Do I need to play 1 and 2 to enjoy and understand 3? I enjoy DOS 1-2. Are the first 2 games enjoyable to play without nostalgia waves hitting your cerebrum?
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Baldur Gate 3 requirements
>Do I need to play 1 and 2 to enjoy and understand 3?
Not really. 3 is set a hundred or so years after 2, long enough that anyone you cared about has died or that those who survived due to elvish superiority or nonsense writing will probably not play a major role.
> Are the first 2 games enjoyable to play without nostalgia waves hitting your cerebrum?
BG2 is considered somewhat of a standard in the genre, has nothing to do with nostalgia.
Modding out the Beamdog trash is necessary nowadays though, otherwise the previous statement is no longer true.
>BG2 is considered somewhat of a standard in the genre
It is? Thanks to its "roleplaying is about how you kill shit" approach?
>It is? Thanks to its "roleplaying is about how you kill shit" approach?
Do you think BG invented that?
No but I expect better from my rpgs that are "standard" of the genre.
99% of all RPGs have a large emphasis on killing shit man I'm not sure what to tell you.
>I've never played a RPG in my life, but let me tell you how they should be
It's a highly influential game you ought to play it at least once if you want to talk about the genre, I'm making no particular judgement on the roleplaying aspect or your gripe with it.
>I'm making no particular judgement on the roleplaying aspect or your gripe with it.
That's okay, I will.
If your "rpg" has role playing as deep as Diablo it might be a shit rpg.
That's unnecessarily reductive. BG2 did offer some good roleplaying here and there even if the narrative forces your hand at some key points. It's not always about how or if you kill. Right at the start of Chapter 2 you can decide to side with the Shadow Thieves or Bodhi and that's a pretty big deal, roleplaying wise.
1 isn't enjoyable, both from a main story perspective and an RPG/exploration side. The maps are mostly empty, you have to go to the edge of the cardinal direction you want to go. So you have to go all the way south of a map to unlock the next zone south. It gets really tedious. BG2 however, is still great. Both in main story, side quests, and just a good RPG mostly because the higher level cap compared to BG1.
Baldur's Gate 3 has no connection to the Bhaalspawn's saga. It was disingenuous to dub it "3" to begin with. Larian appears to have bent the knee to reddit and added characters like Minsc and Jaheria in as guest appearances in BG3, though.
BG1 and BG2 are fine, if you can tolerate Boomer games. The Enhanced Editions by Beamdog shoved in their modern-day fanfic characters, but you can disable those. GOG has the original antiques available as well if you're turbo autistic about rejecting the EEs. You'd need to hit up Gibberlings 3 and Sorcerer's Palace (does it still exist? lol) to patch that shit up to modernity though.
If you wanted to play them you would just play them but you don't, you just want to waste everyone's time.
Man, those games are ancient, and so is everyone who remembers them fondly. I'll give OP the benefit of the doubt, although yes, it's probably preferable to go straight to asking the list of mods required rather than ask if it's worth it.
Not true, I played Falcom saga Game Cold Steel 1 got half way done before I realized I needed to play the previous games. Originally I didn't want to start 5 games before getting back to steel, but, I just finished the original trilogy, and well eventually finished all the games before I start the steel saga begins again.
How old are you, to make such boldly ignorant assumptions? Gotta be 18yrs or older to post here.
Underage homosexual.
BG2 aged liked fine wine. I think its perfectly playable now as it was when it came out. I love BG1 too but I could see how someone who goes into it blind could find it annoying at first, but its worth to stick with it and learn to love it
Yes and play it on Switch for the best gaming experience.
>Do I need to play 1 and 2 to enjoy and understand 3?
No but 3 does have lots of callbacks and a couple of the original characters are recruitable companions
>Are the first 2 games enjoyable to play without nostalgia waves hitting your cerebrum?
