Balders gate GOTY edition should have extended cut choices, you can romance even more people and unlock the hidden 6 hour romance scene atomic heart was too scared to include
@@cyberninjazero5659I don't know why we don't get more shortstack romances in modern games. They're cool, adult characters with great proportions and fun personalities.
I remember on the Podcast he said he was on a DnD liveshow thing at a con or something, might have to relisten to some older episodes to find out what it was
@@TidleFratI remember him playing a one shot of an Avatar The Last Airbender game on stage. As you may have guessed, he opted to play the only character without bending.
I will state that the Bard has some of the best additional dialogue choices. Although, if you become an Oathbreaker, you get to say "Because it'll piss the Absolute off" when asked why you are against the cult.
Baldur's gate 3 is like if CRPGs were allowed keep going from the 90s and become popular like JRPGs, something like BG3 should have happened in the mid 2010s.
Dragon Age Origins is literaly BG3 before BG3 tho. It was the high budget high presentation crpg. But bioware instead of going full crpg, just made their games less and less like a crpg.
@alsaiduq4363 they straight up made action rpgs after origins and the first mass effect. On top of the fact they gave players less and less role play stuff to have different things happen in their rpgs
secretly, Bioware just wanted to make MDK 3, so they made their rpgs more and more action game-y. (this is the type of joke you make for yourself- but share anyway... you're welcome.)
He was comparing it to his own experience with DnD and honestly that's kind of the beauty of this game and ttrpgs in general - it's really how much the players and GM are invested and are willing to deep dive these sort of things. BG3 is just a DnD campaign where everyone is all in most of the time
Some people joke that BG3 is like playing tabletop without having to interact with other humans, and your post nails the Why. It's tailored for any player: you don't have to be and compromise with some other person who doesn't vibe with your playstyle (I like fighting without spending hours chatting in-character/I like following a story or our characters' arc without a bunch of fights getting in the way/I like exploring without having a story dragging me around). Of course, the downside is that a videogame still needs a road and can't just do Anything, which is what tabletop gaming with humans can.
The biggest complait I have for BG3 is that it has given me the biggest case of indecisivness to date. I play for like 5-10 hours before going "I wonder what (Race/Class combo) would be like", then deleting my save and starting all over again.
@@PJSam1998 The issue is that once I start anew, I lose all interest in the previous saves. Even if I kept them, I would never load them up again. So it would just be a needless waste of space.
After you get Withers it is fairly easy - if a little expensive if you do it too much - to reclass/hire classes other than the Origin characters (you can also reclass Origins!) so you don't have to delete your saves.
Coming from other CRPGs, one aspect that I think BG3 misses about looting is the ability to mass loot an area. IIRC both PoE and Pathfinder:WotR had that. Where if you have like a group of boxes, clicking on one box opens them all into a single loot window. Same for after battles, all of the grouped corpses would open into a single loot window. It makes looting way less tedious.
This super beast take was exactly how I described my feelings to my brother. After Act 2 and starting Act 3, it really felt, emotionally, like I'd just played ME1 and ME2 in a row. It's definitely a statement I make with w big asterisk, but I mostly still stand by it.
It's a little irritating that every CRPG seems to release with an unfinished final act. At least Larian seem to fix Act 3 in their games a year after release.
I'm playing a Bard and, as Pat explained with Paige's sorcerer, it's surprising and really funny how many times there's dialogue choices where you can not only convince main guy or monster of a group to kill all they're minions pre-fight, but also convincing the would be mob boss to kill itself, avoiding a fight altogether. For example, a strong stupid monster was very hungry, so convince him that he shouldn't try to kill and eat my party, that'd be ridiculous, he should definitely kill and eat his own party instead. Shit, his crew is dead, but he's still hungry. Well, I guess there's no choice but to...oh wait a sec, a deception option to convince the monster that he should eat itself instead of us??? That's just comically crazy enough to work! Let them dice roll, and if succeeded, avoid the entire conflict while gaining inspiration, extra experience, plus the experience that you would've received fighting the entire mob. Just one of multiple times you can do this in the game, and it's great every time.
That goddamned Gnoll holy SHIT it was such a wild experience to have as someone who has been out of ttrpgs for about three years and actually landing the "Mind Trick" goddamn.
I feel like Pat has talked about playing one of the Divinity: Original Sin games, but I haven't seen him reference it when discussing the radial loot check, but I personally feel the controller usage by Larian in the definitive versions of that series was much more fluid and had an overall better quality of life when it came to UI. Still, Larian is killing it once again. It's unbelievable how much they've evolved over their past three games, and arguably evolved the RPG genre as a whole. The definitive edition, which is basically a given for Larian, is gonna be insane.
the one issue I personally have with the area search was things falling off the list when you move away from them, so for example you do the big radius search and it picks up 2 cabinets on opposite sides of the search zone, you choose to look in the one to your left and the one on your right drops off the search list and needs a new radius search to show back up on the list
Going from Starfield being an undercooked mess that BGS very clearly expects people to wait for DLC and modders to show up to fix everything to BG3 was an immense jump
Books can be brought up in various conversations with you recognizing lore or having unique dialogue options, which would be nonexistent if you had not read that book.
There is another gameplay reason to have hirelings if you're a crazy person like me. You can have some hirelings around that just cast support spells that last until long rest (such as upcasted aid and longstrider) and just leave them back at camp after. You can do this with origin characters too, but if you don't want to futz around with changing their canon classes that's one way of doing it.
Hireling cheese: get one that has high wisdom, medicine proficiency (or better yet, expertise), and class is transmutation wizard. Have that guy turn all your herbs into potion ingredients and turn ask your portion ingredients into potions/elixirs. They have a chance to proc extras.
I really have a big problem with the 'story progresses by rest' thing, and that is I try to put off doing rests as much as possible. I think I did all of act 1 in like...3 rests, which meant it felt like I was missing a bunch and later on, certain conversations happened asking me to bring characters along to certain areas *after* I'd finished that area.
i guess the game could have explained it better but long rests only progress stuff if you've encountered it. if you see an inn on fire maybe don't take a nap before dealing with it. But if you haven't seen it yet take as many long rests as you want and it won't progress.
Also Elden Ring, which is like DS4, 5, and 6 if you full clear it. I'm pretty sure Pat even explicitly said basically the same thing about ER in one of the podcasts after it released.
@@Graysett With ER, I don't think it's a compliment because you do reach a point where you become burnt out. I think Armored Core 6's approach with NG+ content is something I think I like more in concept, however it could be expanded upon further.
If Larian ever decides to do some major content updates for the game, there are 3 things I'd like them to add: 1. Official Lone Wolf mode. Giving you the option to limit you team to 2 (or even 1) characters that get buffed appropriately in turn could make for some interesting gameplay. I downloaded a Lone Wolf mod and played through the entire game as an evil tag-team of The Dark Urge and Minthara and had a blast doing so. 2. More gear and random drops. There's a lot of gear options in BG3, but everything exists at set places. This means that every playthrough tend to end up fairly similar since you get the exact same drops in the exact same places. Having certain unique and legendary items in fixed places makes sense, but there could be more variety with all the green and blue gear. More options could also allow for more niche playstyles. 3. New Game+. Starting over with a full team of max level characters could be fun, but they'd need to rebalance the entire game.
The one use I have found for the hirelings, is to get a level 10 cleric, use divine intervention to give them a weapon (+3 mace), then give that to Shart/whoever needs it, then dismiss them
The only use I'm going to have for Hirelings is doing my "Oops, all Druids" run (start as Druid, get hireling ASAP, then get Halsin, then get Jaheera) and as a backup incase stuff happens in my evil dark urge playthrough and I run out of party members I want to bring along.
Fun fact, my travellers chest had so many items in it by the end 😅 I literally sent every unique book and note to my chest and had like 250+ books/notes in my chest, and I sorted by type so to get to the bottom of my chest for the things that go under the books I had to go ALL of them to get there 😂😂😂
Its crazy to hear the orb search is better than just highlighting because I fucking HATE the orb. It shows you stuff thats able to be looted, then when you pick one you'll just walk out of range of others and need to re-search anyway.
I wish this game had as much classes as pathfinder. There's some classes like Alchemist , Inquisitor , Bloodrager and mount in general that i miss hard
My favorite interaction I had in Act 2 was at the House of Healing and the persuasion check that I busted (Bards yo) to convince the good doctor that he should be the subject. Didn't realize you could just talk someone into killing themselves but here we are.
Episode 5 could be good. I mean Episode 5 of Perfect works was Xenogears, with dealings directly affected by characters from Episode 4 (primarily Lacan and Kreilian) really was a solid package. But we can never know because Squaresoft wanted to fund Spirits within instead.
I'm really looking forward to Pat's report on his Act 3 experience. I've been getting such conflicting reports of "it's buggy, broken, and unfinished" and "it was totally fine". I don't know what to believe.
My two cents: It's pacing is worse than the other 2 acts and it gives you a bit too much freedom imo. I was finishing quests before I even knew they were a thing because I came at them backwards accidentally. It's still very good and there are highlights but I'd say it's the weakest act.
@@joaocreature thanks for the insight, I'm really debating about getting it now or waiting for some kind of definitive edition. Don't know if what you mention is something that would be fixed/changed by one but maybe it'd at least be less buggy.
Still good but the feeling of cut content is massive. Straight up half the city just gone, side stories that end with an awkward cut-off, and certain characters and locations awkwardly placed into the lower city when they were clearly meant to be located elsewhere. Some bugs, characters not showing up and choices I made not triggering properly, but it ran alright.
@@Gear3 I find it really odd that I see people say things like this a lot and then still see so many say "game of the year". Shouldn't it be a bigger deal that the ending seems unfinished?
@@Gear3to me it’s less about an area being missing and more about the content from the upper city being folded into the lower one. I really like act 3 for how the city feels and how dense it is, but the pacing is definitely weird and may have been helped by having two smaller areas instead of one big one.
On the subject of non lethal attacks... did anyone else find that the toggle just does not work in 90% of scenarios? Even if left an NPC with 1 HP and "knocked out" the game would progress as if I had killed them. Often i could return to their place later and their corpses would be all that's left. I think non lethal worked for me in like 3 highly scripted segments.
If any damage other than physical hits the NPC you did the non-lethal attack on they'll die. I know I accidently killed a few people because my weapon had like 4 other types of damage added to it so even if I hit them non-lethally the psychic damage would do them in.
Act 3 is cripplingly unfinished. They cut a whole area and this choice caused the dogshit companion endings as well as 80% of actual bugs to do with companions due to the huge number of dead-end flags left in the cut area.
You donot need to physically read most books or literature, BUT,there is sometime skill checks/lore bits/ or missions tied to some. So make sure you at least click "read" I got blueprints in act 1, and took me a while to find how to "use" it
Rogue Trader has an amazing system that merges the entire inventory of every slain enemy within a radius of the first one you click on. It makes looting and indexing so much quicker.
*acquire gnome corpse* *fill it with alchemists fire and smokepowder* *have barbarian yeet it at the nearest problem* *shoot with firebolt and admire your work*
100 hours officially in and with Pat's crazy drop of feign death trick i am literally thinking about starting over. Straight up I don't even have that spell equipped because I never thought it was useful for anything. God friggin dammit. AND. ALSO. it wasnt until Act 3 that I realized you could reassign spells whenever you want! I thought you could only do it during a level up 🙃🙃 gaaaahhhh this gaaame. I love it and its consumed my life
i was never sure if your approval rateing with party memebers effects when events trigger at camp or if they happen anyways. i was under the impression it only effectedd romance sceens and the story stuff happens regardless.
Based on my playtime, the like micro dialogue interactions mostly affect romances but the obvious big stuff like how you handle the Grove will permanently affect your party’s outlook. The best example is that even if you go full tadpole, Lae’Zel will stick around you just can’t have a romance with her at all
there is a way to tell if a container is untouched, searched and empty on mouse on keyboard. The cursor changes from a gold chest, grey chest and opened empty chest respectively. "oh it does now?" it has always done this, since EA.
I beat the game with mouse an keyboard, I wouldn't play any other way, and I can admit than the orb is insanely useful and that I didn't like this game as much as everyone appears to do, simply because looting. Looting is a third of the time you spend in the game, and it's painful, i wish i had the orb
Having played BG3 for over 100 hours, I'll say this game does not have 3 games worth of content. I find that an over exaggeration and this is coming from someone that hasn't finished the game yet. I'd say maybe 1.5 games worth of content. Mainly because of those 100 hours, 60 of them have been spent making new characters, trying out builds, exploring the world, listening to every interaction, and I'd say 10 of those 60 hours have probably been inventory management and looting alone. If you focused on the story itself and the sidequests, it's probably 40 hours or so. Pat's streamer goggles aren't a good metric of a game's content because he plays slowly and for an audience. It is definitely a densely packed game but to say the game has more going on than say the Mass Effect trilogy in terms of story, is crazy talk. The Acts aren't as long story wise as Pat makes them out to be.
in my 1st play it was a 90hr save, 3 acts. its not a 1 to 1 but man does act 1 and 2 feel like complete games or even small D&D campaigns by themselves.
I don't understand your point because interacting with characters and exploring the world IS the meat and potatoest of the game, of course you're going get lower numbers if you don't count the "unimportant" parts. Also, its not just a streamer playstyle, I've also got 120 hours logged in and it's all been on the same character with the same build.
