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Baldur's Gate 3
83 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they strap on their adventure boots, grab their bows and eldritch blasts, and ask if the tavern keep (Larian) has any work that needs doing in this week's episode!
MINOR SPOILERS: Baldur's Gate 3
Intro:
- Baldur's Gate 3 OST - Main Theme Part I
Outro:
- Baldur's Gate 3 OST - The Power (Choral Version)
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Transcript
Introduction and Pleasantries
00:01:05
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Good. Nice. All right. That's it. That's it. Wrap it up with no follow up whatsoever. Glad it's good.
Daily Life and Cooking Tales
00:01:27
Speaker
I thought that I thought that the no follow-up was itself going to be the follow-up for something else but no that's that's it we kill it right there I will explain since you're also fucking curious today was just an okay day I mean work is always I mean I could always go into detail about that but I won't just in the off chance that anybody ever listens to it I love my job it's great but like
00:01:54
Speaker
Food today was decent, had some leftovers. I took friend Steve's advice. I marinated the chicken thighs that I got that had bones in them, which is why they were so cheap. I did not realize at the time.
00:02:07
Speaker
But I literally just put it in a Ziploc bag with teriyaki stuff, and I threw in some other seasoning blend that I've had forever. And I just let it sit for 24 hours. And then I just did it all in a pan, which will flip it occasionally. The skin got seared. I probably did not need to add any butter, because I could have just cooked it skin side down first, let the fat render out.
00:02:30
Speaker
TLDR, I ended up making some very nice chicken fried rice yesterday, which I had some leftovers of today. That's pretty good. Hence my amazing mood. You feed me one good meal.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, we're doing okay. I can counterbalance all of that. I have worked my way through of the Hot Pockets that we received from a friend of the show and a special guest to Mooch. They're gone. I'm free of those. I can start breaking into my own personal pepperoni Hot Pocket reserves, but I'm going to give it some time. Do you feel gross after eating Hot Pockets?
00:03:12
Speaker
a little bit. Uh, yeah, yeah, I do. Um, it's kind of like, it's just a weird, it sometimes leaves like a weird flavor, a weird taste in your mouth. Like half of those, I think were like full on edible.
00:03:27
Speaker
Cause it was just a variety of flavors. Half of them were like pretty much edible. One of them I think was like good, but the problem is I don't remember which one was good. And it's like, I'm not going to play mind sweeper to find the edible hot pocket, right? Like pepperoni is okay. Eat it with a sauce. It's fine. Good enough. Right. It's not worth like risking your life for one of the ones that's catastrophically bad or maybe slightly better than pepperoni.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like pepperoni is fine enough. If I had to have one in like an emergency situation, I wouldn't want to have two. Cause I would make, I would create its own separate emergency situation where I need a bathroom stat. Cause it just, it's not food food and doesn't agree with my body.
00:04:20
Speaker
That's normal because it's not really food food. I will say when I eat it, so I've tried like different sauces. I've used some hot sauce. That's fine. I've used ranch. That's okay. It's okay. But A1 is actually my favorite of all of these. Just steak sauce. Straight up just steak sauce. Do you know what I love about A1? I almost never use it with steak.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I never really eat steak to be honest, but like it, it does taste like I like the tang of a one. I should pick that up. Yeah. It's good stuff. Keep it in bulk. Buy it by the gallon. You can't eat. They only have it. Like if you're lucky, you can get a bulk pack that's like plastic, but the standard container is like full on glass. Like, uh, what's the, um, the alcoholic beverage with Jack in the name?
00:05:13
Speaker
Jack Daniels. That. It's like it's like a skinny Jack Daniels bottle. That's what A1 is usually in. Yeah. Yeah.
Diving into Baldur's Gate 3
00:05:22
Speaker
Anyways, Baldur's Gate 3. Oh, yeah. What's the backstory for this episode? For the War Masters episode. So if you guys remember 10 years ago, you started playing this game. But no, I'll do a summarized backstory. Jake and I played Divinity 2 a very long time ago.
00:05:43
Speaker
For me, it was like a renaissance of RPGs, fell in love with it, and was like, holy shit, I need more games like this. This was a surprise for me, I'm gonna interject. I was very surprised that Dave got hardcore into a CRPG, because that's very much what Divinity is. I didn't realize your interest in the genre could extend into... I don't even remember how I started.
00:06:11
Speaker
Playing it. I know somebody suggested or what it was but at some point I tried it got its hooks in me pretty much and I didn't really like the Focus on character development. It wasn't like some triple-a thing where it's like I don't like you cuz I'm an upright citizen you guys are hooligans and that's like as that's as far as it goes But yeah, that's divinity 2 had a lot of things I liked in it and I was like when can I get more of this and
00:06:41
Speaker
And then it was dead quiet for years. Um, I forced a couple of other people to play divinity two with me again. So thank you for everyone who has a shout outs to Mike, Justin, Jake again. That led to our actual podcast episode on it. Yes. Yeah. We eventually did do that. I remember I had like three pages of notes on it. And then like seven years later, they're like, Hey.
00:07:03
Speaker
Baldur's Gate 3, and I'm like, I don't give a fuck about D&D. I'm like, hey, Larian's doing it. I'm like, damn it, all right. All right, I'm back in. We just caught him in the library, like water deep reading up on D&D lore. He's like, this could come into play in the story. It wasn't quite that bad. I've always liked
00:07:22
Speaker
like high fantasy. I've always liked D&D from like a universe setting and lore perspective. It's just tabletop mechanics can suck my dick. I don't have the patience for that. It's just not for me, right? Right. That's fine. So this was a really cool way for me to approach that with a game structure that I already really liked. And Jake was of a similar mind as far as I know to where you also appreciated Divinity II and you had interest in Baldur's Gate. Yeah.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think prior to Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity 2 is the best classic CRPG. Now, I haven't played all of them, and there's a lot that I started playing that I never finished, like Planescape Torment, or what was the other one, Neverwinter. I think I had enhanced edition for that. A lot of these, or the older Baldur's Gates even, right? Like 1 and 2, Shadows of Aum.
00:08:12
Speaker
But yeah, Larian specific take on CRPGs is incredibly approachable for something that people really have a hard time breaking into.
RPG System Comparisons
00:08:26
Speaker
And even if they break into it, it's like, I could play something else and it'd be a lot easier or it'd be a lot more accessible. The mechanics didn't feel too
00:08:40
Speaker
overly convoluted. There are definitely some nuances you can pick up over time, but it's not really going to hinder you that much if you haven't mastered it immediately.
00:08:54
Speaker
And it's worth noting, I know that we cannot go into details for divinity, right? But in some ways, there's differences between that and Baldur's Gate 3. And divinity, for an on-ramp into classic RPGs, it uses an action point-based system for what you do.
