Baldur's Gate III Announced - ...and it's coming to Google Stadia and PC

[There Is Light At The End]

These origin characters concept came from DOS2. They should be NPC companions, as they were in every other RPG before, IMO. Like, you know, Baldur's gate 1 and 2

 

[gay]

It's not just quirky writing. Making this involved LITERALLY COOMING

did y'all niggas seriously expect them to animate all that nasty shit by hand with the advent of motion capture? even Mass Effect used mocap for their scenes in the mid 2000's.

professional intimacy coordinators

i enjoy how Pedowood has necessitated an entirely new job which is just a fancy way of describing someone who choreographs how exactly two people should pretend to fuck one another.

as someone who thinks #MeToo is cringe and hated what happened to Chris Avellone i'm very pro-whatever lessens people's ability to bitch about their boundaries supposedly being overstepped after the fact to cancel someone, and there's less room to make that case when you have some bullshit "intimacy coordinator" at the helm whose job is to make sure people are comfortable filming these scenes so i don't see what the big hubbub is.

 

[PaladinBoo]

I just wanted to play a game about removing an alien parasite from my brain and punching space squids in the face. But nooooo, the devs had to make thing weird and weirder.

God when I saw that first trailer I was so hyped because the Mind Flayers are some of my favorite villains to use in D&D next to Devils. However, the more stuff I learn about this the game the more it seems like Larian and WotC had their minds, err... elsewhere instead of focusing on things that matter like the story and dialogue. Two things that are the most important to a RPG. I will probably get a yohoho copy down the line just to see how bad it is. However, I could only play Fallout: The Frontier for a few hours before the childish and shallow writing mixed with the fetishes got the better of me and I called it quits. I'll see if this game can keep my interest before my tolerance runs out and I call quits on it as well.

 

[PaladinBoo]

I hate double posting but I had to respond to the article.

Larian Studios believes it's one of the first motion capture games to use professional intimacy coordinators during production.

Either Larian is being willfully ignorant or lying. The Witcher 3 was the first game to use professional intimacy coordinators during production. They also used them in Cyberpunk 2077.

Unlike movies and TV, mocap actors for videogames are suited up in gear rather than undressed for intimate scenes, but it definitely still involves representing all the many compromising positions a player can get into. Including the bear one.

Good to know that properly animating gay bear sex was very important to Larian. Doesn't make that article I saw over at A&N about that psychologist wanting to normalize zoophilia and make it a valid sexuality anymore weirder. It makes one think that there is a slippery slope fallacy.

Speaking of human emotions, love, lust and romance are a key part of Baldur's Gate 3, which allows players to flirt and build relationships with female or male companions.
This included Jennifer and Devora's characters, and it meant acting out some potentially awkward love scenes... Jennifer admits there was some weirdness during recording but the game's story never took things too far.

This is how you know that the target audience they have in mind for this game is women and queers. Most men don't care about this crap. There is a reason why men love The Witcher series. Because it didn't have any of that crap in it. Geralt was a male power fantasy. He slayed powerful monsters during the day and banged beautiful women who loved him at night. Not to say that Geralt's relationships with the likes of Yennifer, Triss and Shani didn't have its complications but at the end of the day you can tell that those women care about and loved Geralt. It was the same with Mass Effect too. The most popular romance for men was Tali and that was because Tali was in love with Commander Shepherd and men like the idea of a beautiful and mysterious woman falling in love with them and desiring them instead of the other way around.

What the fuck do men get out of this? All the women in this game are unlikable and ugly. Lae'zel is a cunt who cucks you and is a ugly lizard lady. Shadowheart acts like a cunt too and has a stupid autistic haircut (Not to mention that she always looks like she suffers from a terminal case of resting bitch face). Karlach looks like a dyke and even has the "stronk" woman side haircut that is now just a parody at this point. Minthara and Jaheira look like old grannies so at least those with a milf fetish will be happy. In contrast to the romances that are made for women. Pooners and Yaoi fangirls are going to swoon over AstarionXHalsin shippings and I expect a bunch of disgusting fanart and fanfic of them in the coming months. Most other girls are just going romance and ship their characters with Gale. Wyll on the other hand will be left in the dust as the types of women who are obsessed with romance and shippings do not like black men unless they can buck break and emasculate them and even than they are relegated to the friend zone.

 

[SIMIΔN]

Great post, I'm thinking the same.

Either Larian is being willfully ignorant or lying. The Witcher 3 was the first game to use professional intimacy coordinators during production. They also used them in Cyberpunk 2077.

Surprisingly Doug Cockle and Denise Gough (Geralt and Yen) never actually met in real life. Everything was recorded seperately, so I'm amazed at the chemistry.