Yes. Just avoid the gay beamdog companions. BG1 is a little bit slow at first but picks up once you get to the city proper. Durlag's tower is fantastic. Companions are pretty basic and have very little dialogue
BG2 is basically like dragon age except better in basically every single way. Kino villain. lots of interesting locations. interesting companions. Kino soundtrack especially as far as ToB is concerned and ToB is one of the best single-player expansions of all time.
>BG2 is basically like dragon age except better in basically every single way.
Like DAO? That's one of my favorite games of all time. Does it play like DAO? Or more like DOS? I guess I'll ask what are the quintessentia mods for the best experience for BG2?
BG1/2 play much more like dragon age than DOS. BG2 especially. DA:O was basically Bioware's attempt at making a 3D BG equivalent that wasn't based on a D&D ruleset.
There's not really any mods you NEED. But arguably the most popular mods are:
Ascension- a mod for BG2 that tweaks some things in the Throne of Bhaal expansion. Created by the lead writer of DA:O
and Sword Coast Stratagems- a mod that improves enemy AI
Remember to mod out the Beamdog trash. This cannot be overstated. Trust me on this one. It's not a personal bias, every self-respecting BG fan will tell you as much. Take the Beamdog trash out.
I'm okay with them adding a gem bag to BG1 and they did make the pathfinding a little better and made it a bit harder to cheese certain bosses. But the companions are just so gay.
Moreover the company is so fricking gay that they added features like analog movement with way better pathfinding and enemy healthbars on their selection circle ONLY TO THE CONSOLE VERSIONS OF THE GAME.
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I seriously don't understand how these beamdog homosexuals can take an RPG that has been PC-only since forever and then add features only to the new console versions.
I would absolutely not recommend SCS for a first or even second time playthrough. Its for people who have 500+ hours and understand AD&D. No one likes peeling mage onions
tactics is the way to go for noobs. Lions also throw their cubs off cliff sides to see who is the fittest
>Are the first 2 games enjoyable to play without nostalgia waves hitting your cerebrum?
No
I will always wonder how the composers for BG got away with such blatant plagiarism.
Neera is a good romance.
Siege of dragonspear is alright.
Yes, I played the originals way back when.
I had mixed feelings about Neera, I wanted to like her more. She had a spunky demeanor which I found endearing. But I couldn't stand her constantly avoiding responsibility. Always pushing the blame onto someone else.
Siege of Dragonspear was kind of underwhelming as a newcomer. It felt like there was a bunch of contrived elements when it came to the conflict overall that I thought could be mended had we been given the choice. The ending also felt rather rushed and hastily put to connect BG1 to BG2.
Another thing that bothered me was that the only male same-sex romance option the was good-aligned, Glint. Never makes a return in BG2 like the other new companions. In fact most of the newer companions that were romantic options for the same sex were evil aligned. Like Dorn who was bisexual and Hexxat who was a lesbian. What did Beamdog mean by this?
>Another thing that bothered me was that the only male same-sex romance option the was good-aligned, Glint. Never makes a return in BG2 like the other new companions.
Good. The less gay shit the better.
So was the rest of my critique of any note to you beyond that? Or is homosexuality and bisexuality constantly on your mind, causing you to fume? Besides Baldur's Gate 3's romance options are bisexual, so...
>In fact most of the newer companions that were romantic options for the same sex were evil aligned. Like Dorn who was bisexual and Hexxat who was a lesbian. What did Beamdog mean by this?
I don't want to ponder for too long about what goes into a Beamdog writer's mind but my guess is that it's sort of a childish shortcut of equating evil with interesting and subversive, and so it follows that our very evil and very interesting new characters must also be different and bi-queer-lesbian, never mind that this is also terribly banal and not a good substitute for personality.
I find that kind of ironic, not to say that there can't be villainous characters that aren't heterosexual. I always heard a common complaint from those audiences that gay and bi characters. Were typically put into those categories or stereotypes. But here they specifically made these new characters that way. Without taking into account implementing good or neutral characters that so happen to be gay, bi, what have you.
"Progressive" gay characters in media are often portrayed as milquetoast good-guys/gals to better represent the gay community or whatever. They are usually extremely bland and uninteresting as a result. Counter to that writers can intentionally introduce flawed gay characters that are still interesting without following classical stereotypes.
