this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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I've spent some time trying to get to the bottom of what aspect I'm most worried about, and I think what it comes down to is party members and the feeling of the party.
Some aspects, such as exploration, I'm sure Larian will nail perfectly. The combat will be different, but I'm fine with that and Divinity combat was great anyway. Irenicus is a hard villain to match, so I'm not expecting anything there.
But what made Baldur's Gate what it was for me was the writing, voice acting and the characters, in particular talking BG II here.
The 6 person party really enabled lots of interactions between the party members, and it felt vastly different depending on your configuration. So many games are player-centric, but the NPCs there reacted to each other just as much as the player character. Anomen in a good-aligned party is a vastly different experience than in an evil party with Jan.
Not only did the characters constantly interject during dialogues, but they also randomly prompted dialogues on their own when you were just walking around. Sometimes these would not even involve the player at all, it would just be two or more NPCs bickering, or flirting, ending without any player input. Many NPCs had character arcs play out completely independent of player input but wholly reliant on who else was in the party, such as Minsc and Aerie and the love story (potential triangle) involving Haer'Dalis. This made them feel more alive than many games manage.
I think if they nail that, it will feel like Baldur's Gate to me.
From the early access, I'm optimistic that they will meet this bar. The first two companions you can find hate each other (for complicated reasons, that they might be able to work through... if they don't kill each other first), and the first thing the third (or fourth, depending on the order you explore) does after recruiting is flirt with the first one. :P They are all distinct characters, that play off of each other, as well as you. How deep that will go remains to be seen though, as almost everyone not under and NDA has seen at most ~20% of the game. :P
That sounds promising, at least. That sounds good. I've been spoiled that two certain characters return, as well, so I hope they're written and voice acted close to the originals and feel familiar.
Many parts of the original "feel" will otherwise be hard to recreate and that's just the nature of things. The aesthetic of the handpainted backgrounds, for example.
I was saddened to learn the spell incantations weren't preserved, though. It's a tiny thing but would have added so much for veterans of the old games. It's going to feel weird and un-Baldur's Gate to heal someone and not hear "Vita Mortis Careo"
There are still incantations, although due to the spellcasting changes (anything that doesn't instant-cast is functionally useless in combat, nowadays, stuff is either instant, 10 rounds, or 600 rounds), they are a bit shorter. IIRC, the available heals in EA have "te curo" (single-target) "vita excellato" (aoe) and "dum vita est, spes est" (max hp buffs).
Oh, I was referring to the audio that played when casting a spell. Seeing as it's turn based it shouldn't interfere with BG3 combat either, and the Latin three-word phrases used in the originals were so iconic.
(I might be misreading, I haven't had my coffee today, sorry if this was already obvious. :P) Just to be clear, these do play while casting the spell in BG3, it's just not the same exact Latin phrases as before. Which I get is something of a missed opportunity for nostalgia, (I'm sure someone will mod OG incants in eventually), it does still do a good job with in terms of vibe.
It's the little things like that that sells the familiarity for old fans and signals that the devs really loved and cared about the original games. I'll see how I feel about the new Latin phrases but the original ones were so iconic that it feels like a missed opportunity as you say.