I disagree, my first playthrough was 110 hours and I didn't spend any on making characters or minmaxing, I ran with the default characters I was given, mostly. I missed many sidequests and events and still went over the 100 hours mark. Considering the average game is 30-40 hours, it think it's fair to say that it feels like BG is playing 3 games in a row.
@@Mantis47 My point is, once you ran through the game once. You'll begin to see where the content actually is in the game. All those houses that you explored that had nothing of note in them, all those spots in the map you wasted 2-3 minutes to get to so you could see if there was anything interesting in, all those empty rooms, hatches, cellars you'd go in to that you find nothing in. Just look at the quests for each location on the BG3 wiki on fextralife. The game does an amazing job at immersing you in to the game and making you feel like it's a huge environment with a ton of things to see and explore, it does so beautifully and more games need to give you that feeling. The game is still a 10/10 for me, and I'll keep replaying it for years to come. But let's be realistic here, once you get past that initial frontloading phase you'll see that the game is 40-60 hours at most which is very much worth every penny. That's what happened to me anyways, I did my first character and ran about 50-60 hours and not even touching act 3. Made another character, was in act 3 before the 40 hour mark. That's like saying that Starfield is worth 3 games just because someone can spend 120 hours on it their first playthrough. However, I will accept the concession that this game has 5 games worth of enjoyment at least.
The thing I love about this game is that evil choices doesn’t handicap you gameplay wise. You can be a paragon of virture and gather a whole army of Allie’s to help you on your journey but you can be a total shitlord and gather and equally evil army to have your back
Times when i hear people into downtime character lore makes me think how much Falcom games would appeal to them. Though there are some extremes in this company's catalogue. As someone who's indifferent to bethesda open worlds, Falcom games are maybe the only ones i really care about talking to everyone. But, maybe i may also care about mass effect and this game here should i ever get in.
BG3 is amazing and huge, but calling it a trilogy is a lot. It's a standard 3 act story with a lot of videogame in each act. If they had released just act I and called it BG3 it wouldn't be a whole story. All that happens in act I is a single act climax. You find out what the slug is. That's it.
I think Pat is talking about the gameplay time, not about a trilogy in the narrative way. As in, in the time you beat BG3 you would be able to beat Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3. And I can confirm that.
I mean you say that but in Mass Effect 1 you just find out what Reapers are and take out one indoctrinated guy. You could compare Saren to Minthara and Geth to the goblins if you want. Though there are other ways to go about it. Point still stands though. Mass Effect isnt any more of a complete story than Act 1 of Baldurs Gate 3.
@@Zangelin whoa that is a hell of a take. ME1 takes Shepard from some officer on a mission to the person who believes in and resolves to stop the reapers. There's a whole arc in there. Also 3 acts.
The only problem with the long rest mechanic is how they stack and don't give any indication that there is one coming. By the start of act 3 I had to needlessly rest like 5 times to get everyone's cut-scenes to go. It's really annoying since 1 of them was a romance scene. Slugging through 4 shit scenes I don't care about right now just to see shadow bewbs.
It would be nice if the game gave some form of indication on when it is appropriate to Long Rest. Since I tend to be frugal with my abilities and spells, I tend not to use them in battle unless absolutely necessary. So I often end up going through 3-5 battles before using a short rest, and just cycling out any spell dependent party members for those at the camp.
@@tylerhenderson5871 Even a notification might not be enough. By the end of act 2 I checked to make sure that there was no companion or camp scenes before wrapping up and going into act 3 by long resting. By the end of the first story battle with (Redacted) and What's his face. . . Wyll had a cutscene. Lazel had a cutscene. Shadow had a cutscene. Halsin had a cutscene. Jahirea had a cutscene. and the dark urge had a cutscene. All requiring a separate long rest. Lazel's is missable if you go too far into act 3 so that's nice. not even 15 minutes into act 3 and all that was just sitting on the backburner. Not the best game design.
I suppose the only real solution is to perhaps make the events trigger by just going to camp, without needing to specifically Long Rest. I can't imagine all the story stuff NEEDS to happen at night.
I think the problem is more tied to the fact that they all just happen as part of the long rest instead of being dialogues you can opt into. Having played a lot of BG3 I started spamming longrests at particular times during the game, because I know that they are going to stack, and in some instances they cancel eachother. I feel like they should have at least the romance/character stuff be camp dialogue, so that you can have multiple interactions while in camp and not be forced to do 8 long rests in a row in order to trigger all the stuff you want to trigger.
Unfortunately, I am stupid, and BG3 is something I cannot play easily. I am on the easiest difficulty and I keep getting my arse handed to me because it expect me to know the game and be able to exploit game mechanics. I love having a story mode on games, because it lets me play games without getting super stressed about being unable to effectively play. I just wish bg3 was easier.
Yeah, the combat isn't very well balanced. The lowest difficulty is supposed to make combat trivial so you could just focus on the story. And it fails to do that.
I actually disagree with the 3 games comparison. What it actually feels like is game, dlc, expansion, and then game. Underdark/underforge feels like DLC content that was thrown in for lulls, which is fine. You could cut them out and lose almost nothing narratively, but, hey, Astarion scolding you for failing to take Nere's head is funny. Act 2, though, feels like an expansion meant to bridge the next game events, much like how Mass Effect 2 and DA:I did....And boy on repeated playthroughs does Act 2 feel like the neglected one of the acts. Last light inn, to Moonrise, to Shar and not as much interactions with people as in Act 1 or 3. Not to mention just how FAST you can clear ACT2 compared to the other two acts.
cause the whole plot is being caused by the dead three and you are a bhaalspawn and are doing a lot of bhaal related things if you play as the dark urge
i love bg3 but it feels like everyone else is having a much better time than i am. it's without a doubt my game of the year but there hasn't been a single session where my husband and i quit because we reached a natural conclusion. it's always i get too stressed out by reloading over and over to unfuck bugs. so many sequences have entirely just broken for us. the grove turned on us after the raid for literally no reason, the post raid party at the camp never fucking happened AT ALL, astarion is 100% just bugged, his triggers never trigger and he doesn't gain favour for either of us, the party thinks laezel is fucking dead lmfao they talk about her in past tense like she died at some point, it's bizarre. i fucking love this game but it needed at least another year before a full release. there was a full week where we couldn't really play at all because an update broke the dialogue and made the game crash when you listened to another player's convos. it's so fucked. i love this game so much but it makes me want to fucking die when everything falls apart every five minutes. my godamn map doesn't even work, it's just not there. just a black screen with nothing, the minimap is the same. i'm so tired of perpetual early access bullshit like this. when a game came out when i was a kid it was fucking complete, it was READY TO BE PLAYED. the bugs were not GAME DESTROYING like they are with this game. i'm so conflicted, i can't tell if it's my favourite game of all time or if it's just the fucking worst game i've ever played.