00:09:13
Speaker
And I feel like that's just easier to understand for someone who's played video games. It's just like, oh, I have a green bar. And if I move, I am using some of the green bar. And if I make an attack, it requires this much of the green bar.
00:09:27
Speaker
It's a lot less like D&D. Most characters have 30 feet of movement. You have an action. You have a bonus action. Sometimes your action is, you know, like it can cover these activities. Bonus action is these activities. Maybe you have a buff or something. You have multiple bonus action. Like it all gets more complicated than green bar, full, me happy, me attack five times. Right. Um,
00:09:50
Speaker
But that's part of a thesis I want to explore later in the discussion of Baldur's Gate, which is the comparison between the games. And ultimately, which one's better?
00:10:04
Speaker
But don't get that devil out of here. We're so late. We're so late to ball. It's literally one game of the year. People already know this if they follow anything in the gaming space. We have to have a hot take. All right. All right. It's necessary.
Exploring Baldur's Gate 3's Depth
00:10:18
Speaker
So I will say at the point of recording. We're finally done.
00:10:24
Speaker
It's been a lot of Tantric Baldur's Gate 3 for, I don't even want to look at when we started. It was like Q3. It has been a bit. But I will say we were done and there's still so much I feel like we haven't
00:10:42
Speaker
checked out that I'm definitely going to go. I know you're going to, you've already started your single player play through. I'm curious to go back and explore some things, maybe try a different bill, different choices throughout the game. Cause it is, it is so laden with content and good RPG word.
00:11:01
Speaker
I would like to get laid in by the maiden, please. My brain went to an average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. The one thing I love about Larian's design in general is there's a lot of stuff in the game that you don't have to interact with.
00:11:25
Speaker
Which from like a game dev standpoint, theoretically you want everybody to enjoy all the aspect of things that you've put effort into making. But from a gamer's perspective, capital G gamer, it feels nice to have those options. So it's like using, trying to think of a first thing in Baldur's Gate 3, it's pretty early.
00:11:51
Speaker
So in general, with a lot of RPGs, you typically have the option of diplomacy. Maybe I can talk this out. Maybe it can be on good terms with this character and we can avoid conflict. Maybe you have to do conflict. Maybe the only way to do it is to fight it out. Maybe you want to sneak around and seal something or murder somebody. There's a lot of angles you can take to it. And that always feels nice because it's not going to inhibit your specific playthrough.
00:12:19
Speaker
you can still do it the way you want. And also with the content you haven't experienced, it feels kind of fresh each time to go back in and maybe just explore around some other things and find something. Or like I said before, make a different choice for something and have something interesting happen. You're like, oh shit, I didn't know that happened.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's really fair. And it's something that's, it's a very pragmatic decision that people need to make in game development, right? If you're putting resources into something that a subsection of your player base will not see, you gotta justify why that is the case, right? Like, and it's pretty bold to say like, oh yeah, like 50% maybe of like the voice lines in our game will be unheard the first time someone goes through.
00:13:05
Speaker
Right. There's all sorts of things like divinity did as well. I will say like prior to this my stand out for this space of like generating content using characters dialogues stuff like that that could be unused was actually Mass Effect. Because you can like straight up kill or not kill. Choose to have someone die in the first game who then technically had content through all of the rest of the game including lines and stuff like that.
00:13:30
Speaker
Um, that was pretty big back then, right? This is a development beyond that even where, um, there's a whole bunch of dialogue in the game that is, you know, call and response. So like one recorded voice line from, um, uh, or one line coded for your protagonist, but then a voice line from whatever NPC you're talking to. If you're a specific class and there's like nine of those pretty handy. So like, it might be 10 now. I don't know if artificial counts as one of the nines, but.
00:13:59
Speaker
or one of the originals, but like it's a lot. It's just so much content that you absolutely will not see. And you really cannot see unless you play through as every class making pretty much every decision. And on top of that, on top of all of this, we haven't talked about origin characters. I'm just going to introduce it.
00:14:17
Speaker
Like in divinity and in Baldur's Gate 3, you can play as an origin character who is somebody who's already placed in the world. They have a plot line in progress at the point that you start playing, right? There are cut scenes and dialogue that you only get if you're playing that origin character, not there in your party. You have to be playing that character to even see it. God damn it.
00:14:46
Speaker
You could play this game 20 times and still be seeing new things. That's how crazy it is. Like, hopefully we've driven that point home. Yeah, it's it's absolutely insane. Which is why I don't want to immediately hammer down again and be like, all right, new play through shots of people who had that energy. I definitely do want to go back to it, just like cyberpunk, where I just take a fresh crack at it and get to experience new things. But.
00:15:14
Speaker
man, it's just, it's so good. I'm going to spend like a brief moment outside of the analysis and talking about specifics. Yeah. It's just so fucking fun. Um, like act one obviously spent the most time there across like multiple different play sessions with people. Right. Um, but it just, it doesn't take long for you to get immersed in the world. You're like, Oh, there's some shit with goblins. Fuck them. Um,
00:15:42
Speaker
and then you're getting to know some of the characters. You're like, oh, there's like, I'm meeting all these people that can have my party. Who do I want to have my party? Oh, they seem cool. This person seems like a bit of an asshole. I do like that the people who I like, or rather the people who I dislike, everyone else loves. I think Laezel's an asshole.
00:16:03
Speaker
And I know there's some people who are like, no, I stan Basil. And I'm like, I don't see it. I also didn't like Astarian. Great voice actor. More power to him. But like just his character is pretty much an a-hole. Yeah. And I just didn't have the patience to have him in the party. Maybe a woman to play. I don't know. I think.
00:16:23
Speaker
I think part of it is the charisma that like the voice actors bring to these characters. Oh, yeah. I've made this I've made this comparison outside of the podcast. But like between this and Starfield, there's no comparison, like the least interesting character in this game is significantly better from a charisma perspective than the most interesting character in Starfield. Yeah. I remember when we were talking specifically in act three, it's like outside of a circus, there's a a ghoul, isn't it? Yeah.
00:16:51
Speaker
And ghouls are typically just bad entities. Yeah. This was like a tamed ghoul, but it also still like wanted to murder and like see carnage and mayhem. Um, so like when you leave the circus after like a fight breaks out, like he, he finds out that like he missed that whole thing and he's like, and he was sad. Now you've talked to this ghoul for like maybe 30 seconds tops, right? They don't have a character
Character and Story Design
00:17:18
Speaker
arc. They just, they're this one note. I'm a ghoul.
