Isn't that EVE Online in a nutshell?

 

Now that you say it...

 

Not exactly gaming related, but Red Dead Redemption 2's Arthur Morgan's voice actor Roger Clark is releasing Western-themed audiobooks. There is a snippet from Way of the Lawless available here:

 

A French website leaked screenshots for Baldur's Gate 3. They're down now, but people already backed them up:

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

Looks very much like a more polished Divinity 2

 

Which is, ok, I guess? Don't get me wrong, I liked most of the Divinity games Larian published. And Divinity: Original Sin 2 was a pretty good game. So a more polished version should be totally fine. And expecting them to make a very different game, especially when they've custom built this rpg engine, was never in the cards.

But I still feel kind of meh about it. It looks more like a mod to add D&D races then it's own thing.

Obviously the screenshots tell us basically nothing about what matters in a rpg (classes, progression, customization, characters, story, writing, ect.). I'll probably buy it anyways, but hopefully they can inject it with bit more of it's own style and character before they showcase it properly.

 

Is that turn based combat I see? *looks at the cards in the lefthand corner*

 

Naruto-Arena is back from the dead! I don't know who resurrected it or why, but you can play it again. AND it's been updated to HTML5.

Rejoice!

 

Have finished watching the BG3 gameplay stream, Swen is now answering questions. Apparently this was supposed to be only 10-15 minutes of gameplay, thing lasted over an hour. Lots of environment interaction, even more than Divinity: Original Sin 2. Combat is turn based, but you can also turn on turn-based outside of combat, useful for navigating traps or sneaking around enemies, as it was shown in the video.

Character creation has different races for players, but just like D:OS2, this also has origin stories, i.e. fleshed out characters for you to play as: Astarion, a high elf who got turned into a vampire spawn by his vampire master; Shadowheart, some sort of fighter; Gale, a wizard; some noble who made a pact with a devil; the Githyanki from the leaked screenshots and I don't know if there's more.

Also, opening cinematic:



Someone speculated this might end up in you becoming the legendary Adversary of the Ilithid - basically a Mind Flayer that's actually still the person whom the tadpole turned into a MF, without extinguishing your soul, mind and memories - and I hope to God the game does do something about that, rather than just take the thing out and neutralize it completely. IMO, it would be wasted potential.

And here's the full video from the gameplay reveal stream (just skip to 7:16) :



Want to add that character animations look a bit stiff, but hopefully that improves by the time the game releases.

Still, loved what they've shown us so far. What I really liked was how you had this one room that was an obvious set up, with undead ready to rise at some trigger. But you could go up to the undead and loot them while they were inactive, thus taking away their weapons.

 

I am extremely pleased with all of this. THe decision to go turnbased as opposed to realtime makes me very very happy.

Only that would've been better is if they went grid based, but i'll take the freedom of movement too

 

Really hope this ends up being as moddable as like, Neverwinter Nights, cause being able to import new campaigns and characters would be pretty awesome.

 

Divinity OS2 has a lot of mods on the steam workshop. I’d be surprised if this doesn’t eventually have something similar.

 

I admit, I'm a bit confused why they're calling it Baldur's Gate 3 though. It doesn't seem to follow BG2 at all.

 

It will be set in the city of Baldur's Gate, follow DnD rules, etc. So it's Baldur's Gate 3.

The story of the Bhaalspawn was finished in 2. It's a spiritual successor rather than story.

 

Well, they still could have made Neverwinter 3 or a new IP set somewhere on the Swordcoast (Waterdeep for example). The only reason to call it Baldus Gate 3 is the brand recognition.

 

It's a different story, different creators and even different game mechanics. If they were really honest they should call it Baldur's Gate: Something like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance was instead of suggesting any kind of continuation. They probably believed it wouldn't be as marketable? Which is funny because until the recent gameplay, the '3' in the title more than anything else was making me rather doubtful it's going to be any good.

 

There will almost certainly be significant connections to BG1 and 2, including familiar character appearances. There are plenty of characters whose extended lifespan means that they would have survived the intervening 100 odd years between the Bhaalspawn saga and this Mindflayer threat.

The UI and other D:OS2 elements are almost guaranteed to be placeholders to be replaced at a later stage in development.

Sure, the game is being developed by a new studio, so it's expected that there will be differences in the development approach. Additionally, it has been decades since BG1 and 2 were released. Games of every genre have evolved and innovated since then. Were you expecting Larian to closely copy Bioware's outdated game design? D&D itself has been completely overhauled in multiple new editions, and the Baldur's Gate games were always meant to be an adaptation of the pen & paper game to video game format. BG3 will be for 5E what BG1 and 2 were for 2E.

The way I see it, the games are titled 'Baldur's Gate' because of the setting. The first two were the story of the Bhaalspawn. This and subsequent BG games will tell a new story, but in the same setting. So they're equally as justified in being titled 'Baldur's Gate'.

 

Eh those mods are just random bullshit really. Nothing of real significant substance.

 

True

Some great class mods but nothing on the level of nwn

 

There were mods that basically made complex and completely new classes that added tonnes of replay value...

I wasn't a fan of the story, but everything else from D:OS2 was sublime. Can't wait for BG3. Going elf vamp, obviously. Trying to relive my edgy teen youth.