There is a weird aspect where hype around this game came in right before release and it was getting hailed as "Finally, a polished and complete single-player game! Suck it, trouble AAA!" And then I got to Act 3 and realized that wasn't true. I still enjoyed it but I have no motivation to go back unless there is a big story DLC or definitive edition that adds back missing content.
I can't in good faith call this GOTY due to the sheer amount of bugs I experienced. Act 3 was basically unplayable for almost an entire month and is still barely in an acceptable state. I crashed or was forced to reload more in this game than any other game I have played in like 5 years. It's an incredible game to be sure, but it's definitely not God's gift to humanity
@@Taradoxxi Seriously. I've had relatively minor issues throughout, but I'm currently sitting at over 300 hours and I haven't had _any_ issues this game-breaking.
Pat is exaggerating like crazy when he calls this a trilogy's worth of game, bg3 literally has the same story structure of bg1. It is like 1.5 games max, especially since act 3 is like 60 percent complete.
You don't need to fully commit to camp interactions. First playthrough I chose Paladin of Vengeance. I sat back and let camp/party events/storylines unfold. Then, if required, I cast judgement. As far as major decisions regarding their personal quests, I let them decide, not me. I did not romance anyone whatsoever. I was neutral in every respect, until I needed to intervene (I am the law). Every party member made it to the end and every party member chose morally positive outcomes throughout. This game is a blend of existing "RP"G smoke and mirror tactics. It doesn't do anything new. You mentioned Mass Effect. You choose one of two storylines to play through, before you even click new game (it's pre-determined). Other games use conversation flow charts and remember specific markers for later. This game just uses multiple existing techniques, to gloss over the fact that developers cannot presently code human interaction and subsequent reaction. It's not monumental or groundbreaking, despite all the "GOTY" flag waving.
This take is mostly wrong and very superficial. There are deep dives out there on TH-cam now into the coding behind Shadowheart and Gale's major decisions and dialogue variations, and the reactivity is impressive.
Pat talking about how great it is to use a controller to play BG3 feels like someone telling me "It just makes more sense to eat soup with my toes instead of a spoon." I literally don't understand it at all.
Act 3 is still great but it's definitely rougher around the edges. Had a huge sequence break in a questline as a result of the kind of exploring I always do and that the game had always adjusted for previously- this time it told me to talk to a character I had never heard of and acted like it was a mission given by a character that was literally supposed to be imprisoned in an unknown location at the time as though I'd already saved them. Had to seriously adjust settings to get the Lower City to stop crashing the game every 5 minutes as well. On the other hand, the city feels more like an actual city than almost any other city you can point to in an RPG. To anyone saying cut content, sure, Upper City is mentioned a lot and I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up in the Definitive version later. But even in its current state it dwarfs what you see in most games, there are so many interactions and so many ways they can play out. You will have a vastly different cast of characters even being alive depending on the choices you make, entire major characters that you could have killed 100 hours ago, solutions to quest dependent on who you've made friends with or not. So many choice games focus on "mean dialog choice" "nice dialog choice". My favorite familiar is only in my party because of succeeding a dice roll and making specific choices in the first ten minutes of the game, followed by finding them in Act 2 again when somebody could easily miss one or both encounters, make a different choice at any step and be locked out or not know the option exists at all. None of the people I've watched playthroughs of have done it, but they've also all done things I had no idea were even in the game as well. By Act 3, so many of these have piled up the differences become even more pronounced.
Now I could be jumping the gun with this statement but I need people to stop the lie of saying that Mass Effect 3 is worst of the trilogy. ME3 has the best gameplay, the best story, and an amazing mulitplayer. The ending does not define the rest of the game and y’all need to get over that shit. Stop denying the rest of that amazing game.
i agree that the gameplay and story (minus the ending) are good but i don't think it's fair to add the multiplayer to the tally since that's not a thing anymore. I'd class 2 as the best overall game in the trilogy.
Balders gate GOTY edition should have extended cut choices, you can romance even more people and unlock the hidden 6 hour romance scene atomic heart was too scared to include
We were robbed of a Dwarf girl romance and I will never not be mad. Those shortstack models are PEAK
@@cyberninjazero5659I don't know why we don't get more shortstack romances in modern games. They're cool, adult characters with great proportions and fun personalities.
@@rudeboyspodcast The last one I remember was Aida from Dragon Commander. That was in 2013 a whole decade ago
@@cyberninjazero5659 nettie in the druid's grove is cute
@@hinasakukimidude, the lady that works for Raphael? I dare a mf to tell me they wouldn't
If Woolie ever got into one of those livestreamed D&D campaigns I'd love to watch it. I'd feel like he'd make some solid characters.
I might be going insane didnt woolie have DND content at somepoint?
@@hibarikyoya854not D&D per se, but other tabletop games, yes
I remember on the Podcast he said he was on a DnD liveshow thing at a con or something, might have to relisten to some older episodes to find out what it was
@@TidleFratI remember him playing a one shot of an Avatar The Last Airbender game on stage. As you may have guessed, he opted to play the only character without bending.
@@E_The_Animator oh nice 😂
I will state that the Bard has some of the best additional dialogue choices.
Although, if you become an Oathbreaker, you get to say "Because it'll piss the Absolute off" when asked why you are against the cult.
Yeah oathbreaker has some fun options.
Baldur's gate 3 is like if CRPGs were allowed keep going from the 90s and become popular like JRPGs, something like BG3 should have happened in the mid 2010s.
Dragon Age Origins is literaly BG3 before BG3 tho.
It was the high budget high presentation crpg. But bioware instead of going full crpg, just made their games less and less like a crpg.
@alsaiduq4363 they straight up made action rpgs after origins and the first mass effect. On top of the fact they gave players less and less role play stuff to have different things happen in their rpgs
secretly, Bioware just wanted to make MDK 3, so they made their rpgs more and more action game-y.
(this is the type of joke you make for yourself- but share anyway... you're welcome.)
So basically you're saying it's from a universe where Dragon Age didn't go to shit immediately after game 1
2010 or something gave us New Vegas, which isn't a proper crpg but most dialogues have like 5 options+2 skillcheks
He was comparing it to his own experience with DnD and honestly that's kind of the beauty of this game and ttrpgs in general - it's really how much the players and GM are invested and are willing to deep dive these sort of things. BG3 is just a DnD campaign where everyone is all in most of the time
Some people joke that BG3 is like playing tabletop without having to interact with other humans, and your post nails the Why. It's tailored for any player: you don't have to be and compromise with some other person who doesn't vibe with your playstyle (I like fighting without spending hours chatting in-character/I like following a story or our characters' arc without a bunch of fights getting in the way/I like exploring without having a story dragging me around).
