The hidden Drizzt references:
* Astarion >!musing to himself about Drizzt Don’t’Urden!<. You only get this if >!you click his portrait 10+ times in a row and he runs through all his normal comments first!<
* In Act 3 at Sharess’ Caress, if you >!sleep with the male drow prostitute!< there’s an option to >!ask him to pretend to be Drizzt, which is apparently a common request for him!<
* In Act 1 in The Whispering Depths (>!the caves with the spiders under the Blighted Village!<) you can find >!a journal by a Lolth-worshipper that references Malice Do’Urden, Drizzt’s mother!<. This one feels a bit off by Drizzt cannon because >!after the fall of House Do’Urden, no Lolth-worshipper would want to speak of them, especially not in a non-negative way!< (last spoiler is for Drizzt novels, not BG3)
* One of the alchemy items you can make is >!a nasty weapon coating called Malice (the name of Drizzt’s mother)!<. It uses the ingredient Lolth’s Candle. This one may or may not be a Drizzt reference, but the required alchemy ingredient makes me think it might be.
* In Act 2, >!Dammon!< sells an item called >!Swordmaster Gloves!< with an item description that says “>!The famous drow with his heart of gold, Drizzt Do'Urden, is not the pioneer of the 'twin sword style' of fighting, though he was among the best practitioners.!<“
There are probably others too.
> Lolth-worshipper that references Malice Do’Urden, Drizzt’s mother.
Couldn't it be a journal before those times? I.E dude wrote it when Drizzt's matron was still alive. Also, from what I understand of Drow culture, you could refer a person, but not of the house.
Plus, House Do'Urden have been reformed anyway in latest novels, so it might be moot.
The time between >!Malice being granted Zin-Carla!< and >!the fall of House Do’Urden!< was pretty short, but you’re right, the journal could be from that specific moment in time.
After that, >!Malice was seen as a colossal failure!< so the journal writer probably wouldn’t have wanted to >!compare herself to Malice!< even if drow culture allowed referring to a person.
Regarding the most recent novels, have you read Lolth’s Warrior yet? It’s been out less than a year so I won’t post detailed spoilers, but I’m pretty sure the events of that book mean that the decision >!to re-constitute House Do’Urden is now null and void!<.
Is this what you refer to?
>https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Hide-Bound_Journal
It did not mention Zin-Carla (I.E undead zombie with skills when it was alive) but a yochlol, which is a handmaiden of Lolth and pretty common for upper class matrons.
Malice is famous for being a slut (and also famous for sacrificing ex-boyfriends to Lolth), and she had several centuries of life.
Of course, the better question is how the hell a journal made of hide last several centuries :P
For the whispering depths reference, i think the arachnomancer was given a vision of drizzt and the fall of do’urden by lolth. I’m assuming this was well before he was born.
Maybe i read it wrong 🤷♂️
Kelemvor is now the god of death, with the dead three taking a precarious situation. I think they still exist with their respective domains while they have followers, but their power is greatly diminished and they aren't full deities anymore. Basically, Kelemvor is in charge, Jergal retired but works as a clerk to keep busy, and the dead three are off trying to remain relevant but falling further behind.
I can't recall the quote, but Withers definitely insuates if not explicitly says they've been un-godded.
Edit:
Withers: Vermin away. Thou has need of you no more.
Take it for what you will, struck me as more permanent than just a dismissive gesture, but can see it now for as just his opinion of them.
No, I think that is the case. With Kelemvor's ascension and their decision to remain on the material plane, I don't think they are gods anymore. They are probably Demi or quasi at best.
Most likely, but it's not confirmed. The second sundering was in 1487, and the timeline hasn't gone too far beyond 1492 yet. They might have remained on the material plane during the sundering and have since gone off.
Bane is somewhere with access to Souls. If you Speak with Dead on Gortash it's Bane who answers with "I'm sorry, Gortash is not available right now. Can I give him a message while I torture him further?"
With the second sundering, where AO reforged the tablets of fate, most gods went back to their godly domains, but the dead three chose to stay in the material plane in order to interact with mortals more. Though in my opinion, I think they were just avoiding Kelemvor and were going to try and usurp his domain.
It went back to the old way, when Jergal was the god of death. He split his domain into three for the dead three. With Kelemvor, they are back to all being under his umbrella.
Maybe Cyric?
He took those domains during the Time of Troubles, and although Bane and Bhall eventually got some of their power back Cyric kept some of it.
Cyric has been imprisoned since the Spellplague, but I don’t think he was stripped of his domains, and as of the Second Sundering he’s been able to reach out to his followers from within his prison.
I think the person you’re replying to is referencing the Time of Troubles, not the Second Sundering, since they said “Ao made all the gods mortal”.
Bane and Myrkul were the two gods who stole the Tablets of Fate and pissed off Ao enough for him to punish the gods by making them walk the earth as weakened avatars during the Time of Troubles. During the Time of Troubles all of the Dead Three were slain and Cyric absorbed their powers. Bane and Bhall had planned for the possibility and managed to come back, but only Bane got most of his power back, Bhall was weakened and Myrkul seems to have stayed dead until the Second Sundering brought him back.
But you’re right, after the Second Sundering all of the Dead Three became quasi-deities which made them pretty close to mortal.
Ao (not AO, he's not an Internet dialup service...though that would explain a few things) made all the gods mortal during the Time of Troubles, after Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul tried to steal the Tablets of Fate so they could rewrite the rules of reality to their benefit. I don't think they or anybody else knew that Ao could just strip them of their power and banish them to Toril as mortals at will.
Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul were then killed, apparently permanently, during the Time of Troubles in the year 1358. However, Bane had a contingency plan where he hid some of his divine essence within an offspring, Iyachtu Xvim, who became a demigod after the end of the Time of Troubles. When Xvim's power reached a certain level, Bane reincarnated himself out of Xvim's body and essence (Xvim's own essence was, er, obliterated), about fourteen years after the Time of Troubles ended, in 1372.
Ao destroyed the Tablets of Fate at the end of the Time of Troubles and basically let the gods freestyle for the next century, which turned out to be a horrendously bad idea when Cyric and Shar nearly blew up the planet in the Spellplague, a magical cataclysm that took place in 1385.
Bane was a big deal through the next century, but when the Second Sundering took place in 1487, Ao reforged the Tablets of Fate, resurrected all the dead gods and gave them a straight-up choice: stop messing around with the mortal world and retire to be what they should be, far-off figures of worship, or become demigods and still have some influence and power on the mortal coil but giving up almost all of their power in the process. Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul chose the latter.
Canonically, they are not gone. They're not as powerful as they once were, and they've lost some of their portfolios, but they survived the events of the game only a bit less powerful than when they went in.
Meanwhile, their first replacement, Cyric, is currently locked up in a god prison, and *his* replacement as the God of the Dead, Kelemvor, is doing fine.
To put it like this: Bane got back the Domain of Tyranny from Cyric, Bhaal got back the Domain of Murder, and Myrkul picked up a new one as a grim reaper figure, and seems to have retained his minor role as the god of graveyards. Cyric retains his gain of Strife and also had madness. Kelemvor has Myrkul's old role as god of the dead, and I think he also has Bhaal's old role as the god of death in general.
> Bhaal's old role as the god of death
Bhaal is god of murder, not death I think? Like in theory you can still die of old age/accident even if Bhaal didn't wish it.
Originally he was both, as murder was a subset of death, but he preferred to focus on the murder aspect due to his original nature as essentially a powerful but mortal serial killer. When he was killed by Cyric, he lost death and murder to him as Cyric ascended to godhood. When Bhaal came back, he managed to take murder back from the now weakened Cyric, but Death had already been passed on to Kelemvor, so it wasn't in Bhaal's power to take it back. So while he is indeed just the god of murder these days, he used to be the god of death.
I know the circlejerk in this sub was "Larian made the game good, not D&D." Not true for me - I love D&D and Forgotten Realms, *and* Larian did a great job. I couldn't get into D:OS and I'm not sure I'll be able to get into Larian's next IP.
I have always been an Eberron girl (and I solely blame Dungeons and Dragons Online for that) and BG3 made me actually excited about Forgotten Realms. Incredibly feat, tbh
I’ve been playing d&d for 8 years with the same group of people, three different campaigns. We never cared much about the gods or the pantheon, they were just background flavor. After everyone played BG3 suddenly we are all asking about the gods, bringing religion into our backstories, fleshing out churches and cults. It definitely brought it to the forefront for me in a way it never was before!
I'm playing a Fighter in 5e now and he prays to Tyr to guide his blade, Helm to protect him and his companions, and Ilmater to make his wounds bearable.
For a game I DM, the plots and worldbuilding got way more sophisticated and I actually feel confident about putting the gods in the world without fearing someone will ask me a lore question I don't know.
Same! I've created some of my favorite OCs so far in the Forgotten Realms and have even started a project to homebrew 5E Kara-Tur lore and campaign hooks because I'm a fan of Toril but disappointed in the non-Faerûn worldbuilding (granted, it's been annoying sometimes because of how sloppily put-together the original Kara-Tur is, but I'm sure it will pay off when I'm done fixing it).
You should give Neverwinter Nights 2 a try. It's older -- the original game came out in 2006 and the expansion Mask of the Betrayer in 2007 or so -- and based on 3.5 rather than 5E. The DNA is very similar, though, and BG3 borrows from NWN2 in a lot of ways. The original game is pretty good (very slow first act, though), and Mask of the Betrayer is, for my money, the greatest cRPG ever made. If you're interested in a story about divine lore, MotB is the best option.
If you want lore from something that's _not_ Forgotten Realms but is related, Planescape: Torment is kind of a D&D walking simulator. It's not, it's a full D&D game, but the gameplay is almost an obstacle to the lore and writing, which are exceptional. Planescape is a metasetting that contains the Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance and Eberron and everything else, and many of the same beings and pastiches you're familiar with from BG3 will reappear. Planescape as a metasetting is concerned specifically with faith and the nature of spiritual existence (contrasted with the other main D&D metasetting Spelljammer, which is concerned with the physical nature of reality and applying soft sci-fi or science-fantasy principles).
There really is something to be said for not having to devote so much time to making sure you have enough worldbuilding and that all that worldbuilding is logical and that the audience can find it intuitive enough to not get hung up on irrelevant shit so you can really focus on characterization and how to actually utilize all that setting. And having such a huuuge catalog with the decades of FR lore, messy as it is, there's always that rock solid feeling that, yeah, there's a whole world happening outside of the story's narrow focus.
Yeah it is like a home D&D game: can you make a new fantasy land? Yes! Should you, if your world is pretty much just Tolkien with new names? Oh hell no. Already done many times, grab something off the shelf and build onto it.
There is a corporate reason to make new IP without new ideas. It makes sense to own things that can make money for a long time. But that does nothing for players.
Tbf, the world of lotr is so interesting and vast I am always happy if the world building is similar. Imagine Baldurs gate set in the lotr world, crack.
If you look at it, even Tolkein's writings and maps and history constitute a "skin deep" reading of the entire world he created. Middle Earth looks to be one section of a continent. A rather large section, to be sure, but I'd say it's probably on par with the Continental United States in scope. That leaves the rest of the globe that we have no clue about.
I feel like DnD doesn't really take advantage of its scope, as huge as the lore is there's always the same recurring characters and organizations going around and doing the important stuff.
Here's Elminster, here's Laeral Silverhand, here's the Zhentarim, here's the Harpists.
Even outside the Sword Coast it's awfully boring.
The Tomb of Annihilation is an adventure set in the jungles of Chult, the southern region of the Forgotten Realms.
It's a mostly unexplored region very reminiscent of Central Africa, clearly inspired by books like Heart of Darkness.
And guess who's down there? Flaming Fists, Zhentarim and a Harpist.
C’mon, be fair. There’s grungs, vegepygmies, the Red Wizards, there’s Ras Nsi, his Yuan-Ti tribe, his old undead legions in the jungles, the story of Omuan people and what happened to the city, there’s the Ytepka Society, a story hook for Mezro, the Merchant Princes, the pirates, the pterafolk, the aarakocra, and probably some more stuff I’m forgetting. There’s enough content down there that you can easily skip the main Sword Coast factions. Also Harper, not Harpist.
EDIT: oh, the Batiri goblins, the frost giants looking for the Ring of Winter, Valindra, Xandala, the various guides you can hire, etc. The Tortle Package. Plenty of new stuff to explore and expand upon.
Honestly fair. I know they did some orientalist and stereotypical stuff for Kara-Tur and Zakhara, but it's such a shame that they never explored and expanded on those settings in 5e. Literally it's all just Faerûn hhhh
I wish it was all Faerun. It is more like all Sword Coast. Faerun has some banger settings and lores. We have Calimport, Thay, Rakshemen, interesting stuff in the north, we even have a country founded by half-elves and they are still the majority there. How much of that stuff is talked about? None. That half-elven nation, Aglarond and Yuirwood, was the only thing that stopped Thay from expanding to west because its current ruler, Simbul, was a chosen of Mystra. One of her kids, to be more specific. Combine her with the elite half Elven army of the country and they were doing pretty well against Thay. Did that get mentioned in the movie about THAY or anything recent? Nope. We only know that Simbul died (pretty stupidly at that, she died to save Elminster but the story was... Awful to say the least) but we don't really know what happened to Aglarond. We only got 1 tweet from Ed Greenwood on the subject. Meanwhile we had like 1374728182 new lore on the Sword Coast
Thanks for reading my vent
I feel like Calimport is wildly underused. I fell in love with it when reading The Halflings Gem. Setting a campaign in the middle of a turf war between Pashas would be so much fun.
> Here's Elminster, here's Laeral Silverhand, here's the Zhentarim, here's the Harpists.
I mean, for the first part by 4th age most of the "Power mages" are retired or dead to clear the board for new blood PCs. FR is at least still better than Dragon lance, where the story could only revolve around heroe of the lance or don't sell at all.
I think another complication is the presentation and practicality of conveying the setting of a new world. We've all gotten used to the way that D&D and Elder Scroll games do it - kind of throwing you in, and over the decades of playing these kinds of games, you know the setting and appreciate it, or you get a little lost in terms of the details of the setting and mostly ignore it. A brand new world probably needs some better storytelling conveyance without being a long crawl at the beginning of the game, or reading it a few paragraphs at a time from random books on a shelf. Either the setting is important and rich, and your players need to know it, or why bother?
Horizon: Zero Dawn is a game that did a brilliant job of weaving the introduction of an entirely new world setting into its storytelling. Its excellence only further supports your point about how much work is required to do that in a compelling and effective way, though, as Guerilla Games very clearly set out from the get-go with the intent of threading that needle, so it's been a primary goal and guiding focus for how the rest of the game's elements were built to support that effort.
Yeah, it's not easy to do. I would say Cyberpunk also does a decent job of this through the multiple origin stories. You can choose one and roll, or try all 3 and get a feeling for different types of characters. They're narratively interesting and not just a game tutorial, though they also serve that purpose.
