Baldur's Gate 3 -- What if we return to Baldur's Gate together

Baldur's Gate 3 the game that conquered our hearts and Minds let's talk about it but first a quick orientation ah the child of ball is awoken you can think of balder's gate as a coming-of-age story but not of a character but rather of the RPG medium that sounds pretentious basically every game in the franchise contributed an idea of some sort the original came out in 1998 and it too was a breakthrough back then the dominant strain of RPG was a first person Dungeon Crawler these days we call them blobbers back then they were simply called role playing games but it turns out a first-person perspective might not be the best fit for what is essentially a tactical game with multi-unit control Dungeon Crawlers ruled the 80s in the early 90s but with the success of isometric games blobbers were on their way out Boulder's Gate is like a cat you see we love it but it is a murderer serious murder but good as it was the game had problems uh small problems hardly worth mentioning the characters were gimmicks with close to no development some quests were offered and accepted automatically without any player input the combat system was broken by kaitin the text felt AI generated even though language models won't be invented for another 20-something years like I said small problems moving on the year 2000 Baldur's Gate 2. I have a question which one of the classic RPGs do you think was the most influential was it Fallout was it Ultima underworld was it Planet Alcatraz there is a strong case to be made that the most influential classic RPG was Baldur's Gate 2. many of the features that we love or hate in the mass effect the dragon Ages and quarters could be traced to this game binary moral choices player strongholds followers playing a significant narrative role companion side quests romances the DNA of Shadows of M is uh everywhere now skipping ahead a bit in 2012 the Canadian developer beamdog released Baldur's Gate enhanced Edition a remaster of the first game this was followed by the 2016 expansion Siege of dragon spear that's 18 years after the release of the original video games have changed back in the year 2000 the revenue of the video game industry was around 8 billion dollars in 2009 it was just under 20 billion dollars in 2016 it was 91 billion this hobby used to be for nerds now it's for everyone even the way we think about games has changed we learned that individual games can be thought of as mediums with their own code of structural elements mechanics Visual and writing styles and we also learned that we are quite bad at deciphering this code the new content added by beamdog ended up clashing with the original in a way that was noticeable it felt like a modding project from a decade ago but tarot follows you like pesto the story of the progeny of the god of murder was concluded in the 2001 Throne of ball expansion that featured little Urban or Wilderness exploration consisting instead of a series of dungeons each with a boss battle in the end but while the structure sure can be criticized the content itself was good and the most memorable part was the game introducing or reintroducing the best companion character in the franchise what if we were to return to Baldur's Gate together what would people say do you think and now 22 years later will be accepting sarivox offer Baldur's Gate 3 uses the clever system from original sin 2. we can create a blank character or play as one of our companions with a Side Story becoming our personal story and there is also something called Dark urge which is a special character who has Amnesia and is tormented by violent thoughts this is who I'll be picking Larry and made some fantastic games over the years but they never truly worked for me because of their tone the Larry and Whimsy I thought perhaps this can be circumvented by playing as a misanthrope but it turns out it's a complete non-issue the town of Baldur's Gate 3 is very different from that of original sin I'll be playing your Rogue and taking some Ranger and fighter levels later the idea is to make a character who specializes at dealing the maximum amount of damage on turn one the game asks us to create the guardian we are not given any context for this no explanation of who this character is or what's their role in the story it's intentional you're supposed to be a little confused foreign this is a naughty Lloyd a spell jamming ship mind flare technology a spell Jammer is a type of vessel that can travel both between the planes of existence but also in Space the prosperous Port City of Baldur's Gate on the sword Coast the inhabitants are being harvested by space aliens they used to be a vast illicit star Empire that ruled many worlds in the sea of night it was destroyed by a slave rebellion the githyanki mara race of former illicit slaves sworn to hunt down their former Masters anywhere jumping between planes won't save you squid mind flayers reproduce by infecting other individuals with a parasite that must be the reason for the kidnappings infected with a mind flayer tadpole we escape the Pod and explore the alien vessel the adventure begins seems like a strange way of opening this but uh Baldur's Gate 2 also had elements of body Horror in its opening although they were mostly communicated via text the ship the naughty Lloyd is flying full speed through one of the hell dimensions and this would be Leia Zell our future space lizard GF individuals infected by the parasite can partially read each other's thoughts and this conveniently allows us to skip a lot of boring Exposition combat is now turn based there is a simultaneous turns feature but it's rarely used in practice I suppose that's fine every individual action feels like it matters and needs to be communicated clearly but it does get annoying in some of the later fights when the turn queue is populated by a dozen plus entities here is something I thought was very clever pressing the ALT key highlights some interactive objects and containers but not others you'll have to pay attention to the world around you [Music] I've always wondered what would happen if you take a classic RPG formula and supercharge it with AAA resources we don't have a reliable number yet but it's safe to assume that the budget for this game is at least 100 million that's a low estimate it's likely much more for comparison the budget for the well-received throwback RPG Wasteland 3 was around 7 million shadowhire the cleric with a suspicious name becomes our second companion she also has a parasite how long do we have before we turn a lith head we should visit a brain doctor the ship is being boarded by hell demons our illicit Master commands us to fight our way to the helm and activate the jump drive the final battle of the opening segment we have a limited number of turns to accomplish this if you kill the large demon you get his sword I've heard the Forgotten Realms described as generic fantasy nothing can be further from the truth welcome to act one dramatist personae the demon people adrow she Nazi naughty Lloyd survivors goblins this guy and we'll be killing them all but not like right now structurally this game turned out to be very similar to the original in act 1 we'll be exploring Wilderness areas and caves Act 2 is about Dungeons both above ground and traditional act 3 is urban exploration but let's not get ahead of ourselves the first thing we should do is populate all our follower slots in the infinity engine games the maximum party size was 6. in this it's four I'm alive about the world is that anything is possible the game assigns a supply value to most food and drink type of items they are resources used for resting and replenishing your HP