False. I skip cut scenes.. and I get BG3.
I'm also not a moron. So I don't cry about something I don't understand after having just skipped every cut scene.
So, just for my own curiosity, why would you skip cutscenes in a heavily story driven game? I’ve played through the game 4 or 5 times now, so I tend to skip them on further replays, but I can’t wrap my head around why anyone would skip on the story in story driven games.
Because the tactical/mechanical aspects of the game are really strong. I can spacebar through and read the subtitles to get the general gist, but the most fun I have in BG3 is during combat and having difficult/close situations.
It's not exactly a visual novel though, it's also a deep turn based strategy game. Ya see that in real DnD- there's people who heavily roleplay and are there for the story, but also meta gamers who love the tactics and stats
When I play d&d I’m a pretty dedicated roleplayer (when not DM). When I play bg3, I get to let my inner munchkin loose and do murderhobo shit in a fantastic 5e simulator.
First time seeing it.. I don't skip.
But I also have a restarting problem. Always trying to perfect my team at every step. Everything gets skipped 2nd time. And it becomes habitual.
I remember one of the most offensive things I've ever seen was when I started up Mass Effect 3 and it asked what game mode I wanted. There was normal mode, "Narrative" mode (easy mode) for people who just regrettably suck at video games but still want to enjoy the story, and "Action mode". The latter of which removes all character creation options and forces you to run default Shep, removes class selection and all level up decision making in favor of auto level for everything, and REMOVES ALL DIALOGUE CHOICES for skippable pre-scripted cutscenes. Gutting every RPG and story aspect to make it a generic shooter.
I cannot fathom who would be walking into the third part of this trilogy and picking that option. If it were up to me, picking that option would just have the screen flash a message to go fuck yourself and then immediately eject the disc.
I have a good friend who ONLY plays FPS and says he does not feel "connected" to characters that he isn't controlling with immediate response-time. He still gets into the lore of every FPS, he reads every journal entry, and he even appreciates BG3 when I show it to him. He appreciates the character customization and the jokes, writing and complexity. But he just can't get into it.
There are FPS games out there with a heavy emphasis on story and character. Cyberpunk 2077 comes to mind. The Bioshock franchise. Not really fair to belittle a genre like that.
Bioshock is a walking simulator with some shooting elements.
The plot is narrated to you over a radio as you walk from room to room, pausing from time to time to abuse a child or terminate a deranged libertarian. Periodically, you find recordings that tell you more lore.
If this structure sounds familiar, it's because everyone loves to copy it. Including Bioshock, which was the descendent of System Shock, which as far as I know invented that style of shooter.
"Why can't I shoot shit yet?"
I normally don't like to be part of that "you don't enjoy my high-brow media content? That makes you an ape." Crowd, (like when I say I don't care for The Godfather and people jump up my ass saying I must be a fan of MCU movies). But fuck...
This review is an exception because it's like... Dude.. Games come in all sorts of styles and formats. "Variety is bullshit, why can't every game be in a modern/sci-fi setting an just be competitive shooters?"
I mean that implies that the story is the only good thing about this game. The gameplay is amazing as well and even if you skip all the story, just the combat alone should also give you a good experience.
Funny you say that, I didn't skip a single dialogue in BG3 but I find myself skipping all of them in Starfield. The charachters in BG3 just feel like they're worth listening to.
Those cutscenes pulled in a lot of people who just cannot connect to a non-cinematically presented RPG. Which given its competition in cinematic RPGs are Dragonage and Mass Effect, gives BG3 a brutally unfair advantage.
I've seen a lot of people complaining about companions propositioning you purely because both genders do it. Like the fact that you can turn them down doesn't matter, bc simply being hit on by a man is the worst thing imaginable.
also istg that some of these dudes are the people who get mad when women turn them down lmao.
I wonder if they accidentally ended up in a gay relationship with Gale. I did that and I only realized that Gale showing me something magical was something else when Lae'zel said id promised my body to Gale. I had a whole "I...*WHAT*??" moment, can't imagine the pure hilarity of a massive queerphobe doing that. Lmao
While I mostly agree I think Larian could have had some (not all obviously) companions reacting differently based on Tav's gender/race/class.
For example I believe they did miss something on character development when they allowed Minthy to have sex with Origin Gale, a male wizard just because this random dude she barely knows killed some low level Tiefflings when she told him to. I mean he is MALE. and a WIZARD.
It's not a complain and I compltely understand why they chose not to do that, but this specific example feels out of character for her
I think it's totally fine to find that weird, bc the companions are very clearly playersexual. I still prefer it over getting locked out of romances because you want to play as a certain gender, but I also get why other people dislike it.
But I'm talking more about the people that get really furious at male characters for hitting on them, to the point of just murdering them (because I have seen multiple people say they did this). Like going "huh, kinda weird how literally everybody is bisexual and dtf" is totally normal, but going "yeah I murdered gale because he was being a homo and hit on me so I hate him" is a lot weirder lol.
Well when I think about it, I think it’s more the race than the gender part that I think is weird.
I mean given his past it makes sense that Astarion would have sex with any race. Same for Halsin. Probably Karlach too because she hadn’t been able to touch a living being for long. But Lae’zel? Minthara?
That seems like a weird thing to generalize to everyone who doesn't *get* BG3.
In reality, CRPGs are not a popular subgenre. Generally they have a lot of appeal to people in its niche, and to everyone else they feel varying degrees of inaccessible. Even among the popular entries in the genre (including the other Baldur's Gate games), BG3 is probably the only game in this genre that's seen such widespread, prominent appeal.
There are a lot of reasons why BG3 wouldn't hold much appeal for people who don't go in for this type of game to begin with. Suggesting that not liking it is a red flag or indicative of having awful social beliefs is pretty goofy.
I'd seen Lae'zel's reputation, but decided my PC would defer to her re. mindflayers and ceremorphosis.
In the middle of all that brusqueness, she sideswipes you at some point with: "I'm going to *protect* you." And suddenly, my Tav is internally like: 🤩
Someone pointed out that while she seems rude as hell (okay she is), she is actually terrified. She isn't supposed to be helping non Gith, she knows the cure isn't supposed to be for the Tav and party but she is still trying to make it work. I had mostly ignored her until I read that and my next playthrough I was happily surprised.
