the games master (or dungeon master) has long been one of the most fascinating roles one can play in any game - be it video, table, or sport. a blend of one-person theatre, moderation, improvisational comedy, and game design, with the emphasis on these roles and others besides shifting from person to person, from table to table, it's a truly unique position, and it's perhaps the key thing that makes computer role-playing fundamentally different from tabletop role-playing, even if you're still playing with friends. when a game is your dungeon master, it becomes non-negotiable, unwavering, utterly fastidious, and miserly in its rule-keeping. this is not always a problem if the rules are strong enough - i'm not especially interested in playing a game of Go with a referee who's cool with me eating the opponent's pieces when they aren't looking, except maybe as a one-off - but when the rules are not strong enough, it leaves me craving the human hand of a DM who will gently massage the systems behind the scenes to ensure everyone involved is having fun. and in Fifth Edition, the rules are, assuredly, not Strong Enough.
Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons is, bluntly, a poor TTRPG that demands a level of simulationist interest that would bore a 40K player (quick question, has anyone who has ever played 5E ever gave a shit about the carry weight of currency? did you even know that the gold you're carrying around has a weight that you're supposed to manage?) as support to a tactical game that is as shallow as it is torturously prolonged, capped by a social game that is functionally nonexistent. D&D is content to coast by on its cultural ubiquity and the fact that almost all of its player base barely even really knows that other TTRPGs exist, sailing the seas of mediocrity on a boat that starts to sink if you set foot in it for more than a few minutes. it is possible to play wonderful games in D&D, but I have yet to hear of - or be part of - one that was wonderful because it was D&D - rather, they are invariably good in spite of D&D, and always require some degree of selective memory or active rejection over many of the game's outrageously numerous rules.
given this perspective, it's perhaps not surprising that i am not enormously enthused by larian studios' Baldur's Gate III, a game that attempts to faithfully adapt the 5E rules to the broad framework of the studio's last game, Divinity: Original Sin II. but even with that in mind, i find myself genuinely shocked at how unbelievably boring BG3 is.
as the soothsayers on the mount foretold would occur the instant Larian proudly announced their design intentions, marrying 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons to Divinity Original Sin 2's combat completely hamstrings the latter: the genuinely expressive and reactive toolkit of that game is filtered through a dull interpretation of the most stock spells of 5E, making this less a game of setting up a simple rube goldberg machine to defeat an encounter, and more about tediously playing out the motions of early-game dnd in a world your imagination cannot penetrate.
here's the trick to being a DM: let the players do the hard work. if they come up with a crazy scheme that you never imagined that just might work... who's to say it can't? you and the players are telling this story together, after all. if they want to say what happens next, let them. if they ask if there is a chandelier to swing on, say yes. constraining yourself to a number of set solutions you devise and hope the players find is only making the game less interesting for everyone involved. when the world exists only in your heads, it expands at the speed of thought. anything is possible.
while baldur's gate 3 is a more permissible dungeon master than some games, it remains a prisoner of the imaginations of it's designer. and this is hardly a fair critique to make of a video game, i know...except when it's playing with a ruleset explicitly designed with a lackadaisical, easygoing dungeon master in mind. damning as it might be to say, the easiest way to see the failings of 5E as a set of rules is to play by them, and BG3 offers you no choice but to do so, but without even some crucial features like Ready Actions that narrow it's tactical space even more. original sin 2 nobly wrestled with this thanks to an expansive spell set mostly based on reactions and creating situations, and one wherein you could be doing powerful things very quickly. 5E has so little of this, by comparison, especially in the miserable early levels. all you have is some of the weakest tactical combat in table gaming. and explosive red barrels, of course.
the designers are clearly aware of the reduced capability for the player to interact with the environment, and have accordingly given most major encounters one big object to interact with and defeat enemies with, be it one of the aforementioned red barrels, or a giant rock suspended by a rope above where two men are standing, etcetera. this is, definitionally, reactivity in action, i suppose, but is about as intellectually engaging as putting square pegs in square holes: there's a reason we don't hold a party for every first-person shooter with an explosive barrel in it, why are we holding a party for this one?
it certainly can't be the early-game writing. while certainly I'm gratified that BG3 is less outwardly annoying and in-poor-taste as Divinity 2's edgelord parade, it's seemingly forgotten to replace it with much of anything. BG3's player character must surely be one of the most boring in the entire genre, with nary a hint of personality escaping their suffocatingly matter-of-fact dialogue options, that only on occasion dare to be so bold as to allow the player to be...slightly rude or sarcastic. there's never going to be a CRPG that allows for as much reactivity and input as a dungeon master of flesh and blood, but even within those expectations, BG3 falls utterly flat. so much of the appeal of this genre, to me, is in creating a guy that you can rotate around in your head. but baldur's gate 3 is the kind of DM that is only interested in a PC for the Numbers on their character sheet: the actual Character of the Player Character ceases to be once you complete their creation, and let them loose from your imagination into the confining reality of BG3's world.