Of course, the downside is that a videogame still needs a road and can't just do Anything, which is what tabletop gaming with humans can.
The biggest complait I have for BG3 is that it has given me the biggest case of indecisivness to date. I play for like 5-10 hours before going "I wonder what (Race/Class combo) would be like", then deleting my save and starting all over again.
Why delete when you can just have multiple characters? That's what I'm doing.
@@PJSam1998 The issue is that once I start anew, I lose all interest in the previous saves. Even if I kept them, I would never load them up again. So it would just be a needless waste of space.
After you get Withers it is fairly easy - if a little expensive if you do it too much - to reclass/hire classes other than the Origin characters (you can also reclass Origins!) so you don't have to delete your saves.
i'm haveing so much fun in my current run as a bard so many unique dialouges.
Bruh just respec you dingus
Ketheric is such a good antagonist. JK Simmons really is one of the GOATs
Agreed, he's incredible.
Anyone else catch that beautiful moment of the boys harmonizing at the beginning of the video?
Can’t wait for Baldur’s Gate 6!
The Feign Death Hustle is incredible
I'll never stand for Okami slander, that game goes on longer than you ever thought it could and its an absolutely joy that it does
Tbf, the last area is the weakest. The peak of the game is onigashima. The winter village is pretty mid by comparison.
Coming from other CRPGs, one aspect that I think BG3 misses about looting is the ability to mass loot an area. IIRC both PoE and Pathfinder:WotR had that. Where if you have like a group of boxes, clicking on one box opens them all into a single loot window. Same for after battles, all of the grouped corpses would open into a single loot window. It makes looting way less tedious.
Mass loot is a god send
This super beast take was exactly how I described my feelings to my brother.
After Act 2 and starting Act 3, it really felt, emotionally, like I'd just played ME1 and ME2 in a row.
It's definitely a statement I make with w big asterisk, but I mostly still stand by it.
12:00
"Oh no, everyone's scraping everything"
-Pat "Mindgoblins" StaresAt
And remember there is more content coming as well as Baldur's Gate 3: Definitive Edition upgrade, which given Larian's history will be FREE!
I hope you're right about it being free, but at the same time; I'd gladly pay for it. I'm sure it'll be well worth it
It's a little irritating that every CRPG seems to release with an unfinished final act. At least Larian seem to fix Act 3 in their games a year after release.
I'm playing a Bard and, as Pat explained with Paige's sorcerer, it's surprising and really funny how many times there's dialogue choices where you can not only convince main guy or monster of a group to kill all they're minions pre-fight, but also convincing the would be mob boss to kill itself, avoiding a fight altogether.
For example, a strong stupid monster was very hungry, so convince him that he shouldn't try to kill and eat my party, that'd be ridiculous, he should definitely kill and eat his own party instead. Shit, his crew is dead, but he's still hungry. Well, I guess there's no choice but to...oh wait a sec, a deception option to convince the monster that he should eat itself instead of us??? That's just comically crazy enough to work! Let them dice roll, and if succeeded, avoid the entire conflict while gaining inspiration, extra experience, plus the experience that you would've received fighting the entire mob. Just one of multiple times you can do this in the game, and it's great every time.
God I fucking love Marian Studios
jedi mind trick
That goddamned Gnoll holy SHIT it was such a wild experience to have as someone who has been out of ttrpgs for about three years and actually landing the "Mind Trick" goddamn.
I feel like Pat has talked about playing one of the Divinity: Original Sin games, but I haven't seen him reference it when discussing the radial loot check, but I personally feel the controller usage by Larian in the definitive versions of that series was much more fluid and had an overall better quality of life when it came to UI. Still, Larian is killing it once again. It's unbelievable how much they've evolved over their past three games, and arguably evolved the RPG genre as a whole. The definitive edition, which is basically a given for Larian, is gonna be insane.
Or as I like to call it, Pulling An Okami
the one issue I personally have with the area search was things falling off the list when you move away from them, so for example you do the big radius search and it picks up 2 cabinets on opposite sides of the search zone, you choose to look in the one to your left and the one on your right drops off the search list and needs a new radius search to show back up on the list
Going from Starfield being an undercooked mess that BGS very clearly expects people to wait for DLC and modders to show up to fix everything to BG3 was an immense jump
You essentially went from jumping in a shallow pond to diving into a goddamn ocean
@@gkkk2735 it's not overwhelming it's just going from borderline non-existent content to everything is content is eye oprning
@ngmajora6986 oh i realize , i remember when games had this much content back then too
Books can be brought up in various conversations with you recognizing lore or having unique dialogue options, which would be nonexistent if you had not read that book.
There is another gameplay reason to have hirelings if you're a crazy person like me. You can have some hirelings around that just cast support spells that last until long rest (such as upcasted aid and longstrider) and just leave them back at camp after. You can do this with origin characters too, but if you don't want to futz around with changing their canon classes that's one way of doing it.
18:29 Pat does his King of Hyrule impersonation
Hireling cheese: get one that has high wisdom, medicine proficiency (or better yet, expertise), and class is transmutation wizard. Have that guy turn all your herbs into potion ingredients and turn ask your portion ingredients into potions/elixirs. They have a chance to proc extras.
I really have a big problem with the 'story progresses by rest' thing, and that is I try to put off doing rests as much as possible. I think I did all of act 1 in like...3 rests, which meant it felt like I was missing a bunch and later on, certain conversations happened asking me to bring characters along to certain areas *after* I'd finished that area.
i guess the game could have explained it better but long rests only progress stuff if you've encountered it.
if you see an inn on fire maybe don't take a nap before dealing with it.
But if you haven't seen it yet take as many long rests as you want and it won't progress.
Pat just because you can steal and be a dirtbag doesn't mean that money doesn't have value lmao.
The feign death is even funnier than using Fog and picking pocking right infront of them and anybody in town.
Money in Buldur's gate 3 is just a state of mind. It's there if you just want to grind harder, like me.
Or STEAL!!!
Pat, the other game that is like this is Dragon Quest XI. It is three games in one. Super satisfying when you don't cheat your way through.
Also Elden Ring, which is like DS4, 5, and 6 if you full clear it. I'm pretty sure Pat even explicitly said basically the same thing about ER in one of the podcasts after it released.
@@Graysett With ER, I don't think it's a compliment because you do reach a point where you become burnt out. I think Armored Core 6's approach with NG+ content is something I think I like more in concept, however it could be expanded upon further.