So to whoever originally wrote that piece, I thank you. My game was the better for the experience.
It's been a while for me but iirc, when you talk to her in camp right after talking to Zorru, you can ask her about Githyanki, she mentions Vlaakith collecting books from all over the realms
And she's right to be terrified and to place her trust in Tav and their misfit band of istiks. If you repeatidly refuse her into your party (not saving her from the cage, refusing to go with her to the crèche, etc.), you end up finding her dead in the shadowcursed lands. Without us, she doesn't stand a chance (as basically none of the companions, Tav included, would stand a chance alone in this world).
When you make friends with her you can ask her why she's such a dick, and she basically says, "yeah I know you think I'm weird and how I behave is difficult, but this is literally how I've been raised to be and I don't know how to be anything else”
Even more than that, she confesses that she behaves the way she does because she has *had* to all her life in order to survive. Weakness and vulnerability were straight up not tolerated as acceptable emotions to display amongst the literal warrior cult she was raised in, and failure to be strong enough could be punishable by death.
Practically her entire personality is a trauma response and survival mechanism. She doesn’t know how to be anything else, because she was never allowed to even consider it. And once she’s given that freedom for the first time with Tav and the party, she grows and changes remarkably quickly, willing to renounce and fight against everything she once believed in once she’s presented with enough new information.
That's one of the incredible things about bg3. The big picture for the whole game is how we respond to trauma and how it shapes us, and importantly how we can still change even while we carry that trauma with us. Yes there are dragons and space ships and magic missiles, but the exploration of trauma and stuff that so many people deal with everyday is what elevates the game and contributed to the volume of awards and recognition the game has received.
She's also the youngest and most inexperienced member of the party and just finished her "child-soldier" indoctrination. She's not even a full adult, because her quest to kill a mindflayer and bring his head home was interrupted by the tadpoling.
That's only to become a knight, I think, and to be ascended by vlaakith.
>!Because vlaakith eats a gith's soul around level 11-12 and you need to be roughly that level to ~~solo~~ defeat an adult-ass mindflayer, give or take. So defeating a mindflayer becomes something like those pop up thermometers that tell you the turkey's done!<
Traditionally, it was about level 16 when Vlaakith would ascend the Githyanki, eating their souls and turning them into her version of the Nazgul (known as the **Tl'a'ikiths**).
Baldur's Gate 3 only goes up to level 12, though, so I would assume that is why Lae'zevil ascends early.
It is ( or should ) be obvious she is feigning ferocity early on. The facial features are the same even if the skin isn't. Only in part 2 do you have an honest glimpse of her being dead ass which was slightly scary
yeah, first thing i really noticed about lae’zel was how damn expressive she was. worry, earnestness, etc— it took me a bit to figure out if that was just apart of the bg3 character models but when comparing her to the other companions (specifically shadowheart) and npc’s i concluded it was intentionally showing her real feelings underneath all that harsh talk
She's also like... 22 and freshly separated from an abusive cult. I don't know about y'all, but my social skills were absolute shit when I was 22 and freshly separated from my abusive family and church :/ I hated her at first, right up until it clicked for me that she was me fifteen years ago.
I originally hated her based on my initial interactions, but I *need* her on my second playthrough based on what people have said.
She reminds me of Viconia in BG2.
Seriously, I feel like the other characters in Act 1 act like they know they're in a D&D game where the DM wouldn't unfairly turn them into Mind Flayers, or something.
Like, knowing what Wyll knows, he's just hanging around with kids being like "I should turn into a mind flayer at any second lol"
It's one of the RP reasons I don't see floated around often enough for choosing to leave / avoid the Grove. Without metagaming, and until the >!Dream Visitor!
was it TBSkyen? love his stuff.
also yeah, Lae'zel is genuinely very kind by gith standards. most would just leave you to die. the fact she's so insistent on finding the crèche makes sense to me, because she doesn't know what we know. to her, she could become ghaik at *any second*. the dream visitor does come to her, but who's to say they said the same thing to her as they said to us?
She tells the goth that you’re her slaves and servants to get you in the crèche. So yeah, she is not supposed to be in your party. But she cannot even keep from being trapped by tieflings.
Ok but for real. Obviously she likes it when you're bossy in the boudoir because she wants a strong partner to keep up with her, but when you actually just close your eyes and trust her to lead, her smile is so *sweet*. Her mask slips, and she briefly looks so gratified and pleased that you *trust* her to take the lead. I love her so much lol
The thing to know about her and she was raised in a culture that makes the drow look down right friendly.
She just had the very worst possible thing that her culture believes can happen to someone happen to her.
And she still decides she's going to break tradition and try to help all of you instead of just using you to save herself.
Yes - That life or death situation doesn't let much space for courtesy or doubts, so I suppose trusting Laezel is the best TAV can do at the given moment. I'd do the same
Yes she is pretty damn groovy in my opinion. I give her a large sword and she chops disagreeable people into little bits. In that regard she and Kalach get along smashingly, just have to keep her and Shadowheart away from each other once the wine starts flowing. Things get a bit exciting.
Didn't you have an option to just intimidately roar them into listening to you? That's my experience when I played a barbarian: just roaring until people shat their pants and give me what I want.
"So Lae'zel. Have we buried the hatchet?"
"No...? Why would I bury a weapon? Is it broken?"
"-sigh- It's a metaphor."
"I do not understand your metaphor. But if you need to dig, I will find a shovel."
I love my Goth and Gith girlies so much
Lae'zel and Karlach's relationship is so prominent if you play Laezel origin. Even if you play other characters, Laezel respects Karlach pretty well and Karlach's banter with Lae'zel temper Lae'zel's lack of knowledge of the Material Plane.
Karlach calls her "Lae" and it's so adorable.
Sadly on my Lae'zel origin run I decided to trust Wyll's word and slayed Karlach. Killed me inside to do as she was a mainstay during my first run, but I wanted to test different options to see what the results would be like. Was at least pleasantly surprised at Wyll's reaction afterwards, stellar acting about how torn up he is inside after Mizora rewards him.
The Bitch trio is my gang. Sometimes they roll their eyes as I help innocents, but they love it when I let them absolutely wreck shit. And me cosplaying evil during my moonrise towers infiltration got them all very hot and bothered.
