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It’s a glitchy, unpolished game that, while being fun and having amazing dialogue, did not necessarily deserve GOTY.
I don’t know about unpolished, wasn’t my cup of tea in a lot of ways but felt very polished in almost every regard I can think of
Inventory management was horrible. Party management was horrible (but I’ve heard they improved it a bit). Camera management was horrible around areas with multiple floors, especially when they weren’t flat. (The othon fight in particular was awful.) I encountered a few soft locks with enemies sort of teleporting to the shadow realm or some shit and getting stuck inside the illusory door in the hag’s den. Specific graphics settings would get unset every time I opened the game. Stuff like a bug preventing tons of Minthara’s dialogue not being in the game. They fixed that, which is great, but there’s just so many little things like this all over the place. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people say it’s polished. It’s fun and I enjoy it, but it’s certainly not polished.
Also, putting a character (Gale) behind a skill check is insane.
The spell VFX don’t feel incredible after level 3.
Me casting Curriculum of Strategy: Artistry of War expecting the coolest shit and getting lame ass skulls that don’t even explode
The romance aspect is a complete waste of time and the time spent on it could have added so much more to the game.
It’s not super fleshed out, but it also isn’t time consuming. Like if you are talking to your companions regularly, we are talking about selecting a couple of extra dialogue options here and there.
I’m talking g air the time the developer put into the whole thing. The coding, the animation, the VO… all the time could have been put to better more useful things.
You can only bone your companion the one time and they turn the lights off in Sharesses Caress.
I want my companions to have a “Let’s fuck” button.
Unpopular for sure ha ha
I dont care for the lengthy skill checks with the dice roll animation
You are able to click again to skip the animation. The rest of the setup though is important to be able to apply bonuses.
Is it though? Surely it can be made less obtrusive
I wish they had done it without Tencent.
Interesting, I didn’t even know Tencent was involved, was their influence very visible?
They don’t have a controlling share on Larian, but they don’t own an insignificant amount of it. I wouldn’t say it is noticeable. Doesn’t have MTX, which I’m sure they would’ve loved.
Isn’t Larian independent?
It’s a situation similar to Epic. The controlling shares are in the hands of the CEO, Swen Vincke in this case. But at least Tencent only owns 30% of Larian, which is better than 49% of Epic, even if the end result is effectively no different.
Do you have a source for that?
This article corroborates the statement that Tencent owns 30% of Larian, but they do not have voting rights. Swen Vincke and his wife control the direction of the company with their combined 70%.
I realized I was actually slightly off base on the Epic share numbers, where Tencent owns slightly less than the 49% I had initially stated. This article claims the number at 40% total capital, which works out to 48.4% issued shares. However, CEO Tim Sweeny remains the majority shareholder of the company, and Epic has apparently stated that Tencent does not have any involvement with the way they run their business (at least as of when this article was written in 2019, I don’t know if things are different now but I have not heard as such.)
The amount of money that was dropped on the making of the game is a clue but unpopular opinion? Who’s a fan of tencent anyway?
For those who don’t have the context Tencent is a huge Chinese company that has many investments in games. They are the type that plays it silently usually invest and they do let the people do their thing then take their share. But the problem is two fold first of all you cannot start saying much abou the ccp tencent wouldn’t send you to jail but would pull the plung of the funding. Secondly any client info that ends in Tencent hands is potentially viewable by the ccp. There’s no need of a Snowden to tell you that, the government made it law so if you buy the game your data goes to China.My thing about china getting my data is ‘so what?’ I live in the United States. Every major corporation will sell my data to the government, and no warrant is necessary. The fuck is China going to do to me? Send some of their secret police to my house? Fucking TIGHT. I can tell them to fuck off and eat my ass.
Shouldn’t they eat your ass first and then fuck off?
Every major corporation will sell my data to the government
And also to China. I don’t trust Tencent any more or less than I trust Ubisoft or 2K
Yea you can tell them that but the more china as on you and other citizen of where you live the better they can make the propaganda and influence election and other fun thing like that sure they can do it without all the data but it will be less efficient
but unpopular opinion?
I don’t think Tencent’s involvement is common knowledge among BG3 players. It’s hard to have an opinion about something you’re unaware of.
I decided not to buy it yet.
4 max party size was a mistake
Isn’t it laughably easy to mod? I’m okay with them saying “this is what we balanced for, anything else is on you”, though it should be like those divinity “prepackaged mods” like the zoomy boots
If they went any higher they’d have to make some encounters even larger and lengthier for balance, and some of those encounters already feel like they go on forever 💀
I installed the 16-member party Mod and took all the origin characters (except urge) around for a while. Combat became a chore. Probably the biggest grievance is they’d block each other’s movement, but it just took REALLY long to do combat with them all present.
I find Astarion severely overrated
I killed him after he tried to bite me. I felt a little bit guilty and replayed that part but letting him draw a little blood from me. He killed me and the next day acted like nothing had happened, like he didn’t know why I was dead. Fuck that guy, reloaded the save where I killed him.
I leave him out entirely. Can’t stand him
Happy cake day!
No physical copy on release day.
It was too long and had too much content.
Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur’s Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).
It felt like turning in quest coupons and getting your magic item/promise of aid and otherwise very low stakes.