and abilities meet a starry on the Rogue what did you and those tentacle freaks do to me a stereon is a fellow worm Haver so we can use our telepathy to get him up to speed Leia's L being trapped in a cage is a clever tutorial on using weapons to interact with physics objects my people possess the cure for this infection last time I was this impressed by facial animations was back during the bloodline Zera furthermore Soros is the best engine ever made the narrator does a great job of also being a character this is the thing that abducted you you could end its life here and now if only you didn't feel compassion compassion nope swing in a mess scratch that from the to-do list Gail the wizard stuck on the other side of the Fast Travel portal is a potential companion a hand I've read in a spoiler that if you take Gail you'll eventually get to meet elminster the annoying Mary Sue of the Realms who doesn't seem to understand the concept of personal space it is my mission to try to kill alminster in every game he's in the dark urge character gets an option to prevent an unwanted social interaction by queuing off Gail's stuck hand he was supposed to yeah go make fun of my Nero Divergence you our first battle against a rival adventury party these were the highlight of the infinity engine games balder's Gate 1 was praised for its encounter design which indeed was brilliant if you compare it to the old Dungeon Crawlers many games back then simply didn't do encounter design but to be real with you the original Baldur's Gate had a ridiculous amount of filler combat and I'm glad to see this is no longer the case there are no filler battles anymore no more trash mobs spawning in the fog of War everything is hand placed and deliberate Shadow heart scenes jumpy another welcome change is dialogue writing everything is beautifully concise now there are no tax dumps Exposition is done via visual means in fact there is no descriptive text at all the narrator makes it redundant this approach is pretty much the opposite of how it was in the infinity engine games these are the names gods so uh what are we foreshadowing here the last three names in this book sit close together but are so devastated by the scroll as to be unreadable an educated guess Merkel Bain ball the dead three originally a group of mortal adventurers they travel to the gray waste and met jargal the final scribe and the god of the Dead jergal was bored of his job and willingly gave up his portfolio to the three Bane ruled tyranny and strife Bal became the god of murder and Merkel was the lord of the Dead Withers the skeleton is a utility character that offers a respect service for a trivial sum of gold we wake him up while exploring a micro dungeon what a curious way to awaken he'll be chilling in our camp the central conflict of act 1 is a war between the tiefling refugees hiding in a druid Fortress and their Nemesis an army of goblins led by a Nazi elf damnable Rose will is a companion a cool introduction to what is basically a trivial tutorial battle designed to familiarize you with a variety of goblin-related creatures children hear you fool inhabited by tieflanes humans and shape-shifting Druids the fort is The Game's first town type location the community is quite dysfunctional I'm sure you know the stories doomed to shed our skin and become a lithid will looks like a rogue-ish type but he is actually a warlock who stuck a bargain with the devil a bargain from which he longs to break free before it consumes his soul for good welcome to the brainworms Brotherhood the Goblins seem to be worshiping an entity called absolute I want to interrogate The Prisoner looks like protector intelligence check failure uh-oh I am not reloading this sorry this wasn't supposed to be a rescue I just up a roll Priestess God will patches up interesting she says there is a doctor at the goblin place I've changed my mind this is a rescue when a guard spots us escort in your Goblin we get an opportunity to talk our way out of a fight via a dialogue check of our choice something similar happens when we make a social faux pas like uh take somebody else's stuff but there are quite a few guards so quite a few checks and unless you save scum eventually you'll have to kill a tiefling or two or five we also kill the Druid Trader who was acting all cop like all of a sudden all the best items he sells are found on the body and do we get away with it all absolutely yes if you kill isolated groups the rest of them won't know what happened good to be free again gotta say do you by any chance have a dry cleaner at the Goblin Town who's diminutive diminutive scales of yours look like mistakes what the hell is that supposed to mean you know what whatever tired of your babbling we should make camp the camp scene functions kind of like the Ebon hunk from the Knights of the Old Republic It's a home area where we can store extra items and talk to our Companions and it's also where the game develops some of its secondary storylines a tiefling wants to join our court she's a Bard fine that might be useful and I know when I'm being let down a dark puff if you make too many decisions a party member disagrees with they'll leave no blade of the Frontiers content for bad people you have a manner of irresistible desperation about you I like it a Starion surprisingly is very dependable and can be relied upon you open your eyes with a lurch and you are not in your bed the dark urge story event the bird was with us for a total of two minutes this is still basic introductory stuff it'll get way creepier and lumbering Style you have gotten away with murder for the 20th time today the statue of saloon the goddess of the moon rival of char who is the goddess of night you heart reveals that she is a cleric of char and her domains are death trickery and lying to the protagonist traveling with a sharite is a tradition in these games me Carlock is an augmented tiefling super soldier the blade of the Frontiers personal Quest is connected to her but since he turned out to be uncool she'll be traveling with us instead being a barbarian she hits like a truck as the paladins hunting her will learn shortly at night we are tormented by murderous thoughts ah we should go for a walk clear our head please I have found your vile self at last past me sure kept a strange company you're loyal and ever adoring Butler before departing the butler gives us a magical item the Cape is powerful but it looks very stupid so I'm not wearing it the goblin We rescued bugged out failing to get us access to the base HQ so we'll have to talk our way inside as the thimble glows power courses through you brain worm habers are a privileged class compared to the common cultists such as this Goblin the parasite makes the Lesser cultists obey us and it makes us obey the absolute I thought the artifact was an element of the companion side quest but no it's a story critical item that helps us resist the absolute's influence I wonder how this plays out without Shadow heart in the party guard gargon level four [Music] like a ib's guard turns out the goblin Camp is a social location with tons of content play football with a chicken solve puzzles participate in necromantic rituals steal artifacts from the treasury make friends with a BDSM priest randomly kill isolated goblins for XP well done he humiliated a goblin Let's Go the real reason we are here is to see their doctor so drink this it will purify yeah that's not suspicious at all but I trust our physician alas Goblin Healthcare leaves something to be desired she is still better than a Soviet dentist easier to escape from too it's not our concern our prey is elsewhere this is mintara the hitleris there is a weapon absolute Sikhs the