Baldur's Gate 3

[Rand]

My only explanation for this is that they expect you to play one of the original characters yourself.

And then they make 6 or 7 of them, all with interconnected storylines, but have a party limit of 4 including the player.

[TKVNC]

How does Larian so reliably (along with other companies) manage to make the party limit one smaller than the number of companions you would want to have?

I want a mage (not Gale), a thief (not Astarion) a cleric (not Shadowheart), and a fighter or ranger (Lae'zel is actually amusing), while I play the paladin leader, but the game is only designed for 3/4 and bugs out if you mod it for extra party slots.
Not that the engine can't handle it, but all the conversations expect 4 max and can bug everything out in multiple events if you have more than that.

I had the same problem with Divinity Original Sin and Divinity Original Sin 2, but at least you could mod in an extra slot and not have issues in those.

Like, how hard is it to allow every companion in the party, or none, and just increase or decrease the challenge appropriately?

"This is the final battle, and all of [placename] is on the line, but half of you just stay here in the camp because... well I don't know why, actually."

At least DA:O explained why you only took a handful of people to the final fight.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Annnnnd we are back. I have mostly finished all there is to do in World of Warcraft: Midnight now, so I can get back to BG3. Though my playthrough will once again be interrupted by the release of the next Final Fantasy XIV chapter on Tuesday, but hopefully I will be able to make more steady progress going forward.

► Act 2 finale: Moonrise Towers

We go to Last Light's Inn, but we are told that the forces moved out to Moonrise Towers and to go there.

It seems that there are at least half a dozen Harpers strung across the bridge. IIRC there were only two dozen Harpers max at Last Light's inn when I arrived at the start of act 2. Losing 25% of your forces before you even reach the front door of a several story tall fortress is grim.




Once again, it is odd for a hundred+ million dollar AAA cutscene heavy RPG that the devs did not run a program to check for all armor/race/size combinations to see if there were camera angles in cutscenes that would be blocked and to adjust for it.




Isn't Jaheira leading a heroic/paladin organization? Why does one of the Harpers have a bandit mask on? You are about to storm a fortress together (not lying in wait for an ambush in the woods) and have no uniform and have to recognize each other by their faces, and yet this person is covering their face?




Oddly, the front doors do not appear to be shut or locked, and we just waltz inside. No need for a battering ram or a delocking spell or blowing it up with explosives/fireballs/earth giant summons/etc.

We get the first "big" battle of the game (if you didn't go evil in act 1 and help the goblins assault the grove), over 100 hours in. That was waaaay too long. It doesn't feel as grandiose or as exciting as the grove battle either.





Even on Tactician difficulty, the dark lord's chieft commander Z'rell goes down really fast and doesn't do anything notable.






Oddly, Ketheric Thorm is not here overseeing or aiding in the defense of his stronghold at its most critical weakpoint at the front doors/lobby. He seems to be just content to idle on the top floor while we flood in and wipe out his forces.




It seems the game allows you to convince Ketheric to be executed.










But before I can behead him, Aelen drops down. Seems he wants to do it.






I'll let the guy who was tortured for 100+ years do it, but it is odd that the first dialogue option implies that Ketheric should be allowed to live simply because he has given up. Just because he has recognized the wrong he has done and would like forgiveness does not mean he can escape accountability in this life.




Ketheric stands back up to fight. It seems like Aelen trying to get in on the execution incited Ketheric and overrode whatever feelings of acceptance of the end he might have had? It doesn't seem like he was faking it. So if Aelen had just continued hovering overhead and watching from a distance, would we have executed Ketheric right there?






It is neat that you can control Jaheira as a playable party member in this fight, and get a more properly sized party of at least five characters total. Wish the rest of the game had been 5 minimum instead of four.




I am now using the Moonlight Glaive that I received from Aelen. The butterflies animations are a little underwhelming. Anyway, I had chugged a bloodlust elixir and coated by spear in Wyvern Toxin before going to the top of the tower, and once battle began I had Gale cast haste on the MC and everyone else summon in adds. We zerged down Ketheric really fast and he never did anything threatening.