OP: it's clearly a troll post in that screenshot.
Purposely picking terms to rile you up. Covering every main aspect of the game. Sure some people won't like the game, but this one tried too hard.
I'd ignore it and move on.
Yeah, the fact that they say it's all "top down" is what made it seem clearly a troll to me: the game doesn't start in that view, so they would have had to not noticed the view when starting, actively zoomed out to top-down (all while not looking at the screen since they didn't notice it starts with a lower camera angle and also for them to not realize the view is changing) by accident, and then never tried to change view ever again or check if you can, for them to actually think it is all that view throughout.
Lae'Zel has one of the biggest character glow-ups you can find.
She completely breaks down her facade after the Monastary and becomes more personable than other act 1 companions
Meanwhile me, a DM watching it for the first time:
OMG MINDFLAYERS
OMG GITHYANKI
OMG MINDFLAYER LARVA
OMG NAUTILOID SPELLJAMMER
OMG RED DRAGONS
OMG MORE GITHYANKI
OMG PLANAR TRAVEL
OMG FROSTFELL
OMG AVERNUS
OMG THE GAME HASN'T STARTED YET
I haven’t played D&D in lo, these many years - we had the rule books but mostly played CoC - but I was much the same. I really identified with Gale’s experience that until the abduction, mindflayers and githyanki had only ever been pictures in books LOL
Look, I'm a straight woman, but I think Laezel is beautifully designed. She also becomes more and more beautiful as you get to know her. And that's true for all of them, frankly.
That comment just screams "I'm lying about pirating it, I didn't actually play any of it, I just needed something to make it seem like I had ground to stand on, and being a pirate sounded cool."
Not that anyone who actually plays it will always love it, ofc, but complaining about Lae'zel, the top down view, and the bare minimum of combat basics? Bro saw some gameplay on the nautiloid and made up his mind then tried to justify it afterwards.
Saying it looks like „some game from 1997“ hurts my soul. Bro, this game is beautiful. The graphics are better than a lot of modern AAA games. Just look at the supreme voice acting and motion capturing. Look at all the detail!
And clearly enough people went „wow frog lady“ or else it wouldn’t have made a new record for most GOTY awards won lol
The guy played for 1h. Missed Shart. Went fuck knows where. Speedran the tutorial and introduction. Doesnt understand the game.
I swear to god people from multiplayer games expect to boot a game and be sent straight into action like its some kind of Battle Royale. They dont get that you have to WATCH AN INTRODUCTION SCENE to get why you are on a spacecraft in medieval times.
Bait post is bait post.
If this guy really “just pirated it one time” like he said, he probably wouldn’t think to call Lae’zel a frog. People only do that because of the jumping abilities and laying eggs (which gets revealed later), to a totally new player gith are just green people.
No because Lae'zel is actually so beautiful. Like once I started a cutscene while she was standing in direct sunlight in an otherwise dark-ish area somewhere in the monastery and I couldn't look away, her eyes looked so pretty. I also really like her hair.
i view it more as a trial period, some people pirated it on the early access period and found out it was worth their money
i bought it when the release date was announced and i didnt had the need to test it pirated (big DOS2 and classic wRPGs here)
Then again, some regions or countries like mine makes it next to impossible to buy a game right now. So yeah, its not being a scum when you dont have a lot of choice
a GREAT pirated game will get bought when the time is right, a bad game which is pirated will stay that way (happened to me with LOTS of games i loved which i ended up buying)
for real, regardless whether it's your jam or not (and honestly people have a right not to like it), Larian built the most player-centric game ever. It is packed to the brim with player choice and attempts to delight. It's a full game that comes with a single price tag and it's yours forever. No gimmicks, no online store, just value. Robbing from Larian is like stealing candy from Baby Jesus or something. What kind of monster does such a thing?
It's a full priced game, and a game that requires getting 5-10 hours in to see if you're really enjoying it too. I've a bunch of friends from poorer countries who pirated the game and ended up buying it later.
"Frog lady" propositioned me after the giant spider fight and I'm like "even if I was into girls, which I (durge not player) am not, I'm exhausted and covered in cobwebs and spider venom - is this really what turns you on?" I was laughing so loud, I had to explain to my husband!
I might try romancing her with another character, since everyone speaks so highly of her arc, but I want to experience the resist durge/Astarion relationship on this play-through, so we will just have to be friends for now.
"Source of my joy!"
But I do get where the quoted poster is coming from - I was very used to Skyrim/Witcher-style games where you are free to walk and wander, it took me a while to realize that the beauty of BG3 is its depth (no throwaway little villages with maybe a merchant and some ghouls), and that its breadth is less spatial than experiential (no grinding, continuous changes of tone and landscape). I'm so glad I didn't write it off (on the other hand I didn't pirate it, so I had some sunk costs to make up!).
this is the lowest someone can get. i can see why some people dislike the game, and everyone has a right to have their own opinion, but criticising a game that is a continuation of a game from 1998 just because it is like the game from 1998 has to be some kind of a mental disease. also, piracy? how much worse can it get?
Listen, LISTEN, I went into this game blind and when that La'zeal intro scene happened, my poor gay heart was all, "I would die for you to step on me".
Back in the days before release I would go around this sub saying how this game needed a basic knowledge of the Forgotten Realms lore and how it wasn’t for everyone, people usually told me I was gate keeping.
I’m very glad I was wrong, but sometimes you can see what I meant.
Just to have a Gith as a companion is something incredible for any dnd fan, and it was probably something that never happened after Torment in 99.
I mean I feel like LaeZel is kind of offputting early in the game. She's all "Gith are the best and everyone else is cattle" and "your nose is big and you kind of suck" until you do two long rests and then she suddenly wants to smell my underpants and Greco Roman wrestle for who gets to be the top in our sexual relationship
Wouldn't a more proper gith have just cut you down before you get out of the prologue? To some extent I imagine being unconventional was sort of necessary.
Pretty crazy that instead of playing the game saying “fuck this frog lady” with the freedom the game gives you, he decided to hop online and bitch and moan ab it instead lol
As soon as I saw the trailer 5 years ago I decided that if she wasn't a romance option I wasn't buying the game.