(incidentally, BG3 joins CyberPunk 2077 in the prestigious world of 'Games With Character Creators That Give Me Chaser Vibes' with their insistence on embodying transness exclusively via mixing-and-matching voice and genitals on a series of binary traditionally attractive male or female body types. i genuinely appreciate the ability to play as a non-binary character: i don't appreciate the unavoidably fetishistic nature of prioritizing genital customization over any actual input on everyday trans presentation, like binders, top surgery, or even an androgynous voice or two)
with only a solid day's of gameplay under my belt, i can't in good conscience claim to have the full scope of the game's companions, i can at least say that the first impressions they make fall within tiresome cliches we've all had our fill of, i think. or have we? have you?
this is my conundrum with baldur's gate 3. i truly do not think the game is remarkable in any meaningful way: it is not awful but it is a very bog-standard CRPG with a little more messing with the set dressing than is typical for the genre. it is narratively, and mechanically, rote. i have only spent a few hours with it, and already, i am tired of it. just as i am tired of dungeons & dragons.
but maybe you aren't. maybe you haven't played baldur's gate 1 or 2, maybe you haven't played darklands or torment, maybe you haven't played arcanum or underrail. maybe you haven't played pillars of eternity or tyranny. maybe you're someone who got into D&D via Critical Role's explosion, someone who has never played a CRPG quite like this before, and are being introduced to an entire sub-genre with the first true 5E-based CRPG. maybe you still think jokes about Bards fucking Dragons are really funny. i say this with true sincerity (well, maybe not the last one, which was a little mean, and for which i apologize): i am genuinely delighted, on some level, to see a CRPG get this popular. while i truly cannot explain the swathes of industry veterans giving into astonishment on a scale undreamed of with this game, i also know that d&d is much, much bigger than it was when i was first enthralled by dragon age: origins, a game with a similarly rote plot, and still captured by heart and imagination, and that if this is your introduction to the magic of CRPGs, i can see why you give into astonishment. because crpgs can be astonishing.
but i would like for it, and D&D as a whole, to remain an introduction, to not consume the entire conception of the hobby, as D&D has. i am sincerely and genuinely disappointed with the total lack of apprehension the wider critical scene of games has for BG3, given its connection to Wizards of the Coast, a deeply evil company that, just today, admitted to using AI art in the latest D&D sourcebook. i am uninterested in contributing to the breathless hype of an IP owned by a company uninterested in the basic humanity of art and it's creation. not when there are so many other games out there.
you can stay in plato's cave, for a while. you can stay there forever if you want, dungeon crawling up and down the sword coast. but you can also leave that cave, and come into my other cave, slightly next door, where i can tell you about blades in the dark and pentiment. they're really very very cool.
as for me? i turned the game off when i reached a point whereupon, after noticing an obvious trap, i snuck around the skeletons lying in wait to attack and reached the treasure...whereupon the treasure chest spoke to me and told me to fuck off until i had killed the skeletons. fuck off, BG3. why should i bother trying to navigate your encounters creatively when you're going to just say that it doesn't work like that? I've played with dungeon masters like this before, and they aren't good ones. they're the kind of ones who wonder why they can't seem to hold a group together for more than a couple of sessions.
maybe i'll return to BG3, but if i do, it'll only be in multiplayer. with friends, and possibly a drink or two. but if me and three friends are committing to a possible 120-hour RPG...why not just take it a little bit further and just play some actual Tabletop? Why not play something that isn't Dungeons & Dragons? Why not play with a dungeon master that won't be such a spoilsport?
Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons is, bluntly, a poor TTRPG that demands a level of simulationist interest that would bore a 40K player (quick question, has anyone who has ever played 5E ever gave a shit about the carry weight of currency? did you even know that the gold you're carrying around has a weight that you're supposed to manage?) as support to a tactical game that is as shallow as it is torturously prolonged, capped by a social game that is functionally nonexistent. D&D is content to coast by on its cultural ubiquity and the fact that almost all of its player base barely even really knows that other TTRPGs exist, sailing the seas of mediocrity on a boat that starts to sink if you set foot in it for more than a few minutes. it is possible to play wonderful games in D&D, but I have yet to hear of - or be part of - one that was wonderful because it was D&D - rather, they are invariably good in spite of D&D, and always require some degree of selective memory or active rejection over many of the game's outrageously numerous rules.
