Multi Baldur's Gate III
- Thread starter cm2
- Start date
time will tell.
Indeed.
Read a rumor on the game will be revealed during Google Stadia's "Connect" on 6/6/2019, probably as the opening of the show. Probably it's going to be a Google's Stadia timed exclusive.
Yeah too much of a gamble making it just for Stadia, unless Google pays them tons of money for exclusivity like what Epic Games did with Phoenix Point.
New Larian Studios Founder Swen Vincke and Mike Mearls of Wizards of the Coast Interview by Fextralife on the game:
Looks like a fun game.
Baldur's Gate I and II were great rpgs and Baldur's Gate 2 got nice waifu options lol
The mentioned the relationship and waifu system in the game lol:
Baldur’s Gate 3 will launch in Early Access with five companions to begin with, with more coming later. Throughout the main campaign, all companions are open to romance from all other characters, and senior writer Adam Smith is looking to create more complex relationships, with the help of Dungeons & Dragons lore to mess with the players’ heart strings.
Another tricky example of relationships is managing vampiric characters who can feed on sleeping party members if they’re desperate, or just require a top-up. You may have to pass a wisdom skillcheck to stop yourself overfeeding and killing them, and the next morning they’ll feel worn down while you’ll be on top of the world. And the conversations and relationship beyond that will take a much different path than if you’d just kept your fangs in your pants.
Smith hopes to create more complex relationships like this between companions.
“We want to have jealousy. We want to have just great joy in it, as well. But yes, we don’t want it to be a case of, ‘you brought me the gift that I like the most, so you got +50 affection.’ It’s much more based on how you deal with them, and the things you do. So when I say, ‘everyone’s romanceable by everybody else,’ that’s not in every playthrough”.
Baldur’s Gate 3 will launch in Early Access with five companions to begin with, with more coming later. Throughout the main campaign, all companions are open to romance from all other characters, and senior writer Adam Smith is looking to create more complex relationships, with the help of Dungeons & Dragons lore to mess with the players’ heart strings.
Another tricky example of relationships is managing vampiric characters who can feed on sleeping party members if they’re desperate, or just require a top-up. You may have to pass a wisdom skillcheck to stop yourself overfeeding and killing them, and the next morning they’ll feel worn down while you’ll be on top of the world. And the conversations and relationship beyond that will take a much different path than if you’d just kept your fangs in your pants.
Smith hopes to create more complex relationships like this between companions.
“We want to have jealousy. We want to have just great joy in it, as well. But yes, we don’t want it to be a case of, ‘you brought me the gift that I like the most, so you got +50 affection.’ It’s much more based on how you deal with them, and the things you do. So when I say, ‘everyone’s romanceable by everybody else,’ that’s not in every playthrough”.
They just released the official details of the game:
Baldur’s Gate III is an entirely next-generation RPG taking place in the Forgotten Realms setting from Dungeons & Dragons and 20 years in the making. Return to the legendary city of Baldur’s Gate in a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival and the lure of absolute power.
Dark powers are awakening inside you, drawn from a Mind Flayer parasite planted in your mind. Resist, and turn evil against itself. Or embrace corruption, and lay claim to the Forgotten Realms.
Key Features
We are in the Forgotten Realms, a land of many races and multiple divine beings. We know that the world is in turmoil: armies of evil (gnolls, orcs, duergar, goblins, drow, etc.) rampage along the Sword Coast, and refugees swarm to Baldur’s Gate.
Amid all this chaos, a new cult is on the rise: the cult of the Absolute. Seeking to overthrow the old order, its shadowy network is chipping away at the Forgotten Realms foundations. Baldur’s Gate itself will be the first to fall.
That is where we come in: the players. And we’re off to a very inauspicious start indeed…
Out of nowhere, we were kidnapped by mind flayers. A tadpole was put in our heads. We barely survived the crash landing of a nautiloid, and we find ourselves stranded in the middle of an inhospitable wilderness. We discover we have only a few days to get rid of the parasite inside, or we’ll become mind flayers ourselves.
As we desperately seek a cure, we discover the tadpole gives us godlike powers and we find ourselves on the centre stage of a complot hatched by none other than the Dead Three: the gods of Murder, Tyranny, and Death.
Our journey will not only take us back to the legendary city of Baldur’s Gate, but through and beyond the Forgotten Realms.
It is a journey of survival: ours, and all of the Forgotten Realms.
Baldur’s Gate III is an entirely next-generation RPG taking place in the Forgotten Realms setting from Dungeons & Dragons and 20 years in the making. Return to the legendary city of Baldur’s Gate in a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival and the lure of absolute power.
Dark powers are awakening inside you, drawn from a Mind Flayer parasite planted in your mind. Resist, and turn evil against itself. Or embrace corruption, and lay claim to the Forgotten Realms.
Key Features
- A Truly Next-Generation Experience
- Built using the new Divinity 4.0 engine with AAA production values.
- Cinematic dialogs, all performance captured across 1.5 million words.
- Unparalleled depth and replayability, whether in single player or multiplayer.
- Expanded Attitude System to leave your mark on the world.
- Dynamic Music that shifts in tone to the context of a battle, situation, and story.
- Layered Crime system that holds you accountable for your actions and affects your reputation.
- Four-player online multiplayer and split-screen couch co-op for two players.
- The Most Authentic Dungeons & Dragons RPG Ever Created
- Hundreds of locations true to the lore, spanning over 100 hours of gameplay.
- Choose from 15 Dungeons & Dragons</em races and subraces, and eight classes with more to be announced.
- Build relationships with your companions in your ever-evolving campsite.
- Roll the dice to determine your fate in a story with countless permutations.
- Speak with the dead to learn new facts and uncover secrets.
- Evolved Turn-Based Combat True to Dungeons & Dragons
- Switch to turn-based mode to solve puzzles or sneak up on characters.
- Manipulate light and darkness for non-binary style stealth action.
- The next generation of turn-based combat featuring hundreds of Dungeons & Dragons spells and actions.
- Unlimited freedom to explore and experiment.
We are in the Forgotten Realms, a land of many races and multiple divine beings. We know that the world is in turmoil: armies of evil (gnolls, orcs, duergar, goblins, drow, etc.) rampage along the Sword Coast, and refugees swarm to Baldur’s Gate.
Amid all this chaos, a new cult is on the rise: the cult of the Absolute. Seeking to overthrow the old order, its shadowy network is chipping away at the Forgotten Realms foundations. Baldur’s Gate itself will be the first to fall.
That is where we come in: the players. And we’re off to a very inauspicious start indeed…
Out of nowhere, we were kidnapped by mind flayers. A tadpole was put in our heads. We barely survived the crash landing of a nautiloid, and we find ourselves stranded in the middle of an inhospitable wilderness. We discover we have only a few days to get rid of the parasite inside, or we’ll become mind flayers ourselves.
As we desperately seek a cure, we discover the tadpole gives us godlike powers and we find ourselves on the centre stage of a complot hatched by none other than the Dead Three: the gods of Murder, Tyranny, and Death.
Our journey will not only take us back to the legendary city of Baldur’s Gate, but through and beyond the Forgotten Realms.
It is a journey of survival: ours, and all of the Forgotten Realms.
Read Producer's Interview by Eurogamer:
So, this came up when Baldur's Gate was first announced - the studio's grown a huge amount. You've got a team of 200 people at least internally if I have that right, and then like another hundred externally? It sounds massive.
Walgrave: I think [internal, full-time] Larian people now is 250, and outsourcers 50 or something - so it is massive compared to a couple years ago. We did exponentially grow, but it was because we needed to make Baldur's Gate 3. We cannot make Baldur's Gate 3 and everything that we should do to honour it, and to move on with the company, with [only] the people that we had for Original Sin 2. So we had to explode. We had to expand. But I think that we're handling it very well, because there are things that you can learn from companies that have done similar things. So you can anticipate, like, where it can go wrong. We also hired a couple of people that we never had before: we actually have a lawyer now, we have a COO, we have accountants and deputy accountants, like all these things that as a normal game developer or company you go "oh we don't need that". [laughs]
And those people have experienced backgrounds and they can teach us a lot of things, like they have experience with building up companies, especially in Belgium. So they assisted us with all these things. To be honest, we learned a lot from Original Sin 2 for development processes and everything. So I, currently, can finally see what the past two years have done to us [in terms of] growing. We have people that are focusing on hair! You know, it has become- we used to be a very generalist company, like a lot of people did a bit of everything, if you were an artist, you were not focusing on one particular thing, and so on. Right now we do. We have people that are like, making moustaches for months. I'm going, "You're the moustache guy, really?!"
