Baldur's Gate III announced!

Rootax said:
Not enough it seems. I read that people are complaining about that since the EA, as you can miss importants part of the story, and it's subject to bug (like cutscenes X taking the place of cutscenes Y, and Y to never be triggered again).
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The game had exhaustion in EA, but it got removed and in doing so it kind of screwed up the story telling that occurs during the long rest sequences.
 
Patch 2 now available ...
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Baldur's Gate 3 - Community Update #24: Looking To The Future - Steam News

Hello all, Since launching last month, a lot of tweaks and updates can already be seen in Baldur's Gate 3. Over the past few weeks we've chased down bugs, polished up some cinematics, and used your feedback to help organize our thoughts and inform our plans going forward. The first major patch...
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Hello all,

Since launching last month, a lot of tweaks and updates can already be seen in Baldur's Gate 3. Over the past few weeks we've chased down bugs, polished up some cinematics, and used your feedback to help organize our thoughts and inform our plans going forward. The first major patch just launched, solving over 1000 bugs to hopefully make Baldur’s Gate 3 an even better experience. But it was still a patch designed primarily to squash bugs.

We want to go further than that. We now find ourselves at a time where we’re able to properly sit down and consider how to parse feedback beyond bug fixing and UX tweaks. Patch 2 is just around the corner, and while it does include bug fixes, it also includes substantial performance improvements for the first time since launch. Perhaps more notably, we’re adding better closure to the story’s final act in the form of a more fleshed-out ending for Karlach - something many of you have been asking for.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take a moment to focus on a conversation some of you have been having in the background. Many of the points that come out of this conversation are being funneled into the umbrella term of ‘cut content’, so we thought it would be helpful to give you some clarity about that as we think about the future of Baldur’s Gate 3.

We went through many different threads and reviews with our community teams, and we think we’ve managed to truncate the discussion about cut content and Act 3 into three topics: Performance, Bugs, and User Experience.

Community Update #24: Looking To The Future

Performance. The city of Baldur’s Gate itself is ambitious. Technically, narratively, and in scope. One of the biggest issues with creating games is that technology is always trying to keep up with your ambition, and here we’ve been hit pretty hard by some setbacks. We know that Act 3’s performance isn’t as good as the first two acts, but the good news is that Patch 2 is bringing major performance improvements to the entire game, but more specifically to Act 3 where you’ll feel it the most. We’ll also be working throughout September to improve performance in Act 3 further with new technology that’s been taking a bit longer to release than we expected.

Bugs. We’ve seen your reports about Act 3, and we are as frustrated as you are by bugs spoiling the experience. So we’re dedicated to solving these quickly. And as you’ve noticed by our Hotfix and Patch rollout, we’re getting pretty fast.

Our approach is that whenever blockers pop up, we either release a hotfix if a patch is not imminent or include the fix as part of a patch if the patch is imminent. With Patch 1, your experience should already be a lot better, with most big issues solved by at least a workaround.

Patch 2 looks to further eliminate some of the more major issues, including those found in Act 3. Some things that are currently being associated with ‘cut content’ are actually things like companion reactions to events in the world that didn’t trigger. These are being solved. Where there seem to be loose ends, we’re tying them up.

User Experience. UX covers a lot of things: from how it feels to play the game, to how you feel when you’re playing it. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game 3 years in Early Access and 6 years in the making. Many of the ‘building blocks’ or ideas, tests, or however you want to refer to the junk data that falls outside of what we shipped with, can and is being datamined.That’s okay, but it’s important to understand that not every building block in the giant box of Lego is needed to create the experience we ultimately envisioned and intended over years of iteration.

We’ve seen three types of complaints that are being referred to as cut content:

The first references content that actually doesn’t properly trigger because of a bug, for instance some of Minthara’s reactivity. We’ve located what’s causing that and are working on it - expect a fix for this soon.

The second is about the epilogue. What’s been datamined is not really cut content but content that we didn’t want to release because we didn’t think it worked. We’re pretty strict with ourselves and our ideas. If it isn’t good - if it isn’t fun to play - it doesn’t make it into the game. One of the reasons why we trimmed the epilogue is because we were afraid the ending cinematics were becoming too long and would detract from the epicness of the experience. But clearly, not everyone agrees with us! So we’re going to do something about it.

We’ve started expanding the epilogues and you’ll see the first results of that in Patch 2 with the addition of a new optional ending with Karlach. It’s fiery, poignant, and gives her the ending she deserves.

The third is about the things we actually didn’t plan for, and those we once considered but ultimately didn’t do.

It was always our intention for the Upper City to be an epic, cinematic epilogue bringing the story of Baldur’s Gate 3 to a close. But we didn’t talk about that in advance because it would have been a major spoiler.