given this perspective, it's perhaps not surprising that i am not enormously enthused by larian studios' Baldur's Gate III, a game that attempts to faithfully adapt the 5E rules to the broad framework of the studio's last game, Divinity: Original Sin II. but even with that in mind, i find myself genuinely shocked at how unbelievably boring BG3 is.
as the soothsayers on the mount foretold would occur the instant Larian proudly announced their design intentions, marrying 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons to Divinity Original Sin 2's combat completely hamstrings the latter: the genuinely expressive and reactive toolkit of that game is filtered through a dull interpretation of the most stock spells of 5E, making this less a game of setting up a simple rube goldberg machine to defeat an encounter, and more about tediously playing out the motions of early-game dnd in a world your imagination cannot penetrate.
here's the trick to being a DM: let the players do the hard work. if they come up with a crazy scheme that you never imagined that just might work... who's to say it can't? you and the players are telling this story together, after all. if they want to say what happens next, let them. if they ask if there is a chandelier to swing on, say yes. constraining yourself to a number of set solutions you devise and hope the players find is only making the game less interesting for everyone involved. when the world exists only in your heads, it expands at the speed of thought. anything is possible.
while baldur's gate 3 is a more permissible dungeon master than some games, it remains a prisoner of the imaginations of it's designer. and this is hardly a fair critique to make of a video game, i know...except when it's playing with a ruleset explicitly designed with a lackadaisical, easygoing dungeon master in mind. damning as it might be to say, the easiest way to see the failings of 5E as a set of rules is to play by them, and BG3 offers you no choice but to do so, but without even some crucial features like Ready Actions that narrow it's tactical space even more. original sin 2 nobly wrestled with this thanks to an expansive spell set mostly based on reactions and creating situations, and one wherein you could be doing powerful things very quickly. 5E has so little of this, by comparison, especially in the miserable early levels. all you have is some of the weakest tactical combat in table gaming. and explosive red barrels, of course.
the designers are clearly aware of the reduced capability for the player to interact with the environment, and have accordingly given most major encounters one big object to interact with and defeat enemies with, be it one of the aforementioned red barrels, or a giant rock suspended by a rope above where two men are standing, etcetera. this is, definitionally, reactivity in action, i suppose, but is about as intellectually engaging as putting square pegs in square holes: there's a reason we don't hold a party for every first-person shooter with an explosive barrel in it, why are we holding a party for this one?
it certainly can't be the early-game writing. while certainly I'm gratified that BG3 is less outwardly annoying and in-poor-taste as Divinity 2's edgelord parade, it's seemingly forgotten to replace it with much of anything. BG3's player character must surely be one of the most boring in the entire genre, with nary a hint of personality escaping their suffocatingly matter-of-fact dialogue options, that only on occasion dare to be so bold as to allow the player to be...slightly rude or sarcastic. there's never going to be a CRPG that allows for as much reactivity and input as a dungeon master of flesh and blood, but even within those expectations, BG3 falls utterly flat. so much of the appeal of this genre, to me, is in creating a guy that you can rotate around in your head. but baldur's gate 3 is the kind of DM that is only interested in a PC for the Numbers on their character sheet: the actual Character of the Player Character ceases to be once you complete their creation, and let them loose from your imagination into the confining reality of BG3's world.
(incidentally, BG3 joins CyberPunk 2077 in the prestigious world of 'Games With Character Creators That Give Me Chaser Vibes' with their insistence on embodying transness exclusively via mixing-and-matching voice and genitals on a series of binary traditionally attractive male or female body types. i genuinely appreciate the ability to play as a non-binary character: i don't appreciate the unavoidably fetishistic nature of prioritizing genital customization over any actual input on everyday trans presentation, like binders, top surgery, or even an androgynous voice or two)
with only a solid day's of gameplay under my belt, i can't in good conscience claim to have the full scope of the game's companions, i can at least say that the first impressions they make fall within tiresome cliches we've all had our fill of, i think. or have we? have you?
this is my conundrum with baldur's gate 3. i truly do not think the game is remarkable in any meaningful way: it is not awful but it is a very bog-standard CRPG with a little more messing with the set dressing than is typical for the genre. it is narratively, and mechanically, rote. i have only spent a few hours with it, and already, i am tired of it. just as i am tired of dungeons & dragons.
