I don't play many PC games these days because of how woke a lot of the shit is. I got burned on Cyberpunk, so now I pretty much play FS2020 and that's it these days. The last game I played through was System Shock remake, which I found to be decent enough.
BG3 won game of the year from Worth a Buy, but I hear it has a lot of gay sex?
I got a copy for free, and have played a fair bit. Haven't run into any gay sex. I'm sure it's there, but optional so far.
Unpopular opinion in these parts, but I think the game feels really nice. Good visuals, good combat (if you like that style, of course), very good music in my opinion (nothing spectacular, but does the 'you are in a fantasy world' feel very well), good exploration with lots of options.
Story seems kind of hit or miss, and as someone else mentioned there is some forced morality and generally stilted storytelling. A certain conflict is pretty obnoxious. It seemed like a nuanced problem, but then the people involved are a bunch of oppressed do-gooder versus nasty people basically in it to be mean. They took the nuance and just threw it on the ground and stomped on it.
And, although the game so far doesn't feel super woke, there are certainly elements. Character creation is a mess because they removed clarity to make things as 'gender neutral' or whatever as possible. Which is especially annoying since the early footage had you select your sex (versus now a Body Type or whatever.) So they actually removed clarity and functionality to conform to Modern Standards.
I've enjoyed what I played, despite some nitpicks, and despite the creators themselves being at least moderately woke, and the woke marketing campaign. It's a much better game than I expected based on what we'd seen. I wish the story was better, and a bit more streamlined. It feels a tad bloated, but that also does help it feel like a larger world. It's hard to describe, but despite some legitimate faults and critiques, it feels pretty good. Really encapsulates "fantasy RPG" in a way modern games haven't in a while.
Nah, the "Body Type (1, 2, 3, 4)" only alter whether you are a short, lean male, short lean female, big bulky (but not fat) male and big bulky female.
Then you can select which genitals your body type has irrespective of which body type you chose. That's where things can get weird, esp if you just hit "Randomize"
The name "body type 1" instead of "male 1" and separate genital options are 100% troon propaganda moves.
Trying to decouple gendered language, sex and appearance is convoluted and counterintuitive for a character creator. It makes the system objectively worse for players, all for the sake of a couple of loons.
Looks like you're setting up a rule that doesn't exist. In game you can make male, female or whatever weird combination you want. It doesn't make "everyone queer" imo.
Nah. I saw it. I waved at it as it drifted by.
I think is the opposite, the story is unpolished and rushed. Third act is an incoherent mess and the world seems small.
Lets take BG1 for instance, much smaller game, BG3 tried to make the story from BG1 but bigger. Well BG1 Sarevok has a plan to take over Baldurs Gate in order to start a war with Amn and case a continent level massacre in order to become the next god of murder. In BG3 I did not see any desire or involvement from foreign nations. It seems completly seperate from the rest of the world. Same with the druids grove, they seem to be an entity in of themselves rather then a larger group of druids that they were suppose to be.
At most you get the harpers that seem somewhat fine and it was the only place they actually used the doppelgangers to somewhat success. Could have been better but they failed in creating any mistery or intrigye around those.
I'm certainly not saying it's better than BG1 or BG2, just that in my opinion it's a enjoyable modern RPG.
Everyone knows the absurd gay sex stuff at this point. The only other thing I've heard about in regards to it is "forced morality," in which there are some circumstances where a choice to reject would be obvious, but even with the ability to say "no," the game still forces you to accept the situation. The most I've heard is usually in regards to certain NPCs "entering your camp." In fact, one particular NPC went into your camp to kill another person, and despite that, you're still forced to welcome them into the camp after the situation is resolved, apparently? And then there's some "muh refugees" shit, again with the camp.
The lesbians come to your camp although you tell them you don't want them. Wyll, the black guy, is trying to kill Karlach but then everyone is telling you is a good idea to bring him in the team, is like you sure you want to not make him part of the team, are you really really sure? are you really really really sure?