If Larian ever decides to do some major content updates for the game, there are 3 things I'd like them to add:
1. Official Lone Wolf mode. Giving you the option to limit you team to 2 (or even 1) characters that get buffed appropriately in turn could make for some interesting gameplay. I downloaded a Lone Wolf mod and played through the entire game as an evil tag-team of The Dark Urge and Minthara and had a blast doing so.
2. More gear and random drops. There's a lot of gear options in BG3, but everything exists at set places. This means that every playthrough tend to end up fairly similar since you get the exact same drops in the exact same places. Having certain unique and legendary items in fixed places makes sense, but there could be more variety with all the green and blue gear. More options could also allow for more niche playstyles.
3. New Game+. Starting over with a full team of max level characters could be fun, but they'd need to rebalance the entire game.
When you toggle on none-lethal it also effects melee skills. So the toggle makes sense because it's not just your basic attack that gets effected.
The one use I have found for the hirelings, is to get a level 10 cleric, use divine intervention to give them a weapon (+3 mace), then give that to Shart/whoever needs it, then dismiss them
The only use I'm going to have for Hirelings is doing my "Oops, all Druids" run (start as Druid, get hireling ASAP, then get Halsin, then get Jaheera) and as a backup incase stuff happens in my evil dark urge playthrough and I run out of party members I want to bring along.
Oh man, that feign death cheese is gonna be great for my next solo run
Fun fact, my travellers chest had so many items in it by the end 😅 I literally sent every unique book and note to my chest and had like 250+ books/notes in my chest, and I sorted by type so to get to the bottom of my chest for the things that go under the books I had to go ALL of them to get there 😂😂😂
Last time I felt like I got 3 for 1 was Hollow Knight, then Okami indeed before that.
13:54 the moment when woolie internalizes that corpse nothing is no longer corpse nothing
Its crazy to hear the orb search is better than just highlighting because I fucking HATE the orb. It shows you stuff thats able to be looted, then when you pick one you'll just walk out of range of others and need to re-search anyway.
I wish this game had as much classes as pathfinder. There's some classes like Alchemist , Inquisitor , Bloodrager and mount in general that i miss hard
Pat forgot the combo, it's feign death the shopkeeper then use darkness or fog. Happy looting y'all!
My favorite interaction I had in Act 2 was at the House of Healing and the persuasion check that I busted (Bards yo) to convince the good doctor that he should be the subject. Didn't realize you could just talk someone into killing themselves but here we are.
Episode 5 could be good. I mean Episode 5 of Perfect works was Xenogears, with dealings directly affected by characters from Episode 4 (primarily Lacan and Kreilian) really was a solid package. But we can never know because Squaresoft wanted to fund Spirits within instead.
Simplest way to know if a read is actually important, it's highlighted orange
Not always. The Wizard tower books for the poems in pat's example are not orange
16:30 come back to this for your playthrough😂
I'm really looking forward to Pat's report on his Act 3 experience. I've been getting such conflicting reports of "it's buggy, broken, and unfinished" and "it was totally fine". I don't know what to believe.
My two cents:
It's pacing is worse than the other 2 acts and it gives you a bit too much freedom imo.
I was finishing quests before I even knew they were a thing because I came at them backwards accidentally.
It's still very good and there are highlights but I'd say it's the weakest act.
@@joaocreature thanks for the insight, I'm really debating about getting it now or waiting for some kind of definitive edition. Don't know if what you mention is something that would be fixed/changed by one but maybe it'd at least be less buggy.
Still good but the feeling of cut content is massive. Straight up half the city just gone, side stories that end with an awkward cut-off, and certain characters and locations awkwardly placed into the lower city when they were clearly meant to be located elsewhere. Some bugs, characters not showing up and choices I made not triggering properly, but it ran alright.
@@Gear3 I find it really odd that I see people say things like this a lot and then still see so many say "game of the year". Shouldn't it be a bigger deal that the ending seems unfinished?
@@Gear3to me it’s less about an area being missing and more about the content from the upper city being folded into the lower one. I really like act 3 for how the city feels and how dense it is, but the pacing is definitely weird and may have been helped by having two smaller areas instead of one big one.
Having finally played the game, I agree with Pat's take that it's the Mass Effect trilogy all in one.
On the subject of non lethal attacks... did anyone else find that the toggle just does not work in 90% of scenarios? Even if left an NPC with 1 HP and "knocked out" the game would progress as if I had killed them. Often i could return to their place later and their corpses would be all that's left. I think non lethal worked for me in like 3 highly scripted segments.
A lot of story NPCs don't have non-lethal interactions for some reason - like Minthara. Yet Minsc does.
If any damage other than physical hits the NPC you did the non-lethal attack on they'll die. I know I accidently killed a few people because my weapon had like 4 other types of damage added to it so even if I hit them non-lethally the psychic damage would do them in.
There are hirelings from withers can get if you lose all your party members.
Act 3 is cripplingly unfinished. They cut a whole area and this choice caused the dogshit companion endings as well as 80% of actual bugs to do with companions due to the huge number of dead-end flags left in the cut area.
You donot need to physically read most books or literature, BUT,there is sometime skill checks/lore bits/ or missions tied to some.
So make sure you at least click "read"
I got blueprints in act 1, and took me a while to find how to "use" it
Rogue Trader has an amazing system that merges the entire inventory of every slain enemy within a radius of the first one you click on. It makes looting and indexing so much quicker.
I actually prefer the keyboard and mouse to the controller
*acquire gnome corpse*
*fill it with alchemists fire and smokepowder*
*have barbarian yeet it at the nearest problem*
*shoot with firebolt and admire your work*
real baldurs gamers steal everything not nailed down and sell it to one vendor. Arrons trade inventory in act 1 lags and sometimes crashes my game
100 hours officially in and with Pat's crazy drop of feign death trick i am literally thinking about starting over.
Straight up I don't even have that spell equipped because I never thought it was useful for anything. God friggin dammit.
AND. ALSO. it wasnt until Act 3 that I realized you could reassign spells whenever you want! I thought you could only do it during a level up 🙃🙃 gaaaahhhh this gaaame. I love it and its consumed my life
i was never sure if your approval rateing with party memebers effects when events trigger at camp or if they happen anyways. i was under the impression it only effectedd romance sceens and the story stuff happens regardless.
Based on my playtime, the like micro dialogue interactions mostly affect romances but the obvious big stuff like how you handle the Grove will permanently affect your party’s outlook. The best example is that even if you go full tadpole, Lae’Zel will stick around you just can’t have a romance with her at all
Interactions trigger largely on story beats however they change based on your affinity with them.
there is a way to tell if a container is untouched, searched and empty on mouse on keyboard. The cursor changes from a gold chest, grey chest and opened empty chest respectively.
"oh it does now?" it has always done this, since EA.