At around the 40% HP mark, we get sucked into a cutscene where Ketheric calls a tentacle to strike the airborne Aelen. I think I heard a female voiceline and Ketheric refer to Aelen as a "her". Anyway, Ketheric disappears and we are told to leap down a "hole", except it isn't a hole. It's several layers of thick fleshy webs that would obstruct your fall.




There is a neat maze puzzle. It was a little difficult to do using the third person camera mod I have that tethers the camera to the character you are controlling (as opposed to BG3's default setup where you can pan the camera around independently of the character). So I had to keep entering turn based mode to pan the camera over and see the connections and nodes near the end.




In one of the fleshy rooms, there is an onslaught of (trivial) skeleton adds. It kinda looks like one of the Diablo cinematics, though not with as cool models.






The fleshy environments are neat.






We find Mizora in a pod. The American lawyer/city-code speak is a little tacky. It is odd that she was captured and put into a tadpole chamber, but hadn't been tadpoled. It is also unclear how she couldn't have just dissolved into goo and teleported away.






Again, some neat visuals.






Aren't Ketheric and Orin directly staring at us?






Gortash's intricate gemmed magitek armbrace looks neat. Looks like something out of MTG.




The sovereign of a major country - and the father of one our dearest comrades - is about to be tadpoled, and we don't do anything about it? Come on, we just bursted down that 100+ year old death knight general Ketheric and sent him running. He's clearly the strongest of the three. We can take them!




Where were these guys while we were battling across the bridge, breaching the fortress, and then having a battle atop their stronghold?




Strangely, Ketheric talks as if his near death defeat atop the fortress and his flight didn't happen. He seems to have no plan to better deal with us than last time.




There is once again an option to persuade Ketheric to relinquish his mass murder activities (and presumably be executed just like earlier), but then as he is about to commit suicide, the MC tries to stop him. Huh? Why?




Anyway, it seems to skip straight to another boss fight, so I reloaded and provoked him hoping to see what I had missed.

From the starting position, you can blink straight to Aylin and click him to free him, causing Thorm to lose his invulnerability.








It'd be cool to have an angel party member.




Unfortunately, he is still immune to knockbacks despite there being a chasm right behind him. Fortunately he is bursted down just as quickly as in the first fight atop the tower.




Gale is off blowing up the selfreplicating necromancer/zombie adds.




At low HP, we get sucked into a cutscene. Once again, the MC nonsensically moves towards the evil darklord we are trying to kill as if he is trying to save him.




Ketheric falls down the chasm, and out pops the first cool looking fantasy boss monster in this game (only took 103 hours!). He is stationary but can rotate full 360 degrees, and has a frontal cleave that can knock people off of the platform. So you need to spread your characters out around him to minimize how many people might get hit by the cleave and knocked off. Also, while on the platform, characters are debuffed by his aura and can't recover HP.






Also, he keeps spawning the selfreplicating zombie necromancers, who if they reach his platform he will cannibalize them and heal himself. Fortunately I was able to respawn my summons and burst him down fast before people had to retreat off of the platform to heal, with only one add reaching him.




Aelen places down a teleporter back to the Moonrise towers lobby. Wyll and Gale manifest exclamation marks over their heads indicating I should talk to them. Oddly, nobody consoles Wyll after we had just seen his father get (irreversibly?) tadpoled and effectively a walking dead man, and it is immediately followed up by Gale being inappropriately overenthusiastic about visiting a bookshop.






Commander Jaheira congratulates me for killing Ketheric... and then asks to join my party. Erm... aren't you a great war hero and the commander of this region's branch of a huge paladin order or network? Don't you have forces to be organizing and leading, benefactors and other leaders to be talking to, etc? Shouldn't you be leading your men back to Baldur's Gate to rally the armies, prepare for an invasion, etc? Why would you desert your men to join my group? It'd make more sense if we all travelled back together following Jaheira at the forefront since she is the seniormost leadership/figure here.




============

The big bad triumvirate that was teased was interesting, though sadly it turned out that Ketheric wasn't loyal and then he promptly died, so I guess we are just looking at a big bad duo left?