but maybe you aren't. maybe you haven't played baldur's gate 1 or 2, maybe you haven't played darklands or torment, maybe you haven't played arcanum or underrail. maybe you haven't played pillars of eternity or tyranny. maybe you're someone who got into D&D via Critical Role's explosion, someone who has never played a CRPG quite like this before, and are being introduced to an entire sub-genre with the first true 5E-based CRPG. maybe you still think jokes about Bards fucking Dragons are really funny. i say this with true sincerity (well, maybe not the last one, which was a little mean, and for which i apologize): i am genuinely delighted, on some level, to see a CRPG get this popular. while i truly cannot explain the swathes of industry veterans giving into astonishment on a scale undreamed of with this game, i also know that d&d is much, much bigger than it was when i was first enthralled by dragon age: origins, a game with a similarly rote plot, and still captured by heart and imagination, and that if this is your introduction to the magic of CRPGs, i can see why you give into astonishment. because crpgs can be astonishing.
but i would like for it, and D&D as a whole, to remain an introduction, to not consume the entire conception of the hobby, as D&D has. i am sincerely and genuinely disappointed with the total lack of apprehension the wider critical scene of games has for BG3, given its connection to Wizards of the Coast, a deeply evil company that, just today, admitted to using AI art in the latest D&D sourcebook. i am uninterested in contributing to the breathless hype of an IP owned by a company uninterested in the basic humanity of art and it's creation. not when there are so many other games out there.
you can stay in plato's cave, for a while. you can stay there forever if you want, dungeon crawling up and down the sword coast. but you can also leave that cave, and come into my other cave, slightly next door, where i can tell you about blades in the dark and pentiment. they're really very very cool.
as for me? i turned the game off when i reached a point whereupon, after noticing an obvious trap, i snuck around the skeletons lying in wait to attack and reached the treasure...whereupon the treasure chest spoke to me and told me to fuck off until i had killed the skeletons. fuck off, BG3. why should i bother trying to navigate your encounters creatively when you're going to just say that it doesn't work like that? I've played with dungeon masters like this before, and they aren't good ones. they're the kind of ones who wonder why they can't seem to hold a group together for more than a couple of sessions.
maybe i'll return to BG3, but if i do, it'll only be in multiplayer. with friends, and possibly a drink or two. but if me and three friends are committing to a possible 120-hour RPG...why not just take it a little bit further and just play some actual Tabletop? Why not play something that isn't Dungeons & Dragons? Why not play with a dungeon master that won't be such a spoilsport?
8 Comments
The 40K comparison had me howling, good shit, and so is the rest of the review. As someone truly done with 5e it's nice to see someone outside my circle of friends make a good criticism of its systems. If everyone played Lancer, we'd be closer to world peace (Blades in the Dark still fucks btw, amazing choice of ttrpg)
@zn0
i'm surprised and genuinely upset that this review has provoked a response like this, that seems to come from genuine hurt feelings? sorry if my speculation there is undue, but i just wasn't really expecting a response in this tone, especially for a game that has been met with overwhelming positivity. i'm really sorry for any offense caused.
> but once i got to your paragraph stating that i or others who are enjoying bg3 are "in plato's cave" kinda got under my skin.
let me be clear, then, to hopefully assuage some of the offense: that isn't what i said, or what i intended to imply, and i apologize if that's how it came across. i am not suggesting that people who are enjoying baldur's gate 3 are ignorant of the world outside the the plato's cave comment follows on from the paragraph above, where i talk about my distaste for dungeons and dragons as a creative, financial and cultural monopoly over what it means to play an RPG, and my wish for people to explore beyond it. i want people to play games that aren't D&D for the same reason i want people to go to locally-owned restaurants that are struggling instead of crowding out mcdonalds' every night. i'm not deaf to the appeal of mcdonalds, but it's hard to think of it kindly when there are more and more closed places every passing week, and more and more members of the vibrant and wonderful tabletop scene that are struggling to make rent despite creating some truly remarkable works of game design.
i am genuinely glad you and others are enjoying baldur's gate 3. i also find it genuinely troubling and disappointing how eager influential people who really should know better are to elevate it far above it's contemporaries, and feel a deep yearning for games i think are more compelling and explorative to be given one of the infinite chances the industry affords to dungeons and dragons. i can hold these two thoughts within me at the same time.
