like 15 years dude. They’re a has-been. I doubt they even have any of the same staff.
Who?
Lol, pretty sure they meant Obsidian.
Yep. I could say it was autocorrect but more likely my brain was just not working .
The last obsidian game I played, Tyranny, turns to absolute crap halfway through
I loved Diablo 2
fuck what they’ve done
Exactly. This headline read as “Interested investors want to throw money at someone because BG3 did so well and then demand they release a half finished product so they can meet their quarterly financial date.”
I think people are sort of over wotc ever since the OGL fiasco, plus milking mtg for all it’s worth. This is probably a result.
You’d be surprised how many people don’t know about that or think everything is fine now.
Everything will be fine when all the new RPGs in the works over the OGL drama come out. Ain’t critical role making an rpg or something? I hate critical role but I’m eager for them to get all the critical role fans playing a different system than D&D. More excited about the mcdm rpg personally
They basically made 5e that uses 2d10 and feats on cards with a not-great partial success system. So I wouldn’t get too excited.
So far we have a lot of “totally not 5e” RPGs
Haha yeah sounds about right. Matt Mercer doesn’t understand D&D and it shows. But is it at least decent enough for the CR fans to give it a go?
Well the ones you need to win over are the DMs and there’s not really any DM-side improvements as far as I’m aware, it’s basically just worth it if you like their setting.
That’s not how IP holders think. Their ego ruins our fun.
I think Paizo would be a good collab. Personally I’d love to see Larian do something with Starfinder.
Starfinder’d be cool, but Larian has been firmly in Fantasy for a good 10-15 years at least now, so I’d be more confident for Pathfinder than Starfinder
I’m in the opposite group. I don’t care for Larian’s games (though I wish them the best) and I was very let down when they made the latest Baldur’s Gate.
Don’t think people should downvote you for this opinion, especially with you even being respectful about it.
I had a good time with BG3 (though I’m less high on it than most people), but at the end of the day it’s clearly a Larian-game. If you didn’t like the Divinity series you probably won’t enjoy BG3, and if you had hoped for a BG 1&2 feel, you would probably be a bit let down.
One thing I appreciate between BG3 and their Original Sin series is that the latter games felt like turn based Splatoon whereas the former has much less surface spam barrelmancy (though it is still present)
I know what you mean - and combat in D:OS2 would often devolve into pure silliness - but at the same time their proprietary systems also had more play and more interesting wrinkles to them than the 5E they were shackled to in BG3. I can’t decide which I think is better really.
I found the surface interactions to be really cool, and I think overall I like divinity 2’s combat more. That being said, all the jumping/pushing stuff from BG3 is amazing and I would love to see that added to s future divinity game.
Not sure why you’re being down voted, it’s a reasonable opinion to have if you don’t like their games. I feel the same about the originals. I tried them and respect them a lot, but they’re just not for me.
BG3 has insane fanboys who don’t accept any criticism of it. It makes it difficult to review games any more
I think a fair few people have tied their identity to products so they feel like it’s a personal attack to not agree or not like something they like.
The triumph of modern marketing. The company is my friend and the product is my child.
Picturing someone downvoting this makes me giggle. I guess people don’t like getting read that hard lmao
That’s a tale as old as time, whether it is heritage, nations, religions or products people tie their identity to.
Welcome to anything ever that groups of people enjoy lol
Just curious, what was the let down(s) for you? I feel like they were pretty transparent about what the game was gonna be through the whole dev cycle
I simply do not like how Larian handles combat encounters or their reliance on environmental damage/restrictions that are always against the player.
That’s fair, unless you do some wacky stuff they do rely a lot on forcing environmental interactions, if you don’t want fights to drag.
Idk if anyone could do half the job Larian did.
I have a feeling this will just be a cash grab to milk the IP for as much as they can.
Imagine if bg4 is a mobile game with micro transactions? Hasbro would totally do it
Is that the corpse of blizzard being piloted by Activision I hear??
Don’t you guys have phones‽
They did similar thing with mtg.
Mtg has been microtransactions since Alpha. Still love it though.
True :) I sold off some of my collection and got my money back. Still can’t do that with arena.
The Gates of Baldarian 4: Candy Maze Puzzles
Obsidian could maybe, they did a couple classic BG-style Infinity Engine games in Pillars of Eternity I & II.
…but that’s a little bit like a step back/down from what we saw in BG3.