I'd quite like to be the moustache guy.
Walgrave: I'm exaggerating a bit, but I'm just saying like, there are now people that we have that I couldn't have imagined a couple of years ago. And now that everything's coming together, it's really working out, because we also want to make it so that the game really gets what it deserves.
And let's not mince words, we have the money to do it. So we're applying the budget that a game like Baldur's Gate 3 really needs.
Would you call it a triple-A game now, at this point?
Walgrave: Yes. I think, for instance what you've seen, with the lip-synching and the cinematics, the motion capturing that we're doing - I think you're still seeing it in "raw" form. But we do know what it can be, and we have again hired a couple of guys with a lot of experience. The cinematic producer and the cinematic director come from Telltale. This is what they've been doing for the last five, six years. They know what they're doing, they know what to request from the team that hasn't done anything like this before. So, if you see that - and if you see all the technical stuff that has gone into our engine - I would call it a triple-A game. It has a triple-A budget, has a triple-A team by now, and I think that is our aspiration.
We are still one hundred percent independent; we don't have anyone that we need to talk to. Apart from Wizards of the Coast, that still needs to agree on certain things that we do - but they did give us a creative carte blanche, almost - like certain things, we just need to check with them. But the relationship that we have with them is very good, and they're not being difficult about anything.
You mentioned the budget, where did that come from? You're self-publishing, so is that triple-A budget coming purely from Divinity: Original Sin 2's success? Is there investment from Google with the Stadia deal?
Walgrave: Yes, we do get support from Stadia, but again there's nothing that they can say about the game. We have certain agreements and deadlines with Stadia, but that's mostly about technical stuff. They want us to support a couple of typical Stadia features and we need to show that we do, and that's basically it. But I don't know everything about our financial background. I also think that we are managing our money intelligently. So I don't know what the accountants are for! They're probably, like, investing here and there so that our money is not just simply going into development, making sure that the money that we have in the bank is actually growing, or making money.
The production values are quite impressive, given you're more or less totally independent. The money definitely looks like it's on screen.
Walgrave: Well, it's a bit unreal. I've been working at Larian for 15 or 16 years, and we've always made things like Divine Divinity. Beyond Divinity I was there, and Divinity 2 et cetera. And you could always tell that we were not really triple-A, even though we were always aiming for it. We wanted to blow people away by using the money that we did have very smartly. And now we do have the budget, we're going to try and maximise the use of that again.
So is it triple-A? I really don't think you can make Baldur's Gate 3 without saying this is going to be a triple-A game.
Walgrave: We're also going to make sure that there's a story mode where you can focus on story and dialogues. But currently we're just applying the rules, and we have noticed that it is becoming - again, like we actually had before with Original Sin 1 and 2 - it's becoming one of those games where you need to use everything that you have. Where you need to drink potions instead of hoarding them and ending up with 274 healing potions that you never used. And that's, I think, what we want to teach our audience: use everything that you have, pick up everything that can be used. I mean Swen [Vincke, Larian's studio founder who ran the presentation] threw his shoes at a guy!
You're fighting tooth and nail against everything - and that's what we want, because that's always a challenge. We don't want to have, for instance, combat where you go like, "Oh, this is going to be a breeze" click-click-click and everyone's dead. That's not good combat. We don't do that.
You changed some stuff. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 had "real-time with pause" combat, you've gone turn-based. The camera is that sort of third-person-isometric hybrid...
Walgrave: It's 2020!
Is that basically the reason why - you felt you needed to modernise it?