00:17:21
Speaker
and I want to do this thing, but I can't because I'm outside. And he felt genuinely sad in that moment that he missed all the blood and murder. And that drives home so much when you have a character who's just, I'm this. How much am I this? Oh, 1,000% this. You don't ever get the feeling where it's, oh, it's a guy off the street, or this is just an NPC. I mean, there are some just filler NPCs, like people walking around town.
00:17:51
Speaker
Whenever you're interacting with like a shop person or like somebody who has some dialogue, like it's, it goes deep and you feel it, which is why you'll take so long in some of these acts. Cause you're like, okay, I have a questline here. Oh, they said something about this. It's all in your journal and tracks. You don't have to worry about managing it, but you just, I, I at least just got so, so wrapped up in it.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah. Larian does an excellent job of placing characters in the world and making them belong there. Yes. Regardless of how much interaction you have with that character, it feels like that character
00:18:28
Speaker
belongs in the world and they could be a playable character, right? Like, and that's, that's big. It's a big accomplishment. It's excellent to have in your game and it's very immersive because you don't have these kind of like wooden experiences where you're like, I don't think a real person would act that way. There's outlandish things that happen in this game, but within the fiction and the story as it's ongoing, they all seem believable, like what's going on and people operate within their own sphere of what they want.
00:18:58
Speaker
Yes, which is very important. Also to mimic what you were saying earlier, the voice acting, amazing. Not even just for like the main characters, even a lot of the side characters, they very much have their own identity and it comes through a lot with the dialogue. Yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
Okay, I'm not going to list all the examples. Most of the dialogue in the game is really good. Occasionally there's just like an excellent line. A lot of times it's Inu Window. The game is, it's got a lot of Inu Window.
00:19:35
Speaker
it kind of does the whole I don't know what started this I know I feel like Dragon Age might have accelerated it but it's like hey if you're playing an RPG and you have party members they need to be romanceable and this game is just like I think Mass Effect had like a bit of like a different characters would have like different sexualities and so it's just like some characters might be interested in you regardless some would only like
00:20:02
Speaker
Uh, like masculine character, someone only like feminine character, but like, um, Baldur's Gate is just like everybody. Yes. Everything. Anybody wants to fuck you a little bit. Uh-huh. Um, like, um, and, uh, like my, my, my character after are, are safe. Uh, when I'm going through a single player, um, I'm playing as Will. I'm doing plain Will as the origin character, but.
00:20:31
Speaker
I want to explore how all these characters will react to me if I perceived if I seem to be someone else. So I use a tremendous amount of disguised self as just like masculine or a strong female drow. And like my wife told me that like you get through so many things in Act One if you just are a drow. Yeah. A hundred percent true. Everybody are just like defer to you. I chief. Yes.
00:20:59
Speaker
All the goblins are like, drow, drow's higher echelon. I can't, I'm just gonna take orders and, you know, not put my nose into it. Uh-huh. It's, it's just excellent. There's, there's so much going on in the game. It's impossible. It's very difficult to pick out like what to talk about, which is probably why we have to plan that more, but.
00:21:18
Speaker
I will say as a brief comparison to say if you have experience with divinity 2 but you have not checked out Baldur's Gate 3 yet, 1, do it. Just do it, it's good. But something I was very used to in divinity 2 was there was a lot of area AOE type magic where you'd have like
00:21:41
Speaker
Here's a giant puddle of ice, like gigantic. As soon as surfaces start to interact with each other, it would blend, oh, you cast fire on that. Now it's steam. Oh, you have electrified steam. Oh, it's now smoke. All this stuff is always happening all the time in Divinity. And whether you like it or not, it's there. Yeah. Whereas. Electrified blood. Yeah.
00:22:02
Speaker
It can exist in Baldur's Gate 3, but it's not to the same scale. Yes. Like if you freeze some water, it's like, oh, bit, bit, oh, ice. Uh-huh.
00:22:15
Speaker
So it's not as impactful from that regard. And all the spells very much follow D&D. But I will say I very much enjoyed that. Because it's not like I have a wealth of experience in Dungeons and Dragons from tabletop perspective outside of four sessions. Is it four I got through? Yeah, four. Yeah, I was around that. No, I very much enjoyed
00:22:39
Speaker
the magic system. I always wish I had more spell slots, but I very much found myself going into Warlock and seeing how far I could push Eldritch Blast, which is just, it's the best. I don't want any other spells. I told Dave about this like after, or it was near the last session of our playthrough, so there's no way you could really make build decisions. But I was like, you only need like two levels in Warlock and then you just like max out something else and your Eldritch Blast will be ridiculous.
00:23:08
Speaker
It's fine. It's fine. Not everybody has to met a game like crazy. I do, however, though, and where Dave was saying I'm the negation of Dave when it comes to every all of these disclaimers about not being familiar with D&D. Like I ran it as a dungeon master for years. So constantly while we were playing through the thing, it's like, well, actually in the tabletop game, and this would be a different episode. I'm like.
00:23:32
Speaker
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Or God was mentioned, right? Yeah. I was just like, oh yeah, Joaquin, you know, the God of trade and whatever. I found it interesting and informational and not like throwing you under the bus for that. Uh-huh. It is a little bit of like, um, I do think I'm a little guilty of that specifically for D&D because it is something I'm familiar with and interested in. It's like everyone's sitting down to watch a movie and it's like, I bet that guy right there is probably trying to do this.
00:23:58
Speaker
And then if that happens in the movie, you're like, see, see, I called it. And people are like, shut up. We just want to watch the movie, right? I think that would be a fair take. But they do an excellent job of bringing forgotten realms to life. And what's funny about this, they do a better job of it than Wizards of the Coast ever have. But that's kind of Larian's thing. It's a little dangerous for that.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really think you can compare Larian stuff to anybody else's stuff. Um, just because like they spent like seven or eight or maybe even more years on this game. Yeah. And it shows outside of the books. Um, but it's just, again, very much a lot of attention to detail as far as storytelling. And it's so good for that.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah. And it's pretty impressive. Like for it is, it is a lengthy game. Obviously CRPG usually takes a long time, but you are level constraint to 12, which out of the 20 maximum levels you can have in fifth edition, it doesn't seem like that much. Most campaigns aren't going to go this long. Like most campaigns won't get you to 12. Um, like if you're actually just playing at the tabletop, like it would take probably a year or two.
00:25:21
Speaker
to reach that level playing, you know, once a week with friends. Um, so it gets you through a lot of content faster and it's not that it has everything from the tabletop. They knew a lot of things they wanted to cut. Um, for instance, they, they've outright mentioned, Larian mentioned, um, they wanted to do dispel magic, but
00:25:44
Speaker
all of the things that are magical in the game could have an interaction with dispel magic. And they're like, we can't we just can't. So there is no dispel magic spell. But for what they covered, it's a lot. It is a whole lot of the the tabletop D&D experience. But it's in some ways better than that, I will actually say. I'm actually I'm afraid for people who play Baldur's Gate first and then go into
00:26:14
Speaker
trying to play the tabletop game, because there are not that many DMs that are voice actors like the characters in your party, right, in a Larian game. You're basically trying to do the whole thing through an entirely different medium, and you can't really do that and have it measure up in the same way. Again, video games are immersive.
