00:02.70 Dave Hello everybody my name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. my guest today for this. Ah. 00:20.90 Dave if you hear a little bit of funk in my voice today. It's because I'm still coming down from that. Ah that week after Pax East here so this episode is unofficially sponsored by TheraFlu I'm ready to get this going. This is my Michael Jordan 1997 flu game. Episode of the podcast. We gotta make it happen because we got good guests today in a good game. So the guests are friends of the show and together with my dog Rukey here. We make up the best traveling party in the forgotten realms. First up we have a friend of the show Jim Rodeman and Jim welcome back. 00:56.49 Jim Hey thanks for having me. 00:59.55 Dave And we're also joined by another friend of the show. We're all friends of the show Chris rettig Chris talk good to talk with you again. Man ah long time listeners. The show may recognize the 2 voices here Jim was on past episodes of the show about hollow night about hades. 01:03.79 Chris I Yeah good to be here. 01:16.93 Dave We did a tear ranking of the Elden ring bosses and we also talked about how super smash brothers introduced us to different games and characters and Chris was on the vampire survivors episode in which we famously said. Ah, we don't think the game will change that much and that was like two years ago and the game is unrecognizable now I haven't. I haven't followed up with it. But I see screenshots from time to time and I'm like what the fuck is happening in there. So ah, good to have yeah. 01:38.90 Chris Um, is it really I haven't even finished up into it. 01:47.32 Chris Um, and I guess that's the next game. Ah. 01:50.48 Dave Good to have both of you back Today. We're going to talk about Baldur's Gate 3 which is an rpg developed and published by Larry and Studios For Pc Ps 5 and Xbox series in 2023 and this is a big long time in the making for us. We yeah, we had another guest that was going to join us but he fell down a pit and died instantly. So yeah, not here today? No I can't can't spare one I need that for myself later on so but exactly. 02:16.37 Jim The Underdarks a bitch. Yeah. 02:17.51 Chris I don't have any scrolls of revivify sorry I've used them all right I used it all on Dave because he dies all fucking time. 02:29.15 Dave Ah, past episodes on the show about Baldur's Gate. Ah I did Baldur's Gate 1 in episode 79 that was with Phil from deleted saves and I did Baldur's Gate 2 that was in episode 82 that was with Brian from pixelated playgrounds if you want to go back and listen to. Experience of the first 2 Baldur's Gate games that I played if this is your first time listening to the show. Thank you for stopping by and this is how spoilers work on this show. We're going to go quite a while in this episode with no spoilers. And then there will be a clearly defined place where we're going to say hey after this music break spoilers start so you can get out if you don't want to be spoiled on Baldur's Gate 3 but until then we will save story spoilers for that section. You can also look down in the show notes there will be a timestamp for when the spoilers begin. So. Let's get started. What is Baldur's Gate 3? We have prepared some elevator pitches here. I say Baldur's Gate 3 is a dungeons and dragons simulator for real where you live with the consequences of the chaos you create. What would you guys say. 03:36.78 Jim Yeah, so mine is very close. I say play Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition translated into video game format without all the dice rolls, math or spreadsheets. 03:49.81 Dave Plenty of dice rolls. But ah only the only real sickos need the spreadsheets in this game. 03:55.98 Jim Mm. Chris Yeah so I guess this is a game where if you install it then you ah will. Basically sign away the next couple months of your life and ah your sanity and your thoughts because it will just pretty much take everything over I know doesn't describe the game at all. But um, that's what happens. 05:00.14 Dave It is what happened and kind of along those lines. We can talk about how long the playthroughs take in Baldur's gate 3. My playthrough I played on pc took me one hundred and three hours and that is one playthrough and. Yeah, there. There were certain points especially like the first couple weeks when it came out when I was playing this like for six eight hours a day because it's just hard to stop. Ah but I feel like I'm going to be topped by Jim here. So Jim tells us how long you've played this. 05:32.79 Jim So this is a horrifying number and it has to be larger than this. So I've played this game since it came out for a combined total of four hundred and eighty three hours on steam. However, 05:44.10 Chris Damn. 05:47.48 Jim I am currently playing a co-op playthrough where we are just running the 2 of us on honor mode with a friend on his PS 5 and we have had to restart that twice due to Tpk. So um, it has to be above 500 05:53.92 Dave Okay. 06:03.55 Dave Yeah, Jesus yeah perfect Chris how about you. 06:05.21 Jim I Don't know how much. Yeah, it's incredible. 