> i struggle to understand what you find so 'rote' about bg3's plot, too, though you yourself said that you didn't play much of it. so, uh.
ah, come on. is there any need for that "so, uh"? i'm sorry, but this is just rude. like I said before, I'm genuinely sorry to have offended you with my comments on this game, but it's hard to feel like such things are made in good faith when you hit back with snide comments like this.
even setting aside the fact that the amount of people who have actually finished what is purportedly a 100+ hour RPG in the few days since it's come out, what arbitrary number of hours has to pass for criticisms of a game's narrative to become worthwhile? why are feelings on the writing somehow more valid than my own negative feelings? if baldur's gate 3's narrative is novel to you, then great! but for me, it is rote. i have seen all this before. i have seen the troubled cute girl with a dark secret, i have seen the obviously vampiric haughty comedy murder noble, i've seen the gadfly wizard, i've seen the distant traveler who believes her culture superior to all those around. i've seen stories about a group of strangers bound together by a shared ailment fighting against a cult led by a hidden god. i've seen all of this before, with greater interest and charisma besides. you are of course free to disagree, but if a game takes longer than the 8 hours I've played to unfold it's narrative to comment on it at all, then that's a problem with the game, not with me. in half the time in planescape: torment, i could have met the sentient embodiment of the letter "O" in a bar lit by a perpetually burning man.
> they said that they didn't know the artist they hired "touched up" his sketches with ai, and they rewrote their artist guidelines to prevent this in the future. they probably did know, but they didn't exactly use completely ai-generated images the way you make it sound here.
i am wholly uninterested with this kind of hand-wringing comment on AI art, not least because Wizards' comment is obviously nonsense, given that the artist they hired proudly boasts about using AI in their work on their socials. either they knew and are doing damage control, or are so unbelievably negligent that it somehow slipped past them. for the record, given parent company Habro's evident enthusiasm for AI (https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/23809858/hasbro-digital-board-games-ai-teburu) the former seems much more likely to me. either way, i don't feel there's much grounds to defend the company that hired pinkertons to harass and intimidate people to cover up the company's errors. ai art is a plague and until it is legislated on an international scale to protect the rights and livelihoods of real artists, i'll spit on it anywhere i see it.
> think it's a little bit unfair to expect a video game and its writing and scenarios and so forth to be as subtle and flexible as a real dm, and that appears to be the whole crux of your distaste.
no, it isn't "the whole crux of your distaste", and i don't really appreciate being told what my feelings are, especially when i've made my thoughts on this very issue, i think, fairly clear:
"while baldur's gate 3 is a more permissible dungeon master than some games, it remains a prisoner of the imaginations of it's designer. and this is hardly a fair critique to make of a video game, i know...except when it's playing with a ruleset explicitly designed with a lackadaisical, easygoing dungeon master in mind."
in case it is still not clear, my issue is not with the fact that the video game does not offer the infinite scope of play of the tabletop, but rather, with the application of 5th Edition as a system, something designed for tabletop and something that can only be made tolerable for me to play with the extensive house-ruling and selective interest of the tabletop can provide. 5E is designed for and nigh-universally played with (almost no one actually plays raw D&D, and indeed the idea that you can play raw D&D is a relatively recent one: both original and AD&D came with an explicit written understanding on the part of the designers that players would house-rule extensively, to the point of original D&D being genuinely unplayable without it) an infinite scope that a video game is simply incapable of, and by remaining so faithful to it, larian studios have ultimately merely crafted a turn-based combat system that is, to me, slow, shallow, complex without being deep, fundamentally dull, and just plain less engaging than almost every CRPG system I've played that uses a ruleset design primarily for the computer. i am not a fan of Larian's last game, but it has a system that is much more free-form and willing to let the player get riotously silly with their combat options from very early on.
i hope this comment is clarifying. again, i am genuinely sorry for any hurt caused.
i'm surprised and genuinely upset that this review has provoked a response like this, that seems to come from genuine hurt feelings? sorry if my speculation there is undue, but i just wasn't really expecting a response in this tone, especially for a game that has been met with overwhelming positivity. i'm really sorry for any offense caused.
> but once i got to your paragraph stating that i or others who are enjoying bg3 are "in plato's cave" kinda got under my skin.
let me be clear, then, to hopefully assuage some of the offense: that isn't what i said, or what i intended to imply, and i apologize if that's how it came across. i am not suggesting that people who are enjoying baldur's gate 3 are ignorant of the world outside the the plato's cave comment follows on from the paragraph above, where i talk about my distaste for dungeons and dragons as a creative, financial and cultural monopoly over what it means to play an RPG, and my wish for people to explore beyond it. i want people to play games that aren't D&D for the same reason i want people to go to locally-owned restaurants that are struggling instead of crowding out mcdonalds' every night. i'm not deaf to the appeal of mcdonalds, but it's hard to think of it kindly when there are more and more closed places every passing week, and more and more members of the vibrant and wonderful tabletop scene that are struggling to make rent despite creating some truly remarkable works of game design.
i am genuinely glad you and others are enjoying baldur's gate 3. i also find it genuinely troubling and disappointing how eager influential people who really should know better are to elevate it far above it's contemporaries, and feel a deep yearning for games i think are more compelling and explorative to be given one of the infinite chances the industry affords to dungeons and dragons. i can hold these two thoughts within me at the same time.