You can not take him but is annoying how much the game forces him on you, there is 0 sense taking someone who tries to kill one of your team and it makes even less sense to have everyone trying to force him on you.
The refugees story was actually related to the first town, not the PC's camp, but the point stands regardless. The refugee nonsense was pretty annoying. Sad thing is, it could have been handled with some nuance, but then they went in the opposite direction of nuance and made it very black and white, good versus evil. Wasted potential, and painful to play through. Thankfully that portion was pretty brief, but it's still obnoxious for a roleplaying game to force such black and white stuff into a nuanced issue.
Easy fix with smokepowder and firewine barrels from the goblin camp.
There's a couple of instances (Act 1 Tieflings in the Druid camp, Act 3 Arfur Gregorio's House are two that pop immediately to mind) where the immigrant issue is front and center. One NPC lesbian couple who are also front and center (Dame Aylin and Isobel). And also some "Racism is bad m'kay" stuff here and there.
All the recruitable party members are "player-sexual" which means they will all hit on you at some point in the game.
I enjoyed my playthroughs. I recommend a few of the based mods. In particular Sir Aylin, that removes the aggressive dyke that isn't avoidable in a non evil playthrough.
Now I mostly play evil, so I killed her in my first campaign and wasn't aware that she's a psycho lesbian if you don't mod it.
She's legitimately my favorite character of the lot. Has the best jokes too.
I was intrigued by Minthara until I saw "her" and thought "She looks like a very effeminate boy...WTF? I thought drow were supposed to be seductive....?"
Also, why are ALL the drow NPC's so pale? If you have a drow, they are supposed to be black as ink.
WoTC changed that decades ago funny enough, they decided that having the sadistic slaver race be black as numidians was offensive.
I only played once so I want your perspective. Upfront, I'm already starting to forget details.
The story from the 3 evil guys, the Bane dude gets the crown from Raphael, the crown has the power of a god. He gives the crown to an elder brain (one of the most intelligent beings in the world), to control it with 3 shards that he shares with the other 2 (why??) in order to create an army to then save the city so he can become Duke? The entire scenario is ridiculous, use the power of a god in the most insane way possible in order to obtain almost nothing?
Also Raphael wants the crown as it is immensely powerful and he could become the most powerful devil but he already had it before and did not become the most powerful devil?
The Bhaal psycho-bitch has any motivation other then being there and being a bitch? All I got from that was, remember the doppelgangers? Remember Sarevok? Remember the Slayer?
Also did you free the comet dude? After his initial reaction was "I must become an Ilithid to defeat the elder brain" I just uninstalled the game. That made no sense to me, he was an incredibly powerful, borderline divine being and he could find no other way then turning in to the thing him and his entire race hates with unquenchable hatred.
Act 2 I think was the best act, it still had issues, mostly the lesbian being horrible and wanting to kill her but I had already freed her as I wanted a good story with Shadowheart. I also did not like how pathetic Jaheira was in term of power.
edit: When did it change the way Ilithid are made? It was not a mutation of the host but turning in to an Ilithid, basically the tadpole matures using you and is the tadpole now turned in to maturity that also absorbs the victims memory, more inline with Goa'uld rather then X-men.
No real disagreement there, Act 3 was a mess and imo there's a few significant rewrites needed for it to be coherent.
And no I didn't free Orpheus I enslaved his silly ass and lied to Laezel about it.
As for how ilithid are made, yes that's either a retcon or a mistranslation and these days it could have been either.
Gortash (evil follower of Bane) got the Crown of Domination from Mephistopheles, not Raphael. This is discussed in your meeting with Raphael at Sharess' Carress. (Personally, I'd have liked to see that story. "Go all the way down to the Eighth (of Nine) Rings of Hell and steal an ancient Netherese artifact from and Arch-Duke of Hell..." Sounds cool)
The premise of your first part is mistaken.
OK, that at least makes sense. I thought it was the same guy do to the chick that helped him and also helps you.
