Baldur's Gate III

I definitely think I'm ready for Tactician now because I basically did the Grym fight without taking any damage from it (SH was the only casualty because she walked through lava) and did the Death Shepherd fight in the Mountain Pass in just over a round of combat.

Finally beat the Netherbrain tonight but I stopped playing during the afterparty. 300+ hours that's taken me!

After 320 hours, I finally completed it, and they saved the funniest glitch till last

https://www.reddit.com/u/doglatin80/s/NJuEdov1id

I found out that I often leave my xbox on the character sheet screen, which counts as gameplay time so sadly I do not know how many hours I am really in!

tbf I do go away and come back a lot, it's not constant gameplay

Upgraded my video card so’s to play this even smoother

I'm mostly making roughly the same decisions as I did in my first playthrough, but I did get two new interactions:

Rescued and recruited Minthara.
Got my second visit from the urgent butler.

~40 hours into an honor mode run and terrified

had to watch some youtubes about how to actually play this game because it never occurred to me to throw things or be a monk, pretty clutch

really like Minthara, went through all the trouble to save Halsin only for a shade or whatever to destroy his portal and trap him in shadow hell forever, whoops sorry Halsin

Tavern Brawler breaks the game on normal, especially on a monk. Once I try Tactician or HM, I might consider it again if I find I need to cheese to survive, but just punching everything loses its novelty after 10 hours.

yeah well shortly after my previous post I decided to mess around with the githyanki for absolutely no reason and was handily taken to task lol, ah well, honor mode is hard, nobody cares about my monks or tavern brawlers

was doing pretty good though, should have minded my business

Lol damn well better to learn that sooner than later!

Oh god: in my Dark Urge run, I'm doing Moonrise stuff now, and I just saw a reddit post saying not to long rest, but I have loads of stuff left (I haven't scratched the surface of the Sharran Temple), and I'm out of short rests. The butler already told me to kill Isobel or else, and so now I terrified about what's coming. And despite the dread, please don't spoil me, as I think I have to let this play out.

I started my Tactican run and it was going very easy (I even got the cambion to drop his flaming sword) and didn't take any damage while on the Nautiloid. Then picked up the first four recruits, cleaned up the Intellect Devourers and the dying Mind Flayer, scared off the surface-level tomb raiders, this is all smooth sailing so far I'm really nailing this, then fail the deception check at the door, "Oh well I'll just lockpick it open," but the creep left a trap for my party to step on just inside the door, and then their entire party was already waiting for me and proceeded to wipe me off the map.

mmmhm yeah that got me too the one time I tried that area, have completely skipped all of that every subsequent go, did not realize you can actually find Withers until I watched some youtube playthroughs

the early levels are just so sketchy and dangerous I don't wanna fight anything if I can help it

There's the draw of getting the XP and getting Withers so that I can respec Shart ASAP, but it may have to wait till I pick up Wyll for that sweet sweet Eldritch Blast.

Back in my other game, I'm trying out Halsin a bit more to figure out a better druid build, especially with beefing him up while wild shaped. Apparently certain feats apply to animal forms.

Got through that fight and the skelly one after it (which I accidentally triggered early by seeing if I could move them before they aggroed), and now my Shart is a Tempest cleric. I also managed to save the Tiethling kid in the Harpy fight for the first time ever, which was a pretty good fight.

I keep forgetting to pre-cast stuff though! Main thing I want to try is to exploit wetness (use Mage Hand to throw water at enemies, then hit them with ice or lightning).

Combat has been a lot more fun, too the point where I'm wondering if I should preemptively change it on my Act 2 game...

https://www.ign.com/articles/larian-studios-wont-make-baldurs-gate-3-dlc-expansions-or-baldurs-gate-4

Wonder what the dust up was that caused this?

I'd imagine it's at least partly related to the layoffs at Hasbro:

https://www.pcgamer.com/theres-almost-nobody-left-ceo-of-baldurs-gate-3-dev-swen-vincke-says-the-dandd-team-he-initially-worked-with-is-gone-due-to-hasbro-layoffs/

This fucking sucks

Yeah, this type of shit spells the end days. It’s happening everywhere. Enjoy the carcass of a company you have left after you “more lean, more modern” every quarter.

Optimistically I can say I'm excited for what Larian does next. But sad 2 say goodbye to all my new friends.

idk, from the ign article it's not clear if larian actually wanted to continue working on baldur's gate at all.
i reckon the layoff issue is unrelated to that decision but even then it's still a satisfying "fuck you" from them to hasbro

from where i'm sitting, this reads like good news, that they'll choose do whatever they want instead of being slaves in the d&d mines for the next decade or longer

chihuahua's take sounds like what I've been following (i.e. that it was never really in the cards to continue on with BG4 or more DND), and while understandable, I'm also sad.

The stuff about "No DLC" isn't news, Swen has said that before, but Larian has been continuing to release patches, some of which includes new content. Usually it's bug fixes, but sometimes it's new content, whether that's new voice lines around the camp or the whole epilogue. (I wouldn't expect new quests, though.)

Apparently they're still cooking up new things including epilogue cinematics.

Everything aside, I'm not really sure I need a DLC or a sequel, not for a long long time at least. My first playthrough was 350 hours. It'll be a while till I do another play through

https://www.ign.com/articles/larian-started-work-on-baldurs-gate-3-dlc-then-canceled-it-the-studio-was-elated?utm_source=twitter

LOL pay no attention to what I said.

Yeah, Larian itself will be just fine. Them potentially launching a fresh ip is more exciting than more D&D stuff. And I’d imagine after the Divinity games and BG3 they’d be itching to step outside of the trad-fantasy realm. Which would be dope.

Can’t find the post, but I’ve seen the point made that where Larian signed the original contracts, D&D was much less prominent back in 2017 or so before all the popular attention due to podcasters and Critical Role types and pandemic play making it a hit. 5e had only been out for a couple-few years by then.

Trying to renegotiate a game license now (and expansions and merch tie-ins, no doubt), with the far more massive cultural footprint and Hasbro enshittifying every it touches seems like such a headache that no wonder they said fuck it and went back to doing their own thing .

I hope they make a sci-fi property eventually