> i struggle to understand what you find so 'rote' about bg3's plot, too, though you yourself said that you didn't play much of it. so, uh.
ah, come on. is there any need for that "so, uh"? i'm sorry, but this is just rude. like I said before, I'm genuinely sorry to have offended you with my comments on this game, but it's hard to feel like such things are made in good faith when you hit back with snide comments like this.
even setting aside the fact that the amount of people who have actually finished what is purportedly a 100+ hour RPG in the few days since it's come out, what arbitrary number of hours has to pass for criticisms of a game's narrative to become worthwhile? why are feelings on the writing somehow more valid than my own negative feelings? if baldur's gate 3's narrative is novel to you, then great! but for me, it is rote. i have seen all this before. i have seen the troubled cute girl with a dark secret, i have seen the obviously vampiric haughty comedy murder noble, i've seen the gadfly wizard, i've seen the distant traveler who believes her culture superior to all those around. i've seen stories about a group of strangers bound together by a shared ailment fighting against a cult led by a hidden god. i've seen all of this before, with greater interest and charisma besides. you are of course free to disagree, but if a game takes longer than the 8 hours I've played to unfold it's narrative to comment on it at all, then that's a problem with the game, not with me. in half the time in planescape: torment, i could have met the sentient embodiment of the letter "O" in a bar lit by a perpetually burning man.
> they said that they didn't know the artist they hired "touched up" his sketches with ai, and they rewrote their artist guidelines to prevent this in the future. they probably did know, but they didn't exactly use completely ai-generated images the way you make it sound here.
i am wholly uninterested with this kind of hand-wringing comment on AI art, not least because Wizards' comment is obviously nonsense, given that the artist they hired proudly boasts about using AI in their work on their socials. either they knew and are doing damage control, or are so unbelievably negligent that it somehow slipped past them. for the record, given parent company Habro's evident enthusiasm for AI (https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/23809858/hasbro-digital-board-games-ai-teburu) the former seems much more likely to me. either way, i don't feel there's much grounds to defend the company that hired pinkertons to harass and intimidate people to cover up the company's errors. ai art is a plague and until it is legislated on an international scale to protect the rights and livelihoods of real artists, i'll spit on it anywhere i see it.
> think it's a little bit unfair to expect a video game and its writing and scenarios and so forth to be as subtle and flexible as a real dm, and that appears to be the whole crux of your distaste.
no, it isn't "the whole crux of your distaste", and i don't really appreciate being told what my feelings are, especially when i've made my thoughts on this very issue, i think, fairly clear:
"while baldur's gate 3 is a more permissible dungeon master than some games, it remains a prisoner of the imaginations of it's designer. and this is hardly a fair critique to make of a video game, i know...except when it's playing with a ruleset explicitly designed with a lackadaisical, easygoing dungeon master in mind."
in case it is still not clear, my issue is not with the fact that the video game does not offer the infinite scope of play of the tabletop, but rather, with the application of 5th Edition as a system, something designed for tabletop and something that can only be made tolerable for me to play with the extensive house-ruling and selective interest of the tabletop can provide. 5E is designed for and nigh-universally played with (almost no one actually plays raw D&D, and indeed the idea that you can play raw D&D is a relatively recent one: both original and AD&D came with an explicit written understanding on the part of the designers that players would house-rule extensively, to the point of original D&D being genuinely unplayable without it) an infinite scope that a video game is simply incapable of, and by remaining so faithful to it, larian studios have ultimately merely crafted a turn-based combat system that is, to me, slow, shallow, complex without being deep, fundamentally dull, and just plain less engaging than almost every CRPG system I've played that uses a ruleset design primarily for the computer. i am not a fan of Larian's last game, but it has a system that is much more free-form and willing to let the player get riotously silly with their combat options from very early on.
i hope this comment is clarifying. again, i am genuinely sorry for any hurt caused.
thank you for thoughtful response! and thank you for being considerate enough to apologize, though it's not necessary and not exactly what i was looking for. likewise, i'm sorry for inserting a few prickly remarks and i hope you understand it came from feeling slightly wounded — but how i felt isn't that important and i should've been a bit more tempered in what i wanted to say. my aim wasn't to be rude or hurtful.