Can you give me a short list of mods for a good, evil, and works for both play styles? Thanks!
That's pretty much a matter of taste but I recommend basedmods.com.
https://modhq.org/Baldur's%20Gate%203
I found the game boring tbh. Story was meh. Gameplay was meh. I think it was probably a good game given games these days. I think I just don't like gaming very much anymore.
Also Virconia, not sure what her point was, I did not find a way to have her join me.
It had a ton of memberbarries, remember Sarevok, remember Jahiera (now old and weak), remember Minsc (with I think 10 strength?), remember the Slayer? It was all forced for nostalgia. So much focus on Jahiera being old as well, like she was half-elf she was not suppose to age worse then Minsc.
I felt used.
What they did to Viconia (and Sarevok) was complete bullshit and was the final determinator in my decision to not get this game. If the original characters don't deserve to have their redemption arcs, why the hell should any of Larian's get any?
Even Viconia's non-romance, non-alignment-change ending implied a redemption for her happened, where she fell out of favor with Shar and assisted do-gooder Drizzt in saving Suldanessalar from a Zhentarim plot. Seems the writers at Larian really hated her and Sarevok and felt the need to go out of their way including them in a story that didn't require them just to assassinate them, character-wise and literally.
I agree with everything you wrote but I don't think it was critical enough even tbh. I found balancing a big issue myself and the combat felt more tedious than anything. I felt confused at times at what I was even supposed to do to progress the story and then felt the options I wanted to take weren't feasible due to the difficulty and it wasn't easy figuring out how to improve my strength without ruining the ability to take the options I wanted.
The whole time I was playing BG3, I just felt like I'd rather be playing BG2 instead.
I'm not a fan of Larian's level design, 5E D&D, or the plot in general.
-Making the life cycle of illithids the main story, then just ignoring it for plot reasons is really weird to me
-game has you fighting out of depth monsters at level 1 like the mind flayers and cambion, for the sake of "drama" and getting the player hooked. I hate this and think D&D games should start small. If you want to hook players, make the first few quests really quick and easy, don't try to overwhelm me with over the top nonsense.
-After the bombastic intro you are just dropped into some random woods. You spend most of the rest of the game wandering through these insignificant woods and caves to get to the city. It's myopic and uninteresting.
-Small, cramped levels. The whole game feels like a dungeon, which is dumb. It shouldn't be this hard to just walk to the city. I would rather see a proper world map instead of this kitchen sink woods.
-Because you need every bit of XP to survive, you have to comb the woods for every last thing to kill. I'd rather pick and choose from quests and interesting activities than be forced to lawnmow an extremely boring map.
-Backwards quests. Often you walk into an area and there's a bunch of NPCs in the middle of some shit, and you get a quest to deal with it. This is backwards, the PCs should be picking up quests and then going in search of adventure. Stumbling into every random shack and cave that has some epic quest in it makes the game world feel, well, like a video game.
At one point I walked into an area, immediately got like three different quests about duergar and a tower and myconids, and I thought this was all weird and random, and turns out it's all the main quest and you need to do it to proceed in the game. WTF is even this design. I have no concept of a goal or destination and the game is just randomly saying "well this area has to be completed now because shut up, that's why."
I do agree with you on all your points. Especially the first 2, I was starting to feel I was the only one annoyed that you can fight a hag, beholder and drow at level 3-4.
The illithid part aside, the entire evil plan was just so that 1 guy can take over a city?
Isn't that underwhelming? In BG1 it was take over a city to make war with Amn, create a massacre the size of a continent in order to become the lord of murder and he did not even have a god power crown to help.
The small cramp level and the world feeling more like a themed park rather then a large world is how Larian does games, this is just DOS2 but with 5th edition D&D rules. Them changing how the game is made would have been complete trash of a game, it was better to let them do what they were already familiar with.
I disagree with that that you have to get your quests from a questhub somewhere its not an mmorpg and even there I hate it makes exploring no fun if you just collect all quests in a city and follow the quest markers to the goal.