Walgrave: So, I think that in spirit it's still the successor of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. Because there are so many things that people who did play and like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 will still recognise in the new one. It's still about your party. It's still about big personalities clashing with each other and relationships. It's still a party-based game, you still need to do combat, you will recognise a lot of D&D rules - even if you haven't played D&D in 20 years. You will still recognise all the spells, et cetera.
So, to me it's a true sequel, but we are bringing it into the 21st century by saying, "Look, it's glorious 3D. It has really nice cinematics. We're taking it further with systemics, we applied the 'Larian philosophy', which is like, oodles of content and hidden features and hidden stuff everywhere." So to me it's a good sequel.
The choices that we made are ours. Why did we go for turn-based instead of real-time with pause? Because D&D to us is a turn-based game and we're really good - or we have become really good - with turn-based combat. So that, I think, is one of our strengths, and trying out real-time with pause for now, just because the originals were that? It's a big risk. Because the team would have to think completely differently, our combat would be completely different. And we didn't really feel good about that. Normally we do try out a lot. Normally we try out a lot before we make a decision, but with real-time with pause and turn-based we didn't, we just said "Okay it's just gonna be turn-based."
So, this came up when Baldur's Gate was first announced - the studio's grown a huge amount. You've got a team of 200 people at least internally if I have that right, and then like another hundred externally? It sounds massive.
Walgrave: I think [internal, full-time] Larian people now is 250, and outsourcers 50 or something - so it is massive compared to a couple years ago. We did exponentially grow, but it was because we needed to make Baldur's Gate 3. We cannot make Baldur's Gate 3 and everything that we should do to honour it, and to move on with the company, with [only] the people that we had for Original Sin 2. So we had to explode. We had to expand. But I think that we're handling it very well, because there are things that you can learn from companies that have done similar things. So you can anticipate, like, where it can go wrong. We also hired a couple of people that we never had before: we actually have a lawyer now, we have a COO, we have accountants and deputy accountants, like all these things that as a normal game developer or company you go "oh we don't need that". [laughs]
And those people have experienced backgrounds and they can teach us a lot of things, like they have experience with building up companies, especially in Belgium. So they assisted us with all these things. To be honest, we learned a lot from Original Sin 2 for development processes and everything. So I, currently, can finally see what the past two years have done to us [in terms of] growing. We have people that are focusing on hair! You know, it has become- we used to be a very generalist company, like a lot of people did a bit of everything, if you were an artist, you were not focusing on one particular thing, and so on. Right now we do. We have people that are like, making moustaches for months. I'm going, "You're the moustache guy, really?!"
I'd quite like to be the moustache guy.
Walgrave: I'm exaggerating a bit, but I'm just saying like, there are now people that we have that I couldn't have imagined a couple of years ago. And now that everything's coming together, it's really working out, because we also want to make it so that the game really gets what it deserves.
And let's not mince words, we have the money to do it. So we're applying the budget that a game like Baldur's Gate 3 really needs.
Would you call it a triple-A game now, at this point?
Walgrave: Yes. I think, for instance what you've seen, with the lip-synching and the cinematics, the motion capturing that we're doing - I think you're still seeing it in "raw" form. But we do know what it can be, and we have again hired a couple of guys with a lot of experience. The cinematic producer and the cinematic director come from Telltale. This is what they've been doing for the last five, six years. They know what they're doing, they know what to request from the team that hasn't done anything like this before. So, if you see that - and if you see all the technical stuff that has gone into our engine - I would call it a triple-A game. It has a triple-A budget, has a triple-A team by now, and I think that is our aspiration.
We are still one hundred percent independent; we don't have anyone that we need to talk to. Apart from Wizards of the Coast, that still needs to agree on certain things that we do - but they did give us a creative carte blanche, almost - like certain things, we just need to check with them. But the relationship that we have with them is very good, and they're not being difficult about anything.
You mentioned the budget, where did that come from? You're self-publishing, so is that triple-A budget coming purely from Divinity: Original Sin 2's success? Is there investment from Google with the Stadia deal?
