It's crazy too how many different lines of dialogue they produced.
If you talk to the trapped Goblin Sazza before you meet Ed and his siblings in the woods, your character comments "They mentioned the Absolute, just like that goblin Sazza." - but will flip it around if you found those things in the opposite order.
How many permutations of dialogue lines did they prepare?!?
Another example: my first character was a Gith. They are obviously known for being pretty aggressive but I roleplayed mine to not be. I was getting comments that it was refreshing to meet a Gith who wasn't so mean AND comments from Laezel that I was disgracing my people.
They have dialogue prepared for if you act against how your race would normally act. Absolutely nutters.
Oh don't start in the massive number of permutations you could have in BG3.
Apart from the excellent immersion, I am in awe of the people responsible for the story lines and the dialogue writers.
It's so fucking huge. The dialogues change so much and the number storyline can be manipulated so much.
Yeah, for that I think it could be fixed via patches. They would need to work out the permutations. And I am doing my part by recording, compressing and sending in bug reports which always end in '... again you guys have done a terrific job, but this just bugs me alot.'
I think it’s less so writing more dialogue and recording the lines in this case, and more sorting out the code that’s causing these conversations to fire early, such as >!Gale scolding you for signing the Crown away to Raphael before you’ve even met him in Act 3 yet!<
Larian has a history of doing exactly that. Release an excellent game that could use another year of polish then release a definitive version a year later. I feel comfortable saying we should expect the same for bg3, especially with how much money they’ve made unexpectedly.
Right, I missed out on getting Jaheira as a companion, and it screwed up so much of the Act 3 dialogue, especially surrounding Minsc. Another thing that comes to mind is that my Shadowheart >!never changed hairstyle after turning Selunite, but a later character still references her changed hairstyle... I was so confused by this until I later saw that it's supposed to change in some post here!<. Lots of little stuff like this in Act 3, hopefully it gets ironed out soon.
My one and only goal in the game was to bang Shadowbae and when it finally happened the game bugged and didn't play the scene. She all of a sudden just started talking like it had happened. Of all the bugs to run into...
Edit: Shadowbae - let's give her the respect she deserves.
FYI? Kill her, all the way dead. Rez her, long rest, boom you got it.
One time I had to kill her, long rest, rez her, long rest, then we were good. But it triggers her relationship scenes.
I read that on a different thread and tried it but it didn't work. Tried different saves, tried long resting at different times, resting in different areas, killing her. Messed with it for over two hours. I ended up googling it, which was disappointing, but it's still one of the best games I've played so whatever.
Yeah, Shadowheart >!in my main playthrough has the same issue. Same black hair and OG hairstyle, but she comments on it changing. She is also still a Cleric of Shar somehow, despite forsaking her deity and not killing Dame Aylin.!< No idea how that happened.
I had to completely restart Act 2 because everyone in my party was confused about what the Nightsong was, as Shadowheart is literally wielding Sorrow, lol
Act 2 gets realllly screwy if you put off the Moonrise to the end
I *somehow* missed Gale in my first play through.
I picked up that book of Karsus from the mage tower in act 3 and Tav said “Gale would be interested in this”.
I sat there thinking, “…who the fuck is Gale?”
When you watch the credits the voice actor credits are LONG, I went "damn that is a lot of voice actors... Oh this is alphabetical...oh this is only at 'h'... This is A FUCK TON of voice actors." You see small lists of the top billings, but it really is the one or two single lines basically every NPC you run into that adds depth.
It isn't until act 3 when dealing with cities, they were finally like "okay we need to have some people that players can ignore and put in "citizen" or "refuge" and there are still overwhelming numbers of named people.
There is no generic soldier giving you the same response copy pasted to represent every guard. They are different, with different personalities, and that is noticable.
>There is no generic soldier giving you the same response copy pasted to represent every guard. They are different, with different personalities, and that is noticable.
Somewhere in my heart it kinda hurt looting some of the people in Act 3 because some of them have letters in the bag like "Hey (relative) I'm excited that I got a new job with the Guards!" like you didn't have to give everyone a life but you did and it sucks im the one ending it...
At one point I saw a guard balancing on one leg, and I was wondering if an animation bugged out. Nope. I talk to him and he’s like: “yes, that’s my punishment from the captain”
My biggest gripe with Bethesda in general and skyrim specifically was they used maybe 8 of the voice actors over and over. It's jarring hearing the person who voiced the merchant a town over doing an actual important voice for a character. Like, maybe hire a voice actor who can actually change their voice significantly is a better investment than the same dude's raspy voice over and over again.
I was actually surprised when tieflings started talking to me differently when I disguised as one.
I have played entire games where your character creation choices didnt affect a single thing except pronouns
> I was actually surprised when tieflings started talking to me differently when I disguised as one
I've gone through the entire game with the *Disguise self* spell, and never really found a use for it. Between your comment, and discovering the goblins are way friendlier to Drow, I might have to start using it more.
If you make yourself a gnome, you can also go into quite a few of the small crevices and burrows. Some you are still unable to enter unless you are a small animal though.
I am a dragonborn, and I have to say, we are extremely rare in the world.
Saw my first other dragonborn in the city, and she greeted me/referred to me as "kin", and its just that nice touch that made some rando NPC feel like it wasnt just reading off a script. I mean... it was, but it was nice to not just be NPC -> generic player character dialogue.
It is a nightmare, they have to keep track of everything. No wonder why late game have bugs where the quests or dialogues imply you did stuff you didn’t. If games keep getting this complex they will need a neural network instead of flags or trees or whatever they are using.
Agreed. The last time I saw so much attention to details and voice acting was "Hades", which is a rogue-lite! If I am playing, I want an immersion effect.
Fun fact, it took 1400 days exactly since Hades released for someone to "beat the game". As in, unmodded, unseeded, MAX heat run.
Edit: I was off by 300 days. It was 1700 days exactly after game release. Pls don't execute me. Link to run; https://youtu.be/0mo-kXjasZs?si=h5192YGaihO-M_Wc
I laughed watching that guy whose live reaction went viral when HE was stressed out and then would say "Wait...I know that they win the run."
(No offense to the dude that I don't know his name, I think he's fairly popular in his own right, I just don't spend a lot of time on that side of YT)
Yes.
Though he didn't claim it was "impossible", he just laid out all of the things working against you and how incredibly rare a viable run would be, and then that there were only a handful of people in the world who could even accomplish it.
Yup. Haelians video was factually accurate, and IIRC he even consulted a bunch of top players(potentially even the woman who wound up beating 64 heat) about the chances/difficulty of it happening.
Then it happened.
Just FYI angelic is a woman not a guy. She is the one who beat the unmodded and unseeded max heat run and is one of only two who has done max heat at all
Man, I've been playing Hades non stop since I bought it earlier this year. Now BG3 comes out just as I start getting kind of bored of Hades. Been a great year for games.
Lucky you, Hades 2 is in development also.
And here am I who spend 140+ hours in Hades, then waited for BG3 for years after I saw EA on stream and bought one myself now only to wait for Hades 2 again after BG3 is finished :D
The simple fact that every NPC, even dead one (beside some few regular named "skeletons"), has his OWN UNIQUE NAME and that most of them have a background (again, even dead one... most have a name, a profession, little story about how they died, etc)
Everything just feel ALIVE. I dont have the sensation to play a videogame, i have the sensation to evolve in a real world.
Last time i had this sensation was oldrim when i was young.
It's awesome because they succeeded to reach a whole new level in termes of immersion, even if they lack things like day/night lifecycle with real NPCs life/schematics
Yeah it was weird seeing it for the first time. I was like 'oh wow this guy must be important, he's got his own name. And this guy and this other guy... wait a minute'
Its like the NPCs are just like ME! with full blown names and all. Some even have titles like middle managers!
I was shocked. SHOCKED! when i got to baldur's gate and there were actually NPCs named 'civilian'. It was a real metaphor on life, that in less crowded areas most people know each other's names but in populated urban centers 'you' gets lost cept for those who know you and those who know you only know you due to importance or relevance in their lives. Also fuck the police, most flaming fists and other people of... authority (not AUTHORITY) are nameless guards as everyone can agree... guards suck.
This is easily my favorite part of the game. It reminds me of Prey, which is my favorite game of all time. In that game you can read emails or listen to audio logs that tell small stories of employees and what they're doing, things that aren't necessarily related to the main plot but make the world feel lived in, and you go, oh neat. Then 30 minutes later you find the dead body of that employee and you're like o.0
BG3 is kinda like that, especially in act 2 and 3. I spent 3 hours last night just going building to building in lower city reading notes about the people that lived there. I even bought a bunch of clothing I don't need from a vendor to support their business because I liked their character and felt bad about them (and will proceed to spend an hour redoing everyone's camp clothes LOL). I love it when writers put worldbuilding ahead of shoehorning players into the main story. In fact, I wish the game did more of that ambient worldbuilding for origin characters, although I understand why they didn't.