Also the area with duergar/myconids is optional you can also go over the mountainpass (no underdark needed) and directly into the shadowlands if you can beat/avoid a few level 5ish undeads where the shepards can rezz the ghouls.
Overworld map would have been great but devs probably didnt want to balance the game arround the legendary items in the city.
I've played tabletop for 20 years and I've never seen a campaign made this way. No one just wanders around and finds epic quests under every rock and leaf. Players start from some kind of safe point and go out in search of adventure based on requests, rumors, and current events.
Landing in a random patch of woods with so much crap going on in a 100 yard radius is absurd. The goblins and druids are 3 minutes away from each other, and yet they "can't find the other's location."
All they had to do was let you find a tavern or inn on the road after crashing and hear rumors about the various quests there, and then made them discreet locations. Like BG1, not MMOs.
Do you have any specific quests in mind here which dont fit while you travel? It really arent that many epic quests really on the road. Only one which comes to my mind is the chest with beholder bottle in it. And that only really gives you an option to trade in the zentarim hideout. And the only tavern early on you find is burning. The Githranki on the road make sense because a giant ship crashed near by.
Cant really think of any major quests you cant pick up in npc hubs unless you count the Ravengard rescue from the burning tavern. Nightsong quest starts in the druid grove which is a big quest hub.
This is exactly why I never finished Divinity: OS2. This game is exactly like it.
I don't really like how most of the characters look so I passed on it. If you like tabletop RPGs you might enjoy it despite the negative parts.
Lately, I've found it's easy to judge the quality of an RPG's companions (and by extension, the quality of the RPG as a whole) simply by just looking at them. Do they look like they were designed with woke sensibilities in mind? Do they seem like they're meant to appeal to a very specific and narrow sexual fetish? Are they wearing obviously gay fashion just to loudly flaunt how gay they are? Look out of place in the setting? Are the females overwhelmingly ugly, plain, and/or sporting odd facial proportions, yet still advertised as love interests? Do they seriously look like they could be skilled adventurers with storied pasts who could probably have been the cover heroes (or villains) of their own tales, and not like they were selected from a stock catalogue of NPC images or by pressing the Randomize button on FaceGen? If the answer to at least a couple of these questions is yes, then chances are you got a really bad roster and RPG with it.
Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Baldur's Gate 3 definitely got the alarm bells ringing for me for all the above reasons.
I loved tabletop RPG, been 20 years though, never did D&D but several other systems...
D&D Jumped the shark at 4th Edition. 5th doesn't quite suck as hard, but it is still a narrow take on the heroes journey.
In reality D&D rules are made to tell a story about killing things and taking their stuff from 1st to 12 level. That is it.
If you want to play some other kind of game that revolves around court intrigue, assassination attempts, solving a mystery or some such ... don't play D&D.
I recommend Reign by Greg Stolze.
https://gregstolze.com/reign1/
Available as PDF, it scales better than D&D and is capable of more stories than just "I attack the goblins! How much loot do they have?!"
That'd be great and all, but kind of out of it at this point in my life unfortunately.
I mainly did White Wolf (Warewolf & Vampire) and Shadowrun, and several others a little. Knew people who were into LARP but never crossed that line myself.
Gay sex not so much, everyone is player sexual so it means that all the male characters are going to hit on you to ridiculous levels. But your character acts gay without being prompted.
Stuff like looking seductively in a companions eyes and sitting uncomfortably close before you get a dialogue to tell him we're just friends.
I understand they toned it down but when I played it was ridiculous, hey let me show you some magic, cool, now lets bang. Or a druid guy that I barely talked to the entire game tells me he wants to fuck me and like 3 out of 4 dialogue lines leads to bear gay sex.
To be honest that did not bother me as much, just kill any character you don't like but the main story for me it was trash. Maybe I'm missing something but it just did not make sense to me. Your motivations are fine and how you progress is ok-ish, there is a mystery to unravel but the reason for the bad guys to do all of this was just stupid.