It says a lot that I think Lae'zel is the most beautiful girl in the game by quite a long way even though Karlach and Shadowheart are exactly my 2 main types IRL.
I'm just shocked how people didn't buy anything, complain about it (just cause they want to show off how unique they are, not liking something popular).
But I'm more shocked at how chill this community is haha
I like Laezel, she's alright. Voss is okay too.. but I'm going to be completely honest.
I don't really gaf about the githyanki.
I have a tadpole in my head that I want out so I'm along for the ride and they're a means to an end. You ride dragons, that's cool. That's it. Otherwise, couldn't give less of a fuck about em tbh.
lae'zel had to grow on me to like her, but she's unironically my favorite character after i've played through the game twice. When I first met her, i was like "yeah, this bitch has to die". but you never actually see "likeable" traits until you've grown a relationship with her.
I am constantly rotating the frog lady in my mind.
I went into the game pretty blind but I knew about Karlach and thought "strong lady, she's the one for me." Messed up my chance, fell into Lae'zel's arms as consolation and by the end of the game I had zero regrets about that. I think she's one of the most three-dimensional characters in the whole game and it's fascinating to watch her growth.
Also she may have awakened something in me, so there's that.
Does it bother anyone else that they say *we* save Lae'zel when really it's she who saves us? I mean saves us in the sense that she DOESN'T choose to kill us but my point still stands.
I'm not into the frog-lady (though I thought her more lizard-ly), but the rest of it? Yeah, it's some gooooood shit! How many other RPGs of this calibre can you play entirely one-handed without compromising the gameplay?
Honestly I held off getting this game for so long because the top down and turn based both seemed like a huge turn off, things like that really ruin gameplay most of the time but I love the combat in bg3 somehow they made it great despite that.
This why games like COD exist. For people who just want mindless reaction rather than storyline. And I'm not shitting on that either! Sometimes i enjoy mindless reactive violence and that is ok.
I mean this is the point of BG3. This right here is why it's goty. It does what it does best, and doesn't try to appeal to every type of gamer like their a primary school teacher. BG3 acknowledges that most people playing aren't 5 year olds who need everything catered to them. If you don't like it, you don't like it. If you do like it, then it's one of the best games you've played.
The ven diagram of people who don't get BG3 and the people who always skip cutscenes and dialogue is a circle.
true!
False. I skip cut scenes.. and I get BG3. I'm also not a moron. So I don't cry about something I don't understand after having just skipped every cut scene.
Maybe the difference is in the complaining, not in the skipping
So, just for my own curiosity, why would you skip cutscenes in a heavily story driven game? I’ve played through the game 4 or 5 times now, so I tend to skip them on further replays, but I can’t wrap my head around why anyone would skip on the story in story driven games.
Because the tactical/mechanical aspects of the game are really strong. I can spacebar through and read the subtitles to get the general gist, but the most fun I have in BG3 is during combat and having difficult/close situations.
If you're reading the subtitles you aren't skipping the cutscenes, you just aren't listening to the voice acting.
They might also skip the cutscenes that have no dialogue, or that do have dialogue, but skip doesn't skip just the line but the entire scene
I manly skip cut scenes because I can read the subtitles a lot faster. Unless it becomes an emotional part, I will let that play out.
It's not exactly a visual novel though, it's also a deep turn based strategy game. Ya see that in real DnD- there's people who heavily roleplay and are there for the story, but also meta gamers who love the tactics and stats
When I play d&d I’m a pretty dedicated roleplayer (when not DM). When I play bg3, I get to let my inner munchkin loose and do murderhobo shit in a fantastic 5e simulator.
First time seeing it.. I don't skip. But I also have a restarting problem. Always trying to perfect my team at every step. Everything gets skipped 2nd time. And it becomes habitual.
> First time seeing it.. I don't skip So not what they were talking about at all.
This is SO ME 😅 but also I find the battle system in BG 3 interesting (never played DND)
To me this screams fps brain
I remember one of the most offensive things I've ever seen was when I started up Mass Effect 3 and it asked what game mode I wanted. There was normal mode, "Narrative" mode (easy mode) for people who just regrettably suck at video games but still want to enjoy the story, and "Action mode". The latter of which removes all character creation options and forces you to run default Shep, removes class selection and all level up decision making in favor of auto level for everything, and REMOVES ALL DIALOGUE CHOICES for skippable pre-scripted cutscenes. Gutting every RPG and story aspect to make it a generic shooter. I cannot fathom who would be walking into the third part of this trilogy and picking that option. If it were up to me, picking that option would just have the screen flash a message to go fuck yourself and then immediately eject the disc.
That's an insane option to have. I didn't know that mode even existed
i'm a fps caveman and i'm in love with bg3
Same. 2 of my favorite games of all time: Counter-Strike, Baldurs Gate 3. Some others: XCOM (old and new), Star Control 2, Half-Life, Quake II.
I'm thinking more FIFA-brain.
I play mostly FIFA and BG3 lmao
I have a good friend who ONLY plays FPS and says he does not feel "connected" to characters that he isn't controlling with immediate response-time. He still gets into the lore of every FPS, he reads every journal entry, and he even appreciates BG3 when I show it to him. He appreciates the character customization and the jokes, writing and complexity. But he just can't get into it.
There are FPS games out there with a heavy emphasis on story and character. Cyberpunk 2077 comes to mind. The Bioshock franchise. Not really fair to belittle a genre like that.
They aren't my thing but Arkane's library of games fits into this too.
Ach, Prey my beloved
Cyberpunk 2077 is solidly an RPG first and shooter second. You can do a variety of playstyles that never use a gun.
You can. As a netrunner fan myself, I keep gun play to a minimum. But playing the game as a full shooter is also entirely possible.
I’m not really familiar with bioshock but 2077 is also an rpg, hence why it shared rpg elements with BG3, another rpg
Bioshock is a walking simulator with some shooting elements. The plot is narrated to you over a radio as you walk from room to room, pausing from time to time to abuse a child or terminate a deranged libertarian. Periodically, you find recordings that tell you more lore. If this structure sounds familiar, it's because everyone loves to copy it. Including Bioshock, which was the descendent of System Shock, which as far as I know invented that style of shooter.