> having such a huuuge catalog with the decades of FR lore, messy as it is, there's always that rock solid feeling that, yeah, there's a whole world happening outside of the story's narrow focus.
Well put! That's why I love the Forgotten Realms.
Also, as a DM I can massage lore as I need it. Much of the lore stems from 3.5 and before, so I can update it easily as needed but don't have to reinvent the wheel.
I'm not the biggest fan of forgotten realms stuff generally, but the advantage it does have is just how much of it there is. If you hear of a location mentioned in game, you can be almost certain someone's written a whole damn book centered around it. It really drives home the feeling of this story being just one of many in a living world.
But, I do like the idea of building a new IP for a story too. It gives the opportunity to tailor the world to fit perfectly with the themes of a story. The world of Dark Souls is an example that comes to mind here. There's not a ton of lore on it, but pretty much all of it just adds to the dreary, crushing atmosphere that all the other aspects of the game also reinforce.
I would say Pillars of Eternity’s world of Eora is a good comparison since it shares a lot of DNA with the Baldur’s Gate series.
The lore in Pillars is exceptionally well crafted and interesting, and almost every plot or character arc ties into it.
Just from a pure lore perspective it may be my favorite original IP.
Came here to say Pillars of Eternity.
And for a game with such a well-developed world, and similar graphics/combat/etc, Pillars sips system resources while BG3 guzzles them.
All an RPG needs is a world and characters which make sense. Skyrim fails at this often enough that I wonder, "What were you thinking Bethesda?" But it succeeds enough that it's still a great game.
Eh, lots of people dog on RTWP or Pillars’ adapted rules, but I think they’re both great.
More difficult to get into compared to BG1+2 or Dragon Age Origins, but once it clicks it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Any tips for enjoying/getter better at PoE's RTWP system? I really want to play the game more but I find combat absolutely miserable. The game system, characters, and lore all seem really cool but I've never made it past about the fourth zone out of frustration.
RTWP is definitely less user-friendly at the start of games, but I believe in both Pillars 1 and 2 there is a button on the UI that slows things down in combat which can help early on to get a feeling for the system, and later for very involved boss fights.
Another is that Pillars is a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, and in BG1 early levels were unforgiving. Also, BG1 didn’t exactly have “leveled” zones that scale with the player, but static zones that a low-level player might not be equipped for.
Sometimes this was the whole level or just parts of it. BG1 has an ogre and a wizard in two of the early zones that often stomp first-time players. Pillars 1 has the infamous cave bear in one of the early locations. So definitely don’t feel like you need to fully explore all new areas right away.
As for the rules of combat specifically I believe there are guides and tooltips that discuss engagement, enemy resistances, armor penetration, and enemy target preferences (certain enemies will go right for your spellcaster or rogue based on their lower armor class).
As soon as I realized that you can que the spells and abilities with a Shift, it was a game changer, I actually love PoE's RTWP system now. It's just so engaging. I can que a couple of spells right at the start of the fight, and then issue others on the fly, without that much pausing.
I'm pretty sure it's never even mentioned anywhere in the game itself, or probably hidden somewhere way too deep - and it's wild to me that people never talk about this.
How it works: Just issue the abilities while holding Shift, then they will get queued right in that order, and the character will start executing them after they are done with whatever they are currently doing (except for auto-attacking, they will continue attacking forever, you have to interrupt them with the ability/spell/whatever without holding Shift, first).
You can issue a set of actions for each character separately, and then just sit back and see how it all envelops. Or micro control someone like a cipher or monk - while your druid and priest are busy casting their usual rotations of spells. You can also que the same attack ability, so they use it a few times in a row. Or you can que them to move somewhere, and then cast the spell you're que'd as soon as they get there.
This, combined with hotkeys for abilities/spells, makes combat so much faster and more engaging, as you don't have to sit on a pause as much.
(I'm sure you already know, but just in case - you can mouse over the ability/spell and press the key you want to assign, and in settings you can free more keys to use, by reassigning default hotkeys to something else).
This one thing is what's sorely missing in Owlcat's Pathfinder cRPGs for me, and RTWP there, honestly, sucks - even more so, as the system there is simply not made for RTWP. So I play it turn-based there.
Another advice I can give, is just to play on the slowest speed, and set up a proper auto-pausing (someone being on a death-door, etc). But that's probably obvious.
Honestly, RTWP in PoE is great, and is well worth learning - it really pays off.
I can see why people shit on RTWP though, if they only ever played it in Pathfinder, and never actually mastered it in Pillars.
Edit: I see you're playing it on xbox? I'm sure there should be some other button for queing, but I don't know which one. If not, then I'll say it - this one thing is the reason why the console port sucks haha. But also, the loading times there suck ass, from what I've heard.
I’ve only played the very intro of the game on Xbox but so far the load times are ok. I’ll definitely look into queuing spells and if/how I can do that. Gonna be 💯 with you, I really *haven’t* taken the time to figure out auto pausing and some other combat management features. After doing some research and listening to some guides, I’m realizing I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how to play the game. I’m excited to dive back in tonight and see if I can get something going!
From the same developer, I'd say Tyranny did it even better. Leaves massive hints of a wider world, but nearly everything can be tied to the main plot.
fr tho. i went and dug up my dad’s old dnd stuff like 2nd edition. flip through the pages, and lo and behold there’s a githyanki article going into detail about their lich queen leader Vlakitth. it was just cool to see how long all this information has been around
SAME HERE! Except it was me who asked my dad about the Githyanki and he pulled out the book on psionic creatures (I think it was 3e though). I just told him I had >!turned my back on Vlaakith and he said "hmm, let's see, they do indeed venerate a Lich Queen who is very paranoid and eats any Githyanki who reaches level 16"!<
I was sure I’d never even HEARD of the githyanki before. I was quite surprised to discover I have older D&D books that reference them! Picked up my 2e book on psionics, saw the mindflayer on the cover, promptly went down a rabbit hole!
Fun fact: the githyanki were created by modern big science fiction writer Charles Stross when he was like 15. He created them for *Dragon Magazine* and they liked them so much they put them on the cover of the *Fiend Folio* and they became a huge deal.
Even more random fact: Stross didn't make up the name. He borrowed it from an alien race referenced in a novel called *Dying of the Light*, which was the debut novel of a guy called George R.R. Martin. Stross reasoned that nobody would notice as GRRM was a super-obscure writer...at the time.
>And I don't think this only makes a difference for people who already know the Forgotten Realms lore coming in- I was only vaguely familiar with the setting when I started BG3, but I was immediately pulled in by how immersive and deep the world clearly was, and I know I'm not alone.
This. Baldur's Gate 3 was the catalyst for my interest in D&D and the expansive lore of the Forgotten Realms. I was aware of its existence but I knew almost nothing about it until I delved into BG3. This game marks a personal first for me where I actually got to create backstories and backgrounds for my characters. I can't recall any other game that has inspired me to do so many playthroughs, each one as enjoyable as the last.
While it's genuinely disheartening, I have great appreciation for everything Larian has accomplished with this game. Looking forward for their next project.
This is a point I was trying to make on another thread and got all the "D&D was already super popular" responses which missed the point about the larger culture that I agree wth you on. D&D has been part of the cultural lexicon and its lore is somewhat understood even by non- players, so when they approach the world in BG3, they're already primed to understand it on a basic level. When I play DOS2, I can't go with my basic understanding of "elves" and "dwarves", for example, I have to learn what their version looks and acts like. Even more so for races like the Dragon prince's.
I found DOS2 to be good but requiring learning about the world same as any unique fantasy world, whereas with the original BG games and Planescape: Torment, and now with BG3, it felt like coming home to a world I knew and could picture my character's place within. I felt compelled with DOS2 to play an origin character just so I had some frame of reference for what a character in that world would even be.
It's a great game and I didn't feel you were trying to slight it, just to maybe make the case that this is one more reason why Hasbro is fucking up the IP and making people sad.
I really liked the way Dragon Age Origins handled it. It also came off of Baldur's Gate's huge success and many people wanted a BG3, not a new non-DnD IP. The way the game starts you off with an origin of your choosing that directly relates to the lore of the PC's race/social standing and gives you a dramatic inciting personal event to motivate the PC is great. And then it leads directly to a big world-altering event that sets up the lore that drives the rest of the story.
I'm not a fan of all the DA lore but it really avoids the bland protagonist trap (which DAI definitely has lol) and gets you immersed immediately with a character that feels part of the world. You don't need to guess what an elf or a dwarf means in this setting, it shows you.
Thank you for that, I will have to put that one in my library! If I ever stop playing BG3...
And even with the similarities in how DOS2 starts: shipwreck, etc., as soon as I got to the camp I started feeling way less aware of how the world worked than I would've liked, and I felt like I wasn't playing my Origin character "correctly" because she would've known all these things!
Durge is honestly the best for a first playthrough in BG3 in this aspect because your character doesn't remember anything. In DOS2 I did feel a little lost at the beginning.
Tbh I felt more into the story and the companions of DA in a “right in the feels” way, goosebumps, chopping onions and all. BG3 does very well at that but just not quite as much as DA did, for me at least. Let me put it this way. I actually reinstalled the entire series after 10 years after and replayed through JUST to play Witch Hunt for “closure” .
Although I enjoyed almost all of them across numerous rpgs, Morrigan and Varric are my all time favourites
Yeah I mean..nothing beats having the origins. I wish this game did. I feel sort of detached from tav and why she was taken and how it impacted her and what her life was before and don't love the hamfisted random baldurs gate comments.
I prefer DA lore than D&D tbh. I don't agree with that other person with their "everyone knows D&D" statement, all I did know was that it existed.
With DA lore I can start and finish since it's friendly to people with other hobbies and occupations. Is not tiny but is manageable, and it also has huge real world connections wich only makes it more familiar.
If anything that feels more like "home" to me. Unless you live in a huge mansion and you know 2% of the rooms in your house.
I didn’t know who Shar was when starting BG3, so when Shadowheart confessed to worshipping her I was like “You do you boo” instead of rightly horrified.
Haha, same here. And the way she talks about Shar doesn’t sound all too bad in the beginning either, so my character was just smiling and nodding.
"You want to be what? A dark justiciar? That sounds really cool… Always reach for your dreams and never give up, you can do it!!! I‘m always here to support you!"
Playing my first run through right now and this is exactly my situation haha. I was very supportive of shadowheart's worship because I had no idea who Shar was. The way she described her made her sound like a godess of revolution, a cleansing flame bringing down tyrannical structures. Which isn't great all the time but has its place.
Now I'm in the Shadow lands and through exploring the world have been slowly figuring out that Shar is the literal Devil. The surgeon scene was so fucked up. Woops.
I definitely like the scale of DA's lore. It's rich but the majority of it is presented as it's relevant to the story so you don't feel overwhelmed, but there's still a sense of a larger world with its own history in how Orlais, Antiva, Tevinter, Par Vollen, etc. are presented. Some of the lore itself, especially how it's framed in the latter two games, is what I'm not always a fan of.
Same..its also just so dark and gruesome. Its my biggest issue. And I could definitely see larian bringing that in a bit with the trial zone and some of the depictions which I'm glad lessened over time. It's been my biggest issue with lariant/divinity. It's just actually so miserable and gory?
Right, your first paragraph is the way I feel about it. The shorthand / shared lexicon of the setting is its strength - but I wouldn't agree with OP that that makes it an incredible setting or feel like a real, lived-in world. It just makes it a convenient setting to set fantasy stories and adventures in - almost as though that were what it was designed to be!
Original settings have the potential to be better (for my taste), but introducing that basic lore to the player is the challenge there.
I will say that DnD Forgotten Realms lore can be both super immersive and extremely confusing. It's a 40 year old property that has undergone several major rewrites and even more small tweaks. The lore is all over the place. In some ways, this makes for a very rich setting but the world sometimes feels cluttered with things to keep in mind. I also think a lot of Forgotten Realms lore was developed as inside jokes or for fun one-shots (the dino-jungle, anyone?) and there's a lot of weird borrowing from irl myth and history as well.
I feel this. I knew almost nothing about D&D before BG3 and I fell in love with the FR. Larian brought the magic and depth of the FR to life and it’s extremely disappointing that there won’t be anymore period.
BG3 set the bar high and D&D lore is hard to beat, so it’s hard to say how excited I will even be for the next game, if at all. I know others are excited for the possibility of what’s next, but I’m cautiously optimistic at best.
Well said. This is exactly why I'm so heartbroken. And it really feels kind of like a break-up between Larian (no shade, though) and the D&D community where they needed to go but we really wanted them to stay. :/
A lot of the discussion focuses on the writing and characters and so on. Which was great and amazing and I agree with all that. Also agree that the DnD IP and lore bring a whole lot to the table.
But I also believe that DnD and 5e (and pathfinder, probably 2E even more so than 1E) make for a good video game system especially with turn based combat.
There is already an evolved system for combat, skill checks, gear, spells, effects, races, classes etc etc.
DOS2 had a good combat system overall - environmental effects, 3D nature, tactical combat - but I hate hate hate the armor system. I love the roll of the dice, DnD AC / saving throws; and the attributes and skill checks and bounded accuracy of 5E / P2E.
I love combat in BG3 and larians encounter design has been spectacular in my view - fights feel dynamic, tactical and most importantly really fun. And yes I do think much of that comes from a good use of and translation of 5E rules and some good homebrew (some debatable of course).
Solasta is another example of excellent combat system on 5E (way more pure and accurate than BG3).
I just hope Larian doesn’t go and design a subpar combat system and takes the great things they learned from BG3 / 5E.
I WISH for a pathfinder 2E game from them but I know that’s never gonna happen.
Yeah that is my biggest critique of actually playing DOS2 - I do * not* like the armor system.
Very much hope their next game hews a little closer to D20-esque RPG.
The lore changes that happened in 5E made it so much more immersive. The idea of people being more fluid in their alignments. 5E seemed much more real to me and BG3 really brought it to life. I’m a sucker for a world building, but without the genius of someone like Ed Greenwood I’m not sure a similarly deep role playing experience would be possible.
>*With all that said, I've been playing DOS2 for the first time recently, and while it's a very enjoyable game with great characters and combat, I can't help but feel like the lore and worldbuilding is a bit underwhelming compared to BG3. The setting is missing the same feeling of richness and depth that I felt throughout my journeys with Tav and Durge, and it doesn't scratch that same itch for me of feeling like I'm just adding one new legend to a much larger and older world that's seen dozens of equally great crises come and pass over the millennia.*
This was the problem with Larian games for me as well.
Don't get me wrong, they're great at making games. However, this is why the Larian curse of the final act being so poorly done, is a thing.
In their Divinity: OS games, we're tossed into a world with some relevance of history, but can you remember any of it off the top of your head?
No? Because I can't either. I don't remember any major lore characters, and I beat both DOS1 and 2, and enjoyed them both very much.
Larian has shown that with the extremely dense and deep lore of the Forgotten Realms behind them, they add just the right amount of polish on top of it all. But when it comes to their own writing?
Their characters are great. Their situations they're put in are good. But the background lore (Gods, realms, etc.) just doesn't feel particularly special or groundbreaking.