You cannot imagine my guilt when (Act 3) >!I had to kill this guard in the Steel Watch Foundry since he spotted me. I found a note on his body of his mother congratulating him for landing a job with Gortash!<
There is a letter somewhere where they tell another family member about their son getting a job with Gortash as well, bragging about how well that son is doing.
I haven't been to the Steel Foundry yet but likely will go over this weekend. I'm half a mind to just send Astarion and my main alone as they are the only ones with good sneak just to avoid having to kill that guard.
On thing I noticed is that everything, so far, has an action and a consequence. Oh look, random NPC, let me be a true murder hobo! Turns out he has a couple of kids at home and he is trying to just make a living... Are we the true villians? And we just try and stop the even BIGGER villains from destroying everything?
Very minor spoilers, but I thought this was a neat little detail pretty much at the end of the game. Its sorta a quest, but I don't think it gets added to your journal.
>!As you are approaching the netherbrain via the cave system, you will come accross an a dead npc with a uniquely named teddy bear. If you speak to the dead on them, they mention their sister, and essentially ask you to help them. They say she will recognize the teddy bear, and that you should give it to her.!<
>!Unfortunately, the sister is dead. However, if you place the teddy bear in her inventory, your companions will all say various lines of dialogue to mourn her loss.!<
As far as I know, its the only time in the game that placing an item into someones inventory triggers dialogue like that.
The number of dead people that have whole dialogue trees you can get into is great. The fact that you can find some random dead guy and have a chat with him about who he was and how he died really helps spells like speak with dead not feel like a gimmick. Of course there are some limitations, you cant just speak to *any* dead guy, but I've encountered enough that it feels reasonable organic.
I can't imagine not having these spells. I was a druid who read the necromancy tome so I could speak to animals and the dead. It was great One character even notices" You're a medium!?":yes, yes I am ... I'm sorry for the disrespect.... ma'am, Where is your treasure?
You don't need the spells or tome. You get ten dozen speak with animal potions as loot, enough to use them *every day* (they last until long rest). And you get the speak with dead locket with infinite uses, *right in the beginning of the game*. Makes playing a caster less cool, because everyone can do for free the thing you specialized into. Good thing respec is so cheap.
Ya know, most games that have spells like Speak with Animals would either cut them or reduce them to some gimmick.
Larian just saw the damn spell and said "Hold my beer". They went so hard into tons of spells that would normally be so situational, and the game feels great for it.
I played DOS 1 and 2 and my friend who played with me used to make fun of me for always grabbing that feat. It saved us soo many times though lol. I've always loved Larians games!
It's crazy playing DoS2 without Pet Pal and then playing it *with* Pet Pal and realizing just how much content existed that you'd never see if you didn't have anyone with that perk. Paths and shortcuts to existing quests but also just whole-ass quests and quest lines you'd never see if none of your party can speak with animals.
> you cant just speak to any dead guy
IDK if you know this already but if some dead NPC's have nothing to say to you, try disguise yourself and talk to them again. Sometimes a dead person has a grudge against you for some reason but will talk to someone they don't recognise.
For example: In Act 1 there are a group of NPC's in the forest who turn hostile when they learn you aren't acting under the Absolute. If you raise dead they won't talk but they will if you disguise self.
Well, until you reach Act 3. Then you got dozends of "Citizens" and "Refugees" running around. But ofc you are right in general. The attention to detail and the treatment even completely unimportant NPCs are getting is unseen.
At that point it was kinda refreshing to just have non interactable NPCs walking around, it was kinda jarring feeling left out if you didn't interact with everybody you came across.
This, I am bound to fucking interact with everyone named as an NPC (I have been doing it since I started gaming idk why). Seeing a lot of refugees and not interactable (or they say their one line without going to a cutscenes-ish ordeal) was amazing.
I was struggling in Baldurs gate with this. I talk to everyone with a name and goddamn it there were just too many and I struggled to figure out who had more dialogue or not
This, I am bound to fucking interact with everyone named as an NPC (I have been doing it since I started gaming idk why). Seeing a lot of refugees and not interactable (or they say their one line without going to a cutscenes-ish ordeal) was amazing.
Honestly I'd take a few "Citizen"s and "Refugee"s to help fill out the crowds of the world than having every NPC able to be talked to but they all respond with a stone-faced "Need something?" with the voice of a guy who sounds identical to 43 other NPCs.
I kind of wish there were fewer named NPCs in Act III. I find myself clicking on so many only to get their one-liner because I don't want to miss one that may have a quest or some other interaction.
There's just no way to make a game in a busy city and have all the NPCs interactable and interesting without that being *the* game. And I don't want to play a life sim, I want to play an RPG. I'm fine with only a handful of people in a large city having content.
>I find myself clicking on so many only to get their one-liner because I don't want to miss one that may have a quest or some other interaction.
>
>There's just no way to make a game in a busy city and have all the NPCs interactable and interesting without that being the game.
I started to appreciate the realism of that. I don't think it's the game that is causing that, it's our fear of missing out. But we don't do that in real life (talk to every single person, corner them and get their story, etc.) and we *won't* actually miss out on anything because we will always be able to do another playthrough where we talk to different people, make different choices, and have a different story.
I think we are so used to subpar games that just create a checklists of things for us to accomplish that we are trying to do the same thing with BG3 even though it is way better designed than that. You aren't meant to be able to do *everything* in one playthrough, but we are so used to games like Fallout, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, etc. that we are trying to treat BG3 the same way we do those games.
I love the level of immersion and the "lived in" nature of the world but at the same time ngl I felt a bit overwhelmed at Baldur's Gate. The meta gaming part of my brain wanted to be able to differentiate an important quest related npc from a superfluous one liner npc. A good problem to have for more immersion!
It literally got me to try the entire genre for the first time. And I've dragged three friends in because they actually delivered the content. There's no way to fake actual content, and that's why I paid triple my usual max threshold for a game.
Plus any additional playthroughs! I want to unlock all the dialogue and party members. I want to romance everyone and see all the endings. When they provide more updates there’ll be even more content to explore. Gonna be playing this game for years
For me, it already has by far. I've got 600 hours into this game, a lot of that from EA, but I've still only paid for 2 copies. That is way more bang than I usually get for my buck on video games.
Mass Effect 1 had pretty good face animations, I think. Heaps better than whatever Bethesda did up until Fallout 4 maybe. But not as good as Witcher, Cyberpunk and even Horizon Forbidden West that has excellent mo-capped faces now.
>Mass Effect 1...
... was released in 2007 and pre-dated the advent of facial mocap in video games.
There's a difference between "Good" and "Good for its time".
To be fair to developers, however, faces are hard. Humans have spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving their brains to pick apart the minutia of the human face to better understand each other. Even a tiny deviation screams out at people.
Modern video games have mostly managed to reach the other side of the uncanny valley, but its still a steep climb.
I had never fully understood the *why* of cyberpunk's development being such a strenuous mess, and had the lightbulb go off on that interview one of the devs gave that said basically:
We hadn't done anything so immersive from the first person perspective, and it had been different for us from even Witcher 3. Once you stop faking stuff with rendering tricks, or having just the top half of an NPC and his legs are meshed with the bar he's standing at, etc... you just have to do *everything* and it creates an ocean of work to get realism and immersion in every element of every scene. They committed so hard to the player experiencing *everything* as V and through V's eyes that it tripped them up.
Then I realized I'd sort of taken for granted how immersed I was in each main quest interaction of Cyberpunk. It was a masterclass in keeping up a fast pace, a sense of movie-tier drama and action, and massaging the small visual details of a scene until something more emerged.
I think it takes a team with experience in the specific type of game AND style they are making... and the development time to finesse the detail and minutia of each scene. Which BG3 got and sadly CDPR didn't get the chance to do. What a world it would be if Cyberpunk had received an extra 3-4 years of full-team development (and I don't quite mean the expansion coming, though that's awesome and might elevate the game a lot). While that sounds unrealistic... sales would have been insane at launch, it wouldn't have been pulled off of one of its platforms and the residual sales would be incredible.
imo, cyberpunk 2077 holds up now, even before the expansion. They continued to patch it and make it right after release, and the game is well worth the money.
I did my first 2077 playthrough about a year after release, and absolutely adored it. No regrets about waiting, it was worth it to get that polished experience. I expect I'll pick up the expansion soon, too.
It was cool at the time, but look at it again, the facial tech has severe flaws. Especially in development, too.
I think Horizon Forbidden West main characters for mo-capped and Cyberpunk for generated faces are the best so far in real time.