weapon is the artifact Shadow heart carries time to liquidate our vast loot reserves we recognize the crust she Bears the winged Serpent of the center the zentarim are an international Mafia of the Realms the nations of faerun have local thieves organizations but the zents operate everywhere few know this little trick but a merchant will give you all their best items for free all you have to do is interact with them with a bladed object a bunch of goblin kids are throwing rocks at a shape-shifted druid the game loves humanizing exotic or evil creatures by introducing the children versions of them well perhaps humanizing is our own word When in Rome he initiates combat and even kills one of the mini goblins interesting that this is even possible later I would learn that this individual is a companion I regret nothing I wish I could time travel back to Baldur's Gate 2 and kill their Druid as well and when we go to bed we are visited by an orc spirit I came just in time you are transforming are you me from the future I'll protect you this is one of the more confusing plot elements in this game I don't believe it's possible to figure out this character until we are explicitly revealed who this is much later the guardian shows us a corpse of a god floating in a nostril plane been there done that and no I do not believe this is a reference to Marvel anything [Music] back in the material plane the drow is about to March her Goblin horde on the Druid Fort we told her where it was the tadpole it's turned you hasn't it time interesting opinion but there is one small problem I planted a bomb somewhere in your house tread lightly I think there's something I should tell nothing big or terrible just a small little detail about me that hasn't come up naturally you are a vampire ever since he was infected with a tadpole normal vampire rules no longer seem to apply sunlight doesn't hurt him he can enter somebody's house without permission given our group's nature I don't see much harm we're each monsters in the making after all I love the camera jumping between characters I guess the term for that is cinematography cinematography in balder Gates you know what we're all gonna make it been like an hour since I last killed a goblin back in the fort the demon people are preparing for war we threw them back once if you're with us perhaps we can do it again so about that by the time the Goblin Army arrived we already mopped up the remaining tieflings the drow Hitler s discovers a bunch of civilians hiding in a cave this is The Game's equivalent of the no Russian scene you can choose not to partake but she will execute all of them by herself praise they have the underwater the total absence of background music makes the scene feel uncomfortably intimate the woman telepathically communicates her intention to us all important absolutions appear to have parasites the drow Society is dominated by women the Hitler is aggressive and direct which seems to be normal for them as you approach your Camp the raucous celebrations have already begun the changes to the camp are not permanent the game has three acts and we are only halfway through Act One new mechanic we can intentionally consume illicit brain worms we find in the game World consume is the word the game uses but basically we can add more parasites to ourselves to gain Powers we can also do this to our companions although most of them are not open-minded you know parasite isn't too a Starion is the exception he loves brain worms I'm not going to be showing the sex scene but basically it involves a drow Priestess blowing a dragon man and in the process she lets her guard down both physically and more importantly mentally this provokes our past self into resurfacing son all the Vim of a Lover's first embrace wow even for me this is so we killed three Companions and two more left us for ethical reasons ah well nevertheless maybe there are friends waiting for us in the underdark this is not a separate act or anything moving between the caves and the surface world is instantaneous thanks to the game's fast travel system we'll be going back and forth a bunch of times my my what manner of place is this it's possible to meet Raphael much earlier but I think it's funnier to wait a little for the story to progress so that the main character gets confused thinking he's someone from our past life like the goblin Butler [Music] House of Hope Raphael's mansion in avernus one of the hell dimensions what's better than a devil you don't know the devil you do the game is setting up a bunch of things to be referenced later in the main quest once we exhaust all possibilities of getting cured we can make a deal with Raphael blunt your scent alone is enough to make my neck sweat may as well baby please read the room the body of my draw ax is still warm and speaking of romance [Music] leave it whoever's inside doesn't want an audience and I don't want to fight come on I can't not open this door I've always wondered what that looked like I've come to come to cheer and be sated the companions are not actually supposed to be this horny the approval thresholds are bugged that's what the devs say going by the dialogue options the dragon people are very clannish and assertive just like the githyanki if we demonstrate these qualities to Leia Zell she'll be impressed interesting fact about her species they don't actually need a partner to have Offspring giftyanki lay eggs and they can do so essentially speaking of exotic races my conids what the mushroom people have a town here underground a proper social location with quests Traders and uh hobgoblin scientists my colleagues and I are working to improve conditions in the underdark a worthy goal IMO it is impressive that Larry and managed to make a cavern level so visually stunning The Scientist says a local doctor can help us with our condition this adventure has an illicit tadpole it's brilliant how excited this man is he truly loves science that's impossible illitheds are normally controlled by an elder brain in the heart of their colony but Rogue illithids do exist they still need to consume brains bi-weekly omelum clay claims he made a deal with a lich the illith it gets the brains and the Lich the souls clever he says he'll help us brew an illicit abortion portion but will have to travel around and gather ingredients the primary narrative in this corner of the under dark is the conflict of The Mushroom people and the dark dwarves The Sovereign proposes we kill them all with chemical weapons a little genocidal but effective no offense to the shroom but that sounds over complicated it's best to kill them with normal weapons they aren't even that many of them we steal the durgarship to explore the second half of the underdark on derail Expedition and these guys are the Coast Guard I guess [Music] where's kick who are you you might have heard of me Calvin barkmore broke every record they keep track of the ship battle is fun as hell and it's the first fight in this game where I actually had to use a wide array of items and abilities playing blind on medium [Music] the statues of char the goddess Shadow heart worships she is everywhere in this game dead Hoon walking seems like this area is the ruin of an ancient Temple that serves as a base for dwerger slavers the drow Master a fellow true Soul parasite Hever got himself trapped inside a ruin and wants to be rescued he literally calls us via warm telepathy face time but this is a big area with tons of things to do besides working for the drow shit's looking up this is a quote unquote cursed amulet that makes you laugh [Music] Durga racists ancient robots known suicide bombers set me free time to convert the dwarves into experience points but how