We feel confident that there’s enough content in Baldur’s Gate 3, and the city itself, clocking in weeks-long playthroughs at a time. But that’s not to say Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t see cuts just as every game. It’s just important to know that what ultimately shipped was planned long ago, in function primarily of making Baldur’s Gate 3 fun to play, not for us to close development quickly.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game with many release dates, and despite us moving its launch up by around a month, it’s still a couple years late. It was late because we grew teams, ambition, and ideas in function of it being the best game it could possibly be. Thankfully, not every idea makes it into the final launch. It wouldn’t be the game you enjoy if they did.

We’re happy that Baldur’s Gate 3 has resonated with a great many of you, but we’ll never take that for granted. We’re committed to tying up loose ends, fixing the remaining bugs, and improving things where we see they could - and should - be improved.

So, what can you expect from us in the future?

First: we’ll keep on monitoring what bugs you encounter and we’ll make sure to patch them as fast as we can.

Second: We’ll start making improvements based on the feedback you’re giving us. Baldur’s Gate 3 means so much to a great deal of you, and in turn that means the world to us. We love this game and we’re not done with it yet. We welcome your feedback, your threads, and also your words of encouragement.

Withers’ Wardrobe of Wayward Friends - which we hope to launch very soon - is an example of us integrating your feedback. This feature allows you to get rid of co-op party members who join your campaign, so you can continue on without them. We’re also working on the ability to change your characters’ look once you’ve started a campaign, though we don’t have a release date for that yet. There will be more and you can expect us to come with modding support at some point too.

Once again, thank you for giving us so much feedback. It’s incredibly motivating for us and drives us to do better and better.
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Largely what I suspected; the console versions were never intended to be available this early. Some marketing dollars made that difference, but the performance for ps5 is atrocious. Console versions clearly look a ways out to being “ready”. Definitely wait for a patch and check reviews before buying this one
 
iroboto said:

Largely what I suspected; the console versions were never intended to be available this early. Some marketing dollars made that difference, but the performance for ps5 is atrocious. Console versions clearly look a ways out to being “ready”. Definitely wait for a patch and check reviews before buying this one
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And now we know why they struggle to get co-op working on the series s. It's not the fault of the console but is on the developers. I wonder how bad the xbox version will be now that they are putting it out this year
 
iroboto said:

Largely what I suspected; the console versions were never intended to be available this early. Some marketing dollars made that difference, but the performance for ps5 is atrocious. Console versions clearly look a ways out to being “ready”. Definitely wait for a patch and check reviews before buying this one
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well, I am not sure they can pull this off, but they haven't promised anything, they just said they want to explore the possibilities and see what they can do, but there isn't a promise it will work nor they are going to enable split screen in the XSS version.
 
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Baldur's Gate 3 - Hotfix #5 Now Live! - Steam News

Version Number: 4.1.1.3696083
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Patch 3 available:

HIGHLIGHTS
Fixed a bug that locked players out of many of Minthara’s lines of dialogue.

CRASHES AND BLOCKERS
Fixed sometimes not being able to talk to NPCs or party members because the game thought you were still in a dialogue.
Fixed a rare crash that would occur when faraway characters got close to the party.
Fixed a crash that would occur if a guard responding to a crime created a summon (e.g. an elemental), and you fled the combat or were incapacitated without killing the summon.

PS5
Fixed an issue causing the game's audio to stop working on PS5.
Fixed graphical issues on HDR TVs when the HDR black level calibration was set to 0.
Fixed a crash that would occur when opening the onscreen keyboard.

PERFORMANCE
Fixed a memory leak when creating and destroying many objects.

MULTIPLAYER
Improved performance when cycling through Character Sheet tabs in splitscreen.
Fixed splitscreen not working correctly when a client with splitscreen already enabled joins a multiplayer game.
Fixed dismissed avatars not showing up properly in Withers' Wardrobe if the host is at camp and is already looking inside the wardrobe.
Fixed characters sometimes disappearing on splitscreen when the client reconnects after disconnecting while listening in on a dialogue.
Clients rejoining a multiplayer game where there's a dismissed avatar in Withers' Wardrobe will now be able to pick that avatar up again rather than have to create a new avatar. (This bug would happen when the client left the session and another player selected that client's avatar in the middle of the dismiss-to-camp dialogue.)

FLOW AND GAMEPLAY
Trader NPCs will now retain their Approval Rating of avatars and companions even after they're dismissed to Withers' Wardrobe.
Fixed not dying and therefore not triggering the Game Over flow if you bring him to 0 HP outside of combat in .
Fixed not being able to talk to Minthara at camp if you dismissed her outside of camp.
Fixed Level Up not working as expected if you level up while the game is saving.
Fixed Hag's Bane not having an effect on

UI
Fixed text being cut off in the title of tutorial pop-ups.
Fixed button prompts getting cut off on the Multiplayer Settings screen on splitscreen.
Fixed some UIs not updating when saving, causing, for example, Shadowheart's inventory to appear empty when you recruit her on the beach.
Fixed the tadpole count in the Radial Menu on controller.