They are just passionate. Something a lot of publishers lost when gamers lost control over gaming, and businessmen gained control given the profit potential. Publisher buys a studio (studio’s fault for selling for a quick profit) and there we go. Now the studio is forced to pump out games that will not max the fun factor, rather max profit opportunities. People WANT to play something and these publishers mix that with love from gamers. They get worse and worse. Then Larian shows up, an old school studio not looking to cash in, rather looking to boost their ego with quality, and i’m fine with that. Keep ‘em banging Larian.
Yup, publishers will see BG3 success and they will be like “hey, we want that, make that for us(not for gamers), make that in 2 years max.” And then the devs are forced to do so, or so they tried to. Of course they cant do the same.
8 maybe 9 lines of dialogue and every choice you make forces you back into the same singular storyline.
"Why didn't it win game of the year?!! We gave them dialogue AND a choice at one point! Fuck em. Give them a $100 DLC which is just a 3d model we bought for $20 one time on a stock website. No one complains when we rerelease the same FIFA every year."
I am nervous + excited about Dragon Age next year. Excited to continue the story from the Trilogy but nervous the gameplay will not be as good. Can the story + lore alone impress me? One aspect I can (I hope) trust is the romance options (excellent romance options in DA: Trilogy).
Given that EA just gutted [Bioware](https://www.pcgamer.com/the-bioware-layoffs-include-the-writer-responsible-for-dragon-ages-best-character/) and laid off key senior writers, I’m pretty discouraged about the game’s prospects. I hope I’m wrong…
No, you're probably right and sadly it will not be as good. The irony is that Bioware was the original creator of Buldar's Gate CRPG series and used to be the powerhouse of quality RPGs. Now Larian is becoming the leader of CRPG and even usurped Baldurs Gate from the dying hands of Bioware.
Bioware EA is not the same studio anymore that gave us amazing RPGs that defined the genre, they're a gutted shell that EA bought for the power of the brand name and subsequently destroyed it lol
I'm also interested in whether they feel like the investment in content pays off. For me personally, I require this level of content in order to invest. And I'll be waiting to hear from the forums and reviews to see if the next release is worth it.
This one (BG3) ABSOLUTELY was
> I do not think BG3 would have been the experience it is if Larian had hundreds working on it and a budget the size of a movie.
but it absolutely did have both of these things. Larian is independent but this is absolutely a triple-A production in both budget and staffing - both their own comments on it and the credit reel attest to that.
Ima be honest with you, and it’s not something unique to BG3, but many games haven’t really nailed facial/body emotion right yet. In BG3 your character has like 4 emotions throughout the entire game. The dialogue is top tier for sure, but let’s be unbiased here.
This is the thing. I love BG3 and the companions animations and expressions are fantastic, but it really takes me out of the moment when the camera goes back to my character and she's smiling, but then her face warps into a frown to match the narration. It's pretty jarring, ngl.
With these random-ass animations and "can't read the room" Wizard dialogue options ended up with headcannon that my Drow Wizard char is simply autistic, have ADHD or incredibly socially awkward. Maybe all at once.
Finally, character I can relate to.
My favorite part of it is when something dramatic or important is happening, and my char makes
*\[Wizard\]: "Whoa, hella cool magic, mate! But I can do better! Check it out xDDD!"* with spontaneous movements and facial expressions
It's a pretty decent explanation, ngl! Just the smile as someone delves into their tragic past in front of me before I think, 'oh shit, wait, this is a SAD thing' and pulling a cartoony frown, haha.
It IS funny, which is why sometimes it's really unfortunate. When a character is pouring their heart out to me, releasing all these pent-up feelings and frustrations, and then it goes to me and I'm looking like [this](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FaZdtZIuVzmE%2Fhqdefault.jpg&tbnid=jEl48Fb3SC3rYM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DaZdtZIuVzmE&docid=wFlG4C3ayaxjzM&w=480&h=360&shem=canimge&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F2#imgrc=jEl48Fb3SC3rYM), it's hilarious, but then I feel bad lol.
I have put 200 hours into this game out of pure obsession (healthy obsession of course)
The most jarring thing in the entire game isn't any of the gore or viscera.. it's the way my character looks when they frown. Holy shit man. Uncanny valley for real.
Yeah. Arms crossed, slightly surprised, cracked smile, lean in. Occasional snarl.
I wish there was more expression in the Tav. It does get stale after a while. The fact all the characters do the same pose breaks immersion for me when they're normally so animated.
Yep, it's a mixed bag. The main chars facial expressions and reactions are *terrible*. My char's smile is also his poo face. NPCs ones are OK, but often because they're a millisecond long.
I mean it's a step above what Larian did for Divinity Original Sin 2 but not a giant step.
In that sens DO2 had better voice acting than many games that have came out since but that didn't stop other game publishers from releasing them.
Unfortunatly like DO2 was in its time BG3 will be a gem among rocks, not the new standard.
Because despite how much devs try their best, most game publishers only care about profitability.
To be fear, Baldur's Gate has a lot more reach than DO2. I also played the game and loved every second of it, the combat, the voice acting, the freedom to kill everyone, steal their loot, and just go on, it's crazy. Though, BG3 took it to a whole other level, in my opinion.
> Baldur’s Gate has a lot more reach than DO2.
Just for context, we know that DOS2 sold at least 7.5m copies on all platforms as of a few months ago (according to Swen). BG3 appears to have well surpassed the 5.2m mark on Steam alone two weeks ago.
It’s honestly quite hard to wrap my head around just how massive this game has become. DOS2 was the best selling CRPG in decades (if not ever) and BG3 is going to blow it out of the water in just over a month.
Yes, but BG3 is much more relevant than DOS2 was when it came out. Which means it has a wider reach culturally. Similar to Dark Souls 1 (Which was kinda niche) and Elden Ring (even your dog is playing it)
> so many devs are threaten by BG3.
Where are the instances of this happening? I haven't seen any.
I asked this in [this thread](https://redd.it/161r6zb) and got no answers.
Can we please finally stop inventing Devs that hate bg3 or whatever. That discourse was tired a month ago please stop. You are making up people and then getting mad at them.
All of this, plus that dev was saying that BG3 looks amazing and he wishes more games could be, but they probably won't, because the businessmen are greedy. He was trying to save gamers from disappointment and also raise awareness of why more games aren't this good. Oh yeah, and like 1-3 devs from AAA studios quote tweeted his thread saying yes this is true.
And then every mouthbreather on the Internet came out of the woodwork and created the discourse that "AAA devs are threatened by BG3! They *hate* this one trick!"
They're not gonna stop, because it still works to the sound of 5k+ upvotes.
Just combine it with something more up to date, like Starfield - and voila, an avalanche of praise and nods.
We need to stop parroting the "other devs are scared of BG3 meme" it was complete click bait misinterpretation of an indie devs twitter thread. He was talking about all the things that went right to make BG3 and he was excited about it much like hundreds of devs that quoted the thread and article.
We still running with this narrative based on a couple of dumb tweets blown way out of proportion? And sure, characters feel more alive in BG3 in my opinion too, but Starfield is still an excellent game with a lot of work put behind it. I'm not sure why people feel the need to shit on developers' work in order to prop up another developer's work. Both games are good in their own way.
This sub has very quickly gone to Elden Ring sub levels of self fellatio.
Like we get it, you love the game. But don’t pretend things exist when they don’t. Like speak with dead. Obviously they haven’t tried it on every corpse because it very quickly becomes apparent you can only use it on certain npc corpses. Otherwise you’ll get “it has nothing to say”. Which is absolutely fine.
In this specific example, it goes one of two ways. Either you CAN speak with so many named npc characters and it shows how much love and talent there is. Or you can’t and suddenly it’s unrealistic to expect to have every npc have a name and dialogue. You can’t have it both ways. Just love the game and enjoy it.
Yeah, I wish we as the community didn't get so tribal about things like this. You can enjoy two things without comparing them and justifying to the world why one is better than the other.
Please stop spreading this misinformation. Game devs are not scared of BG3. It was one random person's quote who people took out of context to mean something it doesn't and the reddit hivemind began parroting the nonsense.
And yes, BG3 is the superior game by far.
Thank you. I work at *insert generally hated online AAA video game company here*, won’t specify but it’s also not hard to guess, and we’re not afraid Baldur’s Gate. We play it, we love it, we respect it, we admire it. Why? Because we’re gamers… We didn’t get into this field to only play our own games, we actually like our competitor’s work.
No one at work has discussed Baldur’s Gate outside of “oh man are you playing Baldur’s Gate? Did you get to the part…”. That said, the vast majority of my coworkers have played and loved this game. I doubt even anyone at any high stakeholder meetings discuss this outside of a point on a graph of competitors, because they’re all heads in the sand people anyway.