Gortash' design looks sorta cool, like a Final Fantasy villain like Ardyn, but not as well executed IMO.

[rusty_shackleford]

Isn't Jaheira leading a heroic/paladin organization? Why does one of the Harpers have a bandit mask on? You are about to storm a fortress together (not lying in wait for an ambush in the woods) and have no uniform and have to recognize each other by their faces, and yet this person is covering their face?

Probably caused by RR
@orinEsque

At around the 40% HP mark, we get sucked into a cutscene where Ketheric calls a tentacle to strike the airborne Aelen. I think I heard a female voiceline and Ketheric refer to Aelen as a "her". Anyway, Ketheric disappears and we are told to leap down a "hole", except it isn't a hole. It's several layers of thick fleshy webs that would obstruct your fall.

[buttfucker 3000]

There is a neat maze puzzle. It was a little difficult to do using the third person camera mod I have that tethers the camera to the character you are controlling (as opposed to BG3's default setup where you can pan the camera around independently of the character). So I had to keep entering turn based mode to pan the camera over and see the connections and nodes near the end.

For some reason, throughout all my playthroughs, this puzzle either takes me 60 seconds or 8 minutes. No in-between.

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

Annnnnd we are back. I have mostly finished all there is to do in World of Warcraft: Midnight now, so I can get back to BG3. Though my playthrough will once again be interrupted by the release of the next Final Fantasy XIV chapter on Tuesday, but hopefully I will be able to make more steady progress going forward.

► Act 2 finale: Moonrise Towers

We go to Last Light's Inn, but we are told that the forces moved out to Moonrise Towers and to go there.

It seems that there are at least half a dozen Harpers strung across the bridge. IIRC there were only two dozen Harpers max at Last Light's inn when I arrived at the start of act 2. Losing 25% of your forces before you even reach the front door of a several story tall fortress is grim.




Once again, it is odd for a hundred+ million dollar AAA cutscene heavy RPG that the devs did not run a program to check for all armor/race/size combinations to see if there were camera angles in cutscenes that would be blocked and to adjust for it.




Isn't Jaheira leading a heroic/paladin organization? Why does one of the Harpers have a bandit mask on? You are about to storm a fortress together (not lying in wait for an ambush in the woods) and have no uniform and have to recognize each other by their faces, and yet this person is covering their face?




Oddly, the front doors do not appear to be shut or locked, and we just waltz inside. No need for a battering ram or a delocking spell or blowing it up with explosives/fireballs/earth giant summons/etc.

We get the first "big" battle of the game (if you didn't go evil in act 1 and help the goblins assault the grove), over 100 hours in. That was waaaay too long. It doesn't feel as grandiose or as exciting as the grove battle either.





Even on Tactician difficulty, the dark lord's chieft commander Z'rell goes down really fast and doesn't do anything notable.






Oddly, Ketheric Thorm is not here overseeing or aiding in the defense of his stronghold at its most critical weakpoint at the front doors/lobby. He seems to be just content to idle on the top floor while we flood in and wipe out his forces.




It seems the game allows you to convince Ketheric to be executed.










But before I can behead him, Aelen drops down. Seems he wants to do it.






I'll let the guy who was tortured for 100+ years do it, but it is odd that the first dialogue option implies that Ketheric should be allowed to live simply because he has given up. Just because he has recognized the wrong he has done and would like forgiveness does not mean he can escape accountability in this life.




Ketheric stands back up to fight. It seems like Aelen trying to get in on the execution incited Ketheric and overrode whatever feelings of acceptance of the end he might have had? It doesn't seem like he was faking it. So if Aelen had just continued hovering overhead and watching from a distance, would we have executed Ketheric right there?






It is neat that you can control Jaheira as a playable party member in this fight, and get a more properly sized party of at least five characters total. Wish the rest of the game had been 5 minimum instead of four.




I am now using the Moonlight Glaive that I received from Aelen. The butterflies animations are a little underwhelming. Anyway, I had chugged a bloodlust elixir and coated by spear in Wyvern Toxin before going to the top of the tower, and once battle began I had Gale cast haste on the MC and everyone else summon in adds. We zerged down Ketheric really fast and he never did anything threatening.