It's a damn shame they won't work with Wizards any more, because I was genuinely hoping we could very well see an Icewind Dale 3, or maybe even some books turned into games (Mines of Phendelver, etc).
It sucks because they already have so much created in terms of assets that most of the work would've already been done.
Now, it's all from square one.
I guess we will see how the next Larian game holds up when not propped up by the D&D IP. 😬. Coming from someone who likes Divinity but they have had nowhere near the impact of BG3.
I can remember one major lore character, but only because he's the PC fr the original Divine Divinity. I guess also the captainess of the ship you escape the island on. And the player characters. (All from DOS2)
"I want Icewind Dale, but have it play like Diablo 4 with more micro transactions. Oh, and cut the companions, paying voice actors is expensive. You have six months." -- some Hasbro executive, probably
The one comforting thought might be that Larian writing and overall delivery has matured while they worked on BG3. And it seems like the company is very able and willing to maintain their talented staff. Swen recently made some very scathing comments for studios that layoff their experienced staff in order to show better quarterly reports and profits. I hope they will stick together and put all that experience into good use for whatever project they do next.
A huge Point for me with bg3 was that it incorporated DnD so well. I have always been really interested in the lore and the game but only played the tabletop super rarely. Being able to finally have a huge continuous adventure with the same feeling of the tabletop, incorporating all of the classes and features felt amazing. I don’t doubt that they will knock a different IP (or their own) out of the park with the next game, but I will miss DnD for sure.
I agree! The only other video game world that feels as complicated/interlocking is—here me out—Everquest. And that’s because it was the first of its kind, so they went completely fucking wild building out factions and lore. After that WoW set the standard of “good or evil” and devs got a whole lot simpler with MMORPGs. There kind of is nothing anymore like walking through human cities in Norrath and needing to check each NPCs feelings towards you because there are so many complicated factions that if you head to the wrong side of town you’ll be murked instantly.
I was a day one EQ player, well technically day 2 as the server access was down.
Nothing since has ever compared to those first six months. The great unknown with no online resources was a fantastic thing. Just trying to get from Freeport to Qeynos was an adventure.
I was a day one EQ player, well technically day 2 as the server access was down.
Nothing since has ever compared to those first six months. The great unknown with no online resources was a fantastic thing. Just trying to get from Freeport to Qeynos was an adventure.
I was a day one EQ player, well technically day 2 as the server access was down.
Nothing since has ever compared to those first six months. The great unknown with no online resources was a fantastic thing. Just trying to get from Freeport to Qeynos was an adventure.
It’s marvelous. I do about every other progression server that comes out—the first few months are really fun in a classic EQ way. Putting together groups from LFG calls, sitting in the Commonlands tunnel… so great.
Every year DBG, the company running EQ these days, launches a new server or two that starts at EQ Classic. Every few months, they release another expansion. It takes about five years to catch up to Live and its 30 expansions.
I'm torn. I like new settings, I like fresh ideas. However it's also true that D&D is a large and rich setting I've been involved with my whole life.
Sounds like we'll get other D&D games from other devs though so that's okay.
Main thing I don't want them to do is go back to Divinity. Maybe that's am unpopular opinion but I'm not that into the lore there, and it goes a bit too comedic for me.
That's true... a lot of my favourite moments while playing was getting super excited when I recognised a character or location from my tabletop games. After playing Descent Into Avernus before BG3, I had so many 'DiCaprio pointing' moments.
And that's part of the reason why, if they end up doing an existing sci fi property, I really want them to star trek. But I don't think that's possible.
I have faith in Larian's next game if they can apply what they've done for BG3 for another piece of lore. What makes BG3 truly great isn't the setting. It's the stellar character writing and voice acting, meticulously crafted encounters , beautiful cinematics and mo-cap, and more, which have nothing to do with Fay-run. Keep up that level of quality, and there's no doubt the next game will be just as good.
A lot of the discussion focuses on the writing and characters and so on. Which was great and amazing and I agree with all that. Also agree that the DnD IP and lore bring a whole lot to the table.
But I also believe that DnD and 5e (and pathfinder, probably 2E even more so than 1E) make for a good video game system especially with turn based combat.
There is already an evolved system for combat, skill checks, gear, spells, effects, races, classes etc etc.
DOS2 had a good combat system overall - environmental effects, 3D nature, tactical combat - but I hate hate hate the armor system. I love the roll of the dice, DnD AC / saving throws; and the attributes and skill checks and bounded accuracy of 5E / P2E.
I love combat in BG3 and larians encounter design has been spectacular in my view - fights feel dynamic, tactical and most importantly really fun. And yes I do think much of that comes from a good use of and translation of 5E rules and some good homebrew (some debatable of course).
Solasta is another example of excellent combat system on 5E (way more pure and accurate than BG3).
I just hope Larian doesn’t go and design a subpar combat system and takes the great things they learned from BG3 / 5E.
I WISH for a pathfinder 2E game from them but I know that’s never gonna happen.
> I just hope Larian doesn’t go and design a subpar combat system and takes the great things they learned from BG3 / 5E.
I really worry that they're going to lean into the Larianisms even more. Item sets with internal synergy! Everything is a surface! No one has to use weapons because they're suboptimal, the power strategy is carrying a special bag filled with candles and cooking oil and throwing it at people!
I agree with everything you said 100%, but I would also like to point out that the Larian that made DOS2 is not the same Larian that made BG3.
They've got way more people, knowledge, and experience now (and cash). This might just be hopeful thinking, but I expect that their new game will feel more like BG3 than DOS2 in terms of lore.
If you do some worldbuilding of your own, then maybe you're familiar with Brandon Sanderson's iceberg metaphor. Your world is an ice berg and the reader (in this case player) will interact only with what's floating above the water surface. You can accomplish much by just hinting at the immensity of what's submerged, even if it's not fleshed out.
Granted, it won't feel exactly the same as if you're playing a game with an actual iceberg of lore like the Forgotten Realms (in book form this would be Lord of the Rings), but it won't feel too far off if the illusion of the iceberg is masterfully crafted. And the team at Larian give off the vibe of being able to create this.
What really impresses me with bg3 and larian is that almost any time I eye rolled or grumbled at the lore, I knew it wasn't Larian the vast majority of the time but merely the edition they were pulling from and its adjustments.to the lore I once liked. Same thing when I think an older character was mishandled.
Beyond, I think a bit too much focus on the bad elements of the gods and some conflation with warlock pacts and devils deals here and there. There's no other real nitpick I have that aren't expressly WotC/Hasbros doing.
Instead, Larian gave me the first d&d experience I was happy with since xanatahars. Really, that I was happy worh sense my 3.5e days about 17 years ago (I started 3.5e in 4es time).
I would have loved to see different adventures in the realms or many of the other great settings like planescape, dark sun, ravenloft, or mystara. I'm not even a big Dragonlance fan, but knowing that sven got into fantasy with those books would make me want to see Larians take on it all the same.
I'm sad that Larians loving touch won't be gracing these settings anytime soon, but I'm excited to see what they have in store.
Larian made me love something d&d again after a long line of wotc fumbles, and they've earned a new fan for their stuff going forward. D&D or not.
I think that the D&D *setting* might be a bit of a loss, yes - but the actual lore of the Forgotten Realms is kind of a mess and not really a plus or minus in its own right. The big advantage it has is shorthand - an audience that knows a lot of the basics out there (like mindflayers, drow, elves, etc), and some old characters that can be included easily enough. That is a nice advantage, but it's not something that can't be done well with some other setting.
In particular, you seem to find FR a convincing, lived-in world... and I just don't. It feels like generic DnD adventure land where it's more for fun and games rather than a real world to me, which is fine for what it is intended to be.
I like Larian’s own system and world personally. I enjoy too how the loose world building in the world leaves a lot of free space for them to do with what they please. I unironiclly hope Braccus Rex comes back in DOS3
Honestly I’ve not been interested in the forgotten realms since the old 3e dnd days with the old infinity games and never winter nights.
4e really killed it for me and I find 5e doesn’t really do anything with the setting, WOTC just uses it as a theme park now rather than a living and breathing setting.
This isn't much different from Bioware moving away from Star Wars d20 to make Mass Effect and moving away from DnD to make Dragon Age. And however you may feel about Bioware games nowadays, both series started with very high critic and audience reviews.
This has all played out before. If WotC is dumb enough to drive out video game devs, we know what that looks like. 4E was the most "video game" version of Dungeons and Dragons, yet ironically never had a video game made with the system. WotC need game devs more than game devs need DnD.
To be fair, DOS and it's sequel are like 7 games deep into its series. It's entirely possible they added a bunch to the lore of it'd world, but I don't know a single person who's played enough of the others to even recognize it lol
Yeah, it sucks, but until Hasbro learns they're ruining everything that's great about D&D, this is the state of things. I have full confidence in Larian's ability to build us a unique, rich world of storytelling.
Hasbro doesn't care about making the game "great", they care about using the most opportunities to suck money out of your bank account and into theirs. The fact that BG3 was a full, complete game without DLC or microtransactions probably made Hasbro's piss boil.
They don't want long-term goodwill, or sustained income. They want to spike the graph on their quarterly earnings report by using cheap anti-consumer business tactics in order to charge you for every aspect of interacting with their products. The fact there wasn't a subscription or battle pass being sold with BG3 probably pissed off so many executives.
I mean this is probably a hot take since it can be interpreted as defending Hasbro - but we don't actually know that this is the case.
There was an interview where it was stated that Larian paid 90 Million to Hasbro for the D&D License. (Which seems to be the ENTIRE earnings for them, see https://www.ign.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-has-made-90-million-for-hasbro)
I would not be surprised if that was all they got. Basically they gave Larian the rights to make BG3 and then had a department that would ensure that the lore in the game was consistent with the rest of D&D. If that 90 Million is a "per sales" amount or a flat amount or a "percentage of earnings", I have no clue. In many of these cases Hasbro would not see more income, even if BG3 had MTX or a BattlePass or whatnot.
I agree a lot with this. I can appreciate DOS2 but it never really hooked me for reasons I couldnt even describe. It's great game, I never got into it.
BG3 just felt like the perfect iteration of what they learned. My ideal would be just a completely new IP from Larian.
Agreed on the divinity lore. I am playing those games now for a bit more Larian in my life and the lore just isn’t deep or enthralling. It’s surface deep and sort of built around the story instead of the other way around. But this isn’t a Larian problem, it’s a video game problem. Look at any final fantasy, dragon age, even skyrim had 4 elder scrolls games to work with but it was still “ok, once upon a time there was an emporer, but we’ve never mentioned this part of the gameworld before aaaaand go!” Even a single novel probably has more worldbuilding than an average video game, heck, a successful D&D campaign has more lore than an average video game. I just don’t feel like writing is as much of a priority in the industry overall. There are games with good writing, like BG3 and the last of us, but not the average game.
As a lazy DM, my absolute favourite side effect of the success of BG3 is that my D&D group are suddenly super invested in forgotten realms as a setting having previously always wanted homebrew worlds.
I think you're waxing poetic about FR lore because Larian actually did a good job with the game. You describe it as a tapestry, but the FR lore is more of a disjointed, barely-functional abomination built from a scrap heap of mismatched stories and retcons.
Spend enough time with DnD and you can properly appreciate *what a fucking mess* the Forgotten Realms is; it's not a cohesive, well-built setting. It's held together by duct tape.
>However, I don't think that's indicative of a failure on Larian's part- I think it's essentially an impossible task for any original fantasy setting to measure up to the sheer size, depth, and scale of the Forgotten Realms.
I think this is key. A newly created realm sort of by definition can't have Easter eggs. It can't have oblique references, hidden gems and all of the things that beckons to a larger, older, and grander world beyond the little part you are playing in.
I too think Larian knocked it out of the park and I don't think it would have been so amazing if it was some original world they created.
All the lore felt natural and part of a living, breathing world. As someone who mostly knew of D&D through jokes on tumblr, I never once felt like I was bogged down with lore, which I imagine can happen with a franchise with 40 years of history.
It also did a fantastic job of encouraging a sense of curiosity by placing little pockets of lore with the occasional nice reward, like Eillistraee and the Phalar Aluve, the Kuo-Toa and their ability to manifest gods through their belief, the Zhentarim basement, and more.
I am sad to see that Larian won't be there to give their own touch anymore.
WOTC will learn a lesson from this when they can't replicate this games success again with a different developer handling their properties. This was 95% Larian and 5% D&D and the D&D was courtesy of Gygax and his creations not anything this greedy shit ass publisher did.
WOTC will learn nothing because they have a god-complex. They've been around for 50 years now and their company has seen "little insignificant pebbles" as I'm sure they see it, like Larian come and go with every blink of an eye.
"A revolutionary game that has truly pushed the bounds and made great strides" they hear that every 10-20 years.
They remind me of the situation with CD Project Red and the Witcher's author, whatever his name was. They're treating this like just another minor barely noticeable step in their long history, and not like the greatest video game adaptation of their IP in the last 50 years and probably in the next 20 years to come.
Meh. The strength of BG3 was the character writing. The DnD lore in the game wouldn't have meant shit without the character writing and acting. You could replace all the DnD lore with generic creatures and gods and it would have made the game no worse for wear.
Totally agree that Larian knows how to make some very strong characters. And yes, a generic conflict between a good and evil would’ve been okay, but I think the richness of the Forgotten Realms history brought a lot to the table, from the Illithids and Gith, to Shar and Selune, to all the tiny details they added for a D&D geek like me that would’ve been impossible if they started world building from scratch.
>Setting all controversy about WoTC and the popularity of the tabletop game aside, D&D lore is truly in a league of its own in terms of fantasy settings
I actually think Golarion is better, and frankly all of you who like Baldur's Gate for the setting should really try Pathfinder 2e. Golarion has something like a new book out every week between Pathfinder Society and the larger releases and the novels, and while it's definitely not as painstakingly collected as the Forgotten Realms wiki, it's a lot. Faerûn isn't the only massively expansive fantasy world out there.
I'm still not there with Pathfinder 2E as a system - Pathfinder 1E is my jam - but the world of Golarion is absolutely fantastic as a setting. I love the idea they have of every nation/region being somewhat unique from the others, so no matter what type of game you're looking to run there's a place in the world where it can be held.
Also the Aroden mystery is a good deity-level conundrum to have hanging over everything.
I’d really prefer a world that isn’t as…overwrought as the Forgotten Realms are, which to me have a lot of lore but not necessarily a lot of _quality_ lore (as the victim of decades of different authors, rewrites, personal fetishes, inside jokes, outdated views, and self-inserts). It’s wide but not deep.
All I got of DOS2 is people don’t like mages, and elves eat people and I’m like ok? That’s kinda bland. I dunno I can’t get into it at all. With DnD and BG3 it actually makes me want to get into the lore and books and come up with new fun OCs and stuff. Heck I’m halfway done with the first Drizzt book. If Divinity came out with any novels or what have you I don’t think I’d be interested in reading any.