Also the game is designed around certain choices and the game does not know how to handle it properly so you end up being complete hatefully towards some characters and they still act like great friends. Or force some moral choices on you, like a family of refugees squatting inside a guys extra house and they made it very hard to just give them money to leave - the most sane option. Or telling some lesbian bitches to not come to my camp and they came anyway.
There are some non-obvert pro-immigration messaging like the druid guy saying something to the extent that baldurs gate needs to die because they did not instantly allow all the immigrants in. Immigrants being portrayed like some holesome communities that are being unfairly treated etc. Normal woke European propaganda,
You may also notice that almost everywhere the leaders are women, not the main story but every group seems to be woman led, guards, flaming fist, harpers, vampire hunters. There is also a lack of manly men, with few exceptions, men with a backbone are evil.
That being said I did enjoy playing it and it could have been great, mods help but there is no fixing the story.
Then there is the power structure, this is a Larian production and follows the exact same behavior as in DOS2, levels and power are relative to the area. Meaning at level 3-4 you fight a hag, beholder, optionally an ilithid, drow, ogre magi, minotaurs, duergars and more. However later you have problems fighting bandits and normal humans.
DnD should not be like that, you should be fighting gnols, hobgoblins and basic skeletons until you grow in power to fight the big bads of the world.
There are also some questionable motivations on evil groups letting you wonder in to their camp / base that I can give a pass, it does add to the story and is nice to explore.
If you get it for free and dont pay for it sure. You can also install a few mods which dewokify it. Which would get deleted on nexus immediatly. https://modhq.org/Baldur's%20Gate%203 (especially no alphabets and better aesthetics and no male romance are great) https://rpghq.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=48682#p48682
this one is also good if you want to remove asian/african looking headshapes
But even without those the game is mostly woke free until the end of second act if you ignore the diverse druids. And you can sacrifice one character you dont like at a certain spot for more crit damage when enemies bleed.
I received it as a gift and honestly played out of a sense of obligation, which has likely tainted my perception of the game.
That said, it felt like a slog. I worked at it for 3 hours and then have not bothered to play again. Neither the characters nor the story were compelling. Combat was alright. The game is pretty, so that is something as well.
If you like D&D, it might be worth a play?
I’ve put some hours into it and I would say gameplay wise it’s pretty good, though it’s very current year and pozzed.
If you like tactical, turn-based combat and a decent sized world to explore with a lot of sidequests and hidden shit then you’ll probably enjoy it, it’s also really fun to play with a friend. The story is decent, although it gets kind of rushed in the third act, and I found most of the party members enjoyable.
As for the bad: an inordinate ammount of girl bosses, brown people, and homos all over the world, navigating menus and shit is pretty clunky, there’s some bugs near the end of the game, etc.
Personally I got way too bored of it every time I hit act 3. Combat was laughably easy, there was little in the way of builds, companions all felt like they weren't people but player centric automatons with a backstory....
That said it was one release so I don't know how much has changed with patching.
On the other hand as a CRPG player I've put 200+ hours into a just released buggy mess of a CRPG and loving it which I couldn't do with BG3. BG3 is pretty, but as a CRPG it's lacking....or it was but I doubt they fixed fundamental systems.
My advice is zero tolerance for woke shit so just pirate it.
No, I just started it, and it's exactly like DoS2.
Actually does a good job of accounting for all sorts of players choice and ideas
And then act 2 happens and no matter what you choose there's exactly 1 narrative path forward.
And then act 3 gives you a bit of breathing room again but by then you're pretty much locked into a good guy playthrough, the not so subtle hint being these issues are noticeable if & when you want to be an evil character.
As far as player choice is concerned, think of BG3 like an hourglass. But maybe it's more of an upside-down funnel. Act 2 railroads hard
From the people ive heard who played it and have thicker skin than most of the people around here, it sounds great. No one I know gives a shit about the sex scenes, they just avoid them and that's it, who gives a fuck? But honestly if you want a cRPG, I've heard Rogue trader is even better.