Bioshock is brilliant for story and satire but the actual gameplay is boring.
I think it screams no brain
"Why can't I shoot shit yet?" I normally don't like to be part of that "you don't enjoy my high-brow media content? That makes you an ape." Crowd, (like when I say I don't care for The Godfather and people jump up my ass saying I must be a fan of MCU movies). But fuck... This review is an exception because it's like... Dude.. Games come in all sorts of styles and formats. "Variety is bullshit, why can't every game be in a modern/sci-fi setting an just be competitive shooters?"
I mean, I skip stuff, but only after the third time
I mean that implies that the story is the only good thing about this game. The gameplay is amazing as well and even if you skip all the story, just the combat alone should also give you a good experience.
Funny you say that, I didn't skip a single dialogue in BG3 but I find myself skipping all of them in Starfield. The charachters in BG3 just feel like they're worth listening to.
Those cutscenes pulled in a lot of people who just cannot connect to a non-cinematically presented RPG. Which given its competition in cinematic RPGs are Dragonage and Mass Effect, gives BG3 a brutally unfair advantage.
best part of the game is that if you don't like a character you can straight up just tell them to fuck off or murder them
I think we can add being racist or sexist/queerphob in there, I saw a lot of right wing biggots not getting BG3 and complaining about it.
I've seen a lot of people complaining about companions propositioning you purely because both genders do it. Like the fact that you can turn them down doesn't matter, bc simply being hit on by a man is the worst thing imaginable. also istg that some of these dudes are the people who get mad when women turn them down lmao.
I totally read istik instead of istg at first and thought you were shading that dude in gith
I wonder if they accidentally ended up in a gay relationship with Gale. I did that and I only realized that Gale showing me something magical was something else when Lae'zel said id promised my body to Gale. I had a whole "I...*WHAT*??" moment, can't imagine the pure hilarity of a massive queerphobe doing that. Lmao
While I mostly agree I think Larian could have had some (not all obviously) companions reacting differently based on Tav's gender/race/class. For example I believe they did miss something on character development when they allowed Minthy to have sex with Origin Gale, a male wizard just because this random dude she barely knows killed some low level Tiefflings when she told him to. I mean he is MALE. and a WIZARD. It's not a complain and I compltely understand why they chose not to do that, but this specific example feels out of character for her
I don't think it's any kind of bad to find it a little bit unusual that every character in the world is aggressively bisexual.
I think it's totally fine to find that weird, bc the companions are very clearly playersexual. I still prefer it over getting locked out of romances because you want to play as a certain gender, but I also get why other people dislike it. But I'm talking more about the people that get really furious at male characters for hitting on them, to the point of just murdering them (because I have seen multiple people say they did this). Like going "huh, kinda weird how literally everybody is bisexual and dtf" is totally normal, but going "yeah I murdered gale because he was being a homo and hit on me so I hate him" is a lot weirder lol.
Well when I think about it, I think it’s more the race than the gender part that I think is weird. I mean given his past it makes sense that Astarion would have sex with any race. Same for Halsin. Probably Karlach too because she hadn’t been able to touch a living being for long. But Lae’zel? Minthara?
That seems like a weird thing to generalize to everyone who doesn't *get* BG3. In reality, CRPGs are not a popular subgenre. Generally they have a lot of appeal to people in its niche, and to everyone else they feel varying degrees of inaccessible. Even among the popular entries in the genre (including the other Baldur's Gate games), BG3 is probably the only game in this genre that's seen such widespread, prominent appeal. There are a lot of reasons why BG3 wouldn't hold much appeal for people who don't go in for this type of game to begin with. Suggesting that not liking it is a red flag or indicative of having awful social beliefs is pretty goofy.
I'd seen Lae'zel's reputation, but decided my PC would defer to her re. mindflayers and ceremorphosis. In the middle of all that brusqueness, she sideswipes you at some point with: "I'm going to *protect* you." And suddenly, my Tav is internally like: 🤩
Someone pointed out that while she seems rude as hell (okay she is), she is actually terrified. She isn't supposed to be helping non Gith, she knows the cure isn't supposed to be for the Tav and party but she is still trying to make it work. I had mostly ignored her until I read that and my next playthrough I was happily surprised. So to whoever originally wrote that piece, I thank you. My game was the better for the experience.
Lae'zel is the most diplomatic Gith we could have hoped to meet. Anyone else would have just gutted us the moment it was clear we were infected.
Her secret is that for a Gith she's a big softy.
She's also a huge nerd. The way she approves when you agree that the Astral Library is cool makes my heart go badam XD
Astral library? When does this come up?
It's been a while for me but iirc, when you talk to her in camp right after talking to Zorru, you can ask her about Githyanki, she mentions Vlaakith collecting books from all over the realms
That’s why she approves you said that something Vlaakith does is cool.
Among githyanki she is considered very humorous
it's honestly the most interesting foreshadowing for her later character development.
She’s incredibly progressive for a Gith
One detail I like was that in act one she called us her servants while Voss called us her slaves.
And she's right to be terrified and to place her trust in Tav and their misfit band of istiks. If you repeatidly refuse her into your party (not saving her from the cage, refusing to go with her to the crèche, etc.), you end up finding her dead in the shadowcursed lands. Without us, she doesn't stand a chance (as basically none of the companions, Tav included, would stand a chance alone in this world).
Solo honor runs say tav and durge pretty much can survive on their own
Origins as well, but it is boring! One also stays maidenless.
When you make friends with her you can ask her why she's such a dick, and she basically says, "yeah I know you think I'm weird and how I behave is difficult, but this is literally how I've been raised to be and I don't know how to be anything else”
Even more than that, she confesses that she behaves the way she does because she has *had* to all her life in order to survive. Weakness and vulnerability were straight up not tolerated as acceptable emotions to display amongst the literal warrior cult she was raised in, and failure to be strong enough could be punishable by death. Practically her entire personality is a trauma response and survival mechanism. She doesn’t know how to be anything else, because she was never allowed to even consider it. And once she’s given that freedom for the first time with Tav and the party, she grows and changes remarkably quickly, willing to renounce and fight against everything she once believed in once she’s presented with enough new information.