do we do this in the most efficient way possible well it begins with rescuing near the drow the plan is to trick near into killing many preferably all his servants making it easier for us to kill him and extract his parasite I decided I collect them now me and mine worked flat out I was cracking the whip day and night tell him true Soul I've never seen this woman before in my life it worked even better than I hoped when a duagar Archer gets a lucky creature near pushing him into lava the problems in this game solve themselves the book is locked tight with no visible Keyhole the first ever book that sucks your dick I.E the first ever book that is good after completing a series of increasingly hard skill checks we get a new feat what profane knowledge is now seared inside of you you should never have known omalom finally Brews an abortion portion but it doesn't work instead of killing the parasite it seemed to make it stronger are you well that lava is like nothing I have ever observed before oh well it was always a long shot moving on stop wasting time director the gifts are searching for the artifact that protects us from the absolute it might even be the reason they attacked the nautiloid in the first place Ryder my time is short lead me to shhh such a familiar tune screw up this dialogue and you'll have to fight the githyanki patrol although the Dragon Rider won't participate in order to advance the plot we need to reach the main base of the absolute cult this can be done either by going through the underdark or via the mountain pass but nothing is preventing us from exploring both areas there is no actual time limit the ruin in front of us is the Temple of lathander the god of the Rising Sun the gethianki base is in the dungeon below you are in a gig through all is something to eradicate not reason with faithful may be purified this is Rocket's protocol Lazelle says they have a larva removing device but something tells me the story doesn't want us to part with a parasite yet that would be vlakis the Lich queen that consorts with dragons and devours her subjects once they reach a certain level in order to increase her own power vertical incision from pineal eye to end of noticord the doctor has a trustworthy face and too bad she's an absolute psycho you can tell by looking at the device she created The larva extractor made of Flesh and metals [Music] the purpose of the machine is not to remove tadpoles it's to collect the memories of the infected before killing them another false Trail [Music] this is where the plot gets a little hard to follow The Inquisitor in charge of this place demands we surrender the artifact and he refuses to take no for an answer so we kill him this makes us noticed by the Lich Queen rockith ruled her people for over a thousand years she is powerful be rude to lackath and she will wish you out of existence and in the game the leech Queen orders us to travel inside the austral prism and kill the entity inhabiting it curious that the guardian also talks to our companions in their dreams but something tells me they don't see the same orc woman I told you to stay away from the githyanki you just couldn't help yourself she says that hits of lackath who is bad the Lich Queen is a fraud who is incapable of preventing the re-emergence of the illicit star Empire but is this a problem we really have clear prepare only the heaviest Soul soar to the astral this sequence of events breaks lazelle's brain she rationalizes it as an elaborate trial vlakif must be testing her we need to exterminate all the githyanki in the temple who are not pure there are two ways of doing this the boring one and the funny one underneath the inquisitors room there is an undisturbed Vault inside an artifact of immense power good it's also a trap we are locked behind an impenetrable field the power crystals generate a beam of light that shoots through the portal charging a super laser located in the temple exterior the laser points at the ruin itself and the countdown starts in four turns this place is gonna blow up I use the scroll of dimension door to escape the Trap and then run through the portal yes Yankee best day of my life also the last day of my life it's hard to escape the blast this powerful this entire sequence is easily circumvented by inserting a special key we found in the ruins the challenge is actually remembering that you have it the mace is a plus 3 anti-undead weapon that makes Act 2 much easier but it also means that we'll have to solve our gear problem via manual labor there is a cool encounter against a githyanki instructor and his students and we get to kill the mad scientist but overall this is the only part of the game that kind of dragged for me a bunch of these fights felt copy pasted this was the one instance when I actually missed the old style combat rtwp means Real Time with pause it's the type of combat we had in the infinity engine games they didn't invent it but they sure popularized it in fact it's one of their more influential ideas that haunted everything RPG adjacent for about a decade producing multiple barely playable and now forgotten rtwp jaggedalliance and XCOM clones this style Works quite well in games with small parties facing a small number of threats like in Knights of the Old Republic or Dragon Age these days more and more developers seem to be moving away from Real Time with pause into turn-based and I suppose it's a good change but part of you will always miss the old style for sentimental reasons even though I don't think I've ever truly enjoyed it after dark a visitor comes to our camp Voss is the Dragon Rider we met earlier but he is actually an anti-blackath anarchist deep Undercover SE knows about the entity inside the artifact and its powers but refuses to reveal their identity to us if they have not said they must have good reason and I will be the one to betray them we'll meet him in Baldur's Gate when it's time but it's not where we're going beyond the mountain paths are the shadow cursed lands the themes of the second act are very different glorious murder dramatist Persona a bad man who knows our secret his loyal henchman a classmate you haven't seen in a decade fish flesh eating Shadows [Music] there is a dialogue option to order the goblin to go check on the dog I mean are just curious I have eight points in Charisma and yet everyone always does as I say RPGs are a fraud in order to penetrate deeper into the darkness we need a guide [Music] sex with a bear but what about they should stick closer my queen the group follows the dreider through the dead Forest we are traveling to the moonrise Towers the seat of power of the absolute cult Papa's attack the Harpers are a secret organization a secret in air quotes seemingly dedicated to fighting me in various role-play campaigns they don't appear to have any other ideology after dealing with the terrorists we arrive at the Colt HQ not far from the tower is a world camp where the cultists assembled an army ready to march on Baldur's Gate flaw twist the guard knows who we are welcome back and that would be the leader of the absolutists general Catherine thorm originally a selenite turned to char worship after a personal tragedy and then eventually to Merkel a god of the Dead his smirk says everything and nothing at once I know exactly who you are and I will never tell the dark urge character was a cultist even before the parasite the cutscene goes on for a while the game wants us to know that thorme is in charge [Music] and that he is immortal the army of the absolute ain't the only thing hidden in the shadow lands there is a whole town for us to explore it's mostly empty the only remaining residents appear to be non-hostile Undead the doctors