12/17/2023 0 Comments Baldurs gate 3 logo![]() But you also need time to have a sense of continuity so the consequences of your actions or inaction can be adjudicated and therefore meaningful. For one, you need time to stop for a moment, to figure out what you want to do, what you can do, and the best way to go about it. That’s a tough concept to tackle in a video game for two reasons. All at once it’s a call to action, an invitation to creativity, and an assurance that this story is made up of the infinite possibilities knocking around your collective imaginations. “What do you do?” If one question could define Dungeons & Dragons, I think it’s that. But yeah, if you're worried about not having enough access to options and the spell lists, don't worry.” There are still spells that we are working through and trying to get the design written out for in our system. “Obviously you won't see every single spell, but there's really a lot that you get to play with. We weren't sure how we were going to do it, but it ended up being so that it's character that can push things and throw things and all that. “Even something like Mage Hand, which was really difficult. “We're thinking really long and hard about which spells we're putting into the game and how we want to adapt them into our system,” Holland said. ![]() The prospect of a Larian-crafted set of possibilities are, well, pretty exciting for a video game of which they’ve only shown two hours and still managed to touch on vampires, devils pitching contracts, a red-dragon-riding-gith squadron, Illithid interplanar travel, and a somehow smarmier version of Volothamp Geddarm. It wasn’t quite the limitless fountain of power you can get away with at the table, but it was pretty entertaining, with a diverse list of options to choose from. In many cases, you had a shot of completely screwing yourself over, and with a poor enough check, you were almost guaranteed to harm more than help. In BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate 2, casting Wish essentially gave you a list of options to choose from based on your ability scores. But similar to Baldur's Gate II, there are some really snarky and funny interactions you could have with that.” ![]() “Depending on the situation, you never know what the options are going to be. "If you're worried about not having enough access to options and the spell lists, don't worry." “As for the intangible ones, like Wish, for example, we do have to give you a limited option of things you can do. “Well, thankfully we actually have a lot of experience doing this sort of thing from Divinity: Original Sin 2],” said Matt Holland, Combat Designer on Baldur’s Gate 3. You've got spells like Firebolt, Fireball, Haste, Dimension Door, Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, and Meteor Storm – all fairly straightforward, right? Then you’ve got things like Minor Illusion, Major Image, Suggestion, Phantasmal Killer, Legend Lore, and Wish leaning on the intangibles of collective creativity. Whenever I try to explain why it’s hard to recreate the Dungeons and Dragons experience, the easiest example I go to is the arcane schools of magic and the mind-bending shenanigans they offer. So, with that long-winded perspective gleaned, with everything I’ve seen firsthand and learned directly from the developers, I can say Baldur’s Gate 3 is looking like it’s damn close to lighting the spark. It’s a thing that only seems to materialize between collective imaginations if you’re lucky enough to tap a vein of it. There’s this intangible, honest creativity that can’t easily be programmed or rendered – if at all. That’s because Dungeons & Dragons is more than just dirty twenties and nat ones and plus-two loot for your action-surging fighter. Like a sweet, shiny clockwork golem, the cogs can be in place, those gears can whir, the pistons can surge chaotic fire through the frame, but it still doesn’t have a soul. If you play D&D you know that it’s more than just a bunch of cool parts bound together in a player’s handbook or monster manual, and recreating those parts alone can’t necessarily make the whole.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |