Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 6

 Go for the eyes!

Yes, after all this time talking about the thing and looking from far away, I've bitten the proverbial bullet and scooped up Baldur's Gate III at it's eye watering full price. Typically I wouldn't even dream of doing such, (I'm a child of the steam sales, always) but seeing as how I've fallen in love with Baldur's Gate, and that this a game being helmed by the infinitely talented Larian Studios, I figured it was only fair I supported the Early Access. Heck, I want the game to be the best it can be and if my tiny investment goes towards helping that in some vague wishy-washy way, then I can be happy. Plus, I was getting antsy from watching all of this gameplay, and hearing all the praise about how this is the single most AAA CRPG ever made. I just had to jump aboard! (And I couldn't wait another year, like the optimistic projections are saying until full release) And so I've completed a full playthrough of Patch 6's early access content, and here are my thoughts.

Optimisation. Oh my god. I assume that this is going to be something that the team will work on and reiterate as the game starts to finish off it's content, as that is typically the cycle for this sort of thing, but as it stands right now the game pretty much only runs decently on big powerful rigs. Those stats on the Steam page, they will run the game, but be prepared for heavy slowdown, stupidly long load in times, and the occasional temporary freeze up. (My game crashed 3 times over the 67 hours that I played. Which isn't a crazy amount, but still a lot more than Divinity Original Sin 2 has crashed for me in around about the same amount of time. Which is 0. Original Sin 2 had been nice to me.) I was able to endure, however, despite serious doubts when I first started playing, and after getting in my first proper brawl I was hooked to the point of not even noticing the slow down issues anymore. Which speaks wonders for the game on offer, does it not?

Visually we have easily one of the best looking role playing games of all time with a presentation quality that inches close to AAA. Far removed from the very dated graphics of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 or the pleasing but budgeted visuals of Tyranny and Pathfinder, Baldur's Gate is all fantastic lighting, high quality models, cinematic camera angles and animations for just about everything. Whereas other CRPGs are getting used to storybook sections, Baldur's Gate 3 refuses to take the player out of the world for a single second, even when it's to show us our protagonist sticking their thumb into a brain in order to cripple it. Of course, being still in Early Access there are still some rough edges and unfinished animations here and there, but that doesn't detract from the whole package nearly as much as you'd think. Larian wanted to put their best foot forward here, and provided you have the rig to overpower the optimisation issues, you'll be treated to an absolutely gorgeous looking modern CRPG who's presentation is currently unmatched across the genre's market.

Which brings me to the first bit of the actual game you'll find, the character creation menu. Just as with Original Sin, the game allows you to make your own fresh character or jump into the 'origin stories' of one of the companions from the game. (Only, the companions aren't currently implemented PCs in Early Access yet.) Right now we have a range of the typical choices of races to choose through (the only somewhat exotic races are Tieflings and Drow) and every typical class except for Paladin. (Which most are pretty certain is going to be the final added class to the game.) The actual set-up for classes is as straight forward as it could be and that ease-of-access doesn't just come from the inherited accessibility of fifth edition. Larian don't lay out the chart of exactly what feats you're going to get at what level in order to encourage you to min max before you've even started playing, they just want you to slap together a character in their simple, yet glossy, creator suite and get to playing who you want. (Unfortunately, I'm currently playing Pathfinder Kingmaker, so I'm naturally inclined to minmax anyway, but I appreciate the olive branch and I'm sure many other more casual CRPG player will too.)

But what about the actual action of this title? What does it play and feel like? Well, I'm pleased, but not entirely surprised, to say we're looking at a gameplay loop of the same, or perhaps even a little superior, quality as Original Sin, which is to say that it's an incredible unique gem on the cluttered battlefield of popular established role-playing games. Combat is turned-based with orders and initiative, rather different from the Baldur's Gate games that proceeded it, and battles are limited to specifically loving designed potential combat encounters with alternative fronts, ways to sneak around and sometimes even exploitable environmental hazards. (The first time a Goblin priestess telekinetically pulled down an statue ontop of my party I pretty much jumped out of my seat in surprise) You won't be harangued by endless random ambushes here, and that's thanks to Larian's propensity for fine tuning every fight to feel unique or have some sort memorable angle to them. Skills are split into actions and bonus actions, which means there's no more juggling between moving or hitting, spells are managed by Spell slots so you're forced to pay attention to how many you've used, and the basic 'advantage/disadvantage' rules apply here so if you're familiar with 5th edition at all, you'll pick up this game's mechanics practically instinctually. 