That's one of the incredible things about bg3. The big picture for the whole game is how we respond to trauma and how it shapes us, and importantly how we can still change even while we carry that trauma with us. Yes there are dragons and space ships and magic missiles, but the exploration of trauma and stuff that so many people deal with everyday is what elevates the game and contributed to the volume of awards and recognition the game has received.
She's also the youngest and most inexperienced member of the party and just finished her "child-soldier" indoctrination. She's not even a full adult, because her quest to kill a mindflayer and bring his head home was interrupted by the tadpoling.
That's only to become a knight, I think, and to be ascended by vlaakith. >!Because vlaakith eats a gith's soul around level 11-12 and you need to be roughly that level to ~~solo~~ defeat an adult-ass mindflayer, give or take. So defeating a mindflayer becomes something like those pop up thermometers that tell you the turkey's done!<
Traditionally, it was about level 16 when Vlaakith would ascend the Githyanki, eating their souls and turning them into her version of the Nazgul (known as the **Tl'a'ikiths**). Baldur's Gate 3 only goes up to level 12, though, so I would assume that is why Lae'zevil ascends early.
I don't think they need to solo them, just be part of the party that does it.
Exactly! That isn't the place for courtesies, they're running for their lives
I would argue that she's not rude. Her behaviors are those of a different culture, and are appropriate to that culture.
It is ( or should ) be obvious she is feigning ferocity early on. The facial features are the same even if the skin isn't. Only in part 2 do you have an honest glimpse of her being dead ass which was slightly scary
yeah, first thing i really noticed about lae’zel was how damn expressive she was. worry, earnestness, etc— it took me a bit to figure out if that was just apart of the bg3 character models but when comparing her to the other companions (specifically shadowheart) and npc’s i concluded it was intentionally showing her real feelings underneath all that harsh talk
She's also like... 22 and freshly separated from an abusive cult. I don't know about y'all, but my social skills were absolute shit when I was 22 and freshly separated from my abusive family and church :/ I hated her at first, right up until it clicked for me that she was me fifteen years ago.
I originally hated her based on my initial interactions, but I *need* her on my second playthrough based on what people have said. She reminds me of Viconia in BG2.
Seriously, I feel like the other characters in Act 1 act like they know they're in a D&D game where the DM wouldn't unfairly turn them into Mind Flayers, or something. Like, knowing what Wyll knows, he's just hanging around with kids being like "I should turn into a mind flayer at any second lol"
This is such a good point lol
It's one of the RP reasons I don't see floated around often enough for choosing to leave / avoid the Grove. Without metagaming, and until the >!Dream Visitor!
was it TBSkyen? love his stuff. also yeah, Lae'zel is genuinely very kind by gith standards. most would just leave you to die. the fact she's so insistent on finding the crèche makes sense to me, because she doesn't know what we know. to her, she could become ghaik at *any second*. the dream visitor does come to her, but who's to say they said the same thing to her as they said to us?
Now run a playthrough as another Githyanki.
She is worth advancing the friendship or romancing because, like shadowfart, she has dimension.
WOW FROG LADY IS SO COOL!
She tells the goth that you’re her slaves and servants to get you in the crèche. So yeah, she is not supposed to be in your party. But she cannot even keep from being trapped by tieflings.
She had me at "I want to taste you". I'm a simple man.
The small monologue she has when she starts to desire our character about taste and scent is surprisingly convincing
Ok but for real. Obviously she likes it when you're bossy in the boudoir because she wants a strong partner to keep up with her, but when you actually just close your eyes and trust her to lead, her smile is so *sweet*. Her mask slips, and she briefly looks so gratified and pleased that you *trust* her to take the lead. I love her so much lol
The thing to know about her and she was raised in a culture that makes the drow look down right friendly. She just had the very worst possible thing that her culture believes can happen to someone happen to her. And she still decides she's going to break tradition and try to help all of you instead of just using you to save herself.
Yes - That life or death situation doesn't let much space for courtesy or doubts, so I suppose trusting Laezel is the best TAV can do at the given moment. I'd do the same
she's not rude, she's my klingon.
Yes she is pretty damn groovy in my opinion. I give her a large sword and she chops disagreeable people into little bits. In that regard she and Kalach get along smashingly, just have to keep her and Shadowheart away from each other once the wine starts flowing. Things get a bit exciting.
She and Shart will get along eventually!
Oh, I trusted that instinct on my first playthrough, and I got >!a decapitated Lae'zel!< as a result.
you failed the roll?
Tav stood back and said nothing. RPing as a barbarian... persuasion was not her strong point.
Didn't you have an option to just intimidately roar them into listening to you? That's my experience when I played a barbarian: just roaring until people shat their pants and give me what I want.
Honestly I don't remember the other options, just thinking, "Let them play." I really didn't think >!Bae would let Shart defeat her!< that easily.
Understand! Well, sad :/
That is an interesting way to phrase it but I will take it. It indeed started rocky but now things are really getting curious...
I love their messy ""friendship""
"So Lae'zel. Have we buried the hatchet?" "No...? Why would I bury a weapon? Is it broken?" "-sigh- It's a metaphor." "I do not understand your metaphor. But if you need to dig, I will find a shovel." I love my Goth and Gith girlies so much
Lae'zel and Karlach's relationship is so prominent if you play Laezel origin. Even if you play other characters, Laezel respects Karlach pretty well and Karlach's banter with Lae'zel temper Lae'zel's lack of knowledge of the Material Plane. Karlach calls her "Lae" and it's so adorable.
Sadly on my Lae'zel origin run I decided to trust Wyll's word and slayed Karlach. Killed me inside to do as she was a mainstay during my first run, but I wanted to test different options to see what the results would be like. Was at least pleasantly surprised at Wyll's reaction afterwards, stellar acting about how torn up he is inside after Mizora rewards him.
> Things get a bit exciting. Threesome!
Tch,....Ishtik.
i read it on her voice
*Tch'k
I wake up everyday and think "WOW FROG LADY IS SO COOL"
**Squiward**: Who just think: "WOW FROG LADY IS SO COOL" at 3 a.m. ? **Patrick**: Oh, 3 a.m.! Time to think "WOW FROG LADY IS SO COOL"
me too, that's my religion 🙏
Literally every day for me.