CONTROLLER
Fixed characters getting stuck when the Analog Stick Selection setting is set to Left Stick and you rotate the stick in circles as far as it can go.

ART
Added nipple covers to for when the nudity filter is enabled.

LEVEL DESIGN
Moved Withers' Wardrobe in the crèche camp to avoid clipping with Shadowheart's tent.
 
for someone like me, who doesn't know D&D rules at all, this game might be a great start 'cos it seems to perfectly translate the D&D rules and experience into the game.

 
Finished my first run. Good experience even if I had to start over when I noticed you had to do a lot of camp trip to see most of the cinematics.
Now I don't know if I'll start an other run immediatly, or do my first Starfield run. Or maybe finish my xxxx W3 runs started few weeks ago. My life is complicated.
 
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eastmen said:
The game could have used a lot more time in early access
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Early access without an issue tracker for players is almost completely useless for bug finding/fixing. They'll appoint someone to trawl to the muck and enter it into a private issue tracker, but the SNR is too atrocious for it to matter and the players will be disheartened either by the simple lack of transparency if they don't think too much about it, or the blatant disrespect if they do.
 
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MfA said:
Early access without an issue tracker for players is almost completely useless for bug finding/fixing. They'll appoint someone to trawl to the muck and enter it into a private issue tracker, but the SNR is too atrocious for it to matter and the players will be disheartened either by the simple lack of transparency if they don't think too much about it, or the blatant disrespect if they do.
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EA was only useful for Act 1. The rest of the acts were not included, a lot of these bugs are from later parts of the game (from what I can tell at least).
 
Honestly it's a bit of a mania.

Even ignoring the bugs, god awful UI and butchered act 3 hanging together with duct tape, as a genre isometric RPGs have little challenge and plodding gameplay which few gamers can see through to the end (even when the difficulty gets cranked up WotR style, the challenge is just finding the broken stuff, not the moment to moment gameplay). Sure, it's been gussied up nicely with cinematics and voice acting, but it's still just a niche genre pushed on a mainstream pedestal by a fluke stampede of game journalists too scared to go against the flow.
 
It's a fascinating phenomenon. I agree that game journalists act as a mob sometimes, jumping on a particular bandwagon. I haven't played BG3 and plan to try it, but Larian has definitely become the "darling" of the VG press lately.
 
Johnny Awesome said:
It's a fascinating phenomenon. I agree that game journalists act as a mob sometimes, jumping on a particular bandwagon. I haven't played BG3 and plan to try it, but Larian has definitely become the "darling" of the VG press lately.
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deservedly so, imho. DoS 1 and DoS 2 are excellent games. While I don't have BG3 I can guess that some acts are better than others, knowing Larian, but they are people with a love for the craft.
 
MfA said:
just a niche genre pushed on a mainstream pedestal by a fluke stampede of game journalists too scared to go against the flow
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Or, perhaps, it is "shockingly", not for you.
Leaving personal preconceptions aside, suggesting that BG3 is a mediocre game, is stretching it.

I love action games.
Give me Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Sifu, Jedi Fallen Order / Survivor, etc, and I'm a happy man.
From Soft games on the other hand, leave me cold and uninterested.
But although I personally really dislike their pacing, their take on action, I would never ever suggest they are mediocre.
They are simply not for me.

What I wouldn't even consider suggesting, is that the success of Elden Ring, is a fluke, just a niche genre pushed by the gaming press that are scared to go against, the "flow", that simply sounds to me, as positive word of mouth.
Unless of course, you are simply insinuating that the "sheep" don't know any better, and those that ought to put them in their place, got the jitters.
 
Platinum Games have easy mode, it's still normie accessible. They are nowhere near as niche as most Infinity Engine style RPGs. Even among those style of games, this stands out in just how much of a walking sim it is. Unless you're doing a genocide run you can go hours of mostly walking and a bit of talking without getting any real combat. You could make a normie accessible semi-isometric RPG, which leans heavier into action RPG and less walking and talking, where the gameplay and AI is balanced around you mainly controlling one character, same as FF7 remake. Something like Dragon Age 2, but not shit ... but BG3 is not that.

BG3 is not mainstream.

Swen is so full of shit when he pretends the cut content was just business as usual. I'm at Wyrm's crossing now
and a random room on the side has Gortash's inauguration waiting for you to show up, then you walk up the red carpet and he interrupts it to give you an exposition dump in the middle of the audience
... it's just such a poor, obvious hackjob. Conversation flags being all screwed up and preventing quest progression for the
Duke rescue
is just a cherry on top. Act 3 was completely butchered shortly before launch.

BG3 is not 10/10.

It's put on a pedestal as a mainstream 10/10 game and it just plain isn't. It's Larian jank, that's okay, that's what I expected.
 
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