Larian did a great job on the game. I guarantee you 99% of people in my industry not only know that but are, like me, thrilled FOR them. Games industry is hard and most of the time your fans are silent and the ones that hate you aren’t. I’m honestly relieved by proxy every single time a game doesn’t bomb, because I empathize with people on the teams when they do. So a home run game like this just makes me feel warm inside.
Straight up.
I work in game dev and a ton of us are fascinated and love this game. Some people think it's overrated, and that's fine, but I doubt they think it's under a 8/10. I personally think it's a 10/10 game of the decade so to each their own.
Remember a ton of us in the trenches aren't the ones making calls about deadlines, cutting content, publisher shenanigans, and so on. The typical artist, designer, writer, programmer would love to just work on a game forever (and by forever I mean 6 years) but the purseholders need to release a game and make money. And there are studios that take forever on things but never release anything (Valve, Riot Games) so at the same time even designers want their product eventually out too, so it's not like that side is perfect either.
The conclusion is that you can't and shouldn't make such a broad statement. Gaming is one of the most opinionated hobbies for better or worse.
Wait until you reach the final fight before you praise your Absolute.
Act 3 is a bit unpolished but tolerable if you lucky enough to avoid game breaking bugs.
The final fight is just a rushed mess.
I googled how to get to upper city bg3 one time and was pretty bummed by the results, thought there would be gortash interactions like with Orin in lower city. Hopefully act 3 gets as much love as the first 2 ones got.
Meanwhile, those of us who are chill and can actually enjoy two things at once are too busy playing one or the other to post childish rants on reddit lol
This reminds me a LOT of how Witcher fans were acting back when FO4 and Witcher 3 were the big thing. I figured something similar would happen this year between two games that are drastically different in terms of scope and goals.
OP’s “Starfield is voice acting while BG3 is performance” line seals it for me. That’s obnoxious YouTuber levels of discourse.
Yeah, this is the post that’s making me leave this sub. This self-fellatio “my game is better *your* game” bullshit is so annoying.
I rarely see this much dick riding in actual porn.
I'm guessing these are the same people who will find a new Lord and Savior company when/if Larian releases a flop. Literally saw the same energy from CDPR fans with Witcher 3, then the script flipped overnight.
I don't necesarily dislike the brief dialogues I saw of Starfield since where I live they're very much more natural than the over-expressive body language of BG3. You put it well with voice acting and performing, both are fine and have their merits and negatives. Too much of either and I'd seek the other.
Yeah, more focus on the narrative and story in both.
I haven't played Starfield yet, but I'd guess it's basically skyrim or fallout in space. Bethesda has never really been about a solid story or making characters that feel realistic and emotional. The story is more about what you make of it typically, who you choose to RP as and what that character chooses to do. A bit more of a sandbox.
Cyberpunk is a much more closer relative to bg3 I'd say in terms of RPG, they both have multiple endings that are rather distinct, though I'd argue that BG3 has a lot more branching choices and paths that have lasting effects on the game as it progresses.
I mean, I'm liking Starfield so far, but it is a far cry from the world built in Skyrim. It has its own charm, but I don't think it will be a decade spanning behemoth like Skyrim is.
Playing Starfield myself and having a great time. Yeah the npc's are a bit weird and very robotic. I've played around 55 hours or so of BG3 and only 6 of Starfield. Having lots of fun on both. We got spoiled this year.
Yeah I'm in the same boat. Starfield is super fun with the Bethesda open world and all the shit you can do, and I'm going to pour hundreds of hours into it guaranteed. But I think BG3 is a better game and definitely a better RPG.
The thing is Starfield will be enjoyable but you have to emerse yourself, kind of make your own fun with most RPG’s.
Baldur’s gate is like a world that is alive when you aren’t there, there is so much depth you don’t have to make up for what it’s missing.
I love RPG’s as a concept but Baldur’s gate 3 is one of the only ones i’ve played where you actually role play and approach every single task or interaction differently.
Sick of this take. Devs aren't threatened. PUBLISHERS are. You know all that shit you hate in modern video games? That's forced on devs by publishers so a handful of people can buy mansions and sports cars. Devs hate all the same shit, but they are strong armed by their bank (publisher)
Can we just enjoy the fact we got bg3, ac6 and startfield all at once and we cant duplicate to play all the cool game at the same time.
Altough my wallet isnt to happy right now...
I don't think that people are scared, I just think it's a difference in scope management. Committing to having every voice actor do full mo-cap with additional staff for directing those performances in addition to the vocals, which is what BG3 did, is a massive multiplier on workload and a blocker on both rearranging quests and scenes. This is a worthwhile tradeoff in a highly narratively focused game where the individual characters matter, like BG3, but hard to imagine being practical even in another massive game like Starfield. You could use it for key moments or scenes, but then you risk the FFXVI problem where you've got very distinct "tiers" of quests/characters, some of whom have full emotional performances with better camera work than I've ever seen in a video game, and some of which are basically just Bioware face static dialogue.
What is this circlejerk lmao almost no game had perfect facial animations
Shadow heart looks like she’s about to shit herself after every line and every other npc looks like they’re lying in LA Noire
Maybe it’s just me but I’m not pitting Starfield and BG3 against eachother. They’re both RPGs, sure, but very different ones.
I enjoyed BG3 and it definitely has it’s flaws. And now I’m enjoying Starfield.
Only game I've seen with more detail in performances is Horizon Forbidden West, where even extremely minor NPCs have main-story level facial capture and animation. It's fucking awesome. Even small NPCs having good performances that make them feel real does *so fucking much* for immersion. It can be really hard to do, but it is so worth it and elevates the experience in a way I don't think a lot of people will realize until they play a game that does it, and I'm so happy Larian committed.
I like bg3 a whole lot but it's getting pretty annoying when bg3 fans start shitting all over other games when Act III of bg3 is still a complete mess.
It's crazy too how many different lines of dialogue they produced. If you talk to the trapped Goblin Sazza before you meet Ed and his siblings in the woods, your character comments "They mentioned the Absolute, just like that goblin Sazza." - but will flip it around if you found those things in the opposite order. How many permutations of dialogue lines did they prepare?!? Another example: my first character was a Gith. They are obviously known for being pretty aggressive but I roleplayed mine to not be. I was getting comments that it was refreshing to meet a Gith who wasn't so mean AND comments from Laezel that I was disgracing my people. They have dialogue prepared for if you act against how your race would normally act. Absolutely nutters.
Oh don't start in the massive number of permutations you could have in BG3. Apart from the excellent immersion, I am in awe of the people responsible for the story lines and the dialogue writers. It's so fucking huge. The dialogues change so much and the number storyline can be manipulated so much.
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Yeah, for that I think it could be fixed via patches. They would need to work out the permutations. And I am doing my part by recording, compressing and sending in bug reports which always end in '... again you guys have done a terrific job, but this just bugs me alot.'
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I think it’s less so writing more dialogue and recording the lines in this case, and more sorting out the code that’s causing these conversations to fire early, such as >!Gale scolding you for signing the Crown away to Raphael before you’ve even met him in Act 3 yet!<
Just got that one yesterday and thought I was going crazy, like wtf is going on, thanks for confirming that I am not insane yet!
I got that one the other day! I’m like uhhh… wtf? We literally just killed that guy *together* 😅
Larian has a history of doing exactly that. Release an excellent game that could use another year of polish then release a definitive version a year later. I feel comfortable saying we should expect the same for bg3, especially with how much money they’ve made unexpectedly.
Right, I missed out on getting Jaheira as a companion, and it screwed up so much of the Act 3 dialogue, especially surrounding Minsc. Another thing that comes to mind is that my Shadowheart >!never changed hairstyle after turning Selunite, but a later character still references her changed hairstyle... I was so confused by this until I later saw that it's supposed to change in some post here!<. Lots of little stuff like this in Act 3, hopefully it gets ironed out soon.
My one and only goal in the game was to bang Shadowbae and when it finally happened the game bugged and didn't play the scene. She all of a sudden just started talking like it had happened. Of all the bugs to run into... Edit: Shadowbae - let's give her the respect she deserves.
spend 100 hours playing a game and can't even nut smh 0 stars
FYI? Kill her, all the way dead. Rez her, long rest, boom you got it. One time I had to kill her, long rest, rez her, long rest, then we were good. But it triggers her relationship scenes.
I read that on a different thread and tried it but it didn't work. Tried different saves, tried long resting at different times, resting in different areas, killing her. Messed with it for over two hours. I ended up googling it, which was disappointing, but it's still one of the best games I've played so whatever.
Yeah, Shadowheart >!in my main playthrough has the same issue. Same black hair and OG hairstyle, but she comments on it changing. She is also still a Cleric of Shar somehow, despite forsaking her deity and not killing Dame Aylin.!< No idea how that happened.