What really makes this game's combat stand out even more than Original Sins', however, is the amount of creativity available. You've still got the elemental surfaces and combinations, only they're less shoved in your face for gimmick's sake here. Ontop of all of that you have verticality, and height advantages. (in Patch 6 it's not an advantage roll but a + to attack rolls, which is still really cool) This gets really exciting when mixed with abilities that actually apply force and knock people around, like the 'shove' action which can send enemies flying. Some of my coolest moments are from sneaking up on a tough enemy and then thunderwave blasting them off a high perch and just watching those hit points melt away. It makes combat feel that bit more tactile for those who aren't spell wielders and taps into those fantastic moments when I, as the player, can take a minute off, look at my vast repertoire of skills and say "Okay, so how do I win this encounter?" Patch 6 supplemented this with an array of special weapon actions that martial characters can choose to do that are meant to mimic some of the versatility of table top play; such as firing an arrow at an enemies hamstring in order to hobble their movement range.

As with any RPG, the act of levelling is of vast importance to the flow of both the gameplay and the narrative as it allows the player to slowly be introduced to more abilities they can mess around with. I actually found the levelling to be fairly rapid in Early Access and I managed to hit this build's max of Level 4 before even touching the Underdark. Which actually leads into one of my concerns given that the team have already discussed how this game isn't going to have level 20, but instead cap out at around 10-14. Levels do stretch out the more you play, that's natural progression for tabletops, but even then hitting four levels before leaving the first overworld is pretty rapid. With this rate I wouldn't be surprised if we're playing the entire last act of the game at max level, and that doesn't make for a very engaging experience. Personally, I prefer when max level is something you could feasibly not reach if you don't touch all the bonus content, so as to help incentivise side quests beyond the promise of gold I don't need or magic items that aren't as good as the ones I have.

One quirk of Baldur's Gate 3 that I simply love is the way that the big bad dice from which everything in the game is decided, can be visualised in certain check scenarios. So if you're picking a lock, disarming a trap or making a persuasion roll, the game will show you a virtual die, give you a chance to add modifiers, and then let you see as the dice is rolled in front of you. It's an ingenious way of conjuring up the excitement of a rolling die, the anticipation of the flailing and the euphoria of hitting that result you needed. With this visual stimuli, I even didn't care so much about not hitting my quota, because I could visually make out the fact that it was random luck, dispelling that admittedly philistine suspicion I otherwise always get. Heck, most of the time I even just let a bad result lie, which speaks to the effect of something as simple as a flashy graphic. (Although the fact that I'm playing an early access does also lend to that sense of 'forgive and forget')

 

A big concern that I have left the Early Access with, however, pertains to the world and how Larian want to handle it, because I'm worried that they're going the same route that they once did with Divinity Original Sin. In those games, the game's overworlds were all directly connected to one another from the map, meaning you would walk from one location to another. What this did was make it so that everything felt really close together and robbed that illusion of a grand journey which I might have otherwise loved. Even just having these separate overworlds split by a map UI screen does wonders for breathing life into the illusion, just as Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 did. Larian have already confirmed that the game will not feature a day/night cycle, which seems to indicate that everything will unfortunately be interconnected maps, and that's a bit of a shame. However, I did stumble upon an unfinished road and the graphic which greeted me was a map of the Sword Coast with areas highlighted inside of it, so perhaps there is hope. (Although, in hindsight, the highlighted areas were close together to one another, so that might just be a mock-up of the full game's fast travel map.)