Also, they do fit into the games because all BG companions are over the top to begin with.
I guess that makes sense, maybe it's just me but for the few wrpgs that I played thus far. I tend to notice that gay or bi characters tend to fall in these archetypes. Dashing rogues that counter the rest of the dynamic in the group of companions. Such as Zevran from Dragon Age origins. I wouldn't ask for a goody two shoes for the sake of "better representation". But I would like some variety when it comes to that, not to say characters like Zevran are bad. It just that it seems a bid middling if writers keep to that convention when developing characters that aren't heterosexual.
or just don't have gay characters.
Cope. There have been gay characters in many pieces of media, wrpgs being one of them.
Yeah and there should be zero.
Cope.
No. Play only 3. Thanks.
no one and two are better.
"Baldur's Gate" 3 has nothing to do with the Original Baldur's Gate. It would be more accurate to call it Divinity: Original Sin 3 with a different setting. And yes, BG1+2 will always be better than whatever Larian has or will ever manage to put out.
Except for the fact that the Dead Three are the main antagonistic force behind everything. Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul.
CHARNAME's actions did end up mattering even if it was simply a matter of keeping Bhaal's resurrection on hold. I'll take that not particularly satisfying canon over a retcon of "it was all a dream."
Honestly they should have just called it "Mindflayer Adventures with the LGBT Crew"
How gay is BG3? From early access players? We talking about Mass effect 3 lvls of gay? Or a dimension beyond?
The companions are simply bisexual or "playersexual" as some have described. They will only be interested in you, provided you express interest in them first.
For a tangential change of topic, is playersexual better than hard written hetero/homosexual characters? I feel player sexual especially if given new dialogue is better for replayability, however I can see it souring the experience of people who play and complete games only once. It leave a looser impression knowing that these characters are just for (you) rather than the real [b]you[/b]
I have a mixed opinion that tends to lean on the more favorable aspects in my eyes. I tend to prefer this because at the very least your character can get in a romantic relationship with the partner you want. Whereas with characters that have an established sexuality, it is up to the writers who they are. So if you want someone specifically but they're straight you'll get to miss out. Likewise if it were vise versa. And when it comes to gay and bi character, there are often fewer options and they tend to fall into certain tropes. Or they are hardly present within the plot. If BG3 had made these characters just straight, gay, or bi. I think it would've been allocated like this.
>Shadowheart: Heterosexual
>Gale: Heterosexual
>Wyll:Bisexual
>Lae'zel: Bisexual
>Astarion: Homosexual
Wy'll is definitely Patron-sexual.
Isn't Mizora a Cambion?
Whilst I think devs play fast and loose with the point of romances in their games these days, ultimately I think it boils down to what you want your core cast to reflect in your setting. If you want to delve into what makes it interesting you have to acknowledge the parts of your world that are culturally jarring to the player, and ideally your npcs serve both a storytelling purpose as well as a function in your party. So then you have to consider how fleshed out the character is, which isn't to say that you need a frickton of writing but that the character needs to communicate what their deal is with brevity.
>Viconia
Could've easily been written as bisexual due to the female drow disdain of males. If you write them as being strictly playersexual it's about how your individual strength overrides any other considerations. It plays you up as being a powerful PC but doesn't reward you for niche character building that adds to the replay value of a game. If instead they're written to be bisexual then you can get into the weeds discussing what it means to care about a man or a woman in the context of drow society and her brother saving her from getting Lolth'd because you planned for that to be an aspect of her character you could talk about as a way to talk about how the Underdark is its own distinct thing. The line can get blurry between the two of course, but in a game like DA2 where all your romances were playersexual, the single most interesting part of those romances was the rivalry vs friendship element and not the easy access to whoever you wanted to frick.