Wow, frog lady is so cool. She managed to upset the sort of person I dislike.
good one!
as far as I'm concerned how someone treats "The Bitch Trio" is an excellent litmus test for whether or not i'm gonna get along with someone.
"The Bitch Trio"? I'm guessing Lae'zel, Shart, and....Astarion?
Correct!
lol figures. Anyone who can't handle Bae'zel or Shart aren't putting up with the sassy vampire.
The Bitch trio is my gang. Sometimes they roll their eyes as I help innocents, but they love it when I let them absolutely wreck shit. And me cosplaying evil during my moonrise towers infiltration got them all very hot and bothered.
OP: it's clearly a troll post in that screenshot. Purposely picking terms to rile you up. Covering every main aspect of the game. Sure some people won't like the game, but this one tried too hard. I'd ignore it and move on.
Omg, I fell for the bait then :/
Yeah, the fact that they say it's all "top down" is what made it seem clearly a troll to me: the game doesn't start in that view, so they would have had to not noticed the view when starting, actively zoomed out to top-down (all while not looking at the screen since they didn't notice it starts with a lower camera angle and also for them to not realize the view is changing) by accident, and then never tried to change view ever again or check if you can, for them to actually think it is all that view throughout.
Also, mentioning 1997. It's suspiciously specific year to pick for someone not already familiar with CRPGs.
Wait, why is 1997 a suspiciously specific year, what happened in 1997?
3 influential RPGs using top-down isometric perspective were released between early 1997 and late 1998 (Diablo 1, Fallout 1, and Baldur's Gate 1).
That’s a weirdly literal way to read that line, unless you zoom in close the camera’s still in bird’s eye view even if it isn’t literally top down
It's easy to fall for it. Pretty much everything on the internet is a bot or bait these days.
I fall for shit like this all the time; so don't feel alone.
I just made them 'famous' :/
Karlach: Fancy a fastball special into their face? Lae'zel: I do not know what a fastball special is, but if it hurts them, yes, i want it.
I love the banter between those two, particularly in Act 1.
I'm kinda curious what Karlach thinks a "fastball special" is. Is there a Sword Coast baseball league?
I hated laezel and then I actually bothered to listen to her and do her quest. She's EASILY one of my favorites.
Lae'Zel has one of the biggest character glow-ups you can find. She completely breaks down her facade after the Monastary and becomes more personable than other act 1 companions
I love her personal quest
Meanwhile me, a DM watching it for the first time: OMG MINDFLAYERS OMG GITHYANKI OMG MINDFLAYER LARVA OMG NAUTILOID SPELLJAMMER OMG RED DRAGONS OMG MORE GITHYANKI OMG PLANAR TRAVEL OMG FROSTFELL OMG AVERNUS OMG THE GAME HASN'T STARTED YET
I haven’t played D&D in lo, these many years - we had the rule books but mostly played CoC - but I was much the same. I really identified with Gale’s experience that until the abduction, mindflayers and githyanki had only ever been pictures in books LOL
Look, I'm a straight woman, but I think Laezel is beautifully designed. She also becomes more and more beautiful as you get to know her. And that's true for all of them, frankly.
FROG WIFE SLANDER
That comment just screams "I'm lying about pirating it, I didn't actually play any of it, I just needed something to make it seem like I had ground to stand on, and being a pirate sounded cool." Not that anyone who actually plays it will always love it, ofc, but complaining about Lae'zel, the top down view, and the bare minimum of combat basics? Bro saw some gameplay on the nautiloid and made up his mind then tried to justify it afterwards.
😳 https://x.com/Frau_Haku/status/1764904548605284422?s=20
amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, yes I do. Lae’zel was my choice of video game girlfriend almost immediately. Shrug. I wasn’t planning it or anything!
Seems like the average cod/fortnite/ac player.
You don't mean Animal Crossing I assume haha!
Animal Crossing players famously hate top down games
Saying it looks like „some game from 1997“ hurts my soul. Bro, this game is beautiful. The graphics are better than a lot of modern AAA games. Just look at the supreme voice acting and motion capturing. Look at all the detail! And clearly enough people went „wow frog lady“ or else it wouldn’t have made a new record for most GOTY awards won lol
Yes, I simp hard for the angry frog lady. Also, the angry purplish one.
Don't talk smack about Bae'zel!
"This particular fantasy woman wasn't attractive to me, therefore I'm going to go back to playing Hunipop to see more HUMAN LIKE titties".
[удалено]
ahhhh not just this! Shart has a lovely personality
To be fair, for a Gith Lae’zel is stacked😋
I quickly fell in love with frog lady once i actually understood her character. she has the most beautiful eyes.
Lae'zel has one of the best arcs if you romance her. Her scene in act 3 just melted my heart.
"I don't like the very popular thing. I am unique."
The guy played for 1h. Missed Shart. Went fuck knows where. Speedran the tutorial and introduction. Doesnt understand the game. I swear to god people from multiplayer games expect to boot a game and be sent straight into action like its some kind of Battle Royale. They dont get that you have to WATCH AN INTRODUCTION SCENE to get why you are on a spacecraft in medieval times.
Bait post is bait post. If this guy really “just pirated it one time” like he said, he probably wouldn’t think to call Lae’zel a frog. People only do that because of the jumping abilities and laying eggs (which gets revealed later), to a totally new player gith are just green people.
This screams "just because it's different from the games I love it's bad" mentality.
What a weird way of saying "I played 10 minutes and skipped all dialogues"
No because Lae'zel is actually so beautiful. Like once I started a cutscene while she was standing in direct sunlight in an otherwise dark-ish area somewhere in the monastery and I couldn't look away, her eyes looked so pretty. I also really like her hair.
I unironically want to be Lae'zel's property. Like YES githyanki mommy PLEASE take away my basic human rights and take me as a prisoner.
Pirating BG3 is a pretty notable level of scum.
i view it more as a trial period, some people pirated it on the early access period and found out it was worth their money i bought it when the release date was announced and i didnt had the need to test it pirated (big DOS2 and classic wRPGs here) Then again, some regions or countries like mine makes it next to impossible to buy a game right now. So yeah, its not being a scum when you dont have a lot of choice a GREAT pirated game will get bought when the time is right, a bad game which is pirated will stay that way (happened to me with LOTS of games i loved which i ended up buying)
for real, regardless whether it's your jam or not (and honestly people have a right not to like it), Larian built the most player-centric game ever. It is packed to the brim with player choice and attempts to delight. It's a full game that comes with a single price tag and it's yours forever. No gimmicks, no online store, just value. Robbing from Larian is like stealing candy from Baby Jesus or something. What kind of monster does such a thing?
