This had two jobs:
1) Be a good brand ambassador to Dungeons & Dragons, a brand more mainstream than ever with both nostalgic older fans and eager young new ones
2) Be a good AAA CRPG
I'm "only" 20 hours in (why do I keep picking up huge-ass games?) but it's really damn impressive how successful BG3 seems to be at those two things. Larian have constructed a better video game adaptation of DnD combat than I personally would have thought possible—and they did it by being including tons of granular, edge-casey, smart-alec-player bullshit (as well as a few smart exclusions, I'm sure). It's also pretty difficult by default, which I think it needs to be to show off the system's complexity and the fun tricks it allows for.
Skill checks out of combat are a mixed bag. Thinking cynically about the game as a Dungeons & Dragons (TM) product I think they're a smart inclusion (they clearly relish putting a big icosahedron on the screen as much as possible) and if you gotta have them I think they're implemented well enough here. But I suspect they're going to be the biggest cause of save-scumming because they're mechanically completely uninteresting. Both tabletop and computer RPGs have, for a really long time at this point, embraced the idea of "failing forward" on random skill checks—the idea that failing a roll may not be ideal but it will still be interesting, and potentially more interesting (Disco Elysium is probably the current king of this concept in the CRPG space). Baldur's Gate doesn't, and basically can't do this. The scope of the game is already way too big to allow for it. The most mechanically beneficial AND most narratively interesting result for any given roll is succeeding it, so a failure (which is always possible at no fault of the player's when they roll a 1) just feels bad every time. Still, their existence allows for different player character builds to feel truly distinct from each other outside of combat as well as in it, and that's worth something.
Last thing I'll comment on is the narrative style and writing. Putting on my cynical Wizards of the Coast hat again, I think they nailed the assignment. They're CLEARLY influenced by the style of banter in actual play podcasts, which is a "for better or worse" situation but exactly the audience I'd expect them to try to expand to. I read a review on here complaining about how all the party members are too special boy/girl, destiny lightening rod-types and that's a perfectly reasonable thing to dislike... but also, if you've ever played DnD, you know everyone wants to play that character. You always end up with four different unrelated chosen ones. You couldn't be more true to the source material by replicating that.
That all having been said I got something like 70 more hours of this to go so who knows if I'll still have any of these opinions by the time I'm done.
1) Be a good brand ambassador to Dungeons & Dragons, a brand more mainstream than ever with both nostalgic older fans and eager young new ones
2) Be a good AAA CRPG
I'm "only" 20 hours in (why do I keep picking up huge-ass games?) but it's really damn impressive how successful BG3 seems to be at those two things. Larian have constructed a better video game adaptation of DnD combat than I personally would have thought possible—and they did it by being including tons of granular, edge-casey, smart-alec-player bullshit (as well as a few smart exclusions, I'm sure). It's also pretty difficult by default, which I think it needs to be to show off the system's complexity and the fun tricks it allows for.
Skill checks out of combat are a mixed bag. Thinking cynically about the game as a Dungeons & Dragons (TM) product I think they're a smart inclusion (they clearly relish putting a big icosahedron on the screen as much as possible) and if you gotta have them I think they're implemented well enough here. But I suspect they're going to be the biggest cause of save-scumming because they're mechanically completely uninteresting. Both tabletop and computer RPGs have, for a really long time at this point, embraced the idea of "failing forward" on random skill checks—the idea that failing a roll may not be ideal but it will still be interesting, and potentially more interesting (Disco Elysium is probably the current king of this concept in the CRPG space). Baldur's Gate doesn't, and basically can't do this. The scope of the game is already way too big to allow for it. The most mechanically beneficial AND most narratively interesting result for any given roll is succeeding it, so a failure (which is always possible at no fault of the player's when they roll a 1) just feels bad every time. Still, their existence allows for different player character builds to feel truly distinct from each other outside of combat as well as in it, and that's worth something.
Last thing I'll comment on is the narrative style and writing. Putting on my cynical Wizards of the Coast hat again, I think they nailed the assignment. They're CLEARLY influenced by the style of banter in actual play podcasts, which is a "for better or worse" situation but exactly the audience I'd expect them to try to expand to. I read a review on here complaining about how all the party members are too special boy/girl, destiny lightening rod-types and that's a perfectly reasonable thing to dislike... but also, if you've ever played DnD, you know everyone wants to play that character. You always end up with four different unrelated chosen ones. You couldn't be more true to the source material by replicating that.
That all having been said I got something like 70 more hours of this to go so who knows if I'll still have any of these opinions by the time I'm done.