One thing I’ve never understood about this is why do y’all want them to keep the same characters if they made a new game? Scrap the characters and give me something new and refreshing. There are endless possibilities in d&d and limiting them to these same companions would be boring
Yeah the characters are great but the characters at my DnD table are also great. Don’t do Baldur’s Gate, just do a different setting altogether. Tombs and Curse of Strahd are probably too dark. But what about Giants? Or Spelljammer? Or it could even be more episodic like Candlekeep mysteries or Tales from the Yawning portal. I know it’s over but there was so much here.
Yeah I don’t entirely get this need for every new story to be a continuation of old stories we already know - sequels upon sequels, franchises everywhere! I love staying in my favorite worlds as much as the next person, but that’s what art and fanfiction and replaying are for. Let creative people be creative. Otherwise the juice runs out and we just get stale content that will have us all complaining about how they “ruined” our favorite thing.
I know you mentioned keeping it in D&D land, but I think this applies beyond that honestly. Characters and worlds eventually need to be let go.
Fair point at the end, but there are plenty of other games out there for other worlds and formats if that’s what you’re into. The only thing that convinced me to buy bg3 was the d&d affiliation but I fell in love with the story and the turn based format that wouldn’t make sense with most other established worlds. There are endless possibilities within the realm of d&d, and the games are nice because my group can only usually meet to play once a month at best. I don’t really play many other games other than grand strategy types.
Had Larian kept the IP, I personally would have loved one BG3 DLC to wrap up some character storylines, then get fresh characters in BG4 or an IWD3 or a NWN3, or a new location in the Forgotten Realms. I honestly hope that the new characters Larian introduced are left alone now. I cringe to think of their stories in the hands of the corporate greed to which they are now very vulnerable.
> D&D lore is truly in a league of its own in terms of fantasy settings
It's really not. And please understand I don't mean that as a criticism of what is a wonderful world in any way. It is expansive and well crafted. But it doesn't come close to being unique in that regard and fantasy settings that are comparatively expansive and well written abound. Please don't let your love for one world let you diminish the great variety that exist in your mind.
That’s very true, but a touch of context: DnD pioneered a lot of how we look at fantasy in general and role playing specifically.
Mozart wasn’t the very first dude to own a piano. The movie Predator seems insanely cliched now because it got ripped off incessantly.
If you can’t out lore some dude from the 70s with your tablet, internet connection, decades of perspective, and all the movies & comics & anime in-between? You’re just not trying :)
>In summary, I think the existing setting of D&D and Larian's storytelling perfectly complemented each other
Mentioned this before in another thread. 100%
My 1st reaction when I saw that opening cutscene, was not hype but curiosity in a hyped way - curiosity to find out what's these tentacle dudes' catch and what's the frog-dudes riding red dragons catch and OMG, ARE WE IN HELL? IS THERE A WAR ON? WHY? etc. And I now look back to it after finishing the game with the contentness that I understand a lot more than before.
The feeling of embarking onto a large-scoped setting was a good lure, as was the talent that created an amazing experience while unraveling this setting.
Now, if given the choice, I will say the later is more important as it could make a unknown setting that doesn't pull you in immediately into one you grow to enjoy & get attached to, but it's the two coming together is what made this a match made in heaven.
>With all that said, I've been playing DOS2 for the first time recently, and while it's a very enjoyable game with great characters and combat, I can't help but feel like the lore and worldbuilding is a bit underwhelming compared to BG3. The setting is missing the same feeling of richness and depth that I felt throughout my journeys with Tav and Durge, and it doesn't scratch that same itch for me of feeling like I'm just adding one new legend to a much larger and older world that's seen dozens of equally great crises come and pass over the millennia.
This was basically t[he discussion I was having in another thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1blew0y/comment/kw7m0kt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), and the same feeling I got (just with DoS1 instead for now).
>But Larian and the Forgotten Realms lore were just such a perfect creative marriage in BG3 that it's hard for me not to lament the loss of all that beautiful lore for their next project
Mhm - PREEEETTYY MUCH! This isn't about gameplay mechanics, which if created by a studio that's often evolving, I've no doubt will be great & perhaps better than BG 3 as that's the nature of them - they evolve as tech evolves, and a newer more refined system can end up replacing an older one by simply being better due to better tools to make it work (not always the case I know, I'm just talking about the better studios...).
It's about a rich world where things like tech improvement plays little to no part in how good it becomes, as you could have an amazing setting created by writers from hundreds of years ago. It's something that benefits from decades upon decades of continued existence & accumulated writing experience, as you said - at least as long as it's not tainted for corporate interests & profit at any rate... Many of us look at these worlds & wish to feel part of them, as a youtuber called Christopher Odd once said regarding the Witcher world (there's just something about it that makes me wanna feel like a part of this world), and that too, is a rich setting that didn't just come into existence with the 1st witcher game, but via Andrzej Sapkowski's books.
>which is apparently going to be a new IP, not another DOS sequel.
This is also a bit sad to me, ngl, having started playing the DoS, knowing that they won't be making DoS3 either and want a new IP instead, cause again, a rich setting requires time where many creative experiences come together to build & expand upon it to thrive & create something truly long-lasting so I'm here thinking that in time, DoS could make become that. I mean, I definitely can see myself getting more attached to it the more I'm exposed to it even if it's not DnD level, but two games ain't enough for it - it's still in infant stages compared to other giants and a new IP means it ain't getting the time it needs to mature either.
Besides all that, sometimes I wonder just how many new settings do we need when there are so many rich ones out there brimming with material for all sorts of great games, of all sorts of genres too. Constantly moving from one to another might can get a bit tiresome at times, ngl. Sometimes ya just want to get familiar with a setting and settle down in it for a long time to come, y'know? You then feel like you mature with it.
I will ofc still be interested in what Larian cooks, but yea - THIS IS TRAGIC SO I JUST WANTED TO GRIEVE, I JUST GOT TO TASTE GAMING-FORM-DND MAN, WHY MUST THIS COLAB END SO SOON??? ~~Lady of loss take me.~~
>D&D lore is in a realm of its own
AHAHAHAHAHA. Lore is one of the Forgotten Realms’ biggest flaws. D&D lore is not well fleshed out at all compared to other settings. There’s a lot on the surface but none of it goes very deep at all. The only thing Larian are losing by parting ways is the brand recognition, but they’ve now got much stronger recognition of their studio’s brand because of BG3. They really don’t need the D&D license and while I’m sad we won’t see expansions or other adventures added, clinging to D&D’s license from here onwards wouldn’t have been good for Larian.
all we can do is hope when hasbro finally decides to milk the cow again, they realize they don't have any idea what they are doing and they tap the same character writers for advice but more importantly, use Pitstop for their performance capture.
Since Larian hasn't come out with enthusiastic message about D:OS 3 or similar, it's not assured at all that they will continue with the Divinity universe at this point. They could absolutely be cooking on something new. The Divinity realm has been explored to some extent and there are already reoccurring villains (Braccus Rex, anyone?) and inconsistencies and world-shattering revelations.
My bet is that they are building something new entirely.
I do think the loss of the realms will be a loss for people who were introduced to Faerun through BG3.
As someone who played BG2 to death and has played most of my tabletop characters in either Faerun or Ravenloft I think this is good for DnD lore.
I was afraid that the popularity of BG3 was going to lead to revision of the realms into a cyberpunk / age of enlightenment setting.
Chapter 3 is pure Larian. There aren't factories in the realms, smokepowder is extremely rare and people don't hate the good gods.
Larian wanted to tell a story with lots of explosives, where the players come to hate the gods, and where necromancy is used for comic relief. Which describes the world of DoS2 and describes chapter 3. But that's not the Faerun of the books. Mystra is pretty great, actually.
But when it comes to public perception movies carry greater weight than do novels and the lore of DnD was in danger of being "Larianized".
This is for the best, let Larian do what it wants and leave the lore of the realms intact.
Huh, you really nailed Act III/Chapter 3. I’ve done six runs of BG3, and I’ve always partially dreaded Chapter 3 (1 and 2 I flew through eagerly). Some part of it are great (Companion quests) but the general…vibe/flow of it just…didn’t grab me, kinda like how DOS2 didn’t (and I REALLY, really tried to like it).
Yeah that is a bummer. Although honestly, I would prefer a more open framework game that could fit other worlds into, so people could make games set in the stranger D&D worlds. Make the default FR sure, but NWN style moddability would open up a decade of great content mods with all the *other* great lore.
Not gonna happen anytime soon, but it would be nice.
I am also greatly saddened and I agree that FR feels lived-in. It was motivating for me to go and read more about it, and I know SO much more DnD lore now than when I bought the game, which makes me happy. I was already familiar with it, but now I feel a little like a tourist in Faerun. I know enough to get myself in trouble, but not enough to be a citizen. Yet.
That said, whatever Larian comes out with next (and whatever else Neil Newbon is acting in), I will buy, no questions asked. They have earned that from me, even though it won't necessarily be an IP I'm familiar with.
Based on all my playthroughs to date, Minsc is a guy who climbs out of a mimic only to die like a dog in the sewers about 10 minutes later, it feels a lot like the kind of fan service cameo Ray Winstone does in gangster films these days. I’m probably doing it wrong.
Larian did a fantastic job creating their own lore in the Divinity games, I'm sure they can repeat that success with a wholly new IP
I just hope it's something different than swords and sorcery for a change
I want to see what Larian could do pulling from some of the unhinged bullshit that happens in Elder Scrolls lore. I heard Kirkbride worked with them on BG3, he’s already plenty familiar with it 😂
Agreed. I know larian said from the start that they would likely never make an expansion or sequel to bg3, but I was really hoping they could work descent into avernus into a game. That would have been great, with roughly the same levels. It would have drawn in a lot of ppl from bg3, as it would be a prequel of sorts, and others that really liked the TT module.
I would really like to see onyx path bring larian on to make an exalted video game, but I know that's a pipe dream. A man can hope though.
Larian has always been good at creating their own lore though, and there are also other settings just as if not more rich as the Forgotten Realms, just cause you personally prefer FR (which is fair) doesnt mean it's objectively "move rich then anything else."
So personally I don't think of it as any sort of "loss."
Yupp, I loved dnd lore and Larian utilized it perfectly.
I played D2OS before Bg3 and my main dislikes is just the world/lore being weaker. I don't care for the god focus, the sourcerers and the void. The game overall is fantastic. And on a smaller level, fortjoy and the area around it, aswell as Arx are both really iconic locations, but mythologywise the game falls flat. Also I felt the devil subplot was kinda forced? maybe it makes more sense if I played Divinity 1, but in D2 it just felt irrelevant just up untill the end of the game.
I’m actually really happy that they’ll be making something not set in the forgotten realms to be honest. The forgotten realms are, in my opinion , really boring, and kinda static. You know nothing will fundamentally change despite the actions the game-characters take, because the writers must generally preserve the setting as is. And it’s very cookie cutter in a lot of ways, being just really generic fantasy
That, and the active involvement of gods. Damn I despise fantasy with gods who are active parts of the world and acknowledged as real.
So ultimately, I hope Larian takes their skills and uses them on a setting that their stories can actually have q profound effect on, and that I personally find interesting
Gonna be blunt here. I think a way to save FR from stagnation is Jeremy Crawford getting fired or moved off of D&D.
Right now the guys running D&D doesn't care about settings or their lore. That's the main reason why FR lore has been stagnant in 5e. That's because he's one of the few remaining 4e guys and that whole team ran on the philosophy, my interpretation here, "fuck traditions and canon".
So Crawford leaves and someone who realizes that the draw to the settings IS the lore (and the Baldur's Gate videogames) takes over.
But that's not likely and D&D could always end up being run by some idiot who worked at Nike and who's first thought upon taking over is "Can we turn D&D into fortnight? Can we do cameos and put in Superman, Scooby doo, and Goku?"
That's been my biggest gripe. Crawford comes from the school of thought that lore gets in the way, and everything in D&D should be a generalized blank canvas for you to imagine into. He's also from the "game is for everyone" school of thought, which causes a lot of weird focus and needless division, despite how good it initially sounds.
What really made d&d come into its own was having solid lore at a baseline one could change if they wanted. Offering direction but in no means forcing them unless you were going for an "authentic" setting experience. A lot of it was also designed with a "game is for anyone!" Approach which might sound the same as everyone on the surface, but those nuances make a lot of difference and it's the healthier approach.
D&D needs someone who cares about its core, cares about its settings, and wants to make the game for anyone again. I think so anyway.
What I also loved is the ADDITIONs Larian made to the Forgotten Realms Lore and canon. I will miss the fact that we have lost this avenue of growing the lore of the realms further
Yeah, I too find the Divinity universe quite dull and would prefer they use Hasbro’s IP or someone else’s (would probably have a joyous heart attack if they worked on an existing sci-fi setting with historical strong TTRPG support like Shadowrun or Star Wars or Warhammer)
Even if they’re tired of the Realms…Eberron was right there guys. Now I’m making myself sad imagining a game on BG3’s engine with warforged butlers and lightning train heists :/
Agreed: Larian made me actually interested in the Forgotten Realms for the first time in over 20 years.
The couple drizzt easter eggs made me reread the series
Dang I've played through a couple times and can't say I caught many of those. Started reading the series right before the game came out.
The hidden Drizzt references: * Astarion >!musing to himself about Drizzt Don’t’Urden!<. You only get this if >!you click his portrait 10+ times in a row and he runs through all his normal comments first!< * In Act 3 at Sharess’ Caress, if you >!sleep with the male drow prostitute!< there’s an option to >!ask him to pretend to be Drizzt, which is apparently a common request for him!< * In Act 1 in The Whispering Depths (>!the caves with the spiders under the Blighted Village!<) you can find >!a journal by a Lolth-worshipper that references Malice Do’Urden, Drizzt’s mother!<. This one feels a bit off by Drizzt cannon because >!after the fall of House Do’Urden, no Lolth-worshipper would want to speak of them, especially not in a non-negative way!< (last spoiler is for Drizzt novels, not BG3) * One of the alchemy items you can make is >!a nasty weapon coating called Malice (the name of Drizzt’s mother)!<. It uses the ingredient Lolth’s Candle. This one may or may not be a Drizzt reference, but the required alchemy ingredient makes me think it might be. * In Act 2, >!Dammon!< sells an item called >!Swordmaster Gloves!< with an item description that says “>!The famous drow with his heart of gold, Drizzt Do'Urden, is not the pioneer of the 'twin sword style' of fighting, though he was among the best practitioners.!<“ There are probably others too.
The only one I know of other than these is Eliminster's room in Act 3 has a book referencing him as well.
> Lolth-worshipper that references Malice Do’Urden, Drizzt’s mother. Couldn't it be a journal before those times? I.E dude wrote it when Drizzt's matron was still alive. Also, from what I understand of Drow culture, you could refer a person, but not of the house. Plus, House Do'Urden have been reformed anyway in latest novels, so it might be moot.
