Wormerine

Oh yeah. I have been watching StarTrek for the first time (TNG to be exact) for the last couple months, and Stellaris got reinstalled for that very reason.

I found it worthy of investigation, so created account on Larian's forum and made a thread about it. I received an interesting response from one of the users:

Yeah, but BG3 won't be telling a great story. What IE games did, and what Larian is doing are completely different things. The more you define the character, the less space you give to the player: Have full close up, animation, voiceacting - and all is left for the players is to occasionally decide what decision the character will do. Have a written, silent protagonist, with closeup - and players can somewhat decide what the intention of their character might be when they pick a given line. What Larian is doing is a pretty much blank slate, giving players tools and allowing them to play in any way they want. I do find it odd, that they invested in close-ups for BG3, while still keeping a vaguenes of D:OS2 Is it not in spirit of DnD? Do you get a pre-written lines to choose from when you play Table-Top DnD? BG3 gives you options, but what is said, and how it is said is to be defined by you, the player. As to how it is written - Past tense etc. I do agree. Tis odd. I didn't pay to it much attention. What they did in D:OS2 was much more intuitive.

Won't it, though, heavily devalue whatever skill is responsible for "Initiation"? Sure, alpha strike is nice, but after that it becomes irrelevant. They will have to boost it's usefulness in another way.

That's an interesting change. The benefit of this system is that one thinks as a team, rather then individual units. I wonder if the system will effectively support this kind of design. As all players take turn at the same time, it should accelerate game quite a bit. Not only that players can discuss options an execute them in the same "turn" rather then awkwardly waiting for their own que.

Considering the poor quality of writing in Kingmaker, a prospect of relationships does not excite me one bit.

I don't know how OuterWorlds works on Epic, but some games on EGS used different save slots when played Online/Offline. Perhaps you could find another save folder (it must store it somewhere) and move your old saves there?

Surely, a good StarTrek game would simply be: A Violin Hero

I have no doubt there will be hijinks and unexpected things happening. Question is, will I remotely care about any of the NPC (or should I say AI controlled playable characters) this time around. Yeah, they seem to use pretty much the same tech, unlike Deadfire which reworked and improved a lot of things. It is not the worst idea every to do an oldfashioned sequel.

Cool! A classic I never played. And controller support.

They did that in their previous title, Divinity: Original Sin2, and I thought it worked alright. I would fill the blanks of how my character would say it (at least initially), a bit like I fill silent protagonist with my voice. Wasn't I didn't like in D:OS2 is overall how little narrative direction there was, I am worried BG3 will suffer the same fate. What I have seen the most jarring, that sometimes the character would speak pre-recorded lines - whenever it's demo magic, or feature of the game I don't know. If it is a thing, it's an odd design - supervague dialogue most of the time, and then pre-written, recorded lines everyonce in the while.

Such as? Honest question. What has happened is that we didn’t get another RPG, since then, beside crowdfunded projects and recently Outer Words, which was uninspiringly fine. . Bethesda went on to undermine whatever good was in their games with F4&76 (not that I ever cared for their games). I don’t know what Bioware has been doing. There was Witcher3 which was great but barely an RPG - what’s more RPG mechanics were what was dragging the game down. Without doubt, Divinities were the most exciting and innovative thing to happen to RPG, succesfully making a Coop oriented RPG.

If I recognize the avatar @ComradeMaster seems to hate every good RPG. What they are going in Obsidian forum, I dunno.

Is that total, or what comes in Early Access? I remember that it will launch with only few classes, and the rest will be added later. EDIT. From gameplay video it sounds like they are launching with 6 classes and 9 races. EDIT2. Quick google suggest that the game is to come to early access with 8 classes and 15 races and add the rest later. EDIT3. Another search says something else

What if it’s a completely different new horse, you just keep calling it “Roach” because naming is not one of your strong suits?

No, I don’t. I don’t mind them experimenting - I am not tied to IE nostalgia too much, and I found PoE to work the best when it does its own thing. But PoE holds my interest as a party-based story-driven singleplayer RPG. Make it RTwP or turn based, class based or classless. Obsidian could make an RPG in PoE setting and get my interest... but they might as well do a new IP.

I will give Larian a pass. NWN2 has been one of my fav post IE games RPG. it wasn’t a successor to what NWN was, but it was what I wanted NWN to be. BG3 might not be a successor to BG1&2, and it might not be what I like the most... but as long as it’s good in what it aims to achieve, and doesn’t mess with the original... what’s the harm?

I like the look of Deadfire, but performance and functionality is far behind... as is expected of 2nd focused engine modified from Unity for a game made, by what, 40 people? Verticality, size, easy inside/outside without transitions, supporting units being all over the map at the same time, interactions with the enviroment plus multiplayer support add to that moddability and adventure creator. Quite a bit like Witcher, its an engine built by studio for their specific needs and purposes, and it's and investment and commitment that pays off.

D:OS2 engine and scale is amazing. I just wish they would do something more structured for BG3. I found D:OS2 to be too free-form - you can do anything, anywhere with vague objectives meaning I didn’t care or remember about anything I did. Apparently there are about 350 people working on BG3. It shows. In many ways that’s a kind of game I wished for Bioware to pursue - invest in systems and interactions, rather then presentation. What I didn’t wish was for it to be so multiplayer focused.

Oh well, I guess it didn’t sell afterall. Still, from the resurgence of RPGs it is only PoE that is most likely dead, no? Shame as it was my fav of the bunch. Solasta is also a thing. We will see how it will turn out.

You are preaching to the choir here.

It's really clever multiplayer design. I wonder if they manage to find a way for it to work better when playing single player. The demo felt alright to me.

At some point Swen said that “jump” is enhanced by having the worm-thing in your eye. I imagine same goes for push and move objects. It seems to have some effects, like vampire guy not perishing in sunlight.

I categorise Bioware and Larian games a fundamentally different genres - first being singleplayer high presentation focused, mostly linear, story driven adventures, while the latter are sandbox, system driven coop games. The only issue I have with Baldur's Gate 3, is its connection to BG1&2 while being apples and oranges situation.

Looks... good. And more or less what I expected. Seems they are aiming for newer Bioware conversation view, but with Divinities “vague” dialogue system. I am curious how it will gel together - I feel that silent protagonist works better in top down setting, rather then in your face JadeEmpire/KOTOR/DragonAge set up - in isometric all you do is implied and imagination takes over, while fancy presentations makes unanimated things draw attention to themselves.