i can only defer to your experience with ttrpgs and i agree that much of the plot is fairly conventional, yet i am finding it to be intriguing enough (particularly once your 'guardian' appears) and vague enough to make some my my choices in dialogue a bit troubling, which can be both frustrating and compelling. i can't always say exactly what i would like my character to say in every given situation, but i have felt thus far like i could more or less be the kindhearted moonlight paladin i wanted to be. what does annoy me more than anything is the dicerolls in dialogue that fail when they (in my mind) should be a given, considering my character's background. anything outside that range being left to dicerolls makes sense to me, but an oath of ancients paladin probably shouldn't fail a roll when asked to imagine a place of comfort in nature.
wrt wotc i have to digress because i'm not as familiar with them as you are, and i more or less share your outlook on ai 'art' and the very serious problems it is currently presenting everywhere.
i do agree that d:os2 immediately feels more freeform and sandboxy than this one, though i still feel plenty engaged and i can only admit, again, that it must be because be because of my own comparative lack of experience. i do feel a little disappointed in the total absence of a rtwp system (wotr had both!) and the lack of some spells present in bg1-2. i certainly don't think bg3 is a flawless experience or anything, but what's there has been enough to allow me to get into a headspace of immersion and roleplay, at least to a more or less satisfactory (to me) extent! speaking of it on a purely video game level, besides, i am in awe of its scale and density, just like i was with d:os2. it's almost exhausting to explore and i eat that up.
thank you truly for the elaborate response and your kindness, even in the face of my perhaps overly defensive comment.
i can only defer to your experience with ttrpgs and i agree that much of the plot is fairly conventional, yet i am finding it to be intriguing enough (particularly once your 'guardian' appears) and vague enough to make some my my choices in dialogue a bit troubling, which can be both frustrating and compelling. i can't always say exactly what i would like my character to say in every given situation, but i have felt thus far like i could more or less be the kindhearted moonlight paladin i wanted to be. what does annoy me more than anything is the dicerolls in dialogue that fail when they (in my mind) should be a given, considering my character's background. anything outside that range being left to dicerolls makes sense to me, but an oath of ancients paladin probably shouldn't fail a roll when asked to imagine a place of comfort in nature.
wrt wotc i have to digress because i'm not as familiar with them as you are, and i more or less share your outlook on ai 'art' and the very serious problems it is currently presenting everywhere.
i do agree that d:os2 immediately feels more freeform and sandboxy than this one, though i still feel plenty engaged and i can only admit, again, that it must be because be because of my own comparative lack of experience. i do feel a little disappointed in the total absence of a rtwp system (wotr had both!) and the lack of some spells present in bg1-2. i certainly don't think bg3 is a flawless experience or anything, but what's there has been enough to allow me to get into a headspace of immersion and roleplay, at least to a more or less satisfactory (to me) extent! speaking of it on a purely video game level, besides, i am in awe of its scale and density, just like i was with d:os2. it's almost exhausting to explore and i eat that up.
thank you truly for the elaborate response and your kindness, even in the face of my perhaps overly defensive comment.
i should add a couple of asides: though i am enjoying this game and i really like cyberpunk 2077, i agree wrt pandering and shallow gender customization. if they're going to do it at all, it should be much more in-depth and sophisticated. the other thing: as familiar as a lot of the storytelling here is, i think the big thing that really has me feeling drawn in is the evident mystery around how this story relates to the bhaalspawn saga. i haven't been spoiled, thankfully, but i have my suspicions about the dark urge and i hope that whatever connections are present are interesting! some of the books i've found laying around have been interesting...
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9 months ago
Removed by a moderator
In my few dismal hours of interaction with this heap (back during the playtest) the singular positive attribute I could ascribe to it was that it at least allows you to skip through the abysmal combat more often than not. It's something DOS2 seemed to genuinely resent doing, to the point where even in the moments when it was allowed it found some way of snubbing you for it. I'm hoping that skeleton thing you encountered was just a rare exception to the rule, because if not, wow, how do people put up with this?
I've heard extremely negative things about the multiplayer, both in the intentional design and the barely functional bugginess of it all. But yeah, that last sentence...I seriously have to ask, who would be willing to undertake an 100 hour slugfest with another person, other than a significant other? I refuse to believe people are actually playing this game beyond Act 1.