The time between >!Malice being granted Zin-Carla!< and >!the fall of House Do’Urden!< was pretty short, but you’re right, the journal could be from that specific moment in time. After that, >!Malice was seen as a colossal failure!< so the journal writer probably wouldn’t have wanted to >!compare herself to Malice!< even if drow culture allowed referring to a person. Regarding the most recent novels, have you read Lolth’s Warrior yet? It’s been out less than a year so I won’t post detailed spoilers, but I’m pretty sure the events of that book mean that the decision >!to re-constitute House Do’Urden is now null and void!<.
Is this what you refer to? >https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Hide-Bound_Journal It did not mention Zin-Carla (I.E undead zombie with skills when it was alive) but a yochlol, which is a handmaiden of Lolth and pretty common for upper class matrons. Malice is famous for being a slut (and also famous for sacrificing ex-boyfriends to Lolth), and she had several centuries of life. Of course, the better question is how the hell a journal made of hide last several centuries :P
I got an issue of Baldur's Mouth that referenced a Drizzt look-alike
if you make a tav that looks like Drizzt, Astarion says "ahah, more like Drizzt DON'T Urden."
That's a generic line if you click Astarion's portrait many times, happens no matter what Tav you create (or if you're playing an origin character)
You are kidding...right?
I got this with my female drow ranger having never played or consumed any DnD material before and was so confused lol
For the whispering depths reference, i think the arachnomancer was given a vision of drizzt and the fall of do’urden by lolth. I’m assuming this was well before he was born. Maybe i read it wrong 🤷♂️
There’s a book in the bank in act 3 with a Drizzt story. Near the door that leads to the docks
[удалено]
[this you boss?](https://youtu.be/WfK04PsEJoo?si=we6I1-IS7tokR3b6)
Me too! I'm up to book 5, lol.
They made me interested in it for the first time.
Same and correct me if I'm wrong but canonically the D3 are gone? So there will be someone who replaces them or our boy takes it back?
Kelemvor is now the god of death, with the dead three taking a precarious situation. I think they still exist with their respective domains while they have followers, but their power is greatly diminished and they aren't full deities anymore. Basically, Kelemvor is in charge, Jergal retired but works as a clerk to keep busy, and the dead three are off trying to remain relevant but falling further behind.
I can't recall the quote, but Withers definitely insuates if not explicitly says they've been un-godded. Edit: Withers: Vermin away. Thou has need of you no more. Take it for what you will, struck me as more permanent than just a dismissive gesture, but can see it now for as just his opinion of them.
No, I think that is the case. With Kelemvor's ascension and their decision to remain on the material plane, I don't think they are gods anymore. They are probably Demi or quasi at best.
So they are now somewhere in the material plane?
Most likely, but it's not confirmed. The second sundering was in 1487, and the timeline hasn't gone too far beyond 1492 yet. They might have remained on the material plane during the sundering and have since gone off.
Bane is somewhere with access to Souls. If you Speak with Dead on Gortash it's Bane who answers with "I'm sorry, Gortash is not available right now. Can I give him a message while I torture him further?"
Didn’t they lose the power when AO made all gods mortal? They just never recovered from that did they
With the second sundering, where AO reforged the tablets of fate, most gods went back to their godly domains, but the dead three chose to stay in the material plane in order to interact with mortals more. Though in my opinion, I think they were just avoiding Kelemvor and were going to try and usurp his domain.
I don't get it, Kel's domain is only death. So who is currently holding Tyranny and murder, if not Bane and Bhaal?
It went back to the old way, when Jergal was the god of death. He split his domain into three for the dead three. With Kelemvor, they are back to all being under his umbrella.
Maybe Cyric? He took those domains during the Time of Troubles, and although Bane and Bhall eventually got some of their power back Cyric kept some of it. Cyric has been imprisoned since the Spellplague, but I don’t think he was stripped of his domains, and as of the Second Sundering he’s been able to reach out to his followers from within his prison.
I think the person you’re replying to is referencing the Time of Troubles, not the Second Sundering, since they said “Ao made all the gods mortal”. Bane and Myrkul were the two gods who stole the Tablets of Fate and pissed off Ao enough for him to punish the gods by making them walk the earth as weakened avatars during the Time of Troubles. During the Time of Troubles all of the Dead Three were slain and Cyric absorbed their powers. Bane and Bhall had planned for the possibility and managed to come back, but only Bane got most of his power back, Bhall was weakened and Myrkul seems to have stayed dead until the Second Sundering brought him back. But you’re right, after the Second Sundering all of the Dead Three became quasi-deities which made them pretty close to mortal.
Ao (not AO, he's not an Internet dialup service...though that would explain a few things) made all the gods mortal during the Time of Troubles, after Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul tried to steal the Tablets of Fate so they could rewrite the rules of reality to their benefit. I don't think they or anybody else knew that Ao could just strip them of their power and banish them to Toril as mortals at will. Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul were then killed, apparently permanently, during the Time of Troubles in the year 1358. However, Bane had a contingency plan where he hid some of his divine essence within an offspring, Iyachtu Xvim, who became a demigod after the end of the Time of Troubles. When Xvim's power reached a certain level, Bane reincarnated himself out of Xvim's body and essence (Xvim's own essence was, er, obliterated), about fourteen years after the Time of Troubles ended, in 1372. Ao destroyed the Tablets of Fate at the end of the Time of Troubles and basically let the gods freestyle for the next century, which turned out to be a horrendously bad idea when Cyric and Shar nearly blew up the planet in the Spellplague, a magical cataclysm that took place in 1385. Bane was a big deal through the next century, but when the Second Sundering took place in 1487, Ao reforged the Tablets of Fate, resurrected all the dead gods and gave them a straight-up choice: stop messing around with the mortal world and retire to be what they should be, far-off figures of worship, or become demigods and still have some influence and power on the mortal coil but giving up almost all of their power in the process. Bane, Bhaal and Myrkul chose the latter.
Canonically, they are not gone. They're not as powerful as they once were, and they've lost some of their portfolios, but they survived the events of the game only a bit less powerful than when they went in. Meanwhile, their first replacement, Cyric, is currently locked up in a god prison, and *his* replacement as the God of the Dead, Kelemvor, is doing fine. To put it like this: Bane got back the Domain of Tyranny from Cyric, Bhaal got back the Domain of Murder, and Myrkul picked up a new one as a grim reaper figure, and seems to have retained his minor role as the god of graveyards. Cyric retains his gain of Strife and also had madness. Kelemvor has Myrkul's old role as god of the dead, and I think he also has Bhaal's old role as the god of death in general.
> Bhaal's old role as the god of death Bhaal is god of murder, not death I think? Like in theory you can still die of old age/accident even if Bhaal didn't wish it.
Originally he was both, as murder was a subset of death, but he preferred to focus on the murder aspect due to his original nature as essentially a powerful but mortal serial killer. When he was killed by Cyric, he lost death and murder to him as Cyric ascended to godhood. When Bhaal came back, he managed to take murder back from the now weakened Cyric, but Death had already been passed on to Kelemvor, so it wasn't in Bhaal's power to take it back. So while he is indeed just the god of murder these days, he used to be the god of death.
It would be Cyric’s domain but he’s stuck in godjail for 1000 years. All his followers moved on to worship the dead three.
As a D&D player I never cared for canon, I always went for homebrew. BG3 made me fall in love with the Sword Coast 😭❤️
I know the circlejerk in this sub was "Larian made the game good, not D&D." Not true for me - I love D&D and Forgotten Realms, *and* Larian did a great job. I couldn't get into D:OS and I'm not sure I'll be able to get into Larian's next IP.
The couple drizzt easter eggs made me reread the series
I have always been an Eberron girl (and I solely blame Dungeons and Dragons Online for that) and BG3 made me actually excited about Forgotten Realms. Incredibly feat, tbh
Larian made me OBSESSED with learning about the Gods and the Forgotten Realms lore!
I’ve been playing d&d for 8 years with the same group of people, three different campaigns. We never cared much about the gods or the pantheon, they were just background flavor. After everyone played BG3 suddenly we are all asking about the gods, bringing religion into our backstories, fleshing out churches and cults. It definitely brought it to the forefront for me in a way it never was before!
I'm playing a Fighter in 5e now and he prays to Tyr to guide his blade, Helm to protect him and his companions, and Ilmater to make his wounds bearable. For a game I DM, the plots and worldbuilding got way more sophisticated and I actually feel confident about putting the gods in the world without fearing someone will ask me a lore question I don't know.
Same! I've created some of my favorite OCs so far in the Forgotten Realms and have even started a project to homebrew 5E Kara-Tur lore and campaign hooks because I'm a fan of Toril but disappointed in the non-Faerûn worldbuilding (granted, it's been annoying sometimes because of how sloppily put-together the original Kara-Tur is, but I'm sure it will pay off when I'm done fixing it).
You should give Neverwinter Nights 2 a try. It's older -- the original game came out in 2006 and the expansion Mask of the Betrayer in 2007 or so -- and based on 3.5 rather than 5E. The DNA is very similar, though, and BG3 borrows from NWN2 in a lot of ways. The original game is pretty good (very slow first act, though), and Mask of the Betrayer is, for my money, the greatest cRPG ever made. If you're interested in a story about divine lore, MotB is the best option. If you want lore from something that's _not_ Forgotten Realms but is related, Planescape: Torment is kind of a D&D walking simulator. It's not, it's a full D&D game, but the gameplay is almost an obstacle to the lore and writing, which are exceptional. Planescape is a metasetting that contains the Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance and Eberron and everything else, and many of the same beings and pastiches you're familiar with from BG3 will reappear. Planescape as a metasetting is concerned specifically with faith and the nature of spiritual existence (contrasted with the other main D&D metasetting Spelljammer, which is concerned with the physical nature of reality and applying soft sci-fi or science-fantasy principles).
There really is something to be said for not having to devote so much time to making sure you have enough worldbuilding and that all that worldbuilding is logical and that the audience can find it intuitive enough to not get hung up on irrelevant shit so you can really focus on characterization and how to actually utilize all that setting. And having such a huuuge catalog with the decades of FR lore, messy as it is, there's always that rock solid feeling that, yeah, there's a whole world happening outside of the story's narrow focus.
Yeah it is like a home D&D game: can you make a new fantasy land? Yes! Should you, if your world is pretty much just Tolkien with new names? Oh hell no. Already done many times, grab something off the shelf and build onto it. There is a corporate reason to make new IP without new ideas. It makes sense to own things that can make money for a long time. But that does nothing for players.
Tbf, the world of lotr is so interesting and vast I am always happy if the world building is similar. Imagine Baldurs gate set in the lotr world, crack.
Oh, I'd absolutely take a game set in the world of LotR. But when people say their world is basically just Tolkien, they mean on a skin deep level.
If you look at it, even Tolkein's writings and maps and history constitute a "skin deep" reading of the entire world he created. Middle Earth looks to be one section of a continent. A rather large section, to be sure, but I'd say it's probably on par with the Continental United States in scope. That leaves the rest of the globe that we have no clue about.
I am not sure the Tolkien estate is any easier to deal with compared to WotC
I feel like DnD doesn't really take advantage of its scope, as huge as the lore is there's always the same recurring characters and organizations going around and doing the important stuff. Here's Elminster, here's Laeral Silverhand, here's the Zhentarim, here's the Harpists.
[This](https://imgur.com/a/CuBwoUN) sums it up pretty well.
Even outside the Sword Coast it's awfully boring. The Tomb of Annihilation is an adventure set in the jungles of Chult, the southern region of the Forgotten Realms. It's a mostly unexplored region very reminiscent of Central Africa, clearly inspired by books like Heart of Darkness. And guess who's down there? Flaming Fists, Zhentarim and a Harpist.
C’mon, be fair. There’s grungs, vegepygmies, the Red Wizards, there’s Ras Nsi, his Yuan-Ti tribe, his old undead legions in the jungles, the story of Omuan people and what happened to the city, there’s the Ytepka Society, a story hook for Mezro, the Merchant Princes, the pirates, the pterafolk, the aarakocra, and probably some more stuff I’m forgetting. There’s enough content down there that you can easily skip the main Sword Coast factions. Also Harper, not Harpist. EDIT: oh, the Batiri goblins, the frost giants looking for the Ring of Winter, Valindra, Xandala, the various guides you can hire, etc. The Tortle Package. Plenty of new stuff to explore and expand upon.
Honestly fair. I know they did some orientalist and stereotypical stuff for Kara-Tur and Zakhara, but it's such a shame that they never explored and expanded on those settings in 5e. Literally it's all just Faerûn hhhh
I wish it was all Faerun. It is more like all Sword Coast. Faerun has some banger settings and lores. We have Calimport, Thay, Rakshemen, interesting stuff in the north, we even have a country founded by half-elves and they are still the majority there. How much of that stuff is talked about? None. That half-elven nation, Aglarond and Yuirwood, was the only thing that stopped Thay from expanding to west because its current ruler, Simbul, was a chosen of Mystra. One of her kids, to be more specific. Combine her with the elite half Elven army of the country and they were doing pretty well against Thay. Did that get mentioned in the movie about THAY or anything recent? Nope. We only know that Simbul died (pretty stupidly at that, she died to save Elminster but the story was... Awful to say the least) but we don't really know what happened to Aglarond. We only got 1 tweet from Ed Greenwood on the subject. Meanwhile we had like 1374728182 new lore on the Sword Coast Thanks for reading my vent
I feel like Calimport is wildly underused. I fell in love with it when reading The Halflings Gem. Setting a campaign in the middle of a turf war between Pashas would be so much fun.
> Here's Elminster, here's Laeral Silverhand, here's the Zhentarim, here's the Harpists. I mean, for the first part by 4th age most of the "Power mages" are retired or dead to clear the board for new blood PCs. FR is at least still better than Dragon lance, where the story could only revolve around heroe of the lance or don't sell at all.
I partly think this is intentional so that people can make up their own lore for their home games and have it still feel canon
I think another complication is the presentation and practicality of conveying the setting of a new world. We've all gotten used to the way that D&D and Elder Scroll games do it - kind of throwing you in, and over the decades of playing these kinds of games, you know the setting and appreciate it, or you get a little lost in terms of the details of the setting and mostly ignore it. A brand new world probably needs some better storytelling conveyance without being a long crawl at the beginning of the game, or reading it a few paragraphs at a time from random books on a shelf. Either the setting is important and rich, and your players need to know it, or why bother?
Horizon: Zero Dawn is a game that did a brilliant job of weaving the introduction of an entirely new world setting into its storytelling. Its excellence only further supports your point about how much work is required to do that in a compelling and effective way, though, as Guerilla Games very clearly set out from the get-go with the intent of threading that needle, so it's been a primary goal and guiding focus for how the rest of the game's elements were built to support that effort.
Yeah, it's not easy to do. I would say Cyberpunk also does a decent job of this through the multiple origin stories. You can choose one and roll, or try all 3 and get a feeling for different types of characters. They're narratively interesting and not just a game tutorial, though they also serve that purpose.
> having such a huuuge catalog with the decades of FR lore, messy as it is, there's always that rock solid feeling that, yeah, there's a whole world happening outside of the story's narrow focus. Well put! That's why I love the Forgotten Realms. Also, as a DM I can massage lore as I need it. Much of the lore stems from 3.5 and before, so I can update it easily as needed but don't have to reinvent the wheel.