In terms of pacing and stakes, it would have made much more sense for the PCs to have gone to Baldur’s Gate earlier in the game to do all the “adventurers faffing around” stuff, then revisited the city during the endgame. Though it would have clashed with their “each act is one set of maps” setup.
Instead, in the last act we have Gortash, supposed 5D chess player, centering all his plans on the PCs flipping to his side. Then he sits back and lets them wander all over the city, undermining him. Ultimately, when they don’t take up his offer, his backup plan is “whelp, guess I’ll die”.
Maybe the excuse is that the Elder Brain was making him stupid…
Would have been nice to finish the game then still be able to poke around in all the acts.
Act 3 destroys the pacing
They should have just let you dye equipment at will from the character screen
The Emperor isn’t even that hot
I don’t think your act 3 take is particularly controversial tbh
It’s weird, but I suspect that Act 2 and Act 3 were swapped originally. It makes more sense to have Act 2 be where you go to Baldur’s Gate, learn more about your companions, resolve their personal stories, explore a large open map, and THEN move on to the big confrontation against the Absolute at the tower.
From a story perspective it’s really weird how you confront the Absolute and then go on to sort of aimlessly do all that other stuff in Baldur’s Gate. It makes more sense if the story acts are swapped, imo.
You can tell Act 3 had the least amount of polish put into it. Act 1 and 2 feel very carefully and intentionally designed. You can tell they planned everything out. Act 3 feels like it was rushed and they had to make a lot of compromises.
The pacing is the most obvious thing but there’s also stuff like why is Gortash, the literal ruler of the city, being sworn into power in a random fort in the lower city instead of you know… the actual castle?
I always describe it like this:
Act 1 is a great sandbox and the most D&D like experience as a result.
Act 2 is the strongest story and writing, much more focused and tightly built. Some cool D&D like dungeoneering/puzzles to boot.
Act 3 is what happens when you don’t leave enough time and energy to wrap it all up. It tried to be as expansive (more even) as Act 1 and they couldn’t keep up with the writing. They also should’ve done away with the entire section before you actually enter the city. Talk about a momentum killer.
I find all the party members insufferable. I change their classes almost immediately for better synergy or I switch them out for the soulless NPC’s Withers has. Ironically, I’ve been D&D 5E Dungeon Master numerous times and I find the party members to be absolutely authentic characters real people would play. Good work Larian, ya made the characters so table top believable that I want to find a new group to play with.
I loved the character design because I hated the characters too: Lae’zel was a close minded warrior, Shadowheart a smartass, Gael Mr nice guy not so nice when you do something he doesn’t approve, Astarion the vampire rapist… Etc.
But then I kept on playing and I realized they were really deep characters. Lae’zel was indoctrinated super hard, but she’s smart and can recognize when things don’t make sense, even if she totally believes those things. Shadowheart has been lying to everyone, including herself, and putting a mask on; but she’s a really sweet woman. Astarion was abused in every possible way for centuries, and being a total asshole is his way to cope.
My point is, yeah, the characters are flawed and can come across as dicks, but many real people do too until you understand their circumstances. Not saying that what they do is justified, just that they are interesting characters and redeemable from my PoV.
I feel like a lot of characters were just standard RPG archetypes with maybe a wrinkle added in. Like Wyll is the classic “Warlock that makes the deal for the right reasons” and the wrinkle is that he has dad issues.
Compare him to one of my favorite RPG companions. Classic elf wizard nerd with an abusive father that made him hit the books and hit him also… but because of his childhood trauma his soul’s past life, a foul mouthed woman from a long time ago awoke within him and when sometimes he dissociates and she takes control because she wants him to be assertive… which, along with his fears of animancy, caused him to have an obsession with control, and why he accepted to join the baddies some time before you meet him.
Oh they’re great characters and well written. I just don’t like them though. I can’t justify my tastes.
The game is good despite DND 5e’s rules, not because of them.
Unfortunately, DND is mega popular. Many people have never played anything else. Many people have never even played it. So any discussion about it has a “of course 15 strength is +2, isn’t that just how RPGs work?” segment where you have to establish that DND is in fact weird.
Hard agree the ruleset is the mayor shackle to the game. I think the DnD part also includes the whole lore of the forgotten realms which is the incredible foundation in which the game could bloom tho. I’m not saying larian can’t create fantastic worlds and I’m looking forward to the next games, but the lore aspect of the DnD license is mayorly beneficial to the game
I hate multiplayer in pretty much any game where there’s a lot of menuing. And being able to wander off? There’s a reason you don’t split the party IRL and it holds here. Having a shopping session also is boring IRL and it is here, too. Oh, there was important plot stuff happening? I didn’t know the other person was in a conversation.
There’s a setting, I think it’s called eaves drop mode, where you will automatically listen in on any conversation that another player initiates.
Just let me auto follow the party leader, please
You can do this and also listen to conversations you aren’t present for from the active character portraits without changing settings. There’s even a prompt for ongoing conversations to join in on them as a listener remotely.
The marketing oversold the idea that if you wanted to do something it would amaze you to find it was expected.
Most of the, I thought at the time, very obvious thing I wanted to explore thematically were not there. Also, Romance felt clunky and unnuanced.
In Act 1 there is a downed bridge. I had something like a scroll of fly and it wouldn’t let me cross.