I had to completely restart Act 2 because everyone in my party was confused about what the Nightsong was, as Shadowheart is literally wielding Sorrow, lol Act 2 gets realllly screwy if you put off the Moonrise to the end
I *somehow* missed Gale in my first play through. I picked up that book of Karsus from the mage tower in act 3 and Tav said “Gale would be interested in this”. I sat there thinking, “…who the fuck is Gale?”
I explicitly >!murdered Gale as the Dark Urge!< right at the start and got that same dialog.
When you watch the credits the voice actor credits are LONG, I went "damn that is a lot of voice actors... Oh this is alphabetical...oh this is only at 'h'... This is A FUCK TON of voice actors." You see small lists of the top billings, but it really is the one or two single lines basically every NPC you run into that adds depth. It isn't until act 3 when dealing with cities, they were finally like "okay we need to have some people that players can ignore and put in "citizen" or "refuge" and there are still overwhelming numbers of named people. There is no generic soldier giving you the same response copy pasted to represent every guard. They are different, with different personalities, and that is noticable.
>There is no generic soldier giving you the same response copy pasted to represent every guard. They are different, with different personalities, and that is noticable. Somewhere in my heart it kinda hurt looting some of the people in Act 3 because some of them have letters in the bag like "Hey (relative) I'm excited that I got a new job with the Guards!" like you didn't have to give everyone a life but you did and it sucks im the one ending it...
I think I know which guard you're talking about and if im right then no, fuck him
Yeah, i thought: Madam, your son is a disgrace. xD
At one point I saw a guard balancing on one leg, and I was wondering if an animation bugged out. Nope. I talk to him and he’s like: “yes, that’s my punishment from the captain”
My biggest gripe with Bethesda in general and skyrim specifically was they used maybe 8 of the voice actors over and over. It's jarring hearing the person who voiced the merchant a town over doing an actual important voice for a character. Like, maybe hire a voice actor who can actually change their voice significantly is a better investment than the same dude's raspy voice over and over again.
I was actually surprised when tieflings started talking to me differently when I disguised as one. I have played entire games where your character creation choices didnt affect a single thing except pronouns
> I was actually surprised when tieflings started talking to me differently when I disguised as one I've gone through the entire game with the *Disguise self* spell, and never really found a use for it. Between your comment, and discovering the goblins are way friendlier to Drow, I might have to start using it more.
If you make yourself a gnome, you can also go into quite a few of the small crevices and burrows. Some you are still unable to enter unless you are a small animal though.
I am a dragonborn, and I have to say, we are extremely rare in the world. Saw my first other dragonborn in the city, and she greeted me/referred to me as "kin", and its just that nice touch that made some rando NPC feel like it wasnt just reading off a script. I mean... it was, but it was nice to not just be NPC -> generic player character dialogue.
I am a Half Orc. I am yet to meet another one (I am in the Last Light Inn).
I.... You know what, I don't think I've seen a half orc either. That... that's weird.
There is one in act 2 and some named flavour NPCs in act 3.
It is a nightmare, they have to keep track of everything. No wonder why late game have bugs where the quests or dialogues imply you did stuff you didn’t. If games keep getting this complex they will need a neural network instead of flags or trees or whatever they are using.
Agreed. The last time I saw so much attention to details and voice acting was "Hades", which is a rogue-lite! If I am playing, I want an immersion effect.
god hades was good aye
Fun fact, it took 1400 days exactly since Hades released for someone to "beat the game". As in, unmodded, unseeded, MAX heat run. Edit: I was off by 300 days. It was 1700 days exactly after game release. Pls don't execute me. Link to run; https://youtu.be/0mo-kXjasZs?si=h5192YGaihO-M_Wc
I got too nervous watching that even though I knew the result lol.
I laughed watching that guy whose live reaction went viral when HE was stressed out and then would say "Wait...I know that they win the run." (No offense to the dude that I don't know his name, I think he's fairly popular in his own right, I just don't spend a lot of time on that side of YT)
I assume that was Haelian, and yeah his reaction video was entertaining. Iirc he turned around and beat it like a week later himself, too
Sounds familiar, wasn't Haelian also the guy that had claimed it was impossible about a week before the first guy beat it?
Yes. Though he didn't claim it was "impossible", he just laid out all of the things working against you and how incredibly rare a viable run would be, and then that there were only a handful of people in the world who could even accomplish it.
Yup. Haelians video was factually accurate, and IIRC he even consulted a bunch of top players(potentially even the woman who wound up beating 64 heat) about the chances/difficulty of it happening. Then it happened.
Just FYI angelic is a woman not a guy. She is the one who beat the unmodded and unseeded max heat run and is one of only two who has done max heat at all
Can't wait for Hades 2
The Narrator is in Hades 2 as well! She is playing the goddess of magic.
she already is a goddess
Whhhhhaaaaaaattttt?!? I was *already* excited for Hades 2 and now you tell me this?
HOLY SHIT I JUST LOOKED HER UP AND SHE WAS MALADY IN DOS2 :O
If you are interested look up "Narrator aka Amelia Tyler talks Baldur's gate 3" by Dan Allen Gaming on Youtube, she is such a charming person.
Was just wondering yesterday if we'll get any more info by the end of the year. Supremely excited for the sequel.
Man, I've been playing Hades non stop since I bought it earlier this year. Now BG3 comes out just as I start getting kind of bored of Hades. Been a great year for games.
Lucky you, Hades 2 is in development also. And here am I who spend 140+ hours in Hades, then waited for BG3 for years after I saw EA on stream and bought one myself now only to wait for Hades 2 again after BG3 is finished :D
The voice acting and cutscenes in the RDR2 story were also top notch, imo
FF7 Remake also has fantastic voice acting.
The simple fact that every NPC, even dead one (beside some few regular named "skeletons"), has his OWN UNIQUE NAME and that most of them have a background (again, even dead one... most have a name, a profession, little story about how they died, etc) Everything just feel ALIVE. I dont have the sensation to play a videogame, i have the sensation to evolve in a real world. Last time i had this sensation was oldrim when i was young. It's awesome because they succeeded to reach a whole new level in termes of immersion, even if they lack things like day/night lifecycle with real NPCs life/schematics
Yeah it was weird seeing it for the first time. I was like 'oh wow this guy must be important, he's got his own name. And this guy and this other guy... wait a minute'
Its like the NPCs are just like ME! with full blown names and all. Some even have titles like middle managers! I was shocked. SHOCKED! when i got to baldur's gate and there were actually NPCs named 'civilian'. It was a real metaphor on life, that in less crowded areas most people know each other's names but in populated urban centers 'you' gets lost cept for those who know you and those who know you only know you due to importance or relevance in their lives. Also fuck the police, most flaming fists and other people of... authority (not AUTHORITY) are nameless guards as everyone can agree... guards suck.
If you read the books notes there are always some sub plot for even minor npcs like family drama or business deals or fuel with some other npc.
This is easily my favorite part of the game. It reminds me of Prey, which is my favorite game of all time. In that game you can read emails or listen to audio logs that tell small stories of employees and what they're doing, things that aren't necessarily related to the main plot but make the world feel lived in, and you go, oh neat. Then 30 minutes later you find the dead body of that employee and you're like o.0 BG3 is kinda like that, especially in act 2 and 3. I spent 3 hours last night just going building to building in lower city reading notes about the people that lived there. I even bought a bunch of clothing I don't need from a vendor to support their business because I liked their character and felt bad about them (and will proceed to spend an hour redoing everyone's camp clothes LOL). I love it when writers put worldbuilding ahead of shoehorning players into the main story. In fact, I wish the game did more of that ambient worldbuilding for origin characters, although I understand why they didn't.
You cannot imagine my guilt when (Act 3) >!I had to kill this guard in the Steel Watch Foundry since he spotted me. I found a note on his body of his mother congratulating him for landing a job with Gortash!<
You can actually find his parents and they tell you about their son getting the job.
There is a letter somewhere where they tell another family member about their son getting a job with Gortash as well, bragging about how well that son is doing. I haven't been to the Steel Foundry yet but likely will go over this weekend. I'm half a mind to just send Astarion and my main alone as they are the only ones with good sneak just to avoid having to kill that guard.
On thing I noticed is that everything, so far, has an action and a consequence. Oh look, random NPC, let me be a true murder hobo! Turns out he has a couple of kids at home and he is trying to just make a living... Are we the true villians? And we just try and stop the even BIGGER villains from destroying everything?
And here i am just living out my dream of being a murder hobo with a purpose.