00:26:38
Speaker
The person is very much keyed in on their own experience on the screen. They're basically watching a movie that they get to interact with. Yeah. And also combat is going to be infinitely quicker than it would be on tabletop because you're controlling all the characters or you're in a party of people who can just click and it's done for the most part versus writing, rolling die, writing it down. Oh, we've got to do the thing. Got to move the piece here.
00:27:04
Speaker
And enemies just take their turns. They don't need a person back there, like evaluating what they should do. And you're like, all right, I am the AI for each of these 15 goblins or whatever. Enemies just take their turn. So most of the time is spent with the players making decisions, which speeds it up a fair amount. I will say to the player decision part,
00:27:28
Speaker
This is more so from a story standpoint. Um, there are a lot of quests that you'll get throughout the game where it's not definitively this person's right. This person is wrong. I want to do this. I don't want to do that. A lot of times you'll get some very gray things. You're like, none of these options feel great, but here we are. And you shot kind of have to pick one and lead into it.
00:27:51
Speaker
And I always like those types of dilemmas, not exactly a trolley problem so much, but it is a question that when you answer it, you will kind of learn something about yourself or at least who you're RPing as.
Role-playing Decisions and Morality
00:28:03
Speaker
The picture of Larry and Gray. I very much did like the trying to lean into the RP aspect of it.
00:28:12
Speaker
Uh, my character was a warlock who was very power hungry. So like, if there's any possibility to get cool magic, I don't care what it is. Give me that magic. Right. So as soon as necromancy came up and like, just snap my fingers, I'm like, give me that shit. Let me inject it into my veins. Literally. Um, involving fluid. The, I guess the, the counterpoint to that is, but I also, my character was dating car lock.
00:28:40
Speaker
Yes. And Carloch, as you know, is very morally good at all times. She's actually the most morally, well, except maybe Will, like the most explicitly morally good character. Yes. But she's light hearted good. Yes. But I would try and navigate being a power hungry sociopath will also, you know, not trying to make Carloch this approve of me constantly. So it was fun to walk that. Yeah. Yeah. All of the, um,
00:29:11
Speaker
And this is actually the reason that some people really like Lazell, is because although she is super abrasive, I don't think many people could contest that. She has complexity to her character and her motivations and they can shift over the course of the game. And so somebody that you see in an unsympathetic light, by the end of the game, you can be like, I'm all for this person, right? And Larry is very good at that. I could even grow to love
00:29:39
Speaker
Who's the sorcerer guy we let die immediately? Gail. Gail. Took his hand. Yeah. As a souvenir, if you will. Let's go along with my dead pixies. He's not. I'll be honest. That's the one guy I really don't like. Most of the people are fine. He's it's not that he's bad. He's just he's kind of a little bit generic.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah, and he's self-important. That's kind of the problem, but not in an endearing like Like I'm all you know mustache twirling. I'm so sophisticated But more like we have very important things to do here, and I'm very smart right yeah, I just Didn't vibe with that as much. I don't know yeah, he doesn't fit Into some of the tropes like if you like the scoundrel type character you really like a starion and
00:30:31
Speaker
Um, if you like pragmatic character, um, who absolutely just A to B nothing in between wants to get to the goal, then you may like, you know, Lazell. Um, and each of the characters has something like this. Right. Even withers. Yeah. Who if you don't like withers, do not talk to me. We are no longer friends. It was not even a companion. It's just an NPC you talk to, but.
00:31:01
Speaker
No. Yes. There's just so many like memorable things throughout the game. Also, I know we kind of dipped away from it for a bit, but I did want to say, I really like that some of the dialogue, not even both the dialogue options that you have really covers a nice range, but also like the way that other characters speak. It's not in this generic, you spit on my face. Now I'm er, gr, I'm mad at you.
00:31:29
Speaker
Like people have very poignant lines or they might subvert your expectations as far as how they react with something It's just hmm so fucking good. Yeah when you tosses play us by the way, yeah, so I played as the dark urge origin character, which is the only origin character that I
00:31:50
Speaker
Um, is missing from the game. If you don't play as them, it just do not exist. Yeah. Um, but I don't recommend it necessarily for first time playthroughs. This is the reason that we killed Gail, I think, and, and the staring in our playthrough. I stare and had nothing to do with the dark urge. So I went back and I tested it and I think it's easier to do if you're the dark urge. Um,
00:32:20
Speaker
You have to like fail a check to like headbutt him or something like that. Like it goes to, I feel like it goes to combat faster. I reloaded multiple times to test this. Did you manage to headbutt him and go straight into combat? I'm getting a head shake. So when we were doing it in our other thing where we were just like basically shovey murder hobos. Yeah. Um, I think we, we had that similar exchange with Gail, sorry, Astarian.
00:32:49
Speaker
And then somebody did like a strength or intimidation check and he's like, okay, not bad. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, one of two things happened. Either we shot, I shoved him as the dark urge and then it like went to combat, which is the way I remember it, but that could be a false memory. Yeah. Or we confirmed it via dialogue afterwards, like, Hey, okay, I'm going to attack. Um, but in either case, you have to explicitly choose to attack him for it to actually lead to his death. Um,
00:33:19
Speaker
But he jumped me with a knife. I don't know. What do you expect? This is a plausible reaction. Anyways. Some people were very offended. And when I was talking to people at the game, they're very offended about the origin characters we killed in Act 1. People were like, oh, I love this person. I love this person. Jake's like, yeah, I killed him. I don't know. I have no idea who that person is. Or people would be talking about later parts of the game once we got there. And I'm just like, I.
00:33:48
Speaker
that didn't have that happen at all. What are you talking about? And they're like, what do you mean? Like when Gail shows up in the bubble, I'm like, who's Gail? Just goes to show how much variety there can be. Yes. Did you like playing the Dark Urge?
00:34:03
Speaker
I mean, it was a fun, it was a fun narrative experience. I actually recommend, while I say don't play Dark Urge because it kind of like pushes you towards these, the Dark Urge, I guess, like killing people and things like that. I would recommend playing any of the other origin characters because they all have something in the story that you can immediately latch on to. And they're placed in the world. If you play a custom character,
00:34:32
Speaker
outside of your relationship with the other origin characters. Like you yourself don't really have any, I want to say any part in the story, but like any explicit part, you're just a stand-in hero. There's not be a standing here as perfect. They said you're a part of the group, but nothing specifically. Ah, yes, you have. You're the leader.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, you're just you're also there. Mm hmm. But the origin characters are really fun. And if you don't play one, then that means you've got like another six playthroughs you got to clear so you can see the special scenes for each origin character. So you might as well get them out of the way. I'll have to play more. Uh huh.