One huge advantage Larian had was years of experience making games in this genre, and I doubt many other studios have that sort of corporate knowledge. Obsidian may be the only sizable one that comes close. Maybe Beamdog too, as they are responsible for the Enhanced Editions of all the old Infinity Engine games, including some original content.
Please don’t let Beamdog near it. I like the UI and QoL improvements in the EEs and all, but by god they should not be writing for a mainline BG entry.
What’s up with Obsidian these days? Outer Worlds was a really fun empty box. I enjoyed it like a Fallout game, but after ~30 hours I was done. The hype for that game was setting it up to be “the better Fallout”, but alas, the whole thing just felt rushed and empty to me.
I love their old games and I’m tentatively excited about OW2, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t lost some faith.
Like Back 4 Blood, they weren’t selling a game, they were selling a dev’s name
I have full faith in Tactical Adventures. Solasta is the closest translation of tabletop D&D to CRPG ever made IMO. All they need is a better than indie budget and permissions to use the full license and content instead of just the SRD.
The gameplay is good but from what I played, outside of combat, it was a bit lackluster, and rations were a pain when I played. Though it’s hard not to compare it to BG3 in that regard. I did like Larian’s system to interact with the environment and liquids too that made some battles more dynamic. Maybe there’s more of that is Solasta than I saw too, I didn’t get far, should give it another go, it has solid combat which is at least half of a good DnD game.
You need to install the unfinished business mod to really make Solasta shine. It’s… unofficially endorsed by the devs (in the sense that the UB mod discord channel is hosted on the official Solasta discord). It adds races, subclasses, and more to bring the game fully in-line with tabletop options, including multi-classing.
Besides that, while the official campaign is decent enough, some custom campaigns are incredible, like full games in and of themselves, and some take more advantage of the game engine and dialogue options than the official campaign.
To me, Baldur’s Gate 3 is an interesting experiment, but in terms of gameplay it’s just not D&D. It’s a weird relationship sim with some (very) loose D&D mechanics. It has fun moments but the game is inconsistent, buggy, and generally becomes very un-fun, especially in multiplayer.
BG3 is very much a Larian game with D&D trappings, not a D&D game just made by Larian, if that makes sense.
I put something like 50-60 hours into BG3 and just couldn’t be bothered to finish it, stalled out once in act 2, and again on a second attempt in act 1. By contrast, I’ve got over 500 hours and counting in Solasta.
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Edit - oh, and with regard to rations, stack up early as you can (at least 20) and from there you’ll gather plenty in the field map if you have someone with high survival. Alternate option would be to have a Ranger or dries with goodberry, and later on other classes get the create food spell.
Or you could just disable the food mechanic altogether, it’s your game.
BG3 being less dnd and more larion is a major win. It’s the only reason it is when vaguely playable, imo. 5e is an absolute train wreck of a system.
This is hyperbole for sure. What could possibly be that bad about 5e?
Hahaha oh your poor soul you don’t know what you risk conjuring up with a question like that.
I have to write this all out in a blog post so I can just link it one day.
The core mechanic of 1d20+stuff produces flat probability. Every outcome on the die is equally likely. That’s ridiculous. Go throw some darts at a dart board. Do you get an equal distribution around the board? Just as many hit the floor as the bullseye? No. So the underlying math is kind of trash.
The entire game is predicated on its rest cadence. You’re expected to have like 5-8 medium encounters and then take a long rest. This generates a ton of problems for pacing and balance. Chief among them, most people don’t want to play that way. Polls show people typically do like one fight per rest. Welp. Now all your long rest classes are over performing and your short rest classes suck.
Don’t even start with “not every encounter has to be a fight”. Don’t even fucking start. Most people can’t consistently come up with interesting non combat encounters in DND that tax resources the same way fights do. There are no real social conflict rules, for example, as mentioned below.
But even if you do somehow manage to do the suggested amount of encounters per rest, that severely limits the pacing of the story. There are so many hacks and variants to try to fix this. Gritty realism, sanctuary resting, heroic mode. They’re all bandaids on a poor foundation.
The magic system is trash. It’s just fucking bad. It had no real internal consistency. Every spell is bespoke. What’s the difference between a third level spell and a fourth level? Fuck if I know. Can you make your own spells? Not really. Can you be creative with spells? Ehh kind of but they tend to be very specific about what they do, with few inputs.