He is saying that it only changes if you've opened it once. On controller the radial search shows it automatically.
I beat the game with mouse an keyboard, I wouldn't play any other way, and I can admit than the orb is insanely useful and that I didn't like this game as much as everyone appears to do, simply because looting. Looting is a third of the time you spend in the game, and it's painful, i wish i had the orb
Having played BG3 for over 100 hours, I'll say this game does not have 3 games worth of content. I find that an over exaggeration and this is coming from someone that hasn't finished the game yet. I'd say maybe 1.5 games worth of content. Mainly because of those 100 hours, 60 of them have been spent making new characters, trying out builds, exploring the world, listening to every interaction, and I'd say 10 of those 60 hours have probably been inventory management and looting alone. If you focused on the story itself and the sidequests, it's probably 40 hours or so. Pat's streamer goggles aren't a good metric of a game's content because he plays slowly and for an audience. It is definitely a densely packed game but to say the game has more going on than say the Mass Effect trilogy in terms of story, is crazy talk. The Acts aren't as long story wise as Pat makes them out to be.
in my 1st play it was a 90hr save, 3 acts. its not a 1 to 1 but man does act 1 and 2 feel like complete games or even small D&D campaigns by themselves.
I don't understand your point because interacting with characters and exploring the world IS the meat and potatoest of the game, of course you're going get lower numbers if you don't count the "unimportant" parts.
Also, its not just a streamer playstyle, I've also got 120 hours logged in and it's all been on the same character with the same build.
I would estimate closer to 2. My first playthrough was 120 hours. I did not miss any sections of the map.
I disagree, my first playthrough was 110 hours and I didn't spend any on making characters or minmaxing, I ran with the default characters I was given, mostly. I missed many sidequests and events and still went over the 100 hours mark. Considering the average game is 30-40 hours, it think it's fair to say that it feels like BG is playing 3 games in a row.
@@Mantis47 My point is, once you ran through the game once. You'll begin to see where the content actually is in the game. All those houses that you explored that had nothing of note in them, all those spots in the map you wasted 2-3 minutes to get to so you could see if there was anything interesting in, all those empty rooms, hatches, cellars you'd go in to that you find nothing in. Just look at the quests for each location on the BG3 wiki on fextralife. The game does an amazing job at immersing you in to the game and making you feel like it's a huge environment with a ton of things to see and explore, it does so beautifully and more games need to give you that feeling. The game is still a 10/10 for me, and I'll keep replaying it for years to come. But let's be realistic here, once you get past that initial frontloading phase you'll see that the game is 40-60 hours at most which is very much worth every penny. That's what happened to me anyways, I did my first character and ran about 50-60 hours and not even touching act 3. Made another character, was in act 3 before the 40 hour mark. That's like saying that Starfield is worth 3 games just because someone can spend 120 hours on it their first playthrough. However, I will accept the concession that this game has 5 games worth of enjoyment at least.
The thing I love about this game is that evil choices doesn’t handicap you gameplay wise. You can be a paragon of virture and gather a whole army of Allie’s to help you on your journey but you can be a total shitlord and gather and equally evil army to have your back
Times when i hear people into downtime character lore makes me think how much Falcom games would appeal to them.
Though there are some extremes in this company's catalogue.
As someone who's indifferent to bethesda open worlds, Falcom games are maybe the only ones i really care about talking to everyone.
But, maybe i may also care about mass effect and this game here should i ever get in.
19:05 If that was the case you'd need a non-lethal version of all of your melee skills as well, isn't restricted to normal attacks.
_"911 those Gabbos"_ -Patrick the race traitor
BG3 is amazing and huge, but calling it a trilogy is a lot. It's a standard 3 act story with a lot of videogame in each act.
If they had released just act I and called it BG3 it wouldn't be a whole story. All that happens in act I is a single act climax.
You find out what the slug is. That's it.
I think Pat is talking about the gameplay time, not about a trilogy in the narrative way. As in, in the time you beat BG3 you would be able to beat Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3. And I can confirm that.
I mean you say that but in Mass Effect 1 you just find out what Reapers are and take out one indoctrinated guy. You could compare Saren to Minthara and Geth to the goblins if you want. Though there are other ways to go about it. Point still stands though. Mass Effect isnt any more of a complete story than Act 1 of Baldurs Gate 3.
@@Zangelin whoa that is a hell of a take. ME1 takes Shepard from some officer on a mission to the person who believes in and resolves to stop the reapers.
There's a whole arc in there. Also 3 acts.
The only problem with the long rest mechanic is how they stack and don't give any indication that there is one coming.
By the start of act 3 I had to needlessly rest like 5 times to get everyone's cut-scenes to go.
It's really annoying since 1 of them was a romance scene.
Slugging through 4 shit scenes I don't care about right now just to see shadow bewbs.
It would be nice if the game gave some form of indication on when it is appropriate to Long Rest. Since I tend to be frugal with my abilities and spells, I tend not to use them in battle unless absolutely necessary. So I often end up going through 3-5 battles before using a short rest, and just cycling out any spell dependent party members for those at the camp.
@@tylerhenderson5871
Even a notification might not be enough.
By the end of act 2 I checked to make sure that there was no companion or camp scenes before wrapping up and going into act 3 by long resting.
By the end of the first story battle with (Redacted) and What's his face. . .
Wyll had a cutscene.
Lazel had a cutscene.
Shadow had a cutscene.
Halsin had a cutscene.
Jahirea had a cutscene.
and the dark urge had a cutscene.
All requiring a separate long rest.
Lazel's is missable if you go too far into act 3 so that's nice.
not even 15 minutes into act 3 and all that was just sitting on the backburner.
Not the best game design.
@@erikstrasburg6411Oh... that hurts to think about.
I suppose the only real solution is to perhaps make the events trigger by just going to camp, without needing to specifically Long Rest. I can't imagine all the story stuff NEEDS to happen at night.
I think the problem is more tied to the fact that they all just happen as part of the long rest instead of being dialogues you can opt into. Having played a lot of BG3 I started spamming longrests at particular times during the game, because I know that they are going to stack, and in some instances they cancel eachother. I feel like they should have at least the romance/character stuff be camp dialogue, so that you can have multiple interactions while in camp and not be forced to do 8 long rests in a row in order to trigger all the stuff you want to trigger.
Unfortunately, I am stupid, and BG3 is something I cannot play easily.
I am on the easiest difficulty and I keep getting my arse handed to me because it expect me to know the game and be able to exploit game mechanics.
I love having a story mode on games, because it lets me play games without getting super stressed about being unable to effectively play.
I just wish bg3 was easier.
Yeah, the combat isn't very well balanced. The lowest difficulty is supposed to make combat trivial so you could just focus on the story. And it fails to do that.