Walgrave: Yes, we do get support from Stadia, but again there's nothing that they can say about the game. We have certain agreements and deadlines with Stadia, but that's mostly about technical stuff. They want us to support a couple of typical Stadia features and we need to show that we do, and that's basically it. But I don't know everything about our financial background. I also think that we are managing our money intelligently. So I don't know what the accountants are for! They're probably, like, investing here and there so that our money is not just simply going into development, making sure that the money that we have in the bank is actually growing, or making money.
The production values are quite impressive, given you're more or less totally independent. The money definitely looks like it's on screen.
Walgrave: Well, it's a bit unreal. I've been working at Larian for 15 or 16 years, and we've always made things like Divine Divinity. Beyond Divinity I was there, and Divinity 2 et cetera. And you could always tell that we were not really triple-A, even though we were always aiming for it. We wanted to blow people away by using the money that we did have very smartly. And now we do have the budget, we're going to try and maximise the use of that again.
So is it triple-A? I really don't think you can make Baldur's Gate 3 without saying this is going to be a triple-A game.
Walgrave: We're also going to make sure that there's a story mode where you can focus on story and dialogues. But currently we're just applying the rules, and we have noticed that it is becoming - again, like we actually had before with Original Sin 1 and 2 - it's becoming one of those games where you need to use everything that you have. Where you need to drink potions instead of hoarding them and ending up with 274 healing potions that you never used. And that's, I think, what we want to teach our audience: use everything that you have, pick up everything that can be used. I mean Swen [Vincke, Larian's studio founder who ran the presentation] threw his shoes at a guy!
You're fighting tooth and nail against everything - and that's what we want, because that's always a challenge. We don't want to have, for instance, combat where you go like, "Oh, this is going to be a breeze" click-click-click and everyone's dead. That's not good combat. We don't do that.
You changed some stuff. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 had "real-time with pause" combat, you've gone turn-based. The camera is that sort of third-person-isometric hybrid...
Walgrave: It's 2020!
Is that basically the reason why - you felt you needed to modernise it?
Walgrave: So, I think that in spirit it's still the successor of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. Because there are so many things that people who did play and like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 will still recognise in the new one. It's still about your party. It's still about big personalities clashing with each other and relationships. It's still a party-based game, you still need to do combat, you will recognise a lot of D&D rules - even if you haven't played D&D in 20 years. You will still recognise all the spells, et cetera.
So, to me it's a true sequel, but we are bringing it into the 21st century by saying, "Look, it's glorious 3D. It has really nice cinematics. We're taking it further with systemics, we applied the 'Larian philosophy', which is like, oodles of content and hidden features and hidden stuff everywhere." So to me it's a good sequel.
The choices that we made are ours. Why did we go for turn-based instead of real-time with pause? Because D&D to us is a turn-based game and we're really good - or we have become really good - with turn-based combat. So that, I think, is one of our strengths, and trying out real-time with pause for now, just because the originals were that? It's a big risk. Because the team would have to think completely differently, our combat would be completely different. And we didn't really feel good about that. Normally we do try out a lot. Normally we try out a lot before we make a decision, but with real-time with pause and turn-based we didn't, we just said "Okay it's just gonna be turn-based."
I may have to pick this up.
It looks promising so far. I wonder on the rest of companion characters they will introduce next, needs at least another elf waifu option lol...
Read more stuff from wccftech:
Swen Vincke provided some additional detail about the world’s layout.
One subject that was clearly of concern to fans participating in the AMA was custom characters. Of course, D&D is all about rolling your own character, but the BG3 demo we saw focused on a pre-determined “Origin” character. So, the question is, will custom characters have the same depth as Origin characters? Or are you better off playing with Larian’s creations?
Writer Adam Smith provided some more detail on how Larian is handling custom characters.
Speaking of customs, it seems like BG3 will have quite a deep character creator.
Back to Origin characters, it sounds like there will be quite a few of them, and it doesn’t end there! You’ll also be able to recruit more generic mercenaries for your team.
Those were the main things covered by the AMA, but here’s a few more quickie answers. Will all D&D classes be available at launch?
Can you create an entire custom party?
Will modding be available at launch?
What’s the initial level cap going to be?
interesting information on the game.