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-voice-behind-the-witcher

 

[SIMIΔN]

Sorry for the double post, but this is the closest Larian's DoS2 gets to bear sex. (Fairly SFW)

 

[Kane Lives]

Sorry for the double post, but this is the closest Larian's DoS2 gets to bear sex. (Fairly SFW)

Lol. That scene is actually more hilarious if you play someone else and try to eavesdrop on them.

 

[Estate]

Sorry for the double post, but this is the closest Larian's DoS2 gets to bear sex. (Fairly SFW)

All the "sex" scenes in DOS2 are implied with a fade to black. It was the same when I played with Ifan and I ended up with Sebille. Rather innocent and wholesome if I were to give my opinion.

I don't really care if a (c)RPG has romance or not.
If the romance is bad or meme tier I simply ignore it. An example being Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire where the romance was just atrocious and I never bothered with it.
On the other hand, if it's done right, it can improve the overall story. The best example for this, is Dragon Age Origins and the romance with Morrigan. Everything about it, how it ties into the game story and how it continues with a certain DLC, it's simply kino.

... elsewhere instead of focusing on things that matter like the story and dialogue. Two things that are the most important to a RPG. I will probably get a yohoho copy down the line just to see how bad it is. However, I could only play Fallout: The Frontier for a few hours before the childish and shallow writing mixed with the fetishes got the better of me and I called it quits. I'll see if this game can keep my interest before my tolerance runs out and I call quits on it as well.

I hear this type of rhetoric slung around this thread rather frequently.
What is good writing for you? What are the standards and criteria by which you judge?
I personally am very confident that my personal physical library and the amount of books I read is way higher then the average kiwi, yet I am not so quick to dismiss a work with "bad writing".

 

[SIMIΔN]

Lol. That scene is actually more hilarious if you play someone else and try to eavesdrop on them.

You are right

 

[PaladinBoo]

I hear this type of rhetoric slung around this thread rather frequently.
What is good writing for you? What are the standards and criteria by which you judge?
I personally am very confident that my personal physical library and the amount of books I read is way higher then the average kiwi, yet I am not so quick to dismiss a work with "bad writing".

That is a good question. I suppose a good story to me is a story where the stakes matter and the characters take the world with some hints of seriousness. The OG Baldur's Gate are good examples. Sure, some of the characters would make a joke here or there but the characters of that game took the world seriously and the stakes in that game mattered in the grand scheme of things. Not to say every story should be like this, especially if it is a satire. As C.S Lewis once stated; "Not every good story needs to have a point."

However, this is a sequel to a franchise that took itself seriously in the past. Other games based in the Forgotten Realms did as well. Sure, there are jokes to lighten the mood but the characters took the world seriously, the stakes mattered, there are consequences for your actions, and the villain is intimating. Personally, from what I've seen, the writing feels very meta and immature. The characters all act like they are in on the joke. There is also no serious consequences for the actions you take. The world isn't taken seriously and the stakes, which should feel high, feel low. I know you said before that you feel that calling something Reddit is overused so I think a better thing to say is that this game, to me at least, feels like every other piece of entertainment that has been geared at adults for the past decade.

 

[ZMOT]

dunno if someone else mentioned it yet, but I'm the only one who thinks shoving money into those super HD graphics screams style over substance? I don't need 4k motion-captured bear sex, I need a solid story in an RPG, with solid characters and acceptable gameplay.

that new pathfinder hack&slash is pretty much the top end I need in graphics when it comes to RPGs, anything else looks tryhard and missing the point, trying to appeal to MUH CINEMATIC normalfags...

Great post, I'm thinking the same.

Surprisingly Doug Cockle and Denise Gough (Geralt and Yen) never actually met in real life. Everything was recorded seperately, so I'm amazed at the chemistry.

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-voice-behind-the-witcher

that's not that uncommon. brad pitt and catherine zeta-jones never recorded their lines for sinbad together, watching the movie would make you think otherwise.
the difference between good acting/directing I guess...

That being said; I really think we're getting off-topic here...

Spoiler: speaking of off-topic...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1159090/Zoria_Age_of_Shattering/

just shilling dropping this here as a possible palate cleanser so people might wanna wishlisht or keep an eye on it, apparently made by 3 slavs. this means no BG3 production values, but also no intimacy coordinator. already got some soibois bothered after an NPC compared the security of an area to be "tighter than a maiden's purity", gonna have to wait and see if they cave (if they're smart they don't or keep the rest people haven't seen so retards can't bitch & moan about). I fully expect some jank, but I take that over a polished turd any day.

demo is up, but not sure if it has been updated since last september. they also scrapped early access and just gonna release it coming october. they also said they don't wanna price it like a AAA game.

they even bothered to reply to some double-digit views video when he had issues with the demo to help him out:

 

[Spud]

Making this involved LITERALLY COOMING

You're telling me I can get paid to coom? I've been doing it for free for the last ten years, fuck this gay earth

 

[Male Idiot]

I am a snob so I prefer my games not to look like ass. Pixel indie superbased isn't an excuse to put the merest minimum into graphics, neither is quirky and whimsical and progressive.