here suck the subtitle for Baldur's Gate 3 and on the opposite edge of the map there is a Tavern an oasis unaffected by the shadow curse [Music] is one of the first companions you get in the original game this is why we're here you see that if there's one thing that we know it knows its own kind now that's gonna be one hell of a persuasion role turns out General Thorne has a spy among the Harpers who helpfully vouchers for us to your very good health a drink to lose in our tongue so uh who are you these days in Baldur's Gate 1 Jahira was a gimmick character most of them were she joins your party together with her husband Khalid who is a coward if Nana met her the idea is that she is the one with the balls in this relationship Jahira was made a bit more complex in the sequel and here in the third game since the characters are no longer represented by a static picture she was given a set of animated gestures and mannerisms I like it the reason this place is unaffected by the curse is because of the efforts of Isobel the Priestess of saloon the spy man is under orders from the general to kidnap Isabelle and bring her to the tower come with you she doesn't know it's he doesn't know they don't know that last night an old friend asked us for a favor the script in here is confusing I replayed this scene a bunch of times trying to kill them in a different order but it always ends with the Spy flying away with a body of Isabel at this stage I didn't know that Isabel was the daughter of Catholic Thorne has happened um um she fell with the cleric gone the Shadows consumed the Harper's stronghold together with the Jahira we get to kill her former comrades corrupted by the curse killing Harpers with Jahira is something of a tradition in this series so we did what was asked of us what happens now oh I knew it this is is the Slayer an avatar form of ball Lord of murder I believe I understand our role in the story uh sorry for flashing the dragon deck did you know that the Baldur's Gate Saga had a Canon ending the protagonist the man named Abdul Adrian son of the god of murder rejected his Heritage and retired in the city of Baldur's Gate years later one of abdel's Brothers everyone thought was dead came back to confront the hero the victor of the duel we don't know who that was transformed into Slayer and was eventually destroyed by a group of adventurers Ball's contingency plan worked with all his mortal children dead his Essence was freed and the god of murder was brought back to life so I guess he had more children since then let's follow in his footsteps thou has now a bosom companion Withers the skeleton lectures us that romance in the workplace is in appropriate listen buddy friend fella my workplace is the Realms oh baby let's make a dragath Yaki roughly one-third of the second act takes place in a shar-themed dungeon beneath the town our hero thought but a treasure ahead did not consider the Peace of the Dead Rafael has a job for us one of his Rivals a demon or a devil made home inside the dungeon there's a whiff of the of the surface to you these creatures talk too much God of murder not God of dialogue checks this is the most challenging battle so far but there are things we can do to make it easier elsewhere in the dungeon an important Ally of General Thorne made his home meet Balthazar a necromancy Enthusiast no it's not the same character from Throne of ball but there is a connection I decided to take his name for myself I did the same to an Eve online enemy once the powerlifter Golem is called flesh Balthazar says we can borrow him simply ring the bell flesh is very helpful in the demon fight so is the Slayer form transforming restores all your HP killed him so hard the corpse glitched out in the deepest layer of the temple Mr gate to Shadow fell the plane of Shadow thus the name Knight song is an asimar an offspring of a Celestial and a mortal venturing to shadowfell in order to kill Knights on is the final exam for elite clerics she always comes back from the dead so you don't even need to replace her after the deed is done she's also happens to be the reason why thworm cannot be killed Balthazar constructed this magical cage to lend her immortality to the general but the temple outside has been abandoned for more than a hundred years Knights on needs to be moved to the towers for safekeeping sorry about but I can't allow you to do that it should be self-evident that he is a powerful spellcaster and it makes sense to prioritize Balthazar over the skeleton horde in order to become one of the sharite elite shadowheart needs to kill Night song as is RPG tradition the game asks for your input we can influence shadowhart's future but I always allow them to make their decisions autonomously rip Knight song huh most asimar don't actually have immortality Powers aylin is the daughter of the Goddess Saloon material plane the shadow cursed lands [Music] the Harper Outpost uh oh she doesn't know back at the moonrise Towers Jahira is on a one-woman crusade she will actually die if we don't interfere Shadows she will rise in Moon at one's second death so saith the wise Alondo Alando was banned for this post [Music] Alondo The Seer was a sage from candle keep on the Third Coast that's not far from here actually the second game opens with an Alondo quote the first game opens with a knee-check road for some reason so what do you say shall we take the final steps together with each story beat the fights are getting more and more complex finally I had to use consumables spell Scrolls take advantage of skill synergies you might have noticed that until recently I was wearing the same armor we started the game with well I can't do that anymore I have to take things seriously and this is good a rational difficulty curve don't take it for granted that's certainly not how the old games were designed in the General's private Chambers we discover a book that reveals much of the Game's plot everything will be explained organically in the next few minutes so there is no reason for me to read this but it's cool that curious players get rewarded with knowledge if they explore this part of the tower early have you done a dick shrinking spell the cultists were also searching for the artifact and it was always right under their noses but he was too busy sneering and smirking aylin doesn't know that Isabelle was the daughter of thorm and he doesn't know that aylin and Isabelle were in a gay marriage and none of them know that we were the one who killed her I had to replay this a bunch of times because Jahira kept dying since I couldn't customize her equipment or give her health potions it shouldn't be much of a surprise that there is an illithered Colony below the tower so it's the chosen who control the absolute not the other way around [Music] there is still about 25 or so hours of gameplay ahead of us The illithic Colony this is where they manufacture the parasites even in a place as alien as this the designers put little things little details characterize in the way of life of both the enslaved mind flayers and The Necromancer Specialists who actually run this operation it's you it's not the first time we visited the protagonist says he can see a whole Fleet of naughty Lloyds but it seems there were only two or maybe three of them this is still very impressive as naughty Lloyds are rare the illithids seem to have lost the secrets of constructing spell jamming ships elsewhere in the dungeon the stone engraving introduces us to well to illicit art for one but more importantly to the concept of Grand Design which is the idea of rebuilding the old illithid star Empire mind flayer irredentism and here is the rest of the cast you said it was under control that's gortash