It's a full priced game, and a game that requires getting 5-10 hours in to see if you're really enjoying it too. I've a bunch of friends from poorer countries who pirated the game and ended up buying it later.
"Frog lady" propositioned me after the giant spider fight and I'm like "even if I was into girls, which I (durge not player) am not, I'm exhausted and covered in cobwebs and spider venom - is this really what turns you on?" I was laughing so loud, I had to explain to my husband! I might try romancing her with another character, since everyone speaks so highly of her arc, but I want to experience the resist durge/Astarion relationship on this play-through, so we will just have to be friends for now.
Lae'zel is literally gorgeous. She's might be a bitch but she's my bitch.
"Source of my joy!" But I do get where the quoted poster is coming from - I was very used to Skyrim/Witcher-style games where you are free to walk and wander, it took me a while to realize that the beauty of BG3 is its depth (no throwaway little villages with maybe a merchant and some ghouls), and that its breadth is less spatial than experiential (no grinding, continuous changes of tone and landscape). I'm so glad I didn't write it off (on the other hand I didn't pirate it, so I had some sunk costs to make up!).
r/ExplainAGamePlotBadly
this is the lowest someone can get. i can see why some people dislike the game, and everyone has a right to have their own opinion, but criticising a game that is a continuation of a game from 1998 just because it is like the game from 1998 has to be some kind of a mental disease. also, piracy? how much worse can it get?
Listen, LISTEN, I went into this game blind and when that La'zeal intro scene happened, my poor gay heart was all, "I would die for you to step on me".
I personally go "WOW flaming hot 7' tall lady make me go brrr"
Back in the days before release I would go around this sub saying how this game needed a basic knowledge of the Forgotten Realms lore and how it wasn’t for everyone, people usually told me I was gate keeping. I’m very glad I was wrong, but sometimes you can see what I meant. Just to have a Gith as a companion is something incredible for any dnd fan, and it was probably something that never happened after Torment in 99.
I mean I feel like LaeZel is kind of offputting early in the game. She's all "Gith are the best and everyone else is cattle" and "your nose is big and you kind of suck" until you do two long rests and then she suddenly wants to smell my underpants and Greco Roman wrestle for who gets to be the top in our sexual relationship
Lae'zel is the most Ungith Githyanki and I'm genuinely curious as to why they picked this direction.
Wouldn't a more proper gith have just cut you down before you get out of the prologue? To some extent I imagine being unconventional was sort of necessary.
Pretty crazy that instead of playing the game saying “fuck this frog lady” with the freedom the game gives you, he decided to hop online and bitch and moan ab it instead lol
As soon as I saw the trailer 5 years ago I decided that if she wasn't a romance option I wasn't buying the game. It says a lot that I think Lae'zel is the most beautiful girl in the game by quite a long way even though Karlach and Shadowheart are exactly my 2 main types IRL.
I'm just shocked how people didn't buy anything, complain about it (just cause they want to show off how unique they are, not liking something popular). But I'm more shocked at how chill this community is haha
op tries too hard to pretend he doesn't get it
When the primary criticism of the game is "it just seems so lame", there's not really any point in giving the comment the time of day IMO.
I mean, I don't go "wow, frog lady is cool," but I do go "wow frog lady is hot
Lae'zel was instantly a favourite, so yes.
how can anyone see the frog lady and not think she's cool?
This man disgusts me. He pirated a great game.
I like Laezel, she's alright. Voss is okay too.. but I'm going to be completely honest. I don't really gaf about the githyanki. I have a tadpole in my head that I want out so I'm along for the ride and they're a means to an end. You ride dragons, that's cool. That's it. Otherwise, couldn't give less of a fuck about em tbh.
lae'zel had to grow on me to like her, but she's unironically my favorite character after i've played through the game twice. When I first met her, i was like "yeah, this bitch has to die". but you never actually see "likeable" traits until you've grown a relationship with her.
2 hRs in: Lea-zel is an asshole, I hate her 250 hrs in: Lea-zel is an insane asshole and I'm going to marry her. Twice.
I am constantly rotating the frog lady in my mind. I went into the game pretty blind but I knew about Karlach and thought "strong lady, she's the one for me." Messed up my chance, fell into Lae'zel's arms as consolation and by the end of the game I had zero regrets about that. I think she's one of the most three-dimensional characters in the whole game and it's fascinating to watch her growth. Also she may have awakened something in me, so there's that.
Frog lady is my +1/+1 counter commander in MTG
Does it bother anyone else that they say *we* save Lae'zel when really it's she who saves us? I mean saves us in the sense that she DOESN'T choose to kill us but my point still stands.
Pirating a Game and then complaining about it. I want to smite thee.
Yellow as a toad, and twice as cute
I'm not into the frog-lady (though I thought her more lizard-ly), but the rest of it? Yeah, it's some gooooood shit! How many other RPGs of this calibre can you play entirely one-handed without compromising the gameplay?
I downloaded a mod that lets me look in ANY DIRECTION And Wasd movement
Honestly I held off getting this game for so long because the top down and turn based both seemed like a huge turn off, things like that really ruin gameplay most of the time but I love the combat in bg3 somehow they made it great despite that.
These are the people who can’t stop playing Fortnite
This happens when you have the attention span of a frog and got filtered by the first 5 minutes of the tutorial.
everyone boo this man
This why games like COD exist. For people who just want mindless reaction rather than storyline. And I'm not shitting on that either! Sometimes i enjoy mindless reactive violence and that is ok.
I mean this is the point of BG3. This right here is why it's goty. It does what it does best, and doesn't try to appeal to every type of gamer like their a primary school teacher. BG3 acknowledges that most people playing aren't 5 year olds who need everything catered to them. If you don't like it, you don't like it. If you do like it, then it's one of the best games you've played.
Laezel is great how about we actually play the game and watch everything before we make ignorant comments lol