>Viconia could've easily been written as bisexual due to the female drow disdain of males
Uhhh I'm not so sure about that one. Viconia's romance is profoundly straight to the core, because her character arc is about the complete reversal of what she had always known (males are lowly and inferior and certainly not her equal, the other is not to be trusted, attachment is poison and weakness, etc.) and it doesn't work if the player character is female and cures her through the power of the... pussy. I'm putting my tinfoil hat on and guessing the reason we don't really get drow romances anymore (until whatever Minthara is supposed to be) is that they'd have to reconcile the racist and sexist nature of drow to feel real and that's just a Viconia repeat.
I wasn't interested in pursuing a romance with Viconia. I hope it isn't too much to ask but what about her romance is "profoundly straight"? I get that she was only a straight romance option, but when it came to the development of the relationship. How would it not work if she were bisexual? Minthara is a Drow who happens to be attracted to both sexes. The player is able to get a one night stand if you help her sack the Druid's Grove.
It's pretty pervasive in almost every dialogue where she refers to you as a jaluk (male), or questions your manhood, or reminds you men are all pathetic or pigs because that's been her experience on the surface, or finally lets her guard down, or gets all jealous about the idea of you sleeping with Phaere. She could have been bi if she were an entirely different character. And that's what we've lost when characters started being coded as playersexual for convenience, this identity of who they are and how they approach genders differently.
I see, thanks for the explanation. That would be interesting if these dynamics could be seen in recent rpgs when it comes to romance. It gives it an extra layer to it. My only problem when it comes to that is that for each character that is romanceable. You are at the whims of the writers, and in multiple instances there were characters that I felt more interested in engaging in a romantic relationship. Only for them to turn out to be heterosexual. And when it came to the bisexual and homosexual characters, they just tend to fall into these tropes when it comes to their characterization. That and they lack the depth and attention compared to the heterosexual options.
nice trips
I agree with what you're saying in terms of that arc progression unfolding because she's forced to re-evaluate everything she expected from a male when she's come from a world where men are cannonfodder/one outlier amongst everyone she'd known. But that's just one aspect of drow culture, if a major one. I'm not saying it'd be lmao magic pussy shit if she was an option for a female charname, but you could have an arc where she comes to terms with the fact that the adversarial nature of the drow especially in the matriarchy doesn't have to be how her own relationships go. Could that be achieved to an extent with a friendship route like the mod? Sure, which is why that exists. But there's other things about her that you could explore that you won't get when her arc as written is male-centric. I used her as an example because expecting Jaheira to be playersexual after she's just lost her husband is as moronic as the non-canon Minsc book that makes Cernd and Kivan gay lovers, and Aerie more or less has a breeding fetish.
No. RPGs are about playing a role within an established world, not about the world bending to suit the player. "playersexual" shit is just messing with the core concept of RPGs just to appease gays.
I get that establishing a sexuality for a character can add to them in certain ways. But doesn't this save the trouble and leave the writers sticking to writing the characters as they intend? I remember so many people complained about not being able to get with Judy in Cyberpunk 2077 because she was lesbian. Or how in Dragon Age Inquisition, Cassandra was the only heterosexual female romance option.
I'd imagine that from dev's perspective it's not a bad thing to have an obvious feature you're locked out of encourage you to play a second run to experience content you missed. If every game had every NPC be playersexual (or only had the ones that would have obvious appeal)/available on every playthrough it'd get stale very fast.
I think one problem with that is you get characters like Judy, who seem apt for a male romance but doesn't go anywhere. Then people find out she was going to be one, and they just cut it.
I guess that makes sense, it was much the same with River and Kerry in the same game. Their scenes leading up to their romance play out mostly the same. Until you attempt to kiss them. Many felt rather disappointed and led on.
The solution is that you just make everybody straight.
Well go play BG2 for that. Otherwise, cope.
It's ironic because as far as I know most characters are clearly written as straight but also made playersexual out of laziness and inclusivity. So if you're straight and playing as a straight player character you may not even realize it, but the door is open in the code.
yeah right
you don't need to play them to play 3 unless you want to get all the little references. you should play them though because they are some of the best RPGs ever made
Try them out anyways, they are a worthwhile experience in my opinion.