a politician from Boulder's Gate the chosen of Bane the god of tyranny salute yes and this is Oren a shape-shifter the chosen of ball Lord of murder our sister salute In the Flesh the brain is controlled via the crown of karsus an ancient artifact created by the most powerful wizard that has ever lived the conspirators interface with the brain through the nether Stones the consensus of Three Stones is required to command the absolute this is an x-com army a flying brain organic spaceships multi-species troops The Chosen don'ts seem to get along probably already scheming to betray one another yes each one of the last five battles felt like it could be the final battle of the ACT but this is it for real the trick is to send someone fast to the cage and free the asimar good thing they didn't tadpole her Knights on joins the battle once again Lord of Bones I am here I am ready [Music] yours [Music] [Music] I think I killed this guy in Dark Souls 3 certainly a very impressive introduction for someone who will lost two turns against Leia Zell [Music] there is a worm in there I want to extract from my vampire friend you know what never mind [Music] she doesn't know it's better this way the three amass an enlisted Army void of apostolic Souls Withers says illitheds don't have souls so I guess this means they're useless to the gods reminds me of Old Times jahirah formally joins the group she starts as a stock Druid you can customize her into whatever not being very familiar with dnd5 I was surprised how much her list of spells resembled that of the a D and D original call lightning dry at summoning insects warm we are so back Act 2 was quite something wasn't it onwards to Baldur's Gate the Final Chapter dramatist personae Elon Musk flaming fist rent a cops a common Adventurer man a Baldur's Gate entrepreneur who is completely normal a mind flayer Overlord I give Yankee Prince who is well cared for in an astral retirement community what if we return to Baldur's Gate together what would people say do you think you have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself our friend from the artifact needs help before you do anything the true face of our Guardian I did not figure it out prior to now it was clever of the developers to make us customize their appearance during the character creation they took advantage of our own creativity to manufacture a lie to trick ourselves with well played a long time ago an adventurer wandered into the moonrise Towers discovered an illicit Colony underneath turned into a mind flare enslaved by the same Elder brain that is now known as the absolute eventually he escaped its control traveled back to his hometown fed on criminals and low lives governed a prosperous Mercantile operation they called him the emperor so powerful he was but Elon Musk figured him out actually I invented this Mercantile operation and once again the illicit Adventurer was enslaved by the Elder brain The Chosen kept calling him the Emperor as mockery he escaped for the second time when the absolute sent him to recover the astral prism which he did but once the emperor approached Prince Orpheus he was free once again for the prince was the son of gith herself and had the power to disrupt hive mind communication I've always assumed that the method gith used to break free of Mind flayers was a meditation technique but it seems she had a genetic anomaly that was passed on to her Offspring like Balthazar exploited Knights on the emperor is exploiting Orpheus he is using his power to protect us we would have been dead without it or worse a slave to the hive mind [Music] Baldur's Gate the city expanded a lot since we last visited several campaigns ago the army of the absolute is yet to arrive act 3 begins in a big suburb outside the city walls feels like this game's version of berry ghost there is plenty to do plenty to see killed by doppelgangers is a national pastime of baldurians go away Oren [Music] circus of the last days the finest extra planner circus there is this place has a ridiculous amount of item and creature assets that are not used anywhere else in the game or are only used once accuse the afraid of cheating and get turned into a cheese wheel cheese attack [Music] oh God thank you enough yeah listen Ed The Phantom Menace looking character is a criminal investigator 75 percent of violent crime in Baldur's Gate is committed by doppelgangers the rest of it by me have you noticed how few Dragon people are there in the game I wonder if we are related to draconius Triumph of the Triumph This Must Be A Memory of the temple underneath the city the voice is our Goblin Butler when you gaze [Music] Nietzsche always felt kind of gobliny to me there is one last piece I've been throwing with uh oh what did it take for you to earn that Slayer skin you hide so well she's putting it together we should uh probably leave Jahira at the camp once we discover the Temple's location access to the bridge to Baldur's Gate is blocked by a mechanized flaming fist unit Elon Musk invented these FYI no matter there are ways of bypassing the checkpoint the bridge District the new game takes place 120 years after the events of Shadows of M this place has seen More Than A Century of development this is the same bridge in Baldur's Gate 1. if I remember correctly that whole map had like three NPCs was the Dragon Rider wants to make a deal with Raphael to free the being inside the astral prism he is practically begging to sign the contract Raphael doesn't need anything from Voss but he needs something from us the devil temporarily removed the parasite from our brain a much-needed privacy but it's the one inside the prison that you need not the illithid Raphael is in a possession of an artifact called orphic Hammer the weapon is capable of shattering the chains that hold Prince Orpheus and you lazel of Kalia want to free the Forgotten Prince do you not naturally she does Orpheus is the reason we are still alive and autonomous the emperor merely channels his power and his agenda appear to be a illicit transhumanism he grew to like his squid body and he wants us to have one too did you know that the emperor can be romanced there is a scene where he is lying next to us almost naked making small talk as if this wasn't the weirdest thing to ever happen in any of these games it's too much I'm back taking off so the contract what's the catch in exchange for orphic Hammer Raphael wants the nethery's artifact that controls the Elder brain the crown of karsus with it he plans to unite the nine Hells and become arched devil Supreme I like this guy he would make for an excellent Arch devil you're too kind artifact or not it's extremely unlikely he would be able to accomplish this he is a Campion which is like a hell version of asimar powerful compared to Mortals but not quite Zario tear sure I'm in irresponsible decisions are why I play RPGs the master was slain within his own house they dined on him both the cat and the mouse now that we've got the hammer it makes sense to say a few words about the items in the economy note that I'm by no means an expert on this game money was useless in the first two acts but it became important in act three everything is crazy expensive and I don't want to rob a Merchants out of fear of disappointing Jahira the game is very conscious of enhancement inflation even this late in the campaign I'm still using some plus one items my most powerful weapon is plus three the vast majority of magical items we find seem to be designed to work with a specific ability of a specific class or to allow the user to cast some kind of a spell the upside of this approach is that you will rarely find items that are obviously best in slot and the downside is that