At around the 40% HP mark, we get sucked into a cutscene where Ketheric calls a tentacle to strike the airborne Aelen. I think I heard a female voiceline and Ketheric refer to Aelen as a "her". Anyway, Ketheric disappears and we are told to leap down a "hole", except it isn't a hole. It's several layers of thick fleshy webs that would obstruct your fall.




There is a neat maze puzzle. It was a little difficult to do using the third person camera mod I have that tethers the camera to the character you are controlling (as opposed to BG3's default setup where you can pan the camera around independently of the character). So I had to keep entering turn based mode to pan the camera over and see the connections and nodes near the end.




In one of the fleshy rooms, there is an onslaught of (trivial) skeleton adds. It kinda looks like one of the Diablo cinematics, though not with as cool models.






The fleshy environments are neat.






We find Mizora in a pod. The American lawyer/city-code speak is a little tacky. It is odd that she was captured and put into a tadpole chamber, but hadn't been tadpoled. It is also unclear how she couldn't have just dissolved into goo and teleported away.






Again, some neat visuals.






Aren't Ketheric and Orin directly staring at us?






Gortash's intricate gemmed magitek armbrace looks neat. Looks like something out of MTG.




The sovereign of a major country - and the father of one our dearest comrades - is about to be tadpoled, and we don't do anything about it? Come on, we just bursted down that 100+ year old death knight general Ketheric and sent him running. He's clearly the strongest of the three. We can take them!




Where were these guys while we were battling across the bridge, breaching the fortress, and then having a battle atop their stronghold?




Strangely, Ketheric talks as if his near death defeat atop the fortress and his flight didn't happen. He seems to have no plan to better deal with us than last time.




There is once again an option to persuade Ketheric to relinquish his mass murder activities (and presumably be executed just like earlier), but then as he is about to commit suicide, the MC tries to stop him. Huh? Why?




Anyway, it seems to skip straight to another boss fight, so I reloaded and provoked him hoping to see what I had missed.

From the starting position, you can blink straight to Aylin and click him to free him, causing Thorm to lose his invulnerability.








It'd be cool to have an angel party member.




Unfortunately, he is still immune to knockbacks despite there being a chasm right behind him. Fortunately he is bursted down just as quickly as in the first fight atop the tower.




Gale is off blowing up the selfreplicating necromancer/zombie adds.




At low HP, we get sucked into a cutscene. Once again, the MC nonsensically moves towards the evil darklord we are trying to kill as if he is trying to save him.




Ketheric falls down the chasm, and out pops the first cool looking fantasy boss monster in this game (only took 103 hours!). He is stationary but can rotate full 360 degrees, and has a frontal cleave that can knock people off of the platform. So you need to spread your characters out around him to minimize how many people might get hit by the cleave and knocked off. Also, while on the platform, characters are debuffed by his aura and can't recover HP.






Also, he keeps spawning the selfreplicating zombie necromancers, who if they reach his platform he will cannibalize them and heal himself. Fortunately I was able to respawn my summons and burst him down fast before people had to retreat off of the platform to heal, with only one add reaching him.




Aelen places down a teleporter back to the Moonrise towers lobby. Wyll and Gale manifest exclamation marks over their heads indicating I should talk to them. Oddly, nobody consoles Wyll after we had just seen his father get (irreversibly?) tadpoled and effectively a walking dead man, and it is immediately followed up by Gale being inappropriately overenthusiastic about visiting a bookshop.






Commander Jaheira congratulates me for killing Ketheric... and then asks to join my party. Erm... aren't you a great war hero and the commander of this region's branch of a huge paladin order or network? Don't you have forces to be organizing and leading, benefactors and other leaders to be talking to, etc? Shouldn't you be leading your men back to Baldur's Gate to rally the armies, prepare for an invasion, etc? Why would you desert your men to join my group? It'd make more sense if we all travelled back together following Jaheira at the forefront since she is the seniormost leadership/figure here.