Perhaps the most questionable part of the game so far comes from the story and the way that this game justifies it's title as Baldur's Gate 3. Beyond being set in the Sword Coast, I'm not entirely convinced, and even though I think this update came with huge lore implications (which I mentioned on a previous BG3 blog) there's no direct link for this game yet beyond a few ingame books which mention the Bhaalspawn struggle. The story we've been shown so far is interesting, but reliant on far too much secrecy to be engaging or exciting. The lore enthusiast in me wants to know what these True Souls are, and the romanticist hopes the visions presented by those tadpole dreams really do represent the scale the narrative will reach, but right now the pragmatist is going hungry and it's leaving me overall feeling like the meal is uneven. The voice acting is top notch, however, and the narrator's voice is... intense. In a good way. I like hearing her tell me things, which is good for a voice that's going to accompany me throughout the breadth of the narrative. (Even if she once misread the word 'Adamantine' as 'Adamantium' in the Grymforge update. I can forgive.) 

Original Sin 2 is well known for a great many of it's boons, one of which being the suite of cool companions that you love to get to know. (Even though that's sullied by the twist at the end of the prologue, but that's neither here nor there) Companions are a huge part of any DnD game, and I have to say that so far everyone of them, apart from Wyll, is standing out as interesting to me. (And that's only because I literally walked past Wyll and had to backtrack in order to get him, cutting out huge parts of potential character development.) There's a pleasing array of personalities that aren't too neatly cut down paths of 'this is the good character' and 'this is the evil character'. Although Astarion is unrepentantly selfish, but his character revels in his pomposity and so that's a side of him that fits neatly. I think there's still a lot of work to do with making them integral parts of the world, but seeing all of the stellar worldbuilding they're doing around Shadowheart's cult, all of which has me forming an impression on her without her even opening her mouth, I have faith that Larian know how to do this naturally and succinctly. (Seriously though, Shar's worshippers sound like a literal violent death cult, almost at direct odds with Shadowheart's relative mellow confidentiality. It makes her secrecy all the more intriguing.)

There's so much I would love to talk about, but given that this blog is dragging on I'd prefer to wrap up with a piece on some of the bosses present so far, because they are just brilliant. Right now there are a handful of main quest bosses as well as harder optional ones, and each fight has it's own unique element to it that is unlike anything other CRPGs are doing right now. (Beside, I suppose, POE II's megabosses) You have your typical 'this guy has a bunch of HP, cool spells and an artefact', but then you get a piece of a boss like the Giant Phase Spider Queen who can teleport, birth mini baby spiders, and has a strong ranged attack. She's a higher level than you can actually reach in the game so far, and facing her straight up is a real hassle, but her arena is fitted with web walkways that you can shoot out from under her in order to do big falling damage, making a normal boss fight into a mechanics one naturally. And that doesn't even touch upon fights like the Eternal Protector from the latest Grymforge update, who is almost built like a lower level MMO raid boss with the way mechanics play into that fight. I won't spoil it, but it's engaging and changes up an already versatile combat system to help create a truly distinct feeling play experience. 

There is so much potential with Baldur's Gate III, and so few fundamental issues that can't be chalked up to 'it's early access' and 'they're working on it'. I could complain about how genuinely awful the menu UI is, but it's an Early Access and their working on it. Same with the optimisation. Same with the lack of major story hooks. (All of the game so far is still just act I) If you look at everything this game is right now, it shines as an example of a game that has it's head on straight, knows what it's trying to be and feels destined to become something of an RPG gold standard when it drops, just as Original Sin 2 before it was. Larian always won me over with their plucky underdog act, and Baldur's Gate is looking like the cherry atop of their increasingly impressive list of development achievements. (I couldn't be happier for them) This isn't a review, so I'm not going to stick on a score, but I will absolutely recommend this to anyone who wants to try out a CRPG but thinks Pillars of Eternity is too intimidating, or Pathfinder is too complicated, (both fair assumptions) Baldur's Gate III is welcoming, enticing, fun, unfinished so far, but special. (You know, provided you have the computer to run it.)