well I felt the need to keep as many of these items around as possible just in case I'll think of a clever way of using the abilities they provide as the result the inventory quickly became a magical garbage dump impossible to navigate without filter in the search bar back in Baldur's Gate 1 the individual items had stronger identities and overall I like that system a little better this is the Harper hideout in the bridge District hi Harper May Saloon is tears shine on this meeting it's a code phrase he's a hostage there is something familiar about you doesn't she remind you of our old friend Marcus jahira's meaning is clear Marcus was the traitor who plotted to kidnap the catholic's daughter from the Harper base in shadowlands she doesn't know Jahira tells the man that he did well and then immediately fires him from the Harpers his comrades got tortured and killed while he did the kidnappers bidding she is my favorite companion in balder Gates 3. how long must we wait here things stir to the South as we sit from naive naive Jahira who was just a bunch of impulses with no developmental depth to Stubborn adult Jahira who has a history in this world I swear finally to elderly Jahira who makes unpleasant but important decisions but doesn't have that youthful energy anymore she went from this for the fin to this a Bittersweet Arc larion did a fantastic job Jahira has a house here in the city and these are her children some are adult mothers very young a private study a secret room underneath the study old artifacts we collected in athkatla as well as a scroll detailing an esoteric life-extending Druid ritual greetings old friend Oren told me you were on your way here but I scarcely believed it gortash invites us to his inauguration the keep is of a recent construction or at least it wasn't in the original Stand Down villain robot let me pass it's my favorite assassin the dark urge guy is an amnesiac main villain the dead three worked together as Mortals and it's not uncommon for them to work together as gods or demigods or whatever it is they are now Oren told me she made a fool of you but I should have known you wouldn't go down that easy we were there from the very beginning scheming with gordash stealing the nethery's artifacts enslaving the Elder brain but then we got stabbed in the back now the general is dead and Oren is refusing to cooperate commanding the absolute requires the consensus of all three nether stones without the consensus the Elder brain will break free as soon as it finishes executing the previous order which was to march on Baldur's Gate to make things worse the idiot conspirators have been Mass producing parasites and infecting buldurians for a long time now there is an army of potential mind players inside the city wall That's why Withers is tagging along since aberrations don't have souls by turning people into illithids the conspirators are robbing the guards of their sole capital act 3 is the biggest and the most content Rich we finally get to explore the titular city of Baldur's Gate the game is still introducing new characters the companion quests are finalized and their arcs closed we also meet friends from the olden days I am viconia De Vere viconia is such a crush the first character I've ever romanced in an RPG had to read a guide on game FAQs it wasn't intuitive there is even a new follower [Music] Minsk should be 140 something years old by now does anyone ever die in this universe but there is an explanation The Man spent the last hundred years as a statue there is no golden he was always a purely comedic character the jokes were refined in the second game but nothing about him fundamentally changed bats will be liberally kicked in good measure it would be funnier if the brain worms actually made Minsk smarter anyway I didn't get the chance to use him much because the game is about to end the House of Hope Raphael's luxurious Palace in the hells levitating over the wastelands of avernus the reason for us being here is either to steal our contract or the orphic hammer depending on the previous choices but whatever you do Raphael will be very angry the former enemy is now working for the devil choices and consequences he RPG does yes Raphael sings his own theme song best character [Music] Souls that couldn't be bought doomed detected and caught Raphael's Final Act well not if I can help it I'm reloading the contract stays in place Rafael will complete the system of avernian idealism or whatever his goal was there are a number of ways of finishing the game and most of them involve Gathering all three nether Stones dealing with Elon will be easier if we disable his Metal Gear Factory use terrorism to achieve this one of the powers of Starry on got by consuming the parasites was to charm anyone who attacks him in melee he got this ability early but we failed to charm a single character in this entire game until it worked on gortash just now there is a side plot involving rescuing the Grand Duke from gortash underwater prison but for the dark urge character it just feels like busy work the heart of our story is somewhere else sorry walk is the villain from the original game and the companion in one of the expansions Bell's least favorite son the narrator describes him as spilled stain of Father's Divine Essence left out to dry ouch the red Spirits are the former members of the five a group of elite ballspawn destroyed during the events of Throne of ball it seems they returned to Baldur's Gate together sorry walk was possibly the only child of ball who was actually intelligent it would be in his character to eventually grow skeptical of ballism but then again perhaps we should manage our expectations when dealing with ball spawn when I learned that sarivak Jahira and Minsk were in this game my plan was to Ally with cerebok and sacrifice the others to close their decades-long character arcs but after actually meeting Jahira and seeing how she changed and grew well perhaps it's time for us to change as well the game succeeded in something The Originals failed to accomplish and that is convincing me that ball is an idiot God who is about nothing but we are not done this is the undercity a maze of ancient ruins beneath balder's gate you come home the goblin takes care of the temple keeps the place clean the cultists recreationally murder him a few times every day here is our psychotic idiot sister unfortunately for Orin pre-buffing is a thing ahead Yahira cast a haste spell if the roles were a little better we could have swallowed Orin in one turn instead she lost it too some ball spawned disintegrate when killed others die normally it's confusing our dark father possesses the body of the goblin Butler murders him and then talks to us as a reflection in a pool of blood [Music] tldr we are now the top baller the chosen of the god of relish Indian spontaneous murderous surges accepting or declining our new role leads to dramatically different story outcomes and Rewards will you stay with me after everything we've been through I don't imagine myself accepting you dad your life is mine but ball is a god you cross him you die [Music] for the first time in over a century silence by over the bald Temple no chance no screams no prayers and so ends the story of dark urge or does it I too still hold some power the skeleton was with us from the beginning resurrecting our dead companions for a trivial fee so rise Challenger of gods and prepare all battle once more thanks jergal I wish you could do it without also resurrecting the brain worm but you know gift horse in the mouth and all that [Music] the Elder brain is located in a giant cave accessible through one of the undercity passages [Music] there is a problem the crown of