============

The big bad triumvirate that was teased was interesting, though sadly it turned out that Ketheric wasn't loyal and then he promptly died, so I guess we are just looking at a big bad duo left?




Gortash' design looks sorta cool, like a Final Fantasy villain like Ardyn, but not as well executed IMO.

Love the track that plays when you fight the Avatar of Myrkul:

26 Baldur\u0027s Gate 3 Original Soundtrack - The Odds Are Cast Anew

Seriously, that's like one of the most epic compositions ever.

[orinEsque]

Isn't Jaheira leading a heroic/paladin organization? Why does one of the Harpers have a bandit mask on? You are about to storm a fortress together (not lying in wait for an ambush in the woods) and have no uniform and have to recognize each other by their faces, and yet this person is covering their face?

Probably caused by RR
@orinEsque

At around the 40% HP mark, we get sucked into a cutscene where Ketheric calls a tentacle to strike the airborne Aelen. I think I heard a female voiceline and Ketheric refer to Aelen as a "her". Anyway, Ketheric disappears and we are told to leap down a "hole", except it isn't a hole. It's several layers of thick fleshy webs that would obstruct your fall.

@ModdersHQ Do we have a harper with a mask on?

[loregamer]

Isn't Jaheira leading a heroic/paladin organization? Why does one of the Harpers have a bandit mask on?

Harpers aren't really a paladin or heroic order. They're a semi-secret group focused on balance, not capital-G Good. They'll actively work against good-aligned nations or temples if those threaten the balance. Operating quietly is kind of the whole point. It's pretty consistent across every edition too

1987 Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1E) introduction:

a mysterious organization of high-level adventurers, in particular bards and rangers

Ed Greenwood's 2E sourcebook Code of the Harpers (1993) prologue:

Most bards and many rangers in the North are Harpers

3E also gave them a literal stealth/infiltrator prestige class called the Harper Scout in Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (p.46), built explicitly around surveillance and intel gathering. Collecting information is the whole job description.

5E adventure Hoard of the Dragon Queen also calls them:

Masterful spies and infiltrators, they use various guises and secret identities

The balance philosophy is also why the order fractured. The 2E sourcebook Cloak & Dagger (2000, pp.25-26), Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun, one of the senior Harpers, secretly handed the Scepter of the Sorcerer Kings to Fzoul Chembryl of the Zhentarim back in 1357 DR and traded intel for an assurance the Black Network wouldn't expand west of the Thunder Peaks for 30 years. When the rest of the Harpers caught wind in 1370 DR, they expelled him. He took a bunch of defectors with him and founded a splinter group called the Moonstars (Tel'Teukiira). Not exactly behavior you'd see in a paladin order.

So a masked operative makes sense

[rusty_shackleford]

Check the second quote in my post above @orinEsque @loregamer

[loregamer]

Check the second quote in my post above @orinEsque @loregamer

I recall @orinEsque or @Silver debugging that female shout in the cutscene, dunno if it was ever fixed

orin is too busy commission moneymaxxing to work on NA and RR though, she hates us

[orinEsque]

Check the second quote in my post above @orinEsque @loregamer

I recall @orinEsque or @Silver debugging that female shout in the cutscene, dunno if it was ever fixed

orin is too busy commission moneymaxxing to work on NA and RR though, she hates us

No actually I'm busy abusing AI

[loregamer]

No actually I'm busy abusing AI

Your last RR work commit was 11 months ago

[orinEsque]

No actually I'm busy abusing AI

Your last RR work commit was 11 months ago

Work.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

► act 2-3 transition: Journey from Moonrise Towers to Rivington

I fast travel back to Last Light's inn to find Dammon so I can vendor my loot. He's gone. The wiki says I won't see him until I go to the city in act 3. Drats. Guess I will just have to keep my storage chest piling up with stuff in the mean time. Not that I have seen anything in shops for a lot of gold that is worth buying, really, so not a real loss. Don't need to spend gold on to learn new abilities or techniques from spear masters either in this game.