00:35:21
Speaker
It is really good mechanically. You know, you talked about some of the differences to divinity. I will say it is D and D light in a lot of ways, but even more than that, cause D and D light just implies they took stuff away. They, they change things in the system to make it work better as a video game.
Gameplay Enhancements
00:35:39
Speaker
Um, and I feel like I need to provide some examples and not just leave that in the air. Uh, so some of the things they changed in the system are like, um, anyone can use spell scrolls.
00:35:52
Speaker
In 5E, you can only use spell scrolls if you would be capable of casting that spell. Like if it's on your class list and you can cast a spell of that level. Fuck that. That's really boring by comparison, right? Yeah. It feels cool to just find a level four spell scroll and you're like, I don't know when I'm going to need this, but I'm going to put it in my pocket in case. Yes. And then you get into a difficult combat. You're scrolling through all of your potions of magical equipment that maybe I can switch something out. Maybe we can do
00:36:22
Speaker
very context based spell. It feels nice versus having it be gated where I'm only the Marshall melee class or I'm only this. Yeah, it's very much nice to mix it up. And they like another example is potions. Potions are just a bonus action. And I think throwing the potion may be an action.
00:36:45
Speaker
In the tabletop, throwing a potion is not a thing. Does not exist at all. And using a potion is an action. This is actually something that after playing Baldur's Gate, we went to our D&D campaign. I'm not running this one. And we're just like, can we just, can we use potions as a bonus action? Like, can we just do that? And DM's like, yeah, sure, whatever. Seems fair. Cause he played the game also. And he knows that it kind of just opens up, you know, some of that, some of that play space.
00:37:15
Speaker
Um, and then they, they changed a lot of things about like classes, like thieves. Uh, thief is a archetype for rogue. They get two bonus actions. That's insane. There's nothing in D and D five E that like just gives you two bonus actions, like the tabletop game, but you're like, okay, well, how powerful is this? Really? A lot of people broke it, but, uh, it's cool to be able to be like, oh yeah, multiple offhand attacks. Cause those would use your bonus action. Um,
00:37:45
Speaker
And so whenever there was a question of like, is this cool or is this balanced? Larian was like, go with cool. Yeah. It feels nice to pop off and have your build come together and you strategically start to think out, Oh, for this encounter, uh, how much, how much of a deal deal do with this? Well, could I, who should I target if you should prioritize? Oh, maybe I should do something environmental instead. Yeah. Um, like there was a hope this isn't spoilers.
00:38:13
Speaker
I mean, we talk about it more anyway. Yeah, we're at light spoilers. I think right now we can either way. There's a spider boss in a cave system. No, that's not even a spoiler. That's she loves later. Spiders are in caves. But we figured out pretty early on, you can target the webs that the spiders on and it will drop them and they will take.
00:38:34
Speaker
Gravity damage. Yeah, and I was like we can abuse the fuck out of this So we did and it was really cool to have that happen Now did I get the full range of experience I could have had with the spider boss? Maybe not but that will always live my brain as a fun memory of hey, we found a Kind of unique solution to this problem. Yeah that other people probably found as well I don't think we're the only ones to set the web on fire button Yeah, they have like cool to have the
00:39:04
Speaker
support beams for like a watchtower that an enemy might be standing on. There's all sorts of things you could do with the environment. And while you could say, a cynic might say like, oh, well, in the tabletop game, if you're in narrative play, you can just say like, oh, I swing across the chandelier and swing my sword or whatever, right? You could do whatever. But the reality is, unless it's presented as an option in front of you, a lot of people wouldn't think
00:39:28
Speaker
to like blow the legs out of the watchtower. They're just going to continue to take ranged attacks at the person that's on top. And maybe that's what your dungeon master expects. So it might take them more time to prepare if you're like, I think we can hit a resonance frequency if I play these magical jumps just right. That's going to cause like the sand to shift. We're going to cause liquefaction to kill all the goblins. Like that's what I'm going for right now.
00:39:52
Speaker
A lot of DMs aren't going to be ready for that. I wouldn't be. DMs like, you want a donkey conga to do what? Sand prison from Naruto? I don't know.
00:40:04
Speaker
What Larian did is they gave you a lot of options for things that could come up in the tabletop game, but people are more likely to do because they're presented as such. Explosive barrels being a great example, things like that. It's clear that one of their design principles was to give people the feeling of playing D&D and some of the freedom and not just be
00:40:27
Speaker
This is a shining force tactics game where we're just taking turns attacking each other. So jump back to Divinity 2. One of the standout memories I have is in the first area, we went into a church or something and you go to talk to this one guy and you get in dialogue and it's going to go to combat.
00:40:48
Speaker
Now, something with the Divinity System is when somebody else was actively in dialogue, but the other people weren't, you could move around and do whatever the fuck you wanted. That's not your problem. That's their problem. So I remember grabbing really heavy paintings, repositioning them around an individual, and then putting my guy in there who was very melee focused. I'm like, welcome to the motherfucking Thunderdome. When combat broke out, that guy was fucked. Which is stupid. Because he literally couldn't move.
00:41:24
Speaker
kind of like, oh, it feels like I've pulled the wool over the devs eyes. Clearly they haven't thought of this. And like in the goblin camp in act one, we had a bard in our one party and they played music to have everybody come around. Meanwhile, we're like grabbing these barrels. We're like, we're just gonna set this up here. Don't worry about a thing. Then when we were ready to go to combat, we nuked like 12 goblins at once and it felt awesome.
00:41:41
Speaker
I want to say that this was stupid. The fact you could do this in the game was incredibly dumb.
00:41:50
Speaker
Now, granted, there were a lot more than 12 goblins, so combat still happened. But it felt like we had a leg up and we had figured out something cool. Yes. And that is, I think, a better game design because, as I said, I will always now have that memory of that good experience. I'm not going to talk about when we like.
00:42:08
Speaker
fought some hyenas and then they died. That was not eventful. If you're playing the game as it's expected, as you expect it to be played, and as the designers and developers expect it to be played, generally that's not a memorable experience unless somebody dies in a cutscene. But if they make a game that can be a sandbox, dare I say an immersive sim,
00:42:35
Speaker
I'm just kidding. I don't know if it's actually an immersive sim or not, but it kind of is. It kind of is. You can go. You can go like stealth through things. You can skip things entirely. There's a lot of freedom for how you interact with the game, whether it's true or not, that you're doing things that the developers never intended. It's entirely plausible that you are. And that's all it takes.