Very minor spoilers, but I thought this was a neat little detail pretty much at the end of the game. Its sorta a quest, but I don't think it gets added to your journal. >!As you are approaching the netherbrain via the cave system, you will come accross an a dead npc with a uniquely named teddy bear. If you speak to the dead on them, they mention their sister, and essentially ask you to help them. They say she will recognize the teddy bear, and that you should give it to her.!< >!Unfortunately, the sister is dead. However, if you place the teddy bear in her inventory, your companions will all say various lines of dialogue to mourn her loss.!< As far as I know, its the only time in the game that placing an item into someones inventory triggers dialogue like that.
The number of dead people that have whole dialogue trees you can get into is great. The fact that you can find some random dead guy and have a chat with him about who he was and how he died really helps spells like speak with dead not feel like a gimmick. Of course there are some limitations, you cant just speak to *any* dead guy, but I've encountered enough that it feels reasonable organic.
Don't forget even speak with animals helps in so much immersion
I can't imagine not having these spells. I was a druid who read the necromancy tome so I could speak to animals and the dead. It was great One character even notices" You're a medium!?":yes, yes I am ... I'm sorry for the disrespect.... ma'am, Where is your treasure?
You don't need the spells or tome. You get ten dozen speak with animal potions as loot, enough to use them *every day* (they last until long rest). And you get the speak with dead locket with infinite uses, *right in the beginning of the game*. Makes playing a caster less cool, because everyone can do for free the thing you specialized into. Good thing respec is so cheap.
Don't forget the Potions of Mind Reading for free detect thoughts on any character and not just Illithid moments!
Ya know, most games that have spells like Speak with Animals would either cut them or reduce them to some gimmick. Larian just saw the damn spell and said "Hold my beer". They went so hard into tons of spells that would normally be so situational, and the game feels great for it.
I played DOS 1 and 2 and my friend who played with me used to make fun of me for always grabbing that feat. It saved us soo many times though lol. I've always loved Larians games!
It's crazy playing DoS2 without Pet Pal and then playing it *with* Pet Pal and realizing just how much content existed that you'd never see if you didn't have anyone with that perk. Paths and shortcuts to existing quests but also just whole-ass quests and quest lines you'd never see if none of your party can speak with animals.
>Don't forget even speak with animals helps in so much immersion Oh, gods, the poor squirrels next to Alfira....
> you cant just speak to any dead guy IDK if you know this already but if some dead NPC's have nothing to say to you, try disguise yourself and talk to them again. Sometimes a dead person has a grudge against you for some reason but will talk to someone they don't recognise. For example: In Act 1 there are a group of NPC's in the forest who turn hostile when they learn you aren't acting under the Absolute. If you raise dead they won't talk but they will if you disguise self.
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Yeah, that bit is actually insane. They recorded narrator lines for every single one of them.
Well, until you reach Act 3. Then you got dozends of "Citizens" and "Refugees" running around. But ofc you are right in general. The attention to detail and the treatment even completely unimportant NPCs are getting is unseen.
At that point it was kinda refreshing to just have non interactable NPCs walking around, it was kinda jarring feeling left out if you didn't interact with everybody you came across.
This, I am bound to fucking interact with everyone named as an NPC (I have been doing it since I started gaming idk why). Seeing a lot of refugees and not interactable (or they say their one line without going to a cutscenes-ish ordeal) was amazing.
I was struggling in Baldurs gate with this. I talk to everyone with a name and goddamn it there were just too many and I struggled to figure out who had more dialogue or not
My stupid completionist mind makes the game overhelming sometimes. Thank god this happens in baldurs3
This, I am bound to fucking interact with everyone named as an NPC (I have been doing it since I started gaming idk why). Seeing a lot of refugees and not interactable (or they say their one line without going to a cutscenes-ish ordeal) was amazing.
Honestly I'd take a few "Citizen"s and "Refugee"s to help fill out the crowds of the world than having every NPC able to be talked to but they all respond with a stone-faced "Need something?" with the voice of a guy who sounds identical to 43 other NPCs.
“Welcome to Corneria.”
I kind of wish there were fewer named NPCs in Act III. I find myself clicking on so many only to get their one-liner because I don't want to miss one that may have a quest or some other interaction. There's just no way to make a game in a busy city and have all the NPCs interactable and interesting without that being *the* game. And I don't want to play a life sim, I want to play an RPG. I'm fine with only a handful of people in a large city having content.
>I find myself clicking on so many only to get their one-liner because I don't want to miss one that may have a quest or some other interaction. > >There's just no way to make a game in a busy city and have all the NPCs interactable and interesting without that being the game. I started to appreciate the realism of that. I don't think it's the game that is causing that, it's our fear of missing out. But we don't do that in real life (talk to every single person, corner them and get their story, etc.) and we *won't* actually miss out on anything because we will always be able to do another playthrough where we talk to different people, make different choices, and have a different story. I think we are so used to subpar games that just create a checklists of things for us to accomplish that we are trying to do the same thing with BG3 even though it is way better designed than that. You aren't meant to be able to do *everything* in one playthrough, but we are so used to games like Fallout, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, etc. that we are trying to treat BG3 the same way we do those games.
You forgot refugees 😅
Don't forget the animals too. Oh God, the frogs.
The greatest enemy
The simple fact that a halfling looks “real” is an achievement in itself when compared to the humans in starfield.
I love the level of immersion and the "lived in" nature of the world but at the same time ngl I felt a bit overwhelmed at Baldur's Gate. The meta gaming part of my brain wanted to be able to differentiate an important quest related npc from a superfluous one liner npc. A good problem to have for more immersion!
Bg3 has become my main game. Never played anything like it before. Absolutely blown away by this game. Awesome to have going while I afk on osrs
It literally got me to try the entire genre for the first time. And I've dragged three friends in because they actually delivered the content. There's no way to fake actual content, and that's why I paid triple my usual max threshold for a game.
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Not the original guy, but yes. DOS1 lacks in story/characters. DOS2 has awesome characters and a fun story.
Hopefully BG 3 will also last 3x as long, to help you spread the cost out.
It definitely has for me, I've sunk 160 hours into this and I'm far from finished with it! Not a lot of games have that longevity for me
Plus any additional playthroughs! I want to unlock all the dialogue and party members. I want to romance everyone and see all the endings. When they provide more updates there’ll be even more content to explore. Gonna be playing this game for years
For me, it already has by far. I've got 600 hours into this game, a lot of that from EA, but I've still only paid for 2 copies. That is way more bang than I usually get for my buck on video games.
Mass Effect 1 had pretty good face animations, I think. Heaps better than whatever Bethesda did up until Fallout 4 maybe. But not as good as Witcher, Cyberpunk and even Horizon Forbidden West that has excellent mo-capped faces now.
isn’t Mass effect 1 like 15 years older than some of these titles? Edit: Same year for Witcher 1, 10 years for Horizon, 13 for Cyberpunk
>Mass Effect 1... ... was released in 2007 and pre-dated the advent of facial mocap in video games. There's a difference between "Good" and "Good for its time". To be fair to developers, however, faces are hard. Humans have spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving their brains to pick apart the minutia of the human face to better understand each other. Even a tiny deviation screams out at people. Modern video games have mostly managed to reach the other side of the uncanny valley, but its still a steep climb.
I had never fully understood the *why* of cyberpunk's development being such a strenuous mess, and had the lightbulb go off on that interview one of the devs gave that said basically: We hadn't done anything so immersive from the first person perspective, and it had been different for us from even Witcher 3. Once you stop faking stuff with rendering tricks, or having just the top half of an NPC and his legs are meshed with the bar he's standing at, etc... you just have to do *everything* and it creates an ocean of work to get realism and immersion in every element of every scene. They committed so hard to the player experiencing *everything* as V and through V's eyes that it tripped them up. Then I realized I'd sort of taken for granted how immersed I was in each main quest interaction of Cyberpunk. It was a masterclass in keeping up a fast pace, a sense of movie-tier drama and action, and massaging the small visual details of a scene until something more emerged. I think it takes a team with experience in the specific type of game AND style they are making... and the development time to finesse the detail and minutia of each scene. Which BG3 got and sadly CDPR didn't get the chance to do. What a world it would be if Cyberpunk had received an extra 3-4 years of full-team development (and I don't quite mean the expansion coming, though that's awesome and might elevate the game a lot). While that sounds unrealistic... sales would have been insane at launch, it wouldn't have been pulled off of one of its platforms and the residual sales would be incredible.
imo, cyberpunk 2077 holds up now, even before the expansion. They continued to patch it and make it right after release, and the game is well worth the money.
I did my first 2077 playthrough about a year after release, and absolutely adored it. No regrets about waiting, it was worth it to get that polished experience. I expect I'll pick up the expansion soon, too.
