"This is DC 5," said Swingen Vincke, CEO of Larian Studios, at the latest press conference for his company, Gate 3 of Baldur. In Prisoners & Dragons together, "DC" represents a category of difficulty, and symbolizes some kind of obstacle, such as climbing a mountain or deceiving a stranger. You subtract the side-die die, add or subtract the appropriate modifera from the result, and win if your last number is equal to or skip the difficulty level. DC 5 is considered a simple test in D&D.
“I should be able to find that,” said Vincke, then rolled up 3 immediately.
It was one of the many tragedies Vincke faced during the three-hour show Gate 3 of Baldur, a game that tries to recreate the beautiful chaos playing D&D with your friends. Gate 3 of Baldur is a brilliant role-playing game developed by Larian in association with Wizards of Coast, the company behind D&D, and like any good tablet game, failure can be a lot of fun. Vincke's characters died tragically, he failed to kill the guard before alerting all the others who did not go with him, he stuck to the fireball trap, and played the final game thanks to a nasty interruption that made enemies appear where they should have been. With failure after failure, Vincke was always happy to play, happy to finally show his game – ordering dice rolls and all.
Gate 3 of Baldur, which will enter early this year (and will be out in 2021), is very similar to the two starts Baldur Gate games, which came out in 1998 and 2000. This is the third and was widely expected Baldur Gate itchews the complex rules of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (cya, THAC0) by enabling more accessible D&D Fifth Edition. And it's a creation in Larian's last game, stellar Deity: Original sin, with a dashboard to showcase cinemaatic subtleties from the BioWare RPG or, say, Author 3.
The main difference between Gate 3 of Baldur and what precedes it is that this latest sequel wants badly to feel like a tablet game. While the first two games were meaty RPGs full of demands and anti-dungeon crawls, they didn't offer much in the way of creative decisions. Gate 3 of Baldur, on the other hand, is full of operating systems and rules that should be broken.
It you look nice. Here are the key things to know from the three hours I watch Vincke play Gate 3 of Baldur:
1) Fine, old-school wrestling.
Very urgent question Baldur Gate fans have been asking about this game that it will use a turn-based combat system, like Larian's previous games, or return to "real-time pause" combat that is an important part of the original Baldur Gate games. Sorry, infinity engine-war cleaners come in Gate 3 of Baldur based entirely on turns.
Wars between Gate 3 of Baldur feel very much like this Deity: Original sin. They emerge as a strategy game, putting a huge amount of value on positioning and environmental considerations. But rather than following the character's character order, Gate 3 of Baldur overlap between groups.
At the start of each battle, your team and enemy team will roll out the Initiative. Any team that gets the highest number comes first. From there, you can give instructions to the rest of your team in whatever order you choose, rotating your character movement based on what makes the most strategic sense. You can also do more than just move and attack. This is Prisoners & Dragons, after all.
2) Hi, hit me and jump.
One of the most exciting new features is Gate 3 of Baldur a set of bonus actions, which are at the end of the screen, allowing for some cool opportunities. There's the Shve, which lets you push enemies toward the edges or pits, and the Jump, which lets you jump through the air as if you were some kind of magic chatter. You can sink your weapon to nearby objects, such as a candle to set your arrows on fire or a pool of supernatural powers to upgrade your sword. You can help your unconscious colleagues. And perhaps, there are so many other ways to misuse war and do more than just attack and defend.
"What we are trying to do in combat is giving you a million different situations and ways to solve that problem," military strategist Matt Holland said. "There are always additional ways for you to change to prevent it."
3) You can see people's faces now.
And the conversations come in Deity: Original sin revealed in writing, by an anonymous narrator explaining each incident as it happened, Gate 3 of Baldur it takes a big budget approach. (Larian has grown a lot in the past two years.) Whenever you start a conversation, the camera will zoom in on the person talking, allowing direct cinematics like you're playing a BioWare game or Author 3.
While these cinema programs look great, they are on their own. You don't see your character talking to NPCs. Your protagonist will be quiet during all these conversations, whether you made your own hero or chose one of the Origin characters – a character pre-determined through their branching issues, such as Astarion, the vampire dall tournament who Vincke played in our demo. someone will speak, then it will depend on you in choosing the dialogue (introduced in the past, as if you were a D&D Dungeon Master player), and then it will slow down to get back to the other person without showing your character talking.
It may be controversial at first, but I was used to it during the visible period.
4) There is a tadpole inside your head.
Gate 3 of Baldur it is about brainwashing — cephalopodan creatures that can control the human brain using their psionic skills. At the beginning of the game, a brainwash sticks a small creature (the game calls it a tadpole!) Into the eyes of your character, where you enter your brain and pay attention to your head. You soon learn that you have seven days to find a healer before it changes your mind.
Or do you? The answer to that question is left unclear, as it becomes clear that it does not carry the side effects one would expect to suffer through the conversion process. The story will appear there.
5) You can switch by switching to established mode without having to fight.
It means you are approaching a camp full of goblins and you know you want to put your team in a tournament. Maybe you will send your arrow to higher ground and bury your stupidity back so you are in a better position to bring back some of those bad little creatures. In Gate 3 of Baldur, you can do all this using a special support mode that you can work without having to fight.
Here's how it works: Whenever you enter a turn-based mode, you'll stop the world for six seconds of game time while taking action (taking your time), and you'll have to wait another six seconds while everyone else does. You can use your opportunity to skip, party, and take advantage of creative ways that feel familiar to anyone who has played the Deity: Original sin games. One of Vincke's hobbies is to pull a bunch of crates together to create a set of stairs that allow him to reach places you can't reach.