00:42:59
Speaker
That's all it takes to make a memory. You're just like, I just broke it. And that was the same thing to their credit. That's what people remembered from when we played D&D is when they did something that they knew I wasn't anticipating something I had not
Community and Shared Stories
00:43:12
Speaker
planned for. And then they just like crushed an encounter or, you know, took something that should have been like an hour long ordeal and cut it short to like a minute. They remember that.
00:43:23
Speaker
Because they they won one over on me and you can win one over over an encounter in Baldur's Gate 3 Yeah, I also love that. There's now like story swapping Mm-hmm cuz and when divinity 2 was played no one else had fucking played that game Nobody it was actually the first person to play. I didn't have other people like talk to you about it I'm not somebody's gonna go on a forum with Baldur's Gate 3
00:43:51
Speaker
so many people I know were playing. So it was really cool to be like, hey, did you come across this one thing? Oh, how did you handle it? What happened? And then just having those stories shared back and forth. Another story I really enjoyed, also pertaining to that spider cave, I didn't forget, is we went to the spider cave to kind of share, share, Jesus. My words are off tonight, I'm not sure why. I'm too excited. It's so fun.
00:44:20
Speaker
So after we beat the spider, we wanted to steal a jewel that was nearby. And there was this giant pit in the ground, kind of surrounded by the spider boss encounter. And one of our party members, Max, shout out Max, was like, hey, I have an idea. I just want to try something. So he takes like a scroll of feather fall
00:44:46
Speaker
And he's like, can I just jump in the hole and see what happens? And he just jumps in the hole, we're like, oh, what? What's he doing? And then he's like, guys, guys, I'm getting an animation, I'm getting a loading screen. We're like, what the fuck? And so we go click on Max's portrait to see what he's seeing. And he has now jumped into the Underdark. Yeah. So he's gone to a whole new area through a random fucking hole in the ground. And that for us was so...
00:45:11
Speaker
mind blowing because we're already subterranean. We're already under the ground to a degree. And now there's this whole other layer of an explorable area that we didn't even know fucking existed. And that was such like a big aha moment where it's like, what else is in store for me? Yeah. And it was just a very fun, cool thing. Yeah, absolutely. The game, the game definitely has those moments. And I think whether you're really familiar with Forgotten Realms,
00:45:41
Speaker
or you're completely new to it, that actually, it'll give you some of those moments regardless of which side of the fence you are. If you're really familiar with Forgotten Realms, you'll be the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the, I know that meme, it's that one, it's that thing. And if you don't, then some of these discoveries, such as the very nature of the Underdark, could be really cool in their own right, or the creatures that live in the Underdark. So it's great.
00:46:11
Speaker
It's basically the best representation of D&D. Definitely the best representation of D&D I've ever played. They need to remake Planescape. That's what I want. I want Larian to remake Planescape. Good luck. Yeah. Mechanically, very satisfying. It lets you do things like multi-classing, which is an optional rule at the table.
00:46:38
Speaker
And admittedly, you don't need to multiclass in D&D or in Baldur's Gate 3. But it can be fun to just mix it up a little bit. The only way to do it wrong, I would say, is if you take one level in every class. That will not make a strong character. But you will end up with Eldritch Blast at some point, and it'll fire three beams, so you're not doing too bad.
00:47:04
Speaker
It's unavoidable. Everybody has to get it as a part of the play through. If you take a point in every class, then you will have it by the end. Question for you. Yeah. How did you feel about the romance in Valor's Gate 3? I like that there's a multiplayer option to share intimate scenes or not. You can literally just toggle whether other people see if something happens.
00:47:34
Speaker
Now, this is for the physical romance. I will say the emotional aspect of it, like how the characters are portrayed in their interactions with each other. I really like that. But I think that's just a continuation of Larry and making very believable characters. Yes. Maybe they get attached to each other a little bit faster than would happen. But this is a documented thing. You put people in stressful situations, they form bonds quickly.
00:48:03
Speaker
If I'm fighting to save the world, I want to fuck somebody else. That's how I de-stress from the day's events. You have a point to go to. I literally remember this as a real life thing at some point. It was like, don't ask someone to marry you after taking them skydiving or something like that because it will increase the chance that they do it.
00:48:26
Speaker
because of that stress and that rush and stuff like that. But it also means that you're asking them in an altered state to make a long term commitment, which makes you a predator. Anyways, that's my side. I also agree with you that the romance stuff seems to happen kind of quick because you're like, hey, what's up? You're like, fuck you. Like, OK. A day later, hey, what's up? Like, how much was up with you? Day three. Hey, what's up? I like you. I was like, huh?
00:48:56
Speaker
Uh-huh. So I feel like it would be better to kind of space it out longer across the acts. That's something I really liked about Divinity II because I don't remember the character's names in Divinity II. I was playing as Fane, who was an origin character, and the rogue I was dating or I guess on good terms with. Yeah. Do you remember her name? If not, it's fine. I don't. It feels like there's an I or an L or something in there.
00:49:24
Speaker
I'm gonna look it up while you do this, and I'm just gonna interrupt you with whatever it was. There wasn't really like a whole lot of romancing back in, Sabeel, yeah. There wasn't a whole lot of romancing back and forth that were like flirting, maybe some minor things were said in dialogue, but there was like a point later, I'd say like maybe 10 hours from the end of the game, where it's like, hey, this is an option, like you've completed this person's quest, you're on good terms with them,
00:49:53
Speaker
is this going to happen? And then it goes into a narration, right? The narration was made infinitely funnier by the fact that my character was a skeleton. So anything that they were describing, I was like, lol. Boner, boner. Yes, a lot of it was like that. But it felt more earned because it was done over such a stretch of time. Yes. So I would have wished that for Baldur's Gate 3 or anything they do in the future,
00:50:21
Speaker
to kind of space it out more so it feels more earned. It's not like weak to because there's like a Lazell sex speed run and she's like the fastest one you can romance. It was literally like bugged or they at least patched it to make it take longer.
00:50:36
Speaker
Yeah. Um, like I'm looking at the picture I sent Dave, cause the, the YouTube picture is just, uh, the big, big text sex is gone and X overlays L's face and then like a saluting emoticon or emoji. And it's just like, it's the funniest freaking thing, but also like.
00:50:59
Speaker
I will say I did enjoy like the random romance stuff that kind of came up as options. Yeah. With Mazora, she's a character who reoccurs, not a part of your party. But it was cool to see that as an option. Yeah. There's also Harlep, which I thought was like a cool thing to have added into the game. You know what the highlight was? The best one. And this is for people at this point, you're in mild spoilers. We're not talking about the end of the game,
00:51:29
Speaker
There's basically a like lovers ask questions about each other segment in the game.