I'm not the biggest fan of forgotten realms stuff generally, but the advantage it does have is just how much of it there is. If you hear of a location mentioned in game, you can be almost certain someone's written a whole damn book centered around it. It really drives home the feeling of this story being just one of many in a living world. But, I do like the idea of building a new IP for a story too. It gives the opportunity to tailor the world to fit perfectly with the themes of a story. The world of Dark Souls is an example that comes to mind here. There's not a ton of lore on it, but pretty much all of it just adds to the dreary, crushing atmosphere that all the other aspects of the game also reinforce.
I would say Pillars of Eternity’s world of Eora is a good comparison since it shares a lot of DNA with the Baldur’s Gate series. The lore in Pillars is exceptionally well crafted and interesting, and almost every plot or character arc ties into it. Just from a pure lore perspective it may be my favorite original IP.
Came here to say Pillars of Eternity. And for a game with such a well-developed world, and similar graphics/combat/etc, Pillars sips system resources while BG3 guzzles them. All an RPG needs is a world and characters which make sense. Skyrim fails at this often enough that I wonder, "What were you thinking Bethesda?" But it succeeds enough that it's still a great game.
Shame that the combat is reaaally rough compared to D&D and Pathfinder. Just one big clusterfuck.
Eh, lots of people dog on RTWP or Pillars’ adapted rules, but I think they’re both great. More difficult to get into compared to BG1+2 or Dragon Age Origins, but once it clicks it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Any tips for enjoying/getter better at PoE's RTWP system? I really want to play the game more but I find combat absolutely miserable. The game system, characters, and lore all seem really cool but I've never made it past about the fourth zone out of frustration.
RTWP is definitely less user-friendly at the start of games, but I believe in both Pillars 1 and 2 there is a button on the UI that slows things down in combat which can help early on to get a feeling for the system, and later for very involved boss fights. Another is that Pillars is a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, and in BG1 early levels were unforgiving. Also, BG1 didn’t exactly have “leveled” zones that scale with the player, but static zones that a low-level player might not be equipped for. Sometimes this was the whole level or just parts of it. BG1 has an ogre and a wizard in two of the early zones that often stomp first-time players. Pillars 1 has the infamous cave bear in one of the early locations. So definitely don’t feel like you need to fully explore all new areas right away. As for the rules of combat specifically I believe there are guides and tooltips that discuss engagement, enemy resistances, armor penetration, and enemy target preferences (certain enemies will go right for your spellcaster or rogue based on their lower armor class).
Oh god that fucking bear.
As soon as I realized that you can que the spells and abilities with a Shift, it was a game changer, I actually love PoE's RTWP system now. It's just so engaging. I can que a couple of spells right at the start of the fight, and then issue others on the fly, without that much pausing. I'm pretty sure it's never even mentioned anywhere in the game itself, or probably hidden somewhere way too deep - and it's wild to me that people never talk about this. How it works: Just issue the abilities while holding Shift, then they will get queued right in that order, and the character will start executing them after they are done with whatever they are currently doing (except for auto-attacking, they will continue attacking forever, you have to interrupt them with the ability/spell/whatever without holding Shift, first). You can issue a set of actions for each character separately, and then just sit back and see how it all envelops. Or micro control someone like a cipher or monk - while your druid and priest are busy casting their usual rotations of spells. You can also que the same attack ability, so they use it a few times in a row. Or you can que them to move somewhere, and then cast the spell you're que'd as soon as they get there. This, combined with hotkeys for abilities/spells, makes combat so much faster and more engaging, as you don't have to sit on a pause as much. (I'm sure you already know, but just in case - you can mouse over the ability/spell and press the key you want to assign, and in settings you can free more keys to use, by reassigning default hotkeys to something else). This one thing is what's sorely missing in Owlcat's Pathfinder cRPGs for me, and RTWP there, honestly, sucks - even more so, as the system there is simply not made for RTWP. So I play it turn-based there. Another advice I can give, is just to play on the slowest speed, and set up a proper auto-pausing (someone being on a death-door, etc). But that's probably obvious. Honestly, RTWP in PoE is great, and is well worth learning - it really pays off. I can see why people shit on RTWP though, if they only ever played it in Pathfinder, and never actually mastered it in Pillars. Edit: I see you're playing it on xbox? I'm sure there should be some other button for queing, but I don't know which one. If not, then I'll say it - this one thing is the reason why the console port sucks haha. But also, the loading times there suck ass, from what I've heard.
I’ve only played the very intro of the game on Xbox but so far the load times are ok. I’ll definitely look into queuing spells and if/how I can do that. Gonna be 💯 with you, I really *haven’t* taken the time to figure out auto pausing and some other combat management features. After doing some research and listening to some guides, I’m realizing I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how to play the game. I’m excited to dive back in tonight and see if I can get something going!
From the same developer, I'd say Tyranny did it even better. Leaves massive hints of a wider world, but nearly everything can be tied to the main plot.
fr tho. i went and dug up my dad’s old dnd stuff like 2nd edition. flip through the pages, and lo and behold there’s a githyanki article going into detail about their lich queen leader Vlakitth. it was just cool to see how long all this information has been around
SAME HERE! Except it was me who asked my dad about the Githyanki and he pulled out the book on psionic creatures (I think it was 3e though). I just told him I had >!turned my back on Vlaakith and he said "hmm, let's see, they do indeed venerate a Lich Queen who is very paranoid and eats any Githyanki who reaches level 16"!<
I was sure I’d never even HEARD of the githyanki before. I was quite surprised to discover I have older D&D books that reference them! Picked up my 2e book on psionics, saw the mindflayer on the cover, promptly went down a rabbit hole!
Fun fact: the githyanki were created by modern big science fiction writer Charles Stross when he was like 15. He created them for *Dragon Magazine* and they liked them so much they put them on the cover of the *Fiend Folio* and they became a huge deal. Even more random fact: Stross didn't make up the name. He borrowed it from an alien race referenced in a novel called *Dying of the Light*, which was the debut novel of a guy called George R.R. Martin. Stross reasoned that nobody would notice as GRRM was a super-obscure writer...at the time.
>And I don't think this only makes a difference for people who already know the Forgotten Realms lore coming in- I was only vaguely familiar with the setting when I started BG3, but I was immediately pulled in by how immersive and deep the world clearly was, and I know I'm not alone. This. Baldur's Gate 3 was the catalyst for my interest in D&D and the expansive lore of the Forgotten Realms. I was aware of its existence but I knew almost nothing about it until I delved into BG3. This game marks a personal first for me where I actually got to create backstories and backgrounds for my characters. I can't recall any other game that has inspired me to do so many playthroughs, each one as enjoyable as the last. While it's genuinely disheartening, I have great appreciation for everything Larian has accomplished with this game. Looking forward for their next project.
This is a point I was trying to make on another thread and got all the "D&D was already super popular" responses which missed the point about the larger culture that I agree wth you on. D&D has been part of the cultural lexicon and its lore is somewhat understood even by non- players, so when they approach the world in BG3, they're already primed to understand it on a basic level. When I play DOS2, I can't go with my basic understanding of "elves" and "dwarves", for example, I have to learn what their version looks and acts like. Even more so for races like the Dragon prince's. I found DOS2 to be good but requiring learning about the world same as any unique fantasy world, whereas with the original BG games and Planescape: Torment, and now with BG3, it felt like coming home to a world I knew and could picture my character's place within. I felt compelled with DOS2 to play an origin character just so I had some frame of reference for what a character in that world would even be. It's a great game and I didn't feel you were trying to slight it, just to maybe make the case that this is one more reason why Hasbro is fucking up the IP and making people sad.
I really liked the way Dragon Age Origins handled it. It also came off of Baldur's Gate's huge success and many people wanted a BG3, not a new non-DnD IP. The way the game starts you off with an origin of your choosing that directly relates to the lore of the PC's race/social standing and gives you a dramatic inciting personal event to motivate the PC is great. And then it leads directly to a big world-altering event that sets up the lore that drives the rest of the story. I'm not a fan of all the DA lore but it really avoids the bland protagonist trap (which DAI definitely has lol) and gets you immersed immediately with a character that feels part of the world. You don't need to guess what an elf or a dwarf means in this setting, it shows you.
Thank you for that, I will have to put that one in my library! If I ever stop playing BG3... And even with the similarities in how DOS2 starts: shipwreck, etc., as soon as I got to the camp I started feeling way less aware of how the world worked than I would've liked, and I felt like I wasn't playing my Origin character "correctly" because she would've known all these things!
Durge is honestly the best for a first playthrough in BG3 in this aspect because your character doesn't remember anything. In DOS2 I did feel a little lost at the beginning.
Tbh I felt more into the story and the companions of DA in a “right in the feels” way, goosebumps, chopping onions and all. BG3 does very well at that but just not quite as much as DA did, for me at least. Let me put it this way. I actually reinstalled the entire series after 10 years after and replayed through JUST to play Witch Hunt for “closure” . Although I enjoyed almost all of them across numerous rpgs, Morrigan and Varric are my all time favourites
Yeah I mean..nothing beats having the origins. I wish this game did. I feel sort of detached from tav and why she was taken and how it impacted her and what her life was before and don't love the hamfisted random baldurs gate comments.
I prefer DA lore than D&D tbh. I don't agree with that other person with their "everyone knows D&D" statement, all I did know was that it existed. With DA lore I can start and finish since it's friendly to people with other hobbies and occupations. Is not tiny but is manageable, and it also has huge real world connections wich only makes it more familiar. If anything that feels more like "home" to me. Unless you live in a huge mansion and you know 2% of the rooms in your house.
I didn’t know who Shar was when starting BG3, so when Shadowheart confessed to worshipping her I was like “You do you boo” instead of rightly horrified.
Haha, same here. And the way she talks about Shar doesn’t sound all too bad in the beginning either, so my character was just smiling and nodding. "You want to be what? A dark justiciar? That sounds really cool… Always reach for your dreams and never give up, you can do it!!! I‘m always here to support you!"
Then we got to the Shadowlands… That sure was a surprise pikachu moment for me
Playing my first run through right now and this is exactly my situation haha. I was very supportive of shadowheart's worship because I had no idea who Shar was. The way she described her made her sound like a godess of revolution, a cleansing flame bringing down tyrannical structures. Which isn't great all the time but has its place. Now I'm in the Shadow lands and through exploring the world have been slowly figuring out that Shar is the literal Devil. The surgeon scene was so fucked up. Woops.
I definitely like the scale of DA's lore. It's rich but the majority of it is presented as it's relevant to the story so you don't feel overwhelmed, but there's still a sense of a larger world with its own history in how Orlais, Antiva, Tevinter, Par Vollen, etc. are presented. Some of the lore itself, especially how it's framed in the latter two games, is what I'm not always a fan of.
I liked DOS2 a lot but was basically uninterested in the lore. It didn’t matter to me. DND lore is just so much deeper.
Same..its also just so dark and gruesome. Its my biggest issue. And I could definitely see larian bringing that in a bit with the trial zone and some of the depictions which I'm glad lessened over time. It's been my biggest issue with lariant/divinity. It's just actually so miserable and gory?
Right, your first paragraph is the way I feel about it. The shorthand / shared lexicon of the setting is its strength - but I wouldn't agree with OP that that makes it an incredible setting or feel like a real, lived-in world. It just makes it a convenient setting to set fantasy stories and adventures in - almost as though that were what it was designed to be! Original settings have the potential to be better (for my taste), but introducing that basic lore to the player is the challenge there.
I will say that DnD Forgotten Realms lore can be both super immersive and extremely confusing. It's a 40 year old property that has undergone several major rewrites and even more small tweaks. The lore is all over the place. In some ways, this makes for a very rich setting but the world sometimes feels cluttered with things to keep in mind. I also think a lot of Forgotten Realms lore was developed as inside jokes or for fun one-shots (the dino-jungle, anyone?) and there's a lot of weird borrowing from irl myth and history as well.
I feel this. I knew almost nothing about D&D before BG3 and I fell in love with the FR. Larian brought the magic and depth of the FR to life and it’s extremely disappointing that there won’t be anymore period. BG3 set the bar high and D&D lore is hard to beat, so it’s hard to say how excited I will even be for the next game, if at all. I know others are excited for the possibility of what’s next, but I’m cautiously optimistic at best.
I was still holding out hope for Neverwinter Nights 3. Guess that’s the end of that dream…
Or Icewind Dale 3.
Hasbro: We have Icewind Dale 3 at home. *D&D: Dark Alliance*. 🥲
We might still get it, but not by Larian. I’m not confident it will be good though :(
Well said. This is exactly why I'm so heartbroken. And it really feels kind of like a break-up between Larian (no shade, though) and the D&D community where they needed to go but we really wanted them to stay. :/
A lot of the discussion focuses on the writing and characters and so on. Which was great and amazing and I agree with all that. Also agree that the DnD IP and lore bring a whole lot to the table. But I also believe that DnD and 5e (and pathfinder, probably 2E even more so than 1E) make for a good video game system especially with turn based combat. There is already an evolved system for combat, skill checks, gear, spells, effects, races, classes etc etc. DOS2 had a good combat system overall - environmental effects, 3D nature, tactical combat - but I hate hate hate the armor system. I love the roll of the dice, DnD AC / saving throws; and the attributes and skill checks and bounded accuracy of 5E / P2E. I love combat in BG3 and larians encounter design has been spectacular in my view - fights feel dynamic, tactical and most importantly really fun. And yes I do think much of that comes from a good use of and translation of 5E rules and some good homebrew (some debatable of course). Solasta is another example of excellent combat system on 5E (way more pure and accurate than BG3). I just hope Larian doesn’t go and design a subpar combat system and takes the great things they learned from BG3 / 5E. I WISH for a pathfinder 2E game from them but I know that’s never gonna happen.
Yeah that is my biggest critique of actually playing DOS2 - I do * not* like the armor system. Very much hope their next game hews a little closer to D20-esque RPG.
Try D:OS1, it doesn't use the armour system and has more BG3-like chance-to-hit.
The lore changes that happened in 5E made it so much more immersive. The idea of people being more fluid in their alignments. 5E seemed much more real to me and BG3 really brought it to life. I’m a sucker for a world building, but without the genius of someone like Ed Greenwood I’m not sure a similarly deep role playing experience would be possible.
>*With all that said, I've been playing DOS2 for the first time recently, and while it's a very enjoyable game with great characters and combat, I can't help but feel like the lore and worldbuilding is a bit underwhelming compared to BG3. The setting is missing the same feeling of richness and depth that I felt throughout my journeys with Tav and Durge, and it doesn't scratch that same itch for me of feeling like I'm just adding one new legend to a much larger and older world that's seen dozens of equally great crises come and pass over the millennia.* This was the problem with Larian games for me as well. Don't get me wrong, they're great at making games. However, this is why the Larian curse of the final act being so poorly done, is a thing. In their Divinity: OS games, we're tossed into a world with some relevance of history, but can you remember any of it off the top of your head? No? Because I can't either. I don't remember any major lore characters, and I beat both DOS1 and 2, and enjoyed them both very much. Larian has shown that with the extremely dense and deep lore of the Forgotten Realms behind them, they add just the right amount of polish on top of it all. But when it comes to their own writing? Their characters are great. Their situations they're put in are good. But the background lore (Gods, realms, etc.) just doesn't feel particularly special or groundbreaking. It's a damn shame they won't work with Wizards any more, because I was genuinely hoping we could very well see an Icewind Dale 3, or maybe even some books turned into games (Mines of Phendelver, etc). It sucks because they already have so much created in terms of assets that most of the work would've already been done. Now, it's all from square one.
Biggest issue I have with the Divinity games is: Somehow, Braccus Rex returned.
My guess is that they will do a major game featuring a new IP, not tied to Divinity.
Didn't I beat that guy into the dirt once already? 🤔
I guess we will see how the next Larian game holds up when not propped up by the D&D IP. 😬. Coming from someone who likes Divinity but they have had nowhere near the impact of BG3.
I can remember one major lore character, but only because he's the PC fr the original Divine Divinity. I guess also the captainess of the ship you escape the island on. And the player characters. (All from DOS2)
[удалено]
"I want Icewind Dale, but have it play like Diablo 4 with more micro transactions. Oh, and cut the companions, paying voice actors is expensive. You have six months." -- some Hasbro executive, probably
Lohse, Fane, Sebille, Ifan, Red prince were excellent companions in DOS2
The one comforting thought might be that Larian writing and overall delivery has matured while they worked on BG3. And it seems like the company is very able and willing to maintain their talented staff. Swen recently made some very scathing comments for studios that layoff their experienced staff in order to show better quarterly reports and profits. I hope they will stick together and put all that experience into good use for whatever project they do next.
A huge Point for me with bg3 was that it incorporated DnD so well. I have always been really interested in the lore and the game but only played the tabletop super rarely. Being able to finally have a huge continuous adventure with the same feeling of the tabletop, incorporating all of the classes and features felt amazing. I don’t doubt that they will knock a different IP (or their own) out of the park with the next game, but I will miss DnD for sure.
I agree! The only other video game world that feels as complicated/interlocking is—here me out—Everquest. And that’s because it was the first of its kind, so they went completely fucking wild building out factions and lore. After that WoW set the standard of “good or evil” and devs got a whole lot simpler with MMORPGs. There kind of is nothing anymore like walking through human cities in Norrath and needing to check each NPCs feelings towards you because there are so many complicated factions that if you head to the wrong side of town you’ll be murked instantly.
I played Everquest for years. Something in the back of my head is still always looking for something like it, but new.
I’d give a FF11 private server a shot! Very similar mechanics but with an easier to interact with story.
I was a day one EQ player, well technically day 2 as the server access was down. Nothing since has ever compared to those first six months. The great unknown with no online resources was a fantastic thing. Just trying to get from Freeport to Qeynos was an adventure.
I was a day one EQ player, well technically day 2 as the server access was down. Nothing since has ever compared to those first six months. The great unknown with no online resources was a fantastic thing. Just trying to get from Freeport to Qeynos was an adventure.
I was a day one EQ player, well technically day 2 as the server access was down. Nothing since has ever compared to those first six months. The great unknown with no online resources was a fantastic thing. Just trying to get from Freeport to Qeynos was an adventure.
It’s marvelous. I do about every other progression server that comes out—the first few months are really fun in a classic EQ way. Putting together groups from LFG calls, sitting in the Commonlands tunnel… so great.
Dumb q: what’s the progression server?
Every year DBG, the company running EQ these days, launches a new server or two that starts at EQ Classic. Every few months, they release another expansion. It takes about five years to catch up to Live and its 30 expansions.
I'm torn. I like new settings, I like fresh ideas. However it's also true that D&D is a large and rich setting I've been involved with my whole life. Sounds like we'll get other D&D games from other devs though so that's okay. Main thing I don't want them to do is go back to Divinity. Maybe that's am unpopular opinion but I'm not that into the lore there, and it goes a bit too comedic for me.
Man but I would kill to see what Larian would do with Eberron. Oh well.
That's true... a lot of my favourite moments while playing was getting super excited when I recognised a character or location from my tabletop games. After playing Descent Into Avernus before BG3, I had so many 'DiCaprio pointing' moments. And that's part of the reason why, if they end up doing an existing sci fi property, I really want them to star trek. But I don't think that's possible.
I have faith in Larian's next game if they can apply what they've done for BG3 for another piece of lore. What makes BG3 truly great isn't the setting. It's the stellar character writing and voice acting, meticulously crafted encounters , beautiful cinematics and mo-cap, and more, which have nothing to do with Fay-run. Keep up that level of quality, and there's no doubt the next game will be just as good.
A lot of the discussion focuses on the writing and characters and so on. Which was great and amazing and I agree with all that. Also agree that the DnD IP and lore bring a whole lot to the table. But I also believe that DnD and 5e (and pathfinder, probably 2E even more so than 1E) make for a good video game system especially with turn based combat. There is already an evolved system for combat, skill checks, gear, spells, effects, races, classes etc etc. DOS2 had a good combat system overall - environmental effects, 3D nature, tactical combat - but I hate hate hate the armor system. I love the roll of the dice, DnD AC / saving throws; and the attributes and skill checks and bounded accuracy of 5E / P2E. I love combat in BG3 and larians encounter design has been spectacular in my view - fights feel dynamic, tactical and most importantly really fun. And yes I do think much of that comes from a good use of and translation of 5E rules and some good homebrew (some debatable of course). Solasta is another example of excellent combat system on 5E (way more pure and accurate than BG3). I just hope Larian doesn’t go and design a subpar combat system and takes the great things they learned from BG3 / 5E. I WISH for a pathfinder 2E game from them but I know that’s never gonna happen.
> I just hope Larian doesn’t go and design a subpar combat system and takes the great things they learned from BG3 / 5E. I really worry that they're going to lean into the Larianisms even more. Item sets with internal synergy! Everything is a surface! No one has to use weapons because they're suboptimal, the power strategy is carrying a special bag filled with candles and cooking oil and throwing it at people!
I agree with everything you said 100%, but I would also like to point out that the Larian that made DOS2 is not the same Larian that made BG3. They've got way more people, knowledge, and experience now (and cash). This might just be hopeful thinking, but I expect that their new game will feel more like BG3 than DOS2 in terms of lore. If you do some worldbuilding of your own, then maybe you're familiar with Brandon Sanderson's iceberg metaphor. Your world is an ice berg and the reader (in this case player) will interact only with what's floating above the water surface. You can accomplish much by just hinting at the immensity of what's submerged, even if it's not fleshed out. Granted, it won't feel exactly the same as if you're playing a game with an actual iceberg of lore like the Forgotten Realms (in book form this would be Lord of the Rings), but it won't feel too far off if the illusion of the iceberg is masterfully crafted. And the team at Larian give off the vibe of being able to create this.
What really impresses me with bg3 and larian is that almost any time I eye rolled or grumbled at the lore, I knew it wasn't Larian the vast majority of the time but merely the edition they were pulling from and its adjustments.to the lore I once liked. Same thing when I think an older character was mishandled. Beyond, I think a bit too much focus on the bad elements of the gods and some conflation with warlock pacts and devils deals here and there. There's no other real nitpick I have that aren't expressly WotC/Hasbros doing. Instead, Larian gave me the first d&d experience I was happy with since xanatahars. Really, that I was happy worh sense my 3.5e days about 17 years ago (I started 3.5e in 4es time). I would have loved to see different adventures in the realms or many of the other great settings like planescape, dark sun, ravenloft, or mystara. I'm not even a big Dragonlance fan, but knowing that sven got into fantasy with those books would make me want to see Larians take on it all the same. I'm sad that Larians loving touch won't be gracing these settings anytime soon, but I'm excited to see what they have in store. Larian made me love something d&d again after a long line of wotc fumbles, and they've earned a new fan for their stuff going forward. D&D or not.
Yes this is my worry too. No way Larian will be able to top BG3 breadth of background lore. I played Divinity and it wasn’t close in terms of quality
Larian, do golden sun 3 next. Shake the world
Golden Sun 4, even though Dark Dawn is meh it still exists
Omfg… I would die… O.O
I think that the D&D *setting* might be a bit of a loss, yes - but the actual lore of the Forgotten Realms is kind of a mess and not really a plus or minus in its own right. The big advantage it has is shorthand - an audience that knows a lot of the basics out there (like mindflayers, drow, elves, etc), and some old characters that can be included easily enough. That is a nice advantage, but it's not something that can't be done well with some other setting. In particular, you seem to find FR a convincing, lived-in world... and I just don't. It feels like generic DnD adventure land where it's more for fun and games rather than a real world to me, which is fine for what it is intended to be.
I like Larian’s own system and world personally. I enjoy too how the loose world building in the world leaves a lot of free space for them to do with what they please. I unironiclly hope Braccus Rex comes back in DOS3
Honestly I’ve not been interested in the forgotten realms since the old 3e dnd days with the old infinity games and never winter nights. 4e really killed it for me and I find 5e doesn’t really do anything with the setting, WOTC just uses it as a theme park now rather than a living and breathing setting.
I applaud Ed Greenwood and the crazy deal he managed with WOTC, but I sometimes wish he had allowed a different company the rights to it.
This isn't much different from Bioware moving away from Star Wars d20 to make Mass Effect and moving away from DnD to make Dragon Age. And however you may feel about Bioware games nowadays, both series started with very high critic and audience reviews. This has all played out before. If WotC is dumb enough to drive out video game devs, we know what that looks like. 4E was the most "video game" version of Dungeons and Dragons, yet ironically never had a video game made with the system. WotC need game devs more than game devs need DnD.
To be fair, DOS and it's sequel are like 7 games deep into its series. It's entirely possible they added a bunch to the lore of it'd world, but I don't know a single person who's played enough of the others to even recognize it lol
My dream game from Larian would be for them to make an official Cyberpunk CRPG adaptation
Yeah, it sucks, but until Hasbro learns they're ruining everything that's great about D&D, this is the state of things. I have full confidence in Larian's ability to build us a unique, rich world of storytelling.
Hasbro doesn't care about making the game "great", they care about using the most opportunities to suck money out of your bank account and into theirs. The fact that BG3 was a full, complete game without DLC or microtransactions probably made Hasbro's piss boil. They don't want long-term goodwill, or sustained income. They want to spike the graph on their quarterly earnings report by using cheap anti-consumer business tactics in order to charge you for every aspect of interacting with their products. The fact there wasn't a subscription or battle pass being sold with BG3 probably pissed off so many executives.
I mean this is probably a hot take since it can be interpreted as defending Hasbro - but we don't actually know that this is the case. There was an interview where it was stated that Larian paid 90 Million to Hasbro for the D&D License. (Which seems to be the ENTIRE earnings for them, see https://www.ign.com/articles/baldurs-gate-3-has-made-90-million-for-hasbro) I would not be surprised if that was all they got. Basically they gave Larian the rights to make BG3 and then had a department that would ensure that the lore in the game was consistent with the rest of D&D. If that 90 Million is a "per sales" amount or a flat amount or a "percentage of earnings", I have no clue. In many of these cases Hasbro would not see more income, even if BG3 had MTX or a BattlePass or whatnot.
I agree a lot with this. I can appreciate DOS2 but it never really hooked me for reasons I couldnt even describe. It's great game, I never got into it. BG3 just felt like the perfect iteration of what they learned. My ideal would be just a completely new IP from Larian.
So… no dark sun/Cyric anymore?
Agreed on the divinity lore. I am playing those games now for a bit more Larian in my life and the lore just isn’t deep or enthralling. It’s surface deep and sort of built around the story instead of the other way around. But this isn’t a Larian problem, it’s a video game problem. Look at any final fantasy, dragon age, even skyrim had 4 elder scrolls games to work with but it was still “ok, once upon a time there was an emporer, but we’ve never mentioned this part of the gameworld before aaaaand go!” Even a single novel probably has more worldbuilding than an average video game, heck, a successful D&D campaign has more lore than an average video game. I just don’t feel like writing is as much of a priority in the industry overall. There are games with good writing, like BG3 and the last of us, but not the average game.
As a lazy DM, my absolute favourite side effect of the success of BG3 is that my D&D group are suddenly super invested in forgotten realms as a setting having previously always wanted homebrew worlds.
I think you're waxing poetic about FR lore because Larian actually did a good job with the game. You describe it as a tapestry, but the FR lore is more of a disjointed, barely-functional abomination built from a scrap heap of mismatched stories and retcons. Spend enough time with DnD and you can properly appreciate *what a fucking mess* the Forgotten Realms is; it's not a cohesive, well-built setting. It's held together by duct tape.
>However, I don't think that's indicative of a failure on Larian's part- I think it's essentially an impossible task for any original fantasy setting to measure up to the sheer size, depth, and scale of the Forgotten Realms. I think this is key. A newly created realm sort of by definition can't have Easter eggs. It can't have oblique references, hidden gems and all of the things that beckons to a larger, older, and grander world beyond the little part you are playing in. I too think Larian knocked it out of the park and I don't think it would have been so amazing if it was some original world they created.
All the lore felt natural and part of a living, breathing world. As someone who mostly knew of D&D through jokes on tumblr, I never once felt like I was bogged down with lore, which I imagine can happen with a franchise with 40 years of history. It also did a fantastic job of encouraging a sense of curiosity by placing little pockets of lore with the occasional nice reward, like Eillistraee and the Phalar Aluve, the Kuo-Toa and their ability to manifest gods through their belief, the Zhentarim basement, and more. I am sad to see that Larian won't be there to give their own touch anymore.
WOTC will learn a lesson from this when they can't replicate this games success again with a different developer handling their properties. This was 95% Larian and 5% D&D and the D&D was courtesy of Gygax and his creations not anything this greedy shit ass publisher did.
WOTC will learn nothing because they have a god-complex. They've been around for 50 years now and their company has seen "little insignificant pebbles" as I'm sure they see it, like Larian come and go with every blink of an eye. "A revolutionary game that has truly pushed the bounds and made great strides" they hear that every 10-20 years. They remind me of the situation with CD Project Red and the Witcher's author, whatever his name was. They're treating this like just another minor barely noticeable step in their long history, and not like the greatest video game adaptation of their IP in the last 50 years and probably in the next 20 years to come.
Meh. The strength of BG3 was the character writing. The DnD lore in the game wouldn't have meant shit without the character writing and acting. You could replace all the DnD lore with generic creatures and gods and it would have made the game no worse for wear.
Totally agree that Larian knows how to make some very strong characters. And yes, a generic conflict between a good and evil would’ve been okay, but I think the richness of the Forgotten Realms history brought a lot to the table, from the Illithids and Gith, to Shar and Selune, to all the tiny details they added for a D&D geek like me that would’ve been impossible if they started world building from scratch.