I've heard extremely negative things about the multiplayer, both in the intentional design and the barely functional bugginess of it all. But yeah, that last sentence...I seriously have to ask, who would be willing to undertake an 100 hour slugfest with another person, other than a significant other? I refuse to believe people are actually playing this game beyond Act 1.
to start: i agree with most of your criticisms, and agree to disagree with a few others.
with that out of the way, i understand the point you are trying to make, but to use plato's cave to describe someone simply enjoying a toy is melodramatic, presumptive, pretentious, and frankly unnecessarily caustic towards hypothetical strangers over effectively nothing that matters. and yes, i did read your follow-up reasoning in the comments. for all your insistence of the merits of criticism and the worth in dissenting opinions, you come across as someone who cares far too much about what other people think. with respect, reconsider your approach to get people to enjoy the things you like. and genuinely, take care.
with that out of the way, i understand the point you are trying to make, but to use plato's cave to describe someone simply enjoying a toy is melodramatic, presumptive, pretentious, and frankly unnecessarily caustic towards hypothetical strangers over effectively nothing that matters. and yes, i did read your follow-up reasoning in the comments. for all your insistence of the merits of criticism and the worth in dissenting opinions, you come across as someone who cares far too much about what other people think. with respect, reconsider your approach to get people to enjoy the things you like. and genuinely, take care.
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@aeon i appreciate your feedback. i'm sorry for causing offense. i find your describing the dominance of Wizards of the Coast in the TTRPG scene, with their stranglehold over the marketplace and active interest in encouraging a lack of curiosity about the wider medium in their audience forcing even successful designers into the margins and making design work a non-livable pursuit for literally anyone else, "effectively nothing that matters" to be genuinely offensive and shockingly dismissive.
i can only assume that you thought i was referring to BG3 when i talked about plato's cave, but i hope reading that section again will make it obvious that i wasn't, and was referring to Dungeons and Dragons broadly. i'm happy to chalk this up to a misunderstanding, it would hardly be the first time people have not understood the fundamental points i'm making here and instead went off on wild uncharitable mistaken assumptions that take the time to make personal insults. but if you genuinely think it is "melodramatic, presumptive, pretentious, and frankly unnecessarily caustic" to use the analogy of plato's cave (in a self-deprecatory manner where i describe my enthusiasm for another popular TTRPG as a plato's cave next door) to describe the dominance of WOTC and D&D over this space then, fine, I suppose. i fundamentally disagree, but that's fine. but i fail to see how this kind of unbelievably arch and pretentious comment is much better.
i can only assume that you thought i was referring to BG3 when i talked about plato's cave, but i hope reading that section again will make it obvious that i wasn't, and was referring to Dungeons and Dragons broadly. i'm happy to chalk this up to a misunderstanding, it would hardly be the first time people have not understood the fundamental points i'm making here and instead went off on wild uncharitable mistaken assumptions that take the time to make personal insults. but if you genuinely think it is "melodramatic, presumptive, pretentious, and frankly unnecessarily caustic" to use the analogy of plato's cave (in a self-deprecatory manner where i describe my enthusiasm for another popular TTRPG as a plato's cave next door) to describe the dominance of WOTC and D&D over this space then, fine, I suppose. i fundamentally disagree, but that's fine. but i fail to see how this kind of unbelievably arch and pretentious comment is much better.
zn0
9 months ago
also, i find statements like "maybe you haven't played x" really grating. i have played most of those, and i'm having a great time with this game. granted, i have never actually played a ttrpg despite really wanting to... i've just never had the opportunity. but one of the things i really enjoy about these games, bg3 included, is imagining them as a tabletop session given form — though obviously there are gonna be inherent limitations to what you can do when designing a video game, especially one of this scale. it's not gonna be a 1:1 experience. i struggle to understand what you find so 'rote' about bg3's plot, too, though you yourself said that you didn't play much of it. so, uh. i do have to admit, though, it's really only been as of late last year that i discovered i really like crpgs (torment being pretty much the only one i finally played several years ago, though i did play d:os back in 2014). so it's all still relatively fresh to me, and i don't share your fatigue or boredom with d&d. (also, i get being critical of wotc and i don't necessarily mean to defend them here, but i looked up the ai art thing and apparently they did not "admit to using ai art" — they said that they didn't know the artist they hired "touched up" his sketches with ai, and they rewrote their artist guidelines to prevent this in the future. they probably did know, but they didn't exactly use completely ai-generated images the way you make it sound here.)
but yeah. idk, i know this comment is probably really irritating and i apologize, but once i got to your paragraph stating that i or others who are enjoying bg3 are "in plato's cave" kinda got under my skin. i'm absolutely interested in discovering other ttrpgs (through crpgs or, you know, directly (mork borg is one that particularly has me curious, and there's one based on the alien universe i'd like to check out)), but the notion that i'm ignorant of what else is out there just because i like this game more than you did is... weird. i don't like it. i think it's a little bit unfair to expect a video game and its writing and scenarios and so forth to be as subtle and flexible as a real dm, and that appears to be the whole crux of your distaste. (i'd love to play a game that hews a bit closer to what you might expect, though, if you can name any.)