00:51:37
Speaker
And it's so good. It's just you are prompted with questions of like, what is this person's desires? What do they want to do in this situation? What would their favorite color be here? Well, you know, whatever. Right. And it's just like you can intuit if you've been paying attention to the character that you're romancing, what a lot of the answers should be. But if you weren't, you wouldn't be able to. And it's just it's very cool to just throw this in the middle of
00:52:02
Speaker
a high fantasy world stakes video game, right? Yeah. All right. We're we've about 10 minutes left. I feel like we've covered mechanics and why the game is so fucking good. I do want to ask what would be like a standout event or character for you? Oh, man. Give me a highlight banger that like sticks with you. Doesn't have to be your top. We can do multiple.
Character Progression
00:52:26
Speaker
Gotcha. And if you do, I mean, I can.
00:52:29
Speaker
So for me, I'm going to do one for each, but one of them will be fast. For event, I just like how busted my character became at the end of the game. Like there were so many fights where it's like, this looks pretty tough. Like this guy has a lot of hit points. There's a lot of enemies or something like that. And then it's just.
00:52:51
Speaker
broken, right? And it's broken in ways that it's impossible to do in the tabletop game. There are no elixirs of bloodlust in the tabletop game to get extra actions. That's not a thing. Loved that. It felt good. It was a power trip by the end. Jake, what's your favorite encounter in the game? All of them because my dude's so cool. He's so cool and so strong. It was mostly like mid game and on that it got like a little bit ridiculous. Your ability was really complete, I'd say.
00:53:20
Speaker
There was a point where they've had a character who's like main villain, like the wrapping up of their arc was killing this bad guy. And they've made like an attack or something. And then it was like my characters turned up just like Legolas basically rapid firing arrows into this guy for like the remainder of the health bar. And you're like, glad I could hit him once. And that was kind of fun. I felt a little bad, but it was more funny than bad.
00:53:51
Speaker
But I have to be a sucker and say my character had a romance with Shadowheart. And I think she's a great character. Dude, she's so hot. She's not even. No, she's a great character. She is. She is a great character. She's just incredibly sassy. Yeah. And but I also am attracted to sass. That's fair. I like a sassy lady. An assassin.
00:54:16
Speaker
Sabeel. We're right back. What about a non-playable character? Ooh. One you can't play as that you really like. I liked Mole. I think her name is, or Mole, the T-phone. Yeah. Yeah, M-O-L. Because she... I had more interactions with her in my single player. She straight up starts at countdown if you go to her cave.
00:54:45
Speaker
Uh, before like she likes you or you've done anything to like getting her good graces as far as helping the other kids. And she's just like counting down until like, uh, she wants you to leave. Right. I like missed the countdown accidentally. Cause I like got stuck or something and she straight up just leaves the area. She's like, all right, well, I'm not dealing with this. I'm out.
00:55:06
Speaker
Later, she likes me more because I saved all these other kids and things. But you can go through the game and have this kid hate you, I think, which is very funny. And she has a character arc that could sort of be justifiable as an origin character, almost. It crisscrosses major players in the game. It's very cool. Nice.
00:55:32
Speaker
I definitely do as much with more outside of what we did in Act One, but. Because she's the one with Raphael in Act Two, right? Or am I confusing her with someone else? I think you're confusing her. I could be. Somebody makes a pact. I can't remember. I could be confusing. I forget. It might be. Anyways. But a good segue, because Raphael is one of the best characters in my opinion.
00:56:02
Speaker
I think a lot of people like Asterion because he's very dramatic, flagrant, sassy. But to me, he's an asshole. He hasn't done anything to earn my respect. Granted, I did not play with him that much to really have a better context of him.
00:56:28
Speaker
Raphael showed up so many times and he has so much sass and he is a powerful devil and he controls so much. He's very much a thespian as far as how everything is like played out like a great drama. Right. And it's just so cool. Yeah. All of his stuff.
00:56:49
Speaker
You know what is thick? His thing that I love the most, it was near the, I think it was near his introduction is he will not let you take his bargain because he's like, I want you to exhaust your other avenues. I want you to see how pointless it is to accomplish this goal without siding with me. He literally, he's so freaking cocky, right? Yes.
00:57:12
Speaker
And I love that. Like what kind of a villain is just like, you can't take my deal yet. I'm going to show you how desperate you are first and then you can take my deal. Like the writing is just it's so good. No, it's really good. Yeah, he's just a great character throughout. And then in like that final conflict with him when like the music pops in. Holy shit. I think everyone like had a
00:57:41
Speaker
Holy shit, what moment? I was talking to them about it, but it really does amp up the experience, but going into his house and trying to steal something, coming across Harlep, his sex clone, just so much stuff makes the character very interesting, and then also how buttoned up he is, I guess. He very much, he always wants to put on a good
00:58:10
Speaker
face. He doesn't want to ever show weakness or anything. He's very prim, very proper about his business. But no, just really fucking cool. Also Withers, great character just because sassy and funny. Withers is a masterclass and like how do you have a character not say much of anything but imply so much? Yeah.
00:58:38
Speaker
There are a lot of games out there, like show don't tell, right? That's the classic phrase. But there are so many games out there where it's just like a dialogue dump of information. It's like, oh, this is an important character. Therefore, they must tell you a lot of important things. Not if you're doing storytelling well, right?
00:58:59
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to mention for Raphael, the other thing that's kind of cool. This is the peak behind the scenes. This is the DM thing. This is where we go off the risk. What's really cool about him is he's such an awesome, intriguing character, and he's literally a Cambian. He's half fiend. Or I guess fiend would be anything from infernal. So yeah, so like he was he's he's like a half half blood, basically devil. So he's not even like high on the tier list.
00:59:28
Speaker
of like the cool devils in the fiction. But he is. It's very powerful and he's shown is very powerful and he has all of this stuff going on. And what it does that I love about it from a world building perspective is you can see like in your mind's eye, you're like, how cool must the arch fiends be? Right. Like the arch fiends aren't even portrayed in Baldur's Gate three.
00:59:55
Speaker
but they could have an entire DLC or campaign or follow-up game about them. And I know what would be awesome, right? Yeah, they really do kind of show how powerful the gods are when basically a lot of your interactions are with just their champions. Uh-huh. Also, shout out JK Simmons. Yes. Oh, yeah, the chosen. Oh, my gosh. All the chosen characters are really good, too. Or in the red, also voiced by Lady D, if anybody doesn't know.
01:00:25
Speaker
also simping for her. But I love her design and also just how her character plays out. Really fucking cool. Really fucking cool.