You -can- make less realistic graphics work totally fine but it isn't easy. Boltgun and Cuphead are neither photorealistic 4k stuff, but they got their own style.

I am also worried that the plot will be all "remove parasite" instead of any well... adventure. Go to X, ask healer Y, rinse and repeat. It is like a story about getting the money to pay your rent.

Usually when you do this, its okey as the first act, but not the entire story. You want to gain something, to do a notable deed. It is what video games give you, the ability to do something you can never do in real life. Not running from doctor to doctor to get a brain tumor removed.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

Not running from doctor to doctor to get a brain tumor removed.

At this point the question is "will I be able to do that while dressed up as a gimp" because somebody at Larian misunderstood the context of "fantasy", "dungeon" and "bear". That earlier comment about "stealing underwear" really convinced me they meant a different kind of role-playing game.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

Jesus...normally if a game turns out to be not as expected it's because of the bad graphics/music/voice acting etc. normal stuff. This the probably the first game where people mainly talk about how degenerate & perverted it's going to be because it turns out said game is made by sexual degenerates. Not even woke Dragonage was ever that bad.

 

[TVB]

Too bad its overrated as fuck.

How?

 

[Brain Problems]

Every time someone pops in to say "it's not that bad" another article or interview like this pops up.

I wonder how Lovecraftian it's gonna get if we keep going.

I'm not even looking for these. They keep popping up in sidebars of other articles, or random social media feeds.

I'm not entirely unconvinced that most of this is just pure marketing bait because of the saturation of articles popping up about it. What I mean is that the PR department at the studio saying 'hey guys put some wacky shit in the game that will appeal to the mouth-breathers at kotaku and polygon' and the devs just shrugging and digging up whatever retarded Current Year appropriate gag they can imagine.

Coomers gonna coom, normalfags/critical role/nuD&D see lolsorandumb shit like ogres fucking and bear sex and post it to their friends, and lick their lips at the prospect of playing digital versions of their scripted theatre kid garbage.

I'm not trying to say that Larian or whatever dangerhair diversity hires they've got working on this aren't deliberately trying to do political shit in the background, but it feels more like what people have been saying here and that's there's this mix of "shocking" shit for attention and vaguely desperate insertion of goofy, lamp-shaded garbage all over the place to cater to the irony-poisoned audience that 'hey, you don't need to take anything seriously because we sure as hell don't'. It speaks to a fundamental lack of trust in your audience.

 

[Mega Black]

These origin characters concept came from DOS2. They should be NPC companions, as they were in every other RPG before, IMO. Like, you know, Baldur's gate 1 and 2

I also hated this about Divinity. I don't play an RPG like this to play a fixed character, I want to create my own. Larian actively punishes this desire for some reason.

Origins as a concept are fine, Dragon Age used them, but each origin was an extension of your own character.

This is how you know that the target audience they have in mind for this game is women and queers

Here is the thing, Larian already knows the male audience is probably going to buy the game and play white guys with swords. The marketing is targeting a different group because they already pretty much have that group on lock, most of them likely already bought EA.

 

[Harvey Danger]

but it feels more like what people have been saying here and that's there's this mix of "shocking" shit for attention and vaguely desperate insertion of goofy, lamp-shaded garbage all over the place to cater to the irony-poisoned audience that 'hey, you don't need to take anything seriously because we sure as hell don't'.

I don't think they're going for the shock-as-marketing angle here. That last article I posted, from the BBC, was 75% talking to mocap actresses about their job. It was about as straightforward as any behind the scenes interview of any mainstream movie.

The last segment was "sooooo what about the sex scenes", which is part of the template they use for real movie interviews too. But neither the mocap actress or the BBC seemed like they were hyping it up. It seemed more like they considered that stuff to be very normal, like nobody should really be shocked that an acting job gets a little kinky sometimes. The whole point of mentioning the intimacy coordinator was to assure everyone that the actresses weren't being abused or whatever.

I would actually compare it to Cillian Murphy describing the sex scenes in Oppenheimer. That movie's actors have been doing the press junkets, talking about everything in the movie, and inevitably there has to be a question about the sex scenes. (Murphy calls them "awkward" but necessary, I guess he could've used more intimacy coordinators on set.) Some clickbait summarizing articles then pick it up and make that the headline, but that's not the focus of the interview.

In fact, the headline I posted was from a clickbait summary. The BBC headline was merely "Baldur's Gate 3: What it's like acting in a virtual fantasy world".

Spoiler: Oppenheimer vs BG3: Sexy Battle Gaiden

It's actually worth seeing how a serious movie treats out-of-place sex vs how Larian does.

“Listen, no one likes doing them,” the actor told British GQ in an interview published Monday.​

​

“They’re the most awkward possible part of our job. But sometimes you have to get on with it,” he continued, calling the moments “worthwhile” because Pugh’s character Jean Tatlock’s affair with J. Robert Oppenheimer is “key” to the movie.​

​

“[That] is one of the most crucial emotional parts of the film,” Murphy added. “I think they were vital.”​

​

“Those scenes were written deliberately,” he said on July 19. “They’re not gratuitous. They’re perfect. And Florence is just amazing.”​

He's right, because Oppenheimer is a deep character study, and his affair with Tatlock was a major point in his life. The scenes aren't played for laughs or titillation, in one case they're played dry, matter-of-factly, where the nudity is trivialized behind the important things the characters are saying.

Does anyone honestly believe that Larian has written dozens of deep, meaningful relationships and life events for your same-faced custom-genitaled character? Or do you think we'll feel the relationship meter number get higher with every diaglogue choice, until you finally hit 100% and are rewarded with a joke and an awkward sex animation?

Do you really think BG3 sex scenes were written to be "the most crucial emotional parts of the game"? (If so, I have some squirrel nuts to show you.)

I was only half joking about the intimacy coordinator. Larian brought it up because they want to be treated like serious artists, like a serious movie-maker. But a serious professional actor, Murphy, felt awkward inserting sex into the project. He took it seriously enough to understand the character he was playing, shoving down his personal reluctance to deliver the emotional impact. On the other hand, the BG3 mocap actresses felt so flippant about it they laughed about bear sex and started boning the nearest camera operator.

There is a clear difference in approaches here. All sex scenes are not equal.

Point is, I don't think Larian is going for the "bad publicity is still good publicity" outrage campaign here. I think they legitimately treat the deviancy as normalized. The bear scene is the shocking edgelord headline, but behind that everything else is completely normal tripe from the coomer, fanfic, and shipping segments of the Internet.

ITT we're reacting as people not in those circles. And with every bit of info that comes out, I feel more justified in my normie reaction.

 

[PaladinBoo]

but it feels more like what people have been saying here and that's there's this mix of "shocking" shit for attention and vaguely desperate insertion of goofy, lamp-shaded garbage all over the place to cater to the irony-poisoned audience that 'hey, you don't need to take anything seriously because we sure as hell don't'. It speaks to a fundamental lack of trust in your audience.

That is a problem that has also been plaguing entertainment recently. It's that the devs think the audience is stupid. They think that the audience are too childish to take anything seriously and need to be treated like children in any entertainment they consume. Part of what makes something a good piece of art is when that art makes you think. A good example of that would be Planescape Torment. You are asked the question; "What changes the nature of a man?", as you play as The Nameless One and see the consequences of his past actions and realize the answer is regret. I don't think we will see any such brilliance in Baldur's Gate 3. From what I've seen it appears to be modeled after Critical Role and I'm someone who does not consider Critical Role to be art. However, Critical Role is slop that is popular with the cattle so it wouldn't surprise me if Critical Role and its style of writing was a major inspiration for this game.

I also hated this about Divinity. I don't play an RPG like this to play a fixed character, I want to create my own. Larian actively punishes this desire for some reason.

WotC has also been doing that a lot lately too. Want to play a game where some of the party members are racist towards each other? Sorry but that is not allowed as that might encourage real racism. Here we made an entire order of paladins be gay in Ravenloft. What's that? You don't like that and are going to homebrew it out of your game? Sorry but its canon and we forbid you to homebrew it out of your game you bigot. These people are control freaks. They can't stand people not having the same views as them so they try to control how they play a game. I find it to be very silly. You can't control how gamers play. Especially when mods and homebrew exists. You might as well piss in the wind.

Point is, I don't think Larian is going for the "bad publicity is still good publicity" angle here. I think they legitimately treat the deviancy as normalized. The bear scene is the shocking edgelord headline, but behind that everything else is completely normal tripe from the coomer, fanfic, and shipping segments of the Internet.

ITT we're reacting as people not in those circles. And with every bit of info that comes out, I feel more justified in my normie reaction.

Especially if you're the kind of masochists like me who deep dives into the dark corners of fanfic, shipping and fan art for a chuckle and leaves horrified. People don't think that women can be coomers but let me tell you, women have thirst and the types of smut they make would make a porno director blush.