karsus wasn't actually designed for the purpose of controlling illitheds the absolute fed on the Crown's energies and evolved into nether brain the creature was manipulating the events from the very beginning it was the one who revealed the secret of the Australian and Prince Orpheus to The Chosen even the emperor unknowingly was the part of its Grand Design the brain grew in size and eventually it became so smart that now it knows every action we take before we do true Souls that couldn't be bought doomed detected and caught it's over this is not over Souls [Music] to defeat the illithed we need to think like illicit or better yet turn ourselves into one by the way it's actually pronounced illithed I've been saying it wrong so the Big Choice do we shed our skin and become a tentacle freak or do we allow the emperor to consume Orpheus and wield his power to strike at the nether brain but there is a third option the emperor won't like it his long-term survival and perhaps the long-term survival of his species is incompatible with Orpheus Ambitions so he sees no other choice but to flee to be voluntarily assimilated by the absolute is there anyone in this story we haven't betrayed turns out Orpheus was perfectly aware of everything that was happening [Music] do not patronize me he was imprisoned for thousands of years this could have gone much worse one needs to be elithered to wield the stones we volunteer Orpheus to make the sacrifice they don't have penises the finale the people we helped in our adventures will show up to repay us I'm in the mood took some skulls after that in the temple of Bal but the bad guys also have reinforcements this ended up being my favorite final battle in the series The Emperor shows up riding a dragon our imaginary friends are back I know everything about well then you should know better than to land in melee strike range but what ended up killing the emperor was jihira's insect swarm spell humiliating spellcasters and computer games for 23 years we could have stopped the illithic star empire together all you had to do is not torture Orpheus or try to eat his brain the crown is protected by the dragon a squad of Emperors henchmen as well as three illithid arcanists who spam magic missiles oh and the nearby naughty Lloyd will attack us with artillery on our side we have the four of us Orpheus and the Allies we can summon at the Press of a button after the prince uses the stones on their brain this opens the portal into the mind of the absolute and the countdown begins we are given five turns to DPS the brain until it regains control from then on the battle takes place on two Arenas simultaneously and of course being true to itself even here at the very end the game offers us an opportunity to betray everyone and usurp the absolute we could do it you know we could a Starion buddy faerun is the kind of place where some sort of magical cataclysm happens once or twice a generation relying on magical gimmicks for political power is simply stupid Baldur's Gate 3 dungeon and dragon leave in places that don't exist another page in the RPG history book so it turns out that systems heavy games with a top-down camera can sell copies Well that took the weight off my shoulders not unlike the blobbers they replaced the isometric RPGs also went out of favor that happened just a few years after the release of Baldur's Gate 2. some individuals refer to the subsequent period as the era of RPG death or the decline but that's just people being melodramatic the industry was expanding more and more bodies from all over the world were assimilated into the video gamer lifestyle it made sense for the developers to prioritize accessibility T above everything else and it worked the mass effects were some of the first Western AAA RPGs many of us were bitter about the Triumph of biogeois the era of classic isometric RPG masterpieces lasted for six maybe seven years and it felt like we had never even begun exploring these ideas before being forced to discard them the rule of biogeois remained uncontested until the kickstarter decade Baldur's Gate clones were coming back but they didn't exactly conquer the world not until now and you know what the blobbers will come back too I've seen it in the Flames half of this industry is mobile gaming and if anything grid-based Dungeon Crawlers with tactical combat are better on a phone so saith the wise Alando [Music] it's time to congratulate our companions on a well surviving us this moment is for savoring we can ask Leia Zell to stay but I don't want to abort her Dragon Knight career fine Orpheus doesn't want to live as an Abomination and asks us to kill him his last words are to support this channel on patreon uh Patron credits and that will watch the final scenes special thanks to our supporters including Jim Lawrence who also provided a copy of the game 1967 Ford Mustang I feed my parrot chicken my next video will be on I Divine cybermancy Nathan kabiska Miracle Moses Porter Ganso bomber Ilya Rubin Martin iron Dimitri you Eric ludgehance frog reigners dark butt pumpkin Zazzle and painful the doggo C6 cdram fossil snafu Yuri slodovnichenko source is the best engine ever made time to take out the trash a two-room apartment in bobrisk Belarus box rope Danny Kilpatrick Tony spagani and Hank of the Hill so we have two post-credits scenes [Music] Jericho the lord of the end of everything stands before the mural of the Dead 3 and talks calling them fools and then there is the conclusion of Raphael's story my Legions are beginning their assault on zario's flying fortress just about now it will fall the end of verness will be mine Conquering the other Hells will be Simplicity itself Hitler's lost words it won't be long before I come knocking at your door he is talking to the player Raphael is coming for earth I can't help but imagine Dr Breen from City 17 but with a red face and talking in Rhyme now I want to go back to the idea of RPG weight class larion the company responsible for the game has 450 employees and offices in six countries we don't know what the budget was but estimates start at a hundred million the budget for Wasteland 3 was around 7 million and the budget for pillars of Eternity one was under 5 million this should put things in a perspective do not expect a studio the size of in Exile or obsidian to produce a Baldur's Gate 3. certainly do not expect it to person Dev team from Riga Latvia to produce a Baldur's Gate 3 but there is nothing irrational about demanding the same level of fidelity from other AAA developers with comparable budgets perhaps the money bags will attempt to imitate this game what if Microsoft gives a hundred million to Sawyer to make super pillars what if tencent gives a hundred million to Vince to develop age of decadence too perhaps if all of us concentrate on this idea we can manifest it into being oh my God what if gas prom gives a hundred million to cleave to develop Wizardry nine shit's looking up [Music] larion should make planescape tournament too they are perfect for the job the original game had three flaws it was too bookish the color scheme in the first half of the game was Bland and the battles were too simple and what are the three strengths of Baldur's Gate well they happen to be so synced writing vibrant visuals and complex combat furthermore some of the characters in this game like Leia Zell are of planar nature and their stories can be continued in planescape seriously Swan do it

Channel: Warlockracy

Views: 141,179

Keywords: video games, gaming, game design, warlockracy, review, narrative review, baldur's gate 3, baldur's gate, baldur's gate 3 review

Id: cetw-9l9V9g

Length: 79min 49sec (4789 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2023