6) You can split the party.
Rule number one Prisoners & Dragons by: Don't split the party. The first figure Gate 3 of Baldur say: It's cool to split a group. Vincke has made this a heap of our time. Maybe that's why he did it wrong? TBD. But it's helpful to know that one of your characters may be in a struggle, another may be shopping in town for a few miles, and then the other four will be standing in the desert, waiting for something exciting to happen. For many players, different players can control different characters and move on their own in this way.
7) Gate 3 of Baldur set 100 years after the first two games.
In other words, you do not need to have deep knowledge Baldur Gate to inform. In our three-hour example, there are no indications of the first two games, although Larian has made it clear that a large part of the game will take place in the town of Baldur Gate. There is no doubt that whenever we get there, we will see many references to Bhaalspawn – the hero of the actual game, who has just become the child of a murderous god.
"After 100 years," says author Adam Smith, "but it is not very long in certain genres. There are a lot of people who remember this, things that remember this. There are groups and places that are very affected."
8) There are a ton of secrets everywhere.
“Gate 3 of Baldur is a game that is very rewarding to explore – far beyond what was expected, ”said Swen Vincke while playing. He headed straight to the corner, got caught in a corner of a goblin ward and passed his gaze when he found a hidden door that would lead, he said, which is a secret place that you can't find otherwise. .
There's a lot of this kind of thing in the game, a promising developer. One of the keys would be to check the exact gaps using that mysterious Jump command, and on the other hand it would explode in seemingly inaccessible places.
9) Failure can be fun.
At one point, Vincke snatched one of his characters from an underground tomb and discovered a spherical sarcophagus that he knew contained precious treasures – jewelry that allowed you to communicate with the dead. (Yes, you can talk to the dead inside Gate 3 of Baldur. That's all.) He also knew that there was a lump attached to the grave.
When he opened it, heated grams began to burst down around his character, and fireworks began firing from the wall. Going into the fat will lead to the death of the fireman, so Vincke used the spell of the Mage Hand to attach the sharp fingers that could hold the crate close and move it closer to his character. He could stand in the crate and use it to escape safety.
This went wrong. The lack of time led to Vincke's burning of his character, resulting in a fine sequence when he brought his remaining party to the grave in an attempt to resurrect their friend. It was more fun than a simple victory.
"We always want to make failure as exciting as possible," said Adam Smith. "We don't put all that cool and fun behind the scenes."
10) You'll encounter some funny characters.
There's Volo, a legendary poet who is a popular part of the D&D series. There's Raphael, a prominent boyfriend who has just turned into a mysterious devil, a mysterious laughter about what he can do to help and / or hurt you. ("Am I a friend? Can I. Opponent? Certainly. But a savior? That's for sure.") Then there are the members of the group, such as the black githyanki Laezel and the arrogant grandson Gale. If you liked the characters in Deity: Original sin (and how could you not?), I think Gate 3 of Baldur it will be very relaxing.
11) Dice is a big part of the game.
Whenever you have to test a skill, you'll have to pull out a 20-sided sofa, as Swiss Vincke did against that oh-so-unfortunate DC 5. There are little animated dice animations that pop up every time you do so, which seems satisfying, even though it doesn't make sense as a death knell.
You see this cartoon a lot, whether you're trying to guard you from thinking you're his friend (you just killed him) or trying to wander into an illegal arrest. You don't see a roll of dice during a fight – that takes a very long time – but whenever you get a critical crash, you'll see a fun little picture linked to the 20's.
12) If you play as a vampire, you might be tempted to eat your team members.
Getting inside Gate 3 of Baldur lets you set up a camp, where you can talk to your team members and hang out for a while. After that, when you go to bed, you will have dreams. In the case of the vampire Astarion, those dreams include his master, Cazador, who will undoubtedly be the most important part of his Origin story. Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night, hungry for blood. And of course, if you play like Swen Vincke, you will be overcome by the urge and pull out a nice, healthy bite out of one neck of your team members.
Vincke may have killed his team member, Shalkheart, but he opted to go back after sucking a bit. In the morning, Astarion woke up happy and refreshed, with a good mood and a bonus to all his stats. Shakesheart, meanwhile, was sad and confused, suffering 1 for all of his swimmers. This was all entirely optional and in-shape – the kind of thing that most players never saw but Vincke promised that even this would have a broad and lasting effect. After all, Shiefheart will probably find out someday that Astarion released him, because …
13) The game keeps track of everything you do.
It's a promise made by oh-so-many RPGs over the years – that all those tough moral decisions have real consequences. This game is all about remembering! It has so many branches it feels like a forest! Some games are more successful than others, but few produce them as well as Larian's Deity: Original sin, where the decisions you made in Act 1 may come back to haunt you after 40 hours.
The makers of Gate 3 of Baldur they said they wanted to make this a plus. "A lot of the time we talk about trying to make this sound like the right game to play," said Adam Smith. “If Gate 3 of Baldur is a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, all Larian is your DM. We find all these people with all these different ideas, and we try to be as efficient as possible. That creates a lot of memories of the game – you remember what you did. ”
Killing a goblin prisoner may work well for you in the bottomless pit, but it will lure you when you reach the goblins castle & # 39; Finding a treasure trove of Harper can draw you down in search of multiplayer that will never start. And expelling the blood of one of your team members can have all kinds of relapses later. That's it Gate 3 of Baldur—A new emerging attempt to translate the tablet into video games. I can't wait to play it.
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