Also like the way magic works is boring. There’s no real flavor. You say you cast the spell and check off the box, and it happens. Maybe you need a material component. That’s about it. It’s shallow as heck. It’s also weird that rangers paladins wizards clerics arcane-tricksters all basically have magic that works the same way. You could do so much more.
The social system I would say it was trash if it existed. You meet a pack of bandits in the pass. You want to fight them. The rules have a lot to say here. Hit points, armor, saves, actions and reactions, equipment, etc. Ok wait, you want to scare them off with your words instead. Well get fucked, the book has some vague guidelines that quickly turn into “the dm decides”.
There are very few decisions to make about your character. Species and class. Maybe a feat or two depending on how long you play, but those compete with ASIs, and most games don’t even get to 8th level. Subclasses sometimes have a few things to pick, but sometimes you literally get zero choices.
The skill system is extremely basic and you can’t really specialize unless you’re a class with expertise, and even then your options are kind of limited.
Magic items also have no real internal consistency. Why is the flying broom a like uncommon item despite being extremely powerful? Who knows.
Low level combat tends to also be very “I move and attack once”. Some DMs might give you bonuses for taking advantage of the environment, but that’s not well defined. It could be. It’s not. Also making a single attack that has a like 40% chance of doing absolutely nothing sucks.
The main strengths of DND are brand recognition, and it’s shallow enough that you can’t really fuck up a character. Every human fighter is basically the same mechanically, which means your idiot 10 year old brother can play. But that also means you don’t really have much depth to explore.
Pretty much every other part of the game is bad, under baked, or not suited for general purpose RPG stuff.
As someone who’s only ever played 5e, I ask, what would you say is a better? PF? That’s the one I hear a lot.
1d20 + a modifier is how you eliminate flat probability, because you’re adding the modifier. DCs are set so that you nearly always succeed at a task that you’re good at.
What’s the difference between a third level spell and a fourth level spell? How many times you can feasibly use it. Or if you upcast, one die. This is probably the thing I like most about 5e compared to other systems.
Giving you a move every turn keeps combat more interesting than incentivizing you to stay still by treating it as any other action, IMO.
You’re not really selling me.
The economy is non-existent, actual balancing is literally impossible, you can’t make a character yours (reflavoring your eldritch blast doesn’t count), so many rules just don’t exist or are on some random designers Twitter account instead of the damn books. If you want to argue it’s a simple system; it isn’t, it’s stupidly convoluted for how little it actually offers.
Edit: look at Pathfinder (chosen because it’s the closest comparison); it actually gives DMs a rough guide to how much money a player should be expected to have at any level, a decent idea of what players should fight in an encounter (2e even tightened that math up even more), a myriad of ways to customize your character on a real mechanical level, and all the rules are easily found on the same online resource. 5e doesn’t do any of that.
I don’t know that the economy is an important part of D&D or that I see it as a fault that it isn’t. It has a list of approximately what kind of adversary should be a challenge for you at a given level, but that seems like a totally different discussion than how much money that character should have. A soldier would do better in a fight than Jeff Bezos, but Jeff’s got more money.
Look at you giving a short answer instead of rage typing twelve paragraphs about why DND is frankly not that good.
it’s an aggressively mediocre system that’s had years of a huge community polishing it to a mirror shine.
You can praise it for the community content, or go off-book like you can with any other system, but that’s applicable to any system with the same community size.
Whatever you look for in it it’s lacking in comparison to another system. Tactical combat? PF2e. Rules light? Worlds without number.
It’s a decent middle ground of a system only because of community hard work. But that’s only for the GM side. Players still need to deal with the poor character creation, unless they get a lot of support from their GM.
I quite like the character creation compared to other systems I’ve played.
It’s D&D For Windowlickers, and that’s the highest praise it deserves.
To each their own on BG3, I used to play number of tabletop RPG games (many years ago now but a variety) and to me BG3 gives you enough options to feel like you can play as your character rather than just walk between combats, as well as avariety of ways to solve issues. Watching YouTube plays amazes me on the says other people solve the issue. I also used to play the old DnD PC games and it feels much better from my perspective, so that’s probably sways me.
I can see your view but to me BG3 is more intended as a single player game, especially with the companion interactions, so I can see why multiplayer would be lacking. Thankfully I haven’t had many bugs but have heard of them. For reference I have about 120 hours after trying beta a few goes and only a bit in act 2 so it’s a favorite of mine and am biased.