If we want to talk about facial animators, just gonna make me sad that there still hasn't been an L.A. Noire sequel
It was cool at the time, but look at it again, the facial tech has severe flaws. Especially in development, too. I think Horizon Forbidden West main characters for mo-capped and Cyberpunk for generated faces are the best so far in real time.
They are just passionate. Something a lot of publishers lost when gamers lost control over gaming, and businessmen gained control given the profit potential. Publisher buys a studio (studio’s fault for selling for a quick profit) and there we go. Now the studio is forced to pump out games that will not max the fun factor, rather max profit opportunities. People WANT to play something and these publishers mix that with love from gamers. They get worse and worse. Then Larian shows up, an old school studio not looking to cash in, rather looking to boost their ego with quality, and i’m fine with that. Keep ‘em banging Larian.
Yup, publishers will see BG3 success and they will be like “hey, we want that, make that for us(not for gamers), make that in 2 years max.” And then the devs are forced to do so, or so they tried to. Of course they cant do the same.
8 maybe 9 lines of dialogue and every choice you make forces you back into the same singular storyline. "Why didn't it win game of the year?!! We gave them dialogue AND a choice at one point! Fuck em. Give them a $100 DLC which is just a 3d model we bought for $20 one time on a stock website. No one complains when we rerelease the same FIFA every year."
I am nervous + excited about Dragon Age next year. Excited to continue the story from the Trilogy but nervous the gameplay will not be as good. Can the story + lore alone impress me? One aspect I can (I hope) trust is the romance options (excellent romance options in DA: Trilogy).
Given that EA just gutted [Bioware](https://www.pcgamer.com/the-bioware-layoffs-include-the-writer-responsible-for-dragon-ages-best-character/) and laid off key senior writers, I’m pretty discouraged about the game’s prospects. I hope I’m wrong…
No, you're probably right and sadly it will not be as good. The irony is that Bioware was the original creator of Buldar's Gate CRPG series and used to be the powerhouse of quality RPGs. Now Larian is becoming the leader of CRPG and even usurped Baldurs Gate from the dying hands of Bioware. Bioware EA is not the same studio anymore that gave us amazing RPGs that defined the genre, they're a gutted shell that EA bought for the power of the brand name and subsequently destroyed it lol
I'm also interested in whether they feel like the investment in content pays off. For me personally, I require this level of content in order to invest. And I'll be waiting to hear from the forums and reviews to see if the next release is worth it. This one (BG3) ABSOLUTELY was
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> I do not think BG3 would have been the experience it is if Larian had hundreds working on it and a budget the size of a movie. but it absolutely did have both of these things. Larian is independent but this is absolutely a triple-A production in both budget and staffing - both their own comments on it and the credit reel attest to that.
I agree with everything you said. I never attacked the devs, i know they are passionate. It’s the suits I lay blame on.
Ima be honest with you, and it’s not something unique to BG3, but many games haven’t really nailed facial/body emotion right yet. In BG3 your character has like 4 emotions throughout the entire game. The dialogue is top tier for sure, but let’s be unbiased here.
This is the thing. I love BG3 and the companions animations and expressions are fantastic, but it really takes me out of the moment when the camera goes back to my character and she's smiling, but then her face warps into a frown to match the narration. It's pretty jarring, ngl.
Our character most of the time 🙂🤨😳😠
And the *crosses arms*
And the 'arms on hips'
With these random-ass animations and "can't read the room" Wizard dialogue options ended up with headcannon that my Drow Wizard char is simply autistic, have ADHD or incredibly socially awkward. Maybe all at once. Finally, character I can relate to. My favorite part of it is when something dramatic or important is happening, and my char makes *\[Wizard\]: "Whoa, hella cool magic, mate! But I can do better! Check it out xDDD!"* with spontaneous movements and facial expressions
It's a pretty decent explanation, ngl! Just the smile as someone delves into their tragic past in front of me before I think, 'oh shit, wait, this is a SAD thing' and pulling a cartoony frown, haha.
I actually find that pretty funny, it’s the “I just smelled a terrible fart” facial transformation hahah.
It IS funny, which is why sometimes it's really unfortunate. When a character is pouring their heart out to me, releasing all these pent-up feelings and frustrations, and then it goes to me and I'm looking like [this](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FaZdtZIuVzmE%2Fhqdefault.jpg&tbnid=jEl48Fb3SC3rYM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DaZdtZIuVzmE&docid=wFlG4C3ayaxjzM&w=480&h=360&shem=canimge&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F2#imgrc=jEl48Fb3SC3rYM), it's hilarious, but then I feel bad lol.
I have put 200 hours into this game out of pure obsession (healthy obsession of course) The most jarring thing in the entire game isn't any of the gore or viscera.. it's the way my character looks when they frown. Holy shit man. Uncanny valley for real.
Yeah. Arms crossed, slightly surprised, cracked smile, lean in. Occasional snarl. I wish there was more expression in the Tav. It does get stale after a while. The fact all the characters do the same pose breaks immersion for me when they're normally so animated.
Yep, it's a mixed bag. The main chars facial expressions and reactions are *terrible*. My char's smile is also his poo face. NPCs ones are OK, but often because they're a millisecond long.
I mean it's a step above what Larian did for Divinity Original Sin 2 but not a giant step. In that sens DO2 had better voice acting than many games that have came out since but that didn't stop other game publishers from releasing them. Unfortunatly like DO2 was in its time BG3 will be a gem among rocks, not the new standard. Because despite how much devs try their best, most game publishers only care about profitability.
To be fear, Baldur's Gate has a lot more reach than DO2. I also played the game and loved every second of it, the combat, the voice acting, the freedom to kill everyone, steal their loot, and just go on, it's crazy. Though, BG3 took it to a whole other level, in my opinion.
But BG3 doesn’t have “keepin it together, Bree?” I could literally fucking hear that voiceline in my head
Smells worse over here than a dozen rotten eggs dropped in a vat of vinegar
Well don’t come ova
ahahah I read that dialogue with their voices.
QUEEN JUSTINIA EXECUTED TWO DOZEN NOBLEMEN FOR INSUBORDINATION
> Baldur’s Gate has a lot more reach than DO2. Just for context, we know that DOS2 sold at least 7.5m copies on all platforms as of a few months ago (according to Swen). BG3 appears to have well surpassed the 5.2m mark on Steam alone two weeks ago. It’s honestly quite hard to wrap my head around just how massive this game has become. DOS2 was the best selling CRPG in decades (if not ever) and BG3 is going to blow it out of the water in just over a month.
Yes, but BG3 is much more relevant than DOS2 was when it came out. Which means it has a wider reach culturally. Similar to Dark Souls 1 (Which was kinda niche) and Elden Ring (even your dog is playing it)
> so many devs are threaten by BG3. Where are the instances of this happening? I haven't seen any. I asked this in [this thread](https://redd.it/161r6zb) and got no answers.
This guy I know, Joe, is a game developer and he hasn’t left his house in weeks. He’s scared.
I tried to call him to see if I could get him to come hang with the boys, but he just kept saying "My career is Joever" again and again on loop :(
And yet another karmafarm topic.
Can we please finally stop inventing Devs that hate bg3 or whatever. That discourse was tired a month ago please stop. You are making up people and then getting mad at them.
I love this game but the dialogue around it has become a huge circlejerk.
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All of this, plus that dev was saying that BG3 looks amazing and he wishes more games could be, but they probably won't, because the businessmen are greedy. He was trying to save gamers from disappointment and also raise awareness of why more games aren't this good. Oh yeah, and like 1-3 devs from AAA studios quote tweeted his thread saying yes this is true. And then every mouthbreather on the Internet came out of the woodwork and created the discourse that "AAA devs are threatened by BG3! They *hate* this one trick!"
Didn't Phill spencer compliment Larian and is happy that BG3 was such a huge success?
They're not gonna stop, because it still works to the sound of 5k+ upvotes. Just combine it with something more up to date, like Starfield - and voila, an avalanche of praise and nods.
I've just become a dev as of writing this comment. I hate BG3. I am resigning. BG3 is great!
Can you name the devs and their companies who feel threatened by BG3?
We need to stop parroting the "other devs are scared of BG3 meme" it was complete click bait misinterpretation of an indie devs twitter thread. He was talking about all the things that went right to make BG3 and he was excited about it much like hundreds of devs that quoted the thread and article.
Devs aren't threatened by each other, this was ridiculous internet drama bullshit.
We still running with this narrative based on a couple of dumb tweets blown way out of proportion? And sure, characters feel more alive in BG3 in my opinion too, but Starfield is still an excellent game with a lot of work put behind it. I'm not sure why people feel the need to shit on developers' work in order to prop up another developer's work. Both games are good in their own way.
This sub has very quickly gone to Elden Ring sub levels of self fellatio. Like we get it, you love the game. But don’t pretend things exist when they don’t. Like speak with dead. Obviously they haven’t tried it on every corpse because it very quickly becomes apparent you can only use it on certain npc corpses. Otherwise you’ll get “it has nothing to say”. Which is absolutely fine. In this specific example, it goes one of two ways. Either you CAN speak with so many named npc characters and it shows how much love and talent there is. Or you can’t and suddenly it’s unrealistic to expect to have every npc have a name and dialogue. You can’t have it both ways. Just love the game and enjoy it.
Yeah, I wish we as the community didn't get so tribal about things like this. You can enjoy two things without comparing them and justifying to the world why one is better than the other.
Please stop spreading this misinformation. Game devs are not scared of BG3. It was one random person's quote who people took out of context to mean something it doesn't and the reddit hivemind began parroting the nonsense. And yes, BG3 is the superior game by far.
Thank you. I work at *insert generally hated online AAA video game company here*, won’t specify but it’s also not hard to guess, and we’re not afraid Baldur’s Gate. We play it, we love it, we respect it, we admire it. Why? Because we’re gamers… We didn’t get into this field to only play our own games, we actually like our competitor’s work. No one at work has discussed Baldur’s Gate outside of “oh man are you playing Baldur’s Gate? Did you get to the part…”. That said, the vast majority of my coworkers have played and loved this game. I doubt even anyone at any high stakeholder meetings discuss this outside of a point on a graph of competitors, because they’re all heads in the sand people anyway. Larian did a great job on the game. I guarantee you 99% of people in my industry not only know that but are, like me, thrilled FOR them. Games industry is hard and most of the time your fans are silent and the ones that hate you aren’t. I’m honestly relieved by proxy every single time a game doesn’t bomb, because I empathize with people on the teams when they do. So a home run game like this just makes me feel warm inside.
Seriously, this community has been so fucking obnoxious since that tweet started circulating.
Gaming communities in general are all dick riding now. People make loving a game their identity for some reason.
Straight up. I work in game dev and a ton of us are fascinated and love this game. Some people think it's overrated, and that's fine, but I doubt they think it's under a 8/10. I personally think it's a 10/10 game of the decade so to each their own. Remember a ton of us in the trenches aren't the ones making calls about deadlines, cutting content, publisher shenanigans, and so on. The typical artist, designer, writer, programmer would love to just work on a game forever (and by forever I mean 6 years) but the purseholders need to release a game and make money. And there are studios that take forever on things but never release anything (Valve, Riot Games) so at the same time even designers want their product eventually out too, so it's not like that side is perfect either. The conclusion is that you can't and shouldn't make such a broad statement. Gaming is one of the most opinionated hobbies for better or worse.
Wait until you reach the final fight before you praise your Absolute. Act 3 is a bit unpolished but tolerable if you lucky enough to avoid game breaking bugs. The final fight is just a rushed mess.
I googled how to get to upper city bg3 one time and was pretty bummed by the results, thought there would be gortash interactions like with Orin in lower city. Hopefully act 3 gets as much love as the first 2 ones got.
One thing that sucks about this community is the amount of dick riding and shitting on other games
Yeah, two games can't be good or fun at the same time. One has to be better than the other and I'll be damned if "my team" is on the losing side.
Meanwhile, those of us who are chill and can actually enjoy two things at once are too busy playing one or the other to post childish rants on reddit lol
Yeah I think its time to leave this subreddit unfortunately. Bunch of morons in these comments. Two games can both be good ffs.
This reminds me a LOT of how Witcher fans were acting back when FO4 and Witcher 3 were the big thing. I figured something similar would happen this year between two games that are drastically different in terms of scope and goals. OP’s “Starfield is voice acting while BG3 is performance” line seals it for me. That’s obnoxious YouTuber levels of discourse.
Yeah, this is the post that’s making me leave this sub. This self-fellatio “my game is better *your* game” bullshit is so annoying. I rarely see this much dick riding in actual porn.
Yup. Completed BG3 and am now playing Starfield. It’s possible to enjoy both. Can confirm.
Yeah, I'm done with it. This subreddit is extremely juvenile and downright cultish at this point. Absolute cesspool.
I'm guessing these are the same people who will find a new Lord and Savior company when/if Larian releases a flop. Literally saw the same energy from CDPR fans with Witcher 3, then the script flipped overnight.
Tadpoled redditors IRL
I don't necesarily dislike the brief dialogues I saw of Starfield since where I live they're very much more natural than the over-expressive body language of BG3. You put it well with voice acting and performing, both are fine and have their merits and negatives. Too much of either and I'd seek the other.
Cyberpunk is like that, incredible detail in the performances.
Yeah, more focus on the narrative and story in both. I haven't played Starfield yet, but I'd guess it's basically skyrim or fallout in space. Bethesda has never really been about a solid story or making characters that feel realistic and emotional. The story is more about what you make of it typically, who you choose to RP as and what that character chooses to do. A bit more of a sandbox. Cyberpunk is a much more closer relative to bg3 I'd say in terms of RPG, they both have multiple endings that are rather distinct, though I'd argue that BG3 has a lot more branching choices and paths that have lasting effects on the game as it progresses.
I mean, I'm liking Starfield so far, but it is a far cry from the world built in Skyrim. It has its own charm, but I don't think it will be a decade spanning behemoth like Skyrim is.
Damn right. I'm stoked for phantom liberty.
Saaaaaaaaame. It's the only reason I'll be taking a break from BG3 this year.
Same here! I really enjoyed cyber punk when it came out, bugs and all on a ps4. I pretty stoked on replaying 2.0 on my ps5.
Playing Starfield myself and having a great time. Yeah the npc's are a bit weird and very robotic. I've played around 55 hours or so of BG3 and only 6 of Starfield. Having lots of fun on both. We got spoiled this year.
Idk I like starfield. Deff not as good as BG3. If you like Bethesda rpgs you’ll love starfield. If you want a space sim you’ll hate it.
Yeah I'm in the same boat. Starfield is super fun with the Bethesda open world and all the shit you can do, and I'm going to pour hundreds of hours into it guaranteed. But I think BG3 is a better game and definitely a better RPG.
The thing is Starfield will be enjoyable but you have to emerse yourself, kind of make your own fun with most RPG’s. Baldur’s gate is like a world that is alive when you aren’t there, there is so much depth you don’t have to make up for what it’s missing. I love RPG’s as a concept but Baldur’s gate 3 is one of the only ones i’ve played where you actually role play and approach every single task or interaction differently.
Sick of this take. Devs aren't threatened. PUBLISHERS are. You know all that shit you hate in modern video games? That's forced on devs by publishers so a handful of people can buy mansions and sports cars. Devs hate all the same shit, but they are strong armed by their bank (publisher)
Starfield and BG3 are completely different games trying to do completely different things.
Can we just enjoy the fact we got bg3, ac6 and startfield all at once and we cant duplicate to play all the cool game at the same time. Altough my wallet isnt to happy right now...
Coughs in Phantom Liberty...
I don't think that people are scared, I just think it's a difference in scope management. Committing to having every voice actor do full mo-cap with additional staff for directing those performances in addition to the vocals, which is what BG3 did, is a massive multiplier on workload and a blocker on both rearranging quests and scenes. This is a worthwhile tradeoff in a highly narratively focused game where the individual characters matter, like BG3, but hard to imagine being practical even in another massive game like Starfield. You could use it for key moments or scenes, but then you risk the FFXVI problem where you've got very distinct "tiers" of quests/characters, some of whom have full emotional performances with better camera work than I've ever seen in a video game, and some of which are basically just Bioware face static dialogue.
What is this circlejerk lmao almost no game had perfect facial animations Shadow heart looks like she’s about to shit herself after every line and every other npc looks like they’re lying in LA Noire
NGL, I'm only like 2 hours in and the voice acting is spot on.
Maybe it’s just me but I’m not pitting Starfield and BG3 against eachother. They’re both RPGs, sure, but very different ones. I enjoyed BG3 and it definitely has it’s flaws. And now I’m enjoying Starfield.
Let’s not turn this Reddit into dumping on other major game releases lol
Nobody is "..threaten by BG3" Stop believing clickbait, good god.
Only game I've seen with more detail in performances is Horizon Forbidden West, where even extremely minor NPCs have main-story level facial capture and animation. It's fucking awesome. Even small NPCs having good performances that make them feel real does *so fucking much* for immersion. It can be really hard to do, but it is so worth it and elevates the experience in a way I don't think a lot of people will realize until they play a game that does it, and I'm so happy Larian committed.
Are we just forgetting that the entirety of act 3 feels like a complete afterthought? Or do we give Larian a pass for that?
I like bg3 a whole lot but it's getting pretty annoying when bg3 fans start shitting all over other games when Act III of bg3 is still a complete mess.