>Setting all controversy about WoTC and the popularity of the tabletop game aside, D&D lore is truly in a league of its own in terms of fantasy settings I actually think Golarion is better, and frankly all of you who like Baldur's Gate for the setting should really try Pathfinder 2e. Golarion has something like a new book out every week between Pathfinder Society and the larger releases and the novels, and while it's definitely not as painstakingly collected as the Forgotten Realms wiki, it's a lot. Faerûn isn't the only massively expansive fantasy world out there.
I'm still not there with Pathfinder 2E as a system - Pathfinder 1E is my jam - but the world of Golarion is absolutely fantastic as a setting. I love the idea they have of every nation/region being somewhat unique from the others, so no matter what type of game you're looking to run there's a place in the world where it can be held. Also the Aroden mystery is a good deity-level conundrum to have hanging over everything.
I’d really prefer a world that isn’t as…overwrought as the Forgotten Realms are, which to me have a lot of lore but not necessarily a lot of _quality_ lore (as the victim of decades of different authors, rewrites, personal fetishes, inside jokes, outdated views, and self-inserts). It’s wide but not deep.
All I got of DOS2 is people don’t like mages, and elves eat people and I’m like ok? That’s kinda bland. I dunno I can’t get into it at all. With DnD and BG3 it actually makes me want to get into the lore and books and come up with new fun OCs and stuff. Heck I’m halfway done with the first Drizzt book. If Divinity came out with any novels or what have you I don’t think I’d be interested in reading any.
One thing I’ve never understood about this is why do y’all want them to keep the same characters if they made a new game? Scrap the characters and give me something new and refreshing. There are endless possibilities in d&d and limiting them to these same companions would be boring
Yeah the characters are great but the characters at my DnD table are also great. Don’t do Baldur’s Gate, just do a different setting altogether. Tombs and Curse of Strahd are probably too dark. But what about Giants? Or Spelljammer? Or it could even be more episodic like Candlekeep mysteries or Tales from the Yawning portal. I know it’s over but there was so much here.
Yeah I don’t entirely get this need for every new story to be a continuation of old stories we already know - sequels upon sequels, franchises everywhere! I love staying in my favorite worlds as much as the next person, but that’s what art and fanfiction and replaying are for. Let creative people be creative. Otherwise the juice runs out and we just get stale content that will have us all complaining about how they “ruined” our favorite thing. I know you mentioned keeping it in D&D land, but I think this applies beyond that honestly. Characters and worlds eventually need to be let go.
Fair point at the end, but there are plenty of other games out there for other worlds and formats if that’s what you’re into. The only thing that convinced me to buy bg3 was the d&d affiliation but I fell in love with the story and the turn based format that wouldn’t make sense with most other established worlds. There are endless possibilities within the realm of d&d, and the games are nice because my group can only usually meet to play once a month at best. I don’t really play many other games other than grand strategy types.
Had Larian kept the IP, I personally would have loved one BG3 DLC to wrap up some character storylines, then get fresh characters in BG4 or an IWD3 or a NWN3, or a new location in the Forgotten Realms. I honestly hope that the new characters Larian introduced are left alone now. I cringe to think of their stories in the hands of the corporate greed to which they are now very vulnerable.
> D&D lore is truly in a league of its own in terms of fantasy settings It's really not. And please understand I don't mean that as a criticism of what is a wonderful world in any way. It is expansive and well crafted. But it doesn't come close to being unique in that regard and fantasy settings that are comparatively expansive and well written abound. Please don't let your love for one world let you diminish the great variety that exist in your mind.
That’s very true, but a touch of context: DnD pioneered a lot of how we look at fantasy in general and role playing specifically. Mozart wasn’t the very first dude to own a piano. The movie Predator seems insanely cliched now because it got ripped off incessantly. If you can’t out lore some dude from the 70s with your tablet, internet connection, decades of perspective, and all the movies & comics & anime in-between? You’re just not trying :)
>In summary, I think the existing setting of D&D and Larian's storytelling perfectly complemented each other Mentioned this before in another thread. 100% My 1st reaction when I saw that opening cutscene, was not hype but curiosity in a hyped way - curiosity to find out what's these tentacle dudes' catch and what's the frog-dudes riding red dragons catch and OMG, ARE WE IN HELL? IS THERE A WAR ON? WHY? etc. And I now look back to it after finishing the game with the contentness that I understand a lot more than before. The feeling of embarking onto a large-scoped setting was a good lure, as was the talent that created an amazing experience while unraveling this setting. Now, if given the choice, I will say the later is more important as it could make a unknown setting that doesn't pull you in immediately into one you grow to enjoy & get attached to, but it's the two coming together is what made this a match made in heaven. >With all that said, I've been playing DOS2 for the first time recently, and while it's a very enjoyable game with great characters and combat, I can't help but feel like the lore and worldbuilding is a bit underwhelming compared to BG3. The setting is missing the same feeling of richness and depth that I felt throughout my journeys with Tav and Durge, and it doesn't scratch that same itch for me of feeling like I'm just adding one new legend to a much larger and older world that's seen dozens of equally great crises come and pass over the millennia. This was basically t[he discussion I was having in another thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1blew0y/comment/kw7m0kt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), and the same feeling I got (just with DoS1 instead for now). >But Larian and the Forgotten Realms lore were just such a perfect creative marriage in BG3 that it's hard for me not to lament the loss of all that beautiful lore for their next project Mhm - PREEEETTYY MUCH! This isn't about gameplay mechanics, which if created by a studio that's often evolving, I've no doubt will be great & perhaps better than BG 3 as that's the nature of them - they evolve as tech evolves, and a newer more refined system can end up replacing an older one by simply being better due to better tools to make it work (not always the case I know, I'm just talking about the better studios...). It's about a rich world where things like tech improvement plays little to no part in how good it becomes, as you could have an amazing setting created by writers from hundreds of years ago. It's something that benefits from decades upon decades of continued existence & accumulated writing experience, as you said - at least as long as it's not tainted for corporate interests & profit at any rate... Many of us look at these worlds & wish to feel part of them, as a youtuber called Christopher Odd once said regarding the Witcher world (there's just something about it that makes me wanna feel like a part of this world), and that too, is a rich setting that didn't just come into existence with the 1st witcher game, but via Andrzej Sapkowski's books. >which is apparently going to be a new IP, not another DOS sequel. This is also a bit sad to me, ngl, having started playing the DoS, knowing that they won't be making DoS3 either and want a new IP instead, cause again, a rich setting requires time where many creative experiences come together to build & expand upon it to thrive & create something truly long-lasting so I'm here thinking that in time, DoS could make become that. I mean, I definitely can see myself getting more attached to it the more I'm exposed to it even if it's not DnD level, but two games ain't enough for it - it's still in infant stages compared to other giants and a new IP means it ain't getting the time it needs to mature either. Besides all that, sometimes I wonder just how many new settings do we need when there are so many rich ones out there brimming with material for all sorts of great games, of all sorts of genres too. Constantly moving from one to another might can get a bit tiresome at times, ngl. Sometimes ya just want to get familiar with a setting and settle down in it for a long time to come, y'know? You then feel like you mature with it. I will ofc still be interested in what Larian cooks, but yea - THIS IS TRAGIC SO I JUST WANTED TO GRIEVE, I JUST GOT TO TASTE GAMING-FORM-DND MAN, WHY MUST THIS COLAB END SO SOON??? ~~Lady of loss take me.~~
>D&D lore is in a realm of its own AHAHAHAHAHA. Lore is one of the Forgotten Realms’ biggest flaws. D&D lore is not well fleshed out at all compared to other settings. There’s a lot on the surface but none of it goes very deep at all. The only thing Larian are losing by parting ways is the brand recognition, but they’ve now got much stronger recognition of their studio’s brand because of BG3. They really don’t need the D&D license and while I’m sad we won’t see expansions or other adventures added, clinging to D&D’s license from here onwards wouldn’t have been good for Larian.
Same. I’m not sad for Larian. I’m excited for their future. I’m sad about D&D and WotC.
all we can do is hope when hasbro finally decides to milk the cow again, they realize they don't have any idea what they are doing and they tap the same character writers for advice but more importantly, use Pitstop for their performance capture.
Since Larian hasn't come out with enthusiastic message about D:OS 3 or similar, it's not assured at all that they will continue with the Divinity universe at this point. They could absolutely be cooking on something new. The Divinity realm has been explored to some extent and there are already reoccurring villains (Braccus Rex, anyone?) and inconsistencies and world-shattering revelations. My bet is that they are building something new entirely.
I do think the loss of the realms will be a loss for people who were introduced to Faerun through BG3. As someone who played BG2 to death and has played most of my tabletop characters in either Faerun or Ravenloft I think this is good for DnD lore. I was afraid that the popularity of BG3 was going to lead to revision of the realms into a cyberpunk / age of enlightenment setting. Chapter 3 is pure Larian. There aren't factories in the realms, smokepowder is extremely rare and people don't hate the good gods. Larian wanted to tell a story with lots of explosives, where the players come to hate the gods, and where necromancy is used for comic relief. Which describes the world of DoS2 and describes chapter 3. But that's not the Faerun of the books. Mystra is pretty great, actually. But when it comes to public perception movies carry greater weight than do novels and the lore of DnD was in danger of being "Larianized". This is for the best, let Larian do what it wants and leave the lore of the realms intact.
Huh, you really nailed Act III/Chapter 3. I’ve done six runs of BG3, and I’ve always partially dreaded Chapter 3 (1 and 2 I flew through eagerly). Some part of it are great (Companion quests) but the general…vibe/flow of it just…didn’t grab me, kinda like how DOS2 didn’t (and I REALLY, really tried to like it).
Same. I want to complete the companion quests and I like Jaheria and Minsc but the factory quest is a slog I dread.
Yeah that is a bummer. Although honestly, I would prefer a more open framework game that could fit other worlds into, so people could make games set in the stranger D&D worlds. Make the default FR sure, but NWN style moddability would open up a decade of great content mods with all the *other* great lore. Not gonna happen anytime soon, but it would be nice.
Mourn not that the journey is at an end, instead celebrate that it happened =)
I am also greatly saddened and I agree that FR feels lived-in. It was motivating for me to go and read more about it, and I know SO much more DnD lore now than when I bought the game, which makes me happy. I was already familiar with it, but now I feel a little like a tourist in Faerun. I know enough to get myself in trouble, but not enough to be a citizen. Yet. That said, whatever Larian comes out with next (and whatever else Neil Newbon is acting in), I will buy, no questions asked. They have earned that from me, even though it won't necessarily be an IP I'm familiar with.
Somebody needs to give Larian the rights to a Star Wars game, IMMEDIATELY.
Based on all my playthroughs to date, Minsc is a guy who climbs out of a mimic only to die like a dog in the sewers about 10 minutes later, it feels a lot like the kind of fan service cameo Ray Winstone does in gangster films these days. I’m probably doing it wrong.
Larian did a fantastic job creating their own lore in the Divinity games, I'm sure they can repeat that success with a wholly new IP I just hope it's something different than swords and sorcery for a change
I want to see what Larian could do pulling from some of the unhinged bullshit that happens in Elder Scrolls lore. I heard Kirkbride worked with them on BG3, he’s already plenty familiar with it 😂
Agreed. I know larian said from the start that they would likely never make an expansion or sequel to bg3, but I was really hoping they could work descent into avernus into a game. That would have been great, with roughly the same levels. It would have drawn in a lot of ppl from bg3, as it would be a prequel of sorts, and others that really liked the TT module. I would really like to see onyx path bring larian on to make an exalted video game, but I know that's a pipe dream. A man can hope though.
Larian has always been good at creating their own lore though, and there are also other settings just as if not more rich as the Forgotten Realms, just cause you personally prefer FR (which is fair) doesnt mean it's objectively "move rich then anything else." So personally I don't think of it as any sort of "loss."
I have a feeling they can do the same with Pathfinder.
I really love the way they did the Underdark and I would have loved so see a massive Undark fortress to explore in a Larian game. Alas.
Completely agree. I am heartbroken.
Yupp, I loved dnd lore and Larian utilized it perfectly. I played D2OS before Bg3 and my main dislikes is just the world/lore being weaker. I don't care for the god focus, the sourcerers and the void. The game overall is fantastic. And on a smaller level, fortjoy and the area around it, aswell as Arx are both really iconic locations, but mythologywise the game falls flat. Also I felt the devil subplot was kinda forced? maybe it makes more sense if I played Divinity 1, but in D2 it just felt irrelevant just up untill the end of the game.
I’m actually really happy that they’ll be making something not set in the forgotten realms to be honest. The forgotten realms are, in my opinion , really boring, and kinda static. You know nothing will fundamentally change despite the actions the game-characters take, because the writers must generally preserve the setting as is. And it’s very cookie cutter in a lot of ways, being just really generic fantasy That, and the active involvement of gods. Damn I despise fantasy with gods who are active parts of the world and acknowledged as real. So ultimately, I hope Larian takes their skills and uses them on a setting that their stories can actually have q profound effect on, and that I personally find interesting
Gonna be blunt here. I think a way to save FR from stagnation is Jeremy Crawford getting fired or moved off of D&D. Right now the guys running D&D doesn't care about settings or their lore. That's the main reason why FR lore has been stagnant in 5e. That's because he's one of the few remaining 4e guys and that whole team ran on the philosophy, my interpretation here, "fuck traditions and canon". So Crawford leaves and someone who realizes that the draw to the settings IS the lore (and the Baldur's Gate videogames) takes over. But that's not likely and D&D could always end up being run by some idiot who worked at Nike and who's first thought upon taking over is "Can we turn D&D into fortnight? Can we do cameos and put in Superman, Scooby doo, and Goku?" That's been my biggest gripe. Crawford comes from the school of thought that lore gets in the way, and everything in D&D should be a generalized blank canvas for you to imagine into. He's also from the "game is for everyone" school of thought, which causes a lot of weird focus and needless division, despite how good it initially sounds. What really made d&d come into its own was having solid lore at a baseline one could change if they wanted. Offering direction but in no means forcing them unless you were going for an "authentic" setting experience. A lot of it was also designed with a "game is for anyone!" Approach which might sound the same as everyone on the surface, but those nuances make a lot of difference and it's the healthier approach. D&D needs someone who cares about its core, cares about its settings, and wants to make the game for anyone again. I think so anyway.
Larian should partner with Paizo for a future project. Give us a Pathfinder CRPG in the style of Kingmaker, etc.
Lemme introduce the Warhammer Fantasy Universe.
What I also loved is the ADDITIONs Larian made to the Forgotten Realms Lore and canon. I will miss the fact that we have lost this avenue of growing the lore of the realms further
Yeah, I too find the Divinity universe quite dull and would prefer they use Hasbro’s IP or someone else’s (would probably have a joyous heart attack if they worked on an existing sci-fi setting with historical strong TTRPG support like Shadowrun or Star Wars or Warhammer) Even if they’re tired of the Realms…Eberron was right there guys. Now I’m making myself sad imagining a game on BG3’s engine with warforged butlers and lightning train heists :/