BG3 looks farther along than I expected. Maybe I'm expected a bit too much for something more than Divinity Original Sin gameplay and mechanics (5e variant) but overall this looks good and eye Mind Flayer's are a nice change of pace from the 'Time of Troubles' era stuff of BG1/2. Although this is supposed to be taking place after the Decent to Avernus adventure so maybe things will get bigger overall.

Yes, I'm also guilty of wishing this would be more faithful to the old CRPG style of BG/IcewindDale a la Pillars of Eternity. I guess I'm not even talking about the combat system as I actually like both RTWP and Turnbased. It's more of it looking too much like Divinty that makes it kind of lose its identity as another game in the BG series? I'm not sure, and this is all by judging the game through limited gameplay videos, so who knows.

In any case, having said that, I'm still very much excited for this. While I kind of fell off of Divinity Original Sin, I did appreciate what it was doing and I may return to it some day.

I refuse to watch any BG3 content before release, but I'm super psyched that this is following the Original Sin style of gameplay. I've been a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate series since the first one, but those Infinity engine games are a bit rough nowadays. Larian's Original Sin engine feels like a proper modern evolution of that old engine, so I think it'll be a perfect fit, personally. It helps that I absolutely adore the Original Sin games as well, so for me this is all a match made in heaven.

I'm not going to write the game off before playing it, but the amount of Original Sin in this is worrying. I wasn't exactly excited to hear Larian was developing this in the first place, as I haven't enjoyed their CRPGs.

It does look very pretty, and I like a lot of what they're doing with the dialogue where you can actually follow-up on previous responses if appropriate.

Worried about the combat, though. As others have said, there might be too much Divinity in there. I'm not necessarily opposed to a lot of the ideas and interactivity that system has, but watching this it looks like it might have the same problem that drove me away from both Divinity games - even the basic combat encounters take so long to resolve.

I know the presenter was deliberately trying various things to show them off, so it was probably not the most efficient play through. However, if every combat scenario is taking 10-20 minutes to get through, that's going to be a problem.

What an interesting game. It looks very cool but it looks almost nothing like Baldur's Gate? Not that I'm too bothered by that when that market is met by stuff like Pillars of Eternity but it's just a totally different thing.

I think this game looks pretty fucking awesome, as someone who really likes Divinity: Original Sin 2 and doesn't have all that much affinity for Baldur's Gate 1 or 2.

Still, I'll agree that if we were getting a Divinity: Original Sin 3, it would probably look a whole hell of a lot like this.

Quick question: How many fans of real time with pause combat are actually out there? Wasteland and Divinity: Original Sin seem pretty popular, Pathfinder: Kingmaker is getting a turn-based mode patched in, and Pillars 2 got a turn-based mode patched in some time after Josh Sawyer admitted that its sales were below expectations. Pillars 1 got a lot of good press, but Tyranny didn't seem to do all that well and they're the only two games from the current resurgence of CRPGs that don't have (or aren't getting) any sort of turn-based mode. With that in mind, how different from Divinity: Original Sin could a turn-based Baldur's Gate actually be, and how much do you think this observation might have influenced Wizards of the Coast picking Larian? I'm not terribly well-versed in DnD, or Baldur's Gate and I'm hardly an expert on Divinity, I just like the games.

I've heard of Baldur's Gate but never played one due to not being a big fan of old crpgs, but I decided to check this out and holy moses this looks amazing. The writing is obviously gonna be top tier but I'm very intrigued with the way the combat looks. I'm definitely gonna keep track of this.

There's one right here, but I'm not dogmatic about it. As long as the designers understand the strengths and weaknesses of the system they're using, either can be good.

Frankly, combat is the least of my concerns when it comes to BG3. As someone who's never been interested enough in a Larian story to actually finish one of their games, I'm just hoping they can deliver something compelling.

I think it looks great. I'm glad they didn't just make something that looked like Pillars of Eternity.

I appreciate throwbacks and I love isometric camera angles, but to keep doing 2D ish looking games with that limited dimension to it would be weird. Those things didn't all come about because its all the developers could imagine or want their games to be. Its cool for some games to do but bring on new ideas.

I love the simulation and combat of Divinity but don't like the world/story so much. The world/story aspect of the first game was awful and the second game was better but still not something I was that into.

I'm quite interested in this game because it can hopefully make for a great total experience.

Developers sure aren't. I listened to Josh Sawyer talk about it recently and he prefers them as well and was talking through why they are much more in vogue.

In some ways pause is just unintuitive in a basic ways because it relies on the player to do that pausing. Might as well just pause the damn game.

One game I can think of that does it recently is Kenshi but the game hardly involves micromanagement so it works. The combat is kind of actually RTS-y.

Want to remain as spoiler-free as I can until release but I'm excited. I have a genuine love of the minutia and flavor of D&D and I adored Divinity: Original Sin 2 so this all seems like a winning formula in my book.

I don't love the Divinity: Original Sin games but really enjoyed Pillars of Eternity as that style of CRPG is more my jam. Knowing that Larian was doing Baldur's Gate 3 though, I know what I'm in for.

I'm going to play it and go into it with an open mind and hope that it clicks for me.

I have concerns. I really like D:OS 1 and 2 but the gameplay I’ve seen so far in BG3 makes it seem very cutscene-fight-cutscene-fight...

Hopefully this was just a demo build and the actual game will feel less on rails.

I only have one question: can I play dress-up with my characters?

Believe it or not, that part about Original Sin 2 (where there's only one look per armor type for your character) bummed me out to the point where I stopped playing.

The UI looks cleaner and more organized than the UI in Original Sin 2. While I'm a fan of the genre, I actually dislike real-time with pause combat because it doesn't translate the tabletop system in a way that I find enjoyable. I'm looking forward to this game.

It looks very interesting! I hope it translates well to good roleplaying, and that the story and world takes itself a big more serious than original sin 2. I loved that game, but for my taste it is a bit too silly and sarcastic for a 100 hour rpg.

Hmm. It will probably be good but I'm not too interested. I prefer the real-time + pausing battles myself. I like the feeling of seeing all my attacks and spells go off at one time in an orgy of destruction, and I like that smaller battles with minions can be wrapped up in a hurry.

But really, the beauty of the original Baldur's Gate games were the environments and the questlines. The cities were densely packed with ideas, where so many random NPCs had surprising and interesting things to say, and the quests usually took you places you would not expect - many times you just need to investigate some strange goings-on on the other side of town rather than killing people in a cave somewhere. They felt somehow dynamic and personal to me than Bethesda-style quests which were often of the go-to-point-A-talk-to-person-B-defeat monster- C variety. Can BG3 pull this off?

As long as battles don't take 20 minutes like in D:OS, I'll be playing BG3.

I'm stoked for it. Literally the only game I care to play this year. It's a great example of adapting 5e to a game format. And Larian has the proven track record to pull it off. That teams loves them some D&D and I'm willing to bet it'll be a great game. August (maybe) can't come soon enough.

I'm very hopeful that it will be good