Thank you for the recommendation on the mod, I will definitely give that a try and see how the game plays. I keep meaning to reinstall anyways and new mods always give more incentive.
Solasta was a great solo game. The multiplayer issues killed it for me and my SO.
Weird, wife and I have played it co-op the entire time. There’s occasional desyncs (saving and reloading fixes that) and otherwise all good.
“Occasional” desyncs. Like 2 to 3x a fight.
If you’re seeing that, good chance you’ve got some kind of network issue (or there’s a problem with the Photon setter you’re on and you should switch servers).
Generally I might see a desync every few hours. Rarely more often, but we can play for 6+hours sometimes with zero issues.
Couple things that could cause issues though:
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make sure you’re both running at the same screen refresh (60hz is preferred).
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if using the UB mod, make sure all settings are the same on both clients.
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weirdly, turning off shadows can have a major impact on network sync. Try disabling shadows.
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If you’re not maintaining 60 fps, turn down settings until you are, and if not possible lock both clients to 30 fps.
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Lastly, as noted above if you’re having frequent desyncs, manually select your option server and choose a different region. E.g - I’m western USA, but I’d there’s issues I’ll switch to US East and that will generally resolve it.
Frankly, this is the only bummer with Solasta, the fact that networking is via Photon and no LAN option. Is set up my own Option server if I could but it doesn’t seem to be possible.
Nope, no network issues. It was because if the client characters went before the host in a round, particularly the first one, or first on a load, they’d desync.
Sorry, I edited my post above with some tips for desync issues. Have found in particular turning off shadows majorly reduced the frequency desyncs happen.
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I think Owlcat makes fantastic dnd games. They made Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and Rogue Trader. They could certainly do more than half as good as Larian. However, their big problem with pathfinder games is that they are stupid long and kinda bog down with so so so many items and talents in the late game.
Almost anyone who works with pathfinder/paizo could have instead worked with D&D/Wizards. Owlcat etc made their choice specifically to not work with Wizards.
Yeah. I’d abandon the series until someone can do a high quality one that’s different though it’s not a clear comparison.
I think a lot of people could IF they didn’t have publishers ruining it to please shareholders.
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Old series that has a decent following of mostly niche dedicated fans is left to sit without a new installment for many years.
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New title is announced. It’s sells gang-busters and flips the community on its head.
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Corporate Executives prioritize short term profits and begin planning a quick and easy cash grab. !
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Second new installment comes out. It is a shell of the previous title with the soul sucked clean out.
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Fans are dissapointed and outside of a small niche following the game series falls into obscurity.
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Repeat.
! we are here right now
Look… Maybe BG4 will be good. But after watching this exact cycle play out over and over again for the past decade I’m not sure how you can expect anything else.
When will the business world realize that anything business majors are given control of turns to shit. Like I know that it’s not impossible for a AAA game to be good but I also know that most companies that can handle that kind of a budget are run by people who just think gamers love throwing money at anything labeled “video game”, proved by so many out of touch quotes.
Like the BlizzCon “don’t you have phones?” showed that Blizzard didn’t even realize that their main demographic and shitty f2p phone games didn’t have much overlap.
Or EA’s “sense of satisfaction” was transparent when they give a paid path to skip a ridiculously tuned grind.
Or Ubisoft’s “AAAA” said they hadn’t even noticed that “AAA” was starting to be considered synonymous with “shit”.
The funny part is that they aren’t even wrong about the potential to make a lot of money from video games, it’s just not by using business major tricks to extract the maximum short term gains or approaching making a video game by thinking about how to make the most money from it.
I remember when Disney fired Avalanche from Disney Infinity… Apparently some guy at Disney learned how cheap it was to make Mobile Games and how much money they made, erroneously assuming that this was where the gaming market was going and how development studios would soon be “Out of jobs” with how “Simple” it was getting…
He was a god damn moron
God, “Do you guys not have phones?” was just… embarrassing, the fact that they needed to be asked if this was an April Fools joke before the crowd understood what was happening is… yeesh
deleted by creator
I’m not saying business majors shouldn’t be involved at all, they just shouldn’t be making major game design decisions that the people who have a passion for making a great game disagree with.
It all comes down to the main motivation for doing the work. If the passion guiding the overall operation is about making a great x, then IMO it is much more likely to succeed than if the passion is about making money from making x.
When it’s a large company involved, that can be mitigated by finding people who are passionate about the x instead of just the money, but all the orders of “do it this less fun way because it will make us more money” can kill that passion over time or even just cancel out the positive effect that passion had on the game.
I’m reminded of the guy who busted his balls trying to get Fallout 1 to be a thing when Interplay had no faith in it, only to be “rewarded” by being overly worked and underpaid to rush out a sequel…
And the release parties for Tomb Raider that the devs literally weren’t invited to, just suits and press people acting like they were the ones who made the game.
Baldurs Gate 4: From EA. $99 for the base game. Then you have the season pass with unique characters (squirrels you can kick), as well as character DLCs, then don’t forget all the skins. Oh! Did we mention that Act 2 and Act 3 are sold separately?
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I’m good. Not really interested in supporting Hasbro after all that’s happened since BG3 released.
So…a new Dark Alliance game is up next?
Don’t… Don’t give me hope…
Okay. I mean that’s fine but I won’t be buying shit until after it comes out and has reviews.
BG2 was a huge game too, and it took 25 years for a sequel.
They’re not going to pick a studio and crank out bg4 in just a couple years.
I’ll be surprised if it takes less than a decade.
WOTC can put the name “Baldurs Gate 4” on whatever they want. They could make a Farmville clone in 2 months and release it as “Baldurs Gate 4” if they want. They own the copyright.
It just won’t be good.
But it’ll probably sell decently well.
Isn’t Wizards of the Coast scummy af?
Larian are the studio with integrity, why wouldn’t Wizards of the Coast go for the cash grab?
100% BG4 will be a cash grab
My understanding is that Wizards is mostly pretty good. Its their corpo overlords at Hasbro to watch for
Let me tell you as an employee at a studio where the parent company is widely viewed as shitty: it doesn’t matter. The rot starts at the head, and even good managers can get shitty. My workplace unionized and got recognition, and our overwhelmingly liked manager then went and violated status quo.
Did Hasbro or WotC send the Pinkertons after that guy who got a pre release card? It doesn’t matter, because a corporation that owns the IP still sent the Pinkertons after a random customer.
WotC is a division of Hasbro now & if you use MtG as a reference you can see the plan seems to be to drain the swamp. I think in their shareholders meetings they want MtG to double its earning in 4 years… So I’d imagine they’re looking for angles on D&D & BG may be the flagship for this.
Was it WotC or Hasbro that sent Pinkerton’s to someone’s house to steal their Magic cards because a retailer accidentally sold them cards from the new set a couple days too early?
Potayto, potahto
The problem is that Hasbro is desperately trying to make more money from WotC. But fairly recent actions indicate that they don’t have players’ best interests at heart. They fired all the contacts that Larian worked with. So nobody is left who has even a modicum of insight into how BG3 was done so well.
I fear several cheap cash grabs are in store for us. The first will probably be a quick and dirty DLC that will come out in a year or two.
Hasbro fired more than half of the people at WotC that created the 4E and 5E rulesets.
Yeah, cranking out another entry to capitalize on BG3’s success would be a terrible move. I’m so glad Hasbro/WotC are not known for making terrible moves. That would be so unlike them to trade in goodwill for short-term profits.
Me too! And I hope the Pinkertons investigate anyone claiming otherwise!
It took less than 2 years to release BG2 after BG1. In the meantime Bioware licensed Infinity Engine to Black Isle who released Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale one year apart.
It took Larian 6 years to develop BG3 after Divinity 2. They moved on to their new game but that engine and assets could be similarily licensed to other studios to churn out some games using similar or simplified formula.
I believe the engine is larian’s
Definitely is. Try playing Divinity 2 and you will realize it’s the exact same engine just with a modified ruleset to match Baldurs gate more. I actually prefer Divinity, they just have more freedom as far as setting and the ruleset than a liscensed ip owned by another company
That’s certain but licensing engine could be additional revenue stream for Larian. They benefit from cRPG market becoming more mainstream too. And I’d kill for more games with couch coop implemented this well.
RIP Baldur’s Gate, at least you had one final hurrah with 3
It’s gonna be blizzard isn’t it…
I hear the guys who made the will smith zombie game are free
May they keep enjoying their freedom
warhammer warhammer warhammer warhammer pls