I level up my characters to ten. It is quite aggravating how my spell list on the wizards keeps getting reset. I have to manually comb through all of the spells to make sure that I have haste, feather fall, minor illusion, etc, because otherwise those get thrown out by whatever list the game defaults to when I level up. Mark against the game. Surprised this hasn't been fixed years later.

Astarion is acting as if he did anything when he hadn't. I don't think I ever added him as a party member in all of act 2. He's been sitting at camp doing nothing the whole time.




Aelen unblocks Shadowheart's memory. Shadowheart's father was blonde? But Shadowheart has black hair. Was her mother black haired? Is the black hair a recessive gene?




On our way out, we are ambushed by Githyanki but easily dispatch them.






Is there anything special about this tree? Who planted it? Was a druid responsible? Or did it just come out of nowhere? Is it going to stay there forever?




The guys come up, but then don't say anything and head back down a few seconds later. Wyll, Gale, and Jaheira don't want to point out locations to the other? Sip wine while taking in the view?






While trying to get to sleep, it seems that the Elder Brain/Absolute has sent out a signal to transform the tadpoled into mindflayers. We are attacked and have 3 turns to escape through a portal. I got delayed (O kept trying to cast haste on the MC so he could dispatch the enemies sooner, but then kept getting hit by the enemies and concentration broken and hit by the lethargic debuff that stuns him), and I got a cutscene where the narrator described a churning in the stomach and the mind splitting apart when I immediately hit F8 to quickload. I presume that means we turned into mindflayers. Does that mean everyone who was tadpoled got turned into mindflayers? Is Duke Ravengard now a mindflayer?




Oddly, we are attacked, but Astarion/Jaheira/Aelen/etc don't come over to help.




We go through the portal (into the prism?).




After fighting two Githyanki monks, you have to leap down to the main platform. It is very annoying how I have the MC leap down first, and then immediately get yanked into a cutscene that depicts my whole party there, but then when the cutscene ends only the MC is actually down there and gets yanked into battle. I have to leap the other three characters down onto the platform for them properly enter the turn order, and they are very far away from the MC and the other combatants. They spend two turns having to use dash to reach the fight, by which point the MC had already soloed two of the four Githyanki enemies.












The Emperor is very big. Bigger than even me, a big heroic muscular lizardman wearing plate armor. But apparently he is only 120 pounds? That's the weight of a petite 5 foot tall girl. Huh?





Moonrise Towers looks pretty nice in the sunlight. Once I entered the act 3 map proper, I tried turning back to go see Moonrise towers in the daylight, but there is no map transistion thing to click on.




With Jahiera being a hundred+ year old trusted hero of the region and commander of the Harper order here, you would think she would have eventually been brought into the inner circle and be in on this knowledge. You'd think she would thus have an inkling about the MC and his party when he first showed up at Last Light's Inn with a tadpole but not under the Absolute's control.




It is bizarre that Wyll is not asking the emperor if his father his safe, if Duke Ravengard has just been turned into a mindflayer, if there is any cure, etc. Gale would also be interested to know if there is a way to kill the Absolute without blowing himself up, or if there is anyway to lure or transport the Elder Brain far away from civilization so that the nuke doesn't wipe a lot of other people out. Wyll - being the son of the duke and one of this region's heroes - would also be doubtful of the emperor's claim given that he had never heard of him.




How could you not know? Do the dukes not help set their successors up before stepping down by introducing them to their cabinet, advisors, supporters, etc? Not tell them important secrets and info? Surely your father would have known about the emperor, if not worked with him! Gortash in the emperor's flashback looks exactly as he did in the present day. The emperor could not have been kidnapped more than a couple years ago. The duke would absolutely be aware that one of his most important advisors was kidnapped and would want to be trying to get him back. Wyll would have been informed of this to keep an eye out while adventuring, if not asked to investigate it!




Gale is ecstatic lol.




I can't find Jaheira, Astarion, Halsin, etc to ask them about the emperor. The Harper commander and the Archdruid of this region might have known, or would be very curious about this info. Astarion having lived in the city for a hundred years might have also heard whispers too.