This is more a problem if DND 5e: the game is very deadly at lower levels.
It gets a lot easier by the time you hit level 5.
This game deserves to win GOTY!
I actually disagree with the 3 games comparison.
What it actually feels like is game, dlc, expansion, and then game.
Underdark/underforge feels like DLC content that was thrown in for lulls, which is fine. You could cut them out and lose almost nothing narratively, but, hey, Astarion scolding you for failing to take Nere's head is funny.
Act 2, though, feels like an expansion meant to bridge the next game events, much like how Mass Effect 2 and DA:I did....And boy on repeated playthroughs does Act 2 feel like the neglected one of the acts.
Last light inn, to Moonrise, to Shar and not as much interactions with people as in Act 1 or 3. Not to mention just how FAST you can clear ACT2 compared to the other two acts.
I don't see how BG3 is related to the first 2, outside of tying up the lingering illithid plot. Baldur's Gate is the Bhaalspawn Saga.
cause the whole plot is being caused by the dead three and you are a bhaalspawn and are doing a lot of bhaal related things if you play as the dark urge
i love bg3 but it feels like everyone else is having a much better time than i am.
it's without a doubt my game of the year but there hasn't been a single session where my husband and i quit because we reached a natural conclusion. it's always i get too stressed out by reloading over and over to unfuck bugs.
so many sequences have entirely just broken for us. the grove turned on us after the raid for literally no reason, the post raid party at the camp never fucking happened AT ALL, astarion is 100% just bugged, his triggers never trigger and he doesn't gain favour for either of us, the party thinks laezel is fucking dead lmfao they talk about her in past tense like she died at some point, it's bizarre. i fucking love this game but it needed at least another year before a full release.
there was a full week where we couldn't really play at all because an update broke the dialogue and made the game crash when you listened to another player's convos. it's so fucked.
i love this game so much but it makes me want to fucking die when everything falls apart every five minutes.
my godamn map doesn't even work, it's just not there. just a black screen with nothing, the minimap is the same.
i'm so tired of perpetual early access bullshit like this. when a game came out when i was a kid it was fucking complete, it was READY TO BE PLAYED. the bugs were not GAME DESTROYING like they are with this game.
i'm so conflicted, i can't tell if it's my favourite game of all time or if it's just the fucking worst game i've ever played.
There is a weird aspect where hype around this game came in right before release and it was getting hailed as "Finally, a polished and complete single-player game! Suck it, trouble AAA!" And then I got to Act 3 and realized that wasn't true. I still enjoyed it but I have no motivation to go back unless there is a big story DLC or definitive edition that adds back missing content.
It sounds like your copy is badly bugged. I’ve encountered some minor bugs here and there but nothing as bad as what you’re describing :(
I can't in good faith call this GOTY due to the sheer amount of bugs I experienced. Act 3 was basically unplayable for almost an entire month and is still barely in an acceptable state. I crashed or was forced to reload more in this game than any other game I have played in like 5 years. It's an incredible game to be sure, but it's definitely not God's gift to humanity
@@Taradoxxi Seriously. I've had relatively minor issues throughout, but I'm currently sitting at over 300 hours and I haven't had _any_ issues this game-breaking.
Like.
Didn't Pat say the same thing about Elden Ring?
Wtf, Pat only now finished Act 2? He must be taking it really slow. Act 3 is even longer if you are doing every quest.
Pat is exaggerating like crazy when he calls this a trilogy's worth of game, bg3 literally has the same story structure of bg1. It is like 1.5 games max, especially since act 3 is like 60 percent complete.
You don't need to fully commit to camp interactions.
First playthrough I chose Paladin of Vengeance. I sat back and let camp/party events/storylines unfold. Then, if required, I cast judgement. As far as major decisions regarding their personal quests, I let them decide, not me. I did not romance anyone whatsoever.
I was neutral in every respect, until I needed to intervene (I am the law). Every party member made it to the end and every party member chose morally positive outcomes throughout.
This game is a blend of existing "RP"G smoke and mirror tactics. It doesn't do anything new.
You mentioned Mass Effect. You choose one of two storylines to play through, before you even click new game (it's pre-determined). Other games use conversation flow charts and remember specific markers for later.
This game just uses multiple existing techniques, to gloss over the fact that developers cannot presently code human interaction and subsequent reaction. It's not monumental or groundbreaking, despite all the "GOTY" flag waving.
This take is mostly wrong and very superficial. There are deep dives out there on TH-cam now into the coding behind Shadowheart and Gale's major decisions and dialogue variations, and the reactivity is impressive.
I hate to inform you, but you're definitely right Pat. Act 3 is ultimately disappointing
Pat talking about how great it is to use a controller to play BG3 feels like someone telling me "It just makes more sense to eat soup with my toes instead of a spoon." I literally don't understand it at all.
God, I could not *imagine* playing BG3 with a controller. It sounds just -so- much worse. Gamepad brainrot is some strong stuff.
Act 3 is still great but it's definitely rougher around the edges. Had a huge sequence break in a questline as a result of the kind of exploring I always do and that the game had always adjusted for previously- this time it told me to talk to a character I had never heard of and acted like it was a mission given by a character that was literally supposed to be imprisoned in an unknown location at the time as though I'd already saved them. Had to seriously adjust settings to get the Lower City to stop crashing the game every 5 minutes as well.
On the other hand, the city feels more like an actual city than almost any other city you can point to in an RPG. To anyone saying cut content, sure, Upper City is mentioned a lot and I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up in the Definitive version later. But even in its current state it dwarfs what you see in most games, there are so many interactions and so many ways they can play out. You will have a vastly different cast of characters even being alive depending on the choices you make, entire major characters that you could have killed 100 hours ago, solutions to quest dependent on who you've made friends with or not. So many choice games focus on "mean dialog choice" "nice dialog choice". My favorite familiar is only in my party because of succeeding a dice roll and making specific choices in the first ten minutes of the game, followed by finding them in Act 2 again when somebody could easily miss one or both encounters, make a different choice at any step and be locked out or not know the option exists at all. None of the people I've watched playthroughs of have done it, but they've also all done things I had no idea were even in the game as well. By Act 3, so many of these have piled up the differences become even more pronounced.
Bg3 kicks ass but I definitely agree with the people saying that the quality drops off in chapter 3
Now I could be jumping the gun with this statement but I need people to stop the lie of saying that Mass Effect 3 is worst of the trilogy.
ME3 has the best gameplay, the best story, and an amazing mulitplayer. The ending does not define the rest of the game and y’all need to get over that shit. Stop denying the rest of that amazing game.
i agree that the gameplay and story (minus the ending) are good but i don't think it's fair to add the multiplayer to the tally since that's not a thing anymore.
I'd class 2 as the best overall game in the trilogy.