01:00:36
Speaker
Yeah, there's so much of this. I don't know for people who play D&D, like I feel like you have to play Baldur's Gate because it's just like just the idea of chosen. Right. It's like the gods can't interfere, but they can pick favorites. Right. Yeah. It's like, how cool must their favorites be? What would they be capable of? And this game delves into that. It absolutely does.
Technical Issues and Final Thoughts
01:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's. I mean, I could name so many other characters and stuff in events, too, but
01:01:07
Speaker
It's very memorable. Let me bookend this by saying the only real complaints I've had about the game have been some bugs that have happened throughout where something doesn't quite work as expected or there's some graphical issue or something like that, where it comes down to they need more QA time. And I know it's a big fucking game and they had this, this is the release date type thing, but it definitely would have been better if those were cleaned up.
01:01:34
Speaker
Yep, because it definitely takes away from the game a little bit. I'm still very much on the train where I love it wholeheartedly, even with its flaws, but it would have been nice not to have those flaws at all. But if I had to pick right now, gun to my head between Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity 2, I think Baldur's Gate 3 is a better game. Yeah. But I do like the surface system of Divinity 2 and their progression of romance stuff.
01:02:05
Speaker
I think that's entirely three is I think a more interesting storyline. Characters more interesting. The world's fucking interesting. It just has so much going for it. The last time I've also played it more recently. Yes. I agree. I agree. It is kind of heresy, but like for a video game, I liked the divinity system more than D and D system for a video game.
01:02:31
Speaker
So you liked having, are you referring to like how many actions you had? Yeah, exactly. I like the action pips in divinity and they could have done this, right? Like I like the surface surface system, all of that stuff we talked about. Um, it doesn't actually, this is the thing. This is what wizards needs to be worried about are the absolute high points that come from Baldur's gate three are Larian breathing life into the setting.
01:03:00
Speaker
and Larian's characters and their portrayal of characters that existed within Forgotten Realms. It's actually not the system. 5e has very little to do with how awesome and successful Baldur's Gate 3 is. And when I say they have to be worried about it, I don't know what that threat actually is. I don't think they're going to split off and make their own tabletop game to compete with D&D.
01:03:30
Speaker
That would be the perfect game for me. And they should also change the multiplayer interactions when you're talking to make sure like multiple people can interact with the conversation at once. Yeah, it is weird when there's like four people here and one person's like the only one talking like this.
01:03:47
Speaker
And they do the NPC thing, right? Where you're talking to a character and maybe some NPC that's in your party will like butt in with some remark or whatever, which is good. I like that. All games should have that. But it's you can be cognizant of the factor playing a multiplayer game and the other player can't do that. Right. That would be that would make it the perfect game for me. The things you mentioned in that.
01:04:11
Speaker
So one final question for you, Jake. I know we've discussed this a little bit off podcast, but I even forget what my thoughts were on it. I'll need to buy time. But if you could see the Larian treatment taken to another franchise or game, what would you like to see the next Larian game of? Oh, that's really interesting.
01:04:35
Speaker
Um, hmm. I mean, so this is proven that they can take like a really, uh, like deep world and portray it better than it's ever been portrayed. Right. Like they pronounce words in D and D ways that are teaching me that the words are pronounced that way because they put that much effort into understanding how everything lives in forgotten realms. Yeah. What are you? Yeah, exactly. I freaking love that. It's very funny.
01:05:05
Speaker
So I feel like I would have to pick a setting that has that depth that they could kind of like explode into.
01:05:15
Speaker
The, the cop out answer, I don't want to go with this, but this is the bite bite time is if they were to make like a Lord of the rings game, it would be really good. I was also thinking about that just because I don't think any of the Lord of the rings games to date have really been. Great. Um, I know, was it shadow of Mordor? Yeah. Um, that's the least cannon Lord of the rings game they've made too. Yeah. Like it also has such like a deep lore.
01:05:45
Speaker
in that universe where it would be cool to explore. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think my actual answer would have to be something sci-fi, though, because I would love to see them branch out beyond fantasy and see what they could do if they're just like, this is the future, this is some interstellar thing. Absolutely noticed our field. Cyberpunk. I mean, cyberpunk, I think they would actually do really well with cyberpunk. I was thinking something like along the lines of
01:06:15
Speaker
like a Battlestar Galactica type thing, just with the characters, their interactions. I feel like they could do that drama better than the show did. But it's hard to pick like a bad thing because they're so good at making characters. What for you, though? You've had some time. I've taken all the I know you were just thinking Battlestar Galactica right off the jump.
01:06:41
Speaker
Uh, what would you pick? I was throwing through steam in a panic. It's a mirror's edge. No. Uh, so for me, I mean, okay. My go-to answer for like, here's something I enjoy exploring is what it means to be human. And what it means to be an Android Westworld type plot. Love it. Yeah.
01:07:09
Speaker
So I would like to see something like that, where it's how far are you willing to push things? What do you actually view as humanity versus, well, that's just a robot. That has no feelings. It doesn't matter what I do to it. You want Dave's ex? Kind of.
01:07:30
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Or maybe you want Detroit to human. No. But yeah, I'd say something in that space kind of Dave's XC or honestly, Magic of the Gathering has a lot of cool lore. That would be really good. Man, that's a good answer. And they already have the partnership like with Wizards through Baldur's Gate. So it's not even a stretch.
01:07:59
Speaker
but it would be so weird to have like a magic the gathering universe RPG. That's not playing the card game. Yeah. I don't know how you blend that in. That'd be funny. They have all of that like prepared though that fits the criteria of this is a very established world or worlds in the case of magic.
01:08:19
Speaker
What's also funny is because in the Magic Universe, I mean, they had like a D&D, Forgotten Realms set, and then they had all these characters from Baldur's Gate 3. Yeah. So this is the DLC is what you're saying. The DLC for Baldur's Gate 3 will be Magic. I cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter. Mill cards from your library until... Uh-huh.
01:08:42
Speaker
The Eldrazi do not respect Tasha's hideous laughter. That would be a cool setting at least. I think so. That's a good answer. I do like that. But if you are a member of Larian and you know what ideas you have for your next game.
01:09:00
Speaker
Send that in, let us know. We can tell everybody else, sub podcast at gml.com or if you just want to come in and talk, any member of Larian, anybody. We can have you on the podcast. We're scheduled out for a long time, but 2025 or so, we can probably fit you in.
01:09:20
Speaker
Um, send in your thoughts, requests for new episodes, ideas, aspirations, hope streams, soapstone podcast at gmail.com or join the swarm on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Hey, Dave here. Normally I just have like a little goodbye, but one to add something special for everybody. Um, I just want you to let you know it's okay to be gake. It does get better.
01:09:58
Speaker
Oh. Oh.
01:10:39
Speaker
Oh,
01:11:14
Speaker
ah