We go to bed with the bodies of our would-be assassins at our feet. The pool of blood is still wet! We couldn't have been bothered to carry the body 50 feet away to the shrubs and cast a water spell to flush away the blood?




Posters online had made out Shadowheart's plot makeover to be hideous, but it's just whatever? Not seeing the big deal here. I browsed Nexus' top BG3 mods to see if there were any supposedly better looking Shadowheart appearance mods, but had to scroll several pages before I found one, and it wasn't good.




Goodness, we aren't married. There is no option to refrain?








This is very weird.






There is no option to ask Jaheira about the emperor.




Finally. It only took 107 hours to reach an inhabited village!




It seems there is a situation, but when I click I don't get the dialogue options I would prefer to further inquire about what is going on. The game gives me an option to offer to kick out "squatters" but I do not recall having actually been told that was what was happening, nor able to ask the other guy for confirmation or his side of the story. I can peer into his mind, but it is an unrelated thing rather than the current situation (why is the bearded guy here? What were the conditions for him to stay inside the house if that is what is actually happening? Was he supposed to only hole up there for a few days? Work for the homeowner to stay? etc).










The merc party attacks me before I can further inquire, and I kill them in self defense. Oddly, no guards come to investigate the commotion or the blood.






The other guy acts oddly belligerent.






Now, to investigate the other matter of the basement. Turns out he has altered toys seemingly intended for refugees? (Where are these refugees from?).








I go to the warehouse that contains supplies for the refugees (?). The serious officer in charge has nothing to say about me being drenched in blood. You also get a dialogue option to pretend to be a Flaming Fist (one of the militaries of the region), but IIRC it was stated earlier that Dragonborn are not native to Baldur's Gate and are a rare sight. So wouldn't he be skeptical about that? Or if there was a dragonborn in the army, that might be novel information he would have heard about.




I find the box of altered toys. The OIC asks who is responsible, but there is no option to point to the house over there. (Because I left the incriminating letter in the chest in the guy's basement?).








I find this disappointing. The game does not give you the option to take the guy to the local OIC and tell him to keep the guy secretly detained in a shack or some outpost's cellar somewhere and not to report this to the higher ups (thus nobody will know where this guy is and won't be able to kill him) while I further investigate in the city. Once the source malefactors are dealt with, then this guy can be officially charged or punished. It seems that the game only gives you the option to either let him flee and get off scott free, or to charge him and send him to his death.

[rusty_shackleford]

Posters online had made out Shadowheart's plot makeover to be hideous,

They're wrong

[Maledict]

Here we go again
(I've played mostly as DU, but never finished with it, and finished once with Astarion and once with Gale)

The Whited Wyll looks good with every hair tbh.

[Vlajdimir Ermenović]

[rusty_shackleford]

You whitewashed Karlach, I fixed it

karlach-asian.webp

[Trickster]

Has anyone tried playing with this mod? If so, how is it?
https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/12727

[brancard]

the best thing about this website is to have good way of elves and not like be some weird transition ppl

[brancard]

i really enjoyed playing bg3 without all the ugly ppl about, finally the elves made sense

[brancard]

its a tactical game which is like all divinty games, you play it for 60 hours its ok y Acrux
nothing like in a lifetime nothing big nothing bad

[Prardenciflar]

[wndrbr]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/a-bal ... returning/

Wizards of the Coast is returning to the Sword Coast, PC Gamer has learned. While Baldur's Gate 4 is inevitable, ahead of that it looks like we'll see the resurrection of BioWare's original games—specifically Baldur's Gate 2, though from what we've heard it's likely both games are getting the ol' remake treatment.

Former BioWare developer and Baldur's Gate 2 co-lead designer Kevin Martens has also returned for the project. Martens has an impressive CV, which includes lead design roles on Jade Empire and Throne of Bhaal, as well as BG2. He also worked on Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect, before leaving BioWare to join Blizzard in 2009, where he served as lead content designer on Diablo 3.

Conveniently, Martens was already working with WotC again. He's been contributing to Exodus—the Mass Effect-like RPG—at Archetype Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of WotC.

According to a source familiar with the project, Martens is already working on the Baldur's Gate 2 remake. If both games are making a comeback—which makes a lot more sense than just the second game, given that it's a direct continuation of BG1—this suggests that the remakes are being developed concurrently. If that's the case, and they launch together, that's an incredible amount of roleplaying on offer.

These are vast, elaborate adventures with hundreds of hours of D&D shenanigans each—taking you on a grand adventure of the Sword Coast and beyond, to the city of Athkatla, the drow-infested Underdark and even other planes. You might need to take some time off work.

This isn't the first time Baldur's Gate has been dusted off. Long before Larian started work on Baldur's Gate 3, Beamdog gave us another excuse to traipse around the Forgotten Realms in the Baldur's Gate enhanced editions—an impressive pair of remasters.

A remake, though, leaves more room for more dramatic changes. It's not clear what the extent of the changes will be, but it's an exciting prospect. If you're hoping that the OG BGs will suddenly play just like BG3, though, I wouldn't put all my money on that bet.

BG3 was built in Larian's proprietary engine, for one. Also, it would be a significant risk to make the classic games pure turn-based affairs—though I'd be perfectly happy with that. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for something that will keep everyone happy: real-time-with-pause battles, with an optional turn-based mode.

I don't think anyone's going to be surprised that WotC's parent company Hasbro is diving back into this well. It's struggled to capitalise on BG3's success, not helped by the fact that it laid off almost everyone at the company who worked with Larian on the incredibly successful RPG.

[Finarfin]

Ah nice, time to turn Baldur's Gate 2 into Bald *** Gay 2: Gape of Amn

[Vaako]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/a-bal ... returning/

Wizards of the Coast is returning to the Sword Coast, PC Gamer has learned. While Baldur's Gate 4 is inevitable, ahead of that it looks like we'll see the resurrection of BioWare's original games—specifically Baldur's Gate 2, though from what we've heard it's likely both games are getting the ol' remake treatment.

Former BioWare developer and Baldur's Gate 2 co-lead designer Kevin Martens has also returned for the project. Martens has an impressive CV, which includes lead design roles on Jade Empire and Throne of Bhaal, as well as BG2. He also worked on Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect, before leaving BioWare to join Blizzard in 2009, where he served as lead content designer on Diablo 3.

Conveniently, Martens was already working with WotC again. He's been contributing to Exodus—the Mass Effect-like RPG—at Archetype Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of WotC.

According to a source familiar with the project, Martens is already working on the Baldur's Gate 2 remake. If both games are making a comeback—which makes a lot more sense than just the second game, given that it's a direct continuation of BG1—this suggests that the remakes are being developed concurrently. If that's the case, and they launch together, that's an incredible amount of roleplaying on offer.

These are vast, elaborate adventures with hundreds of hours of D&D shenanigans each—taking you on a grand adventure of the Sword Coast and beyond, to the city of Athkatla, the drow-infested Underdark and even other planes. You might need to take some time off work.

This isn't the first time Baldur's Gate has been dusted off. Long before Larian started work on Baldur's Gate 3, Beamdog gave us another excuse to traipse around the Forgotten Realms in the Baldur's Gate enhanced editions—an impressive pair of remasters.

A remake, though, leaves more room for more dramatic changes. It's not clear what the extent of the changes will be, but it's an exciting prospect. If you're hoping that the OG BGs will suddenly play just like BG3, though, I wouldn't put all my money on that bet.

BG3 was built in Larian's proprietary engine, for one. Also, it would be a significant risk to make the classic games pure turn-based affairs—though I'd be perfectly happy with that. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for something that will keep everyone happy: real-time-with-pause battles, with an optional turn-based mode.

I don't think anyone's going to be surprised that WotC's parent company Hasbro is diving back into this well. It's struggled to capitalise on BG3's success, not helped by the fact that it laid off almost everyone at the company who worked with Larian on the incredibly successful RPG.

Another lesson for new gamers that being brand loyal is stupid. Even if they have access to Larian's Engine any remake will just be a crashgrab with not even half the interactivity/freedom BG3 had.