06:08.12 Chris That's wild. Yeah on steam I'm showing two hundred and eleven hours. I know some of that's probably AFK Hours as well. But yeah I'd I say probably 200 hours easy yeah 06:18.65 Dave Yeah, ah beefy beefy game this is and like my playthrough the one where it's like I played through it 1 time start to finish I did not restart and reroll a new character. It just took me one hundred and three hours. I was pretty thorough with it. Doing side quests and like exploring as much of the map as I could. But yeah I mean I feel like 100 hours is basically guaranteed here. So let us move into talking about our histories with the game with the Baldur's Gate series if we played it before. Ah, maybe d and d because I know some of us have d and d experience here. So what brought us to Baldur's gate 3 in the first place. So Chris I'll kick this to you first. 07:06.77 Chris Ah, yeah, you're saying yeah kind of knowing d and d before I didn't really I don't have any d and d experience really? um, all very little. Um, so jumping into this game was ah I think I mentioned it earlier like ah, kind of felt like this first run through was the tutorial. 07:24.40 Dave Ah, ah. 07:24.68 Chris Like I, there's so much still learning things about the game mechanics and things like that even up until the last like sequence of events. Um, so yeah, I'd say you don't have to know d and d to get into it. I think it's pretty There's a lot of intuitive things. But I think I'm going into a second run. Knowing the game I'll definitely be able to get through it not only quicker just more efficiently and like know what's going on. So yeah. 07:47.72 Dave Right? What was it that made you want to play this in the first place if it wasn't that d and d background. 07:58.68 Chris I Just had some other gaming friends that were getting really excited about it and they were just like yeah just buy just bias by it. So we're probably going to play it for you know forever. So I did and I have no regrets. It was amazing. Yeah. 08:02.29 Dave Fifth. 08:09.27 Dave Nice ah props to you? Yeah props to you for actually buying the games that your friends plead you to buy. Aaron's been pleading for me to buy several games now for a while. I'm just like yeah yeah, yeah, maybe sometime. Oh yeah, definitely sometime I'll do it. Okay. Jim, how about you? Ah d and d history and then what brought you to Baldur's Gate 3. 08:32.23 Jim Yeah, so coming at it from a little bit of a different angle. But in all honesty there are some similarities so before this I had no idea who Larry and studios like were in the biz. No idea about their previous ventures. Um. I knew that Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 existed because those are famous even among just straight up dungeons and dragons players. Um I think they are considered canon within wizards of the coast. Um, so I knew those existed and never played them. 08:54.29 Dave Yeah. 09:06.33 Jim I came to this game from the d and d d angle. I started playing d and d when I was a young teenager. I have twenty plus years experience um just a quick shout out. Ah one week ago I wrapped up a 4 year campaign where I was a dungeon master. Um, it was very. 09:20.21 Chris Cool. Wow. 09:20.32 Dave Um, who. 09:25.30 Jim D and d end and we'll get into maybe what is d and d later because the PCs were at the finish line. They had 3 rooms to go before the final boss and a wish spell went horribly wrong and they tpk that was the end of the campaign. 09:42.18 Dave Nice. Ah. 09:42.90 Jim 4 years down the drain you started during covid so ah I too like you Chris my players were actually talking about the game when it came out and there was enough interest in there generated for me that um it was a day one purchase and from. 09:45.52 Chris Ah, no. 10:02.00 Jim The penis simulator on I was just head over Heels in love. 10:06.69 Dave There we go um for me personally the only time I've ever played d and d was over at Jim's house like 1 time like ten years ago and we did one session where we created our characters and played for like a half hour before everyone had to go home and then I never played again. I moved overseas like a week later so ah so I don't have d and d experience all of my d and d experience comes from video games I've played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 but those are old versions of d and d so I'm not sure that I actually have experience with fifth edition like this game is. 10:26.69 Jim Um, rock out. 10:43.62 Dave Ah, but what I did have was I played both of the divinity original sin games which Larry and also made and those kind of put them on the map in a big They've been around for a long time but those really put them on the map and I think the quality of those games helped them get the license for Baldur's Gate to make this game. So I was like I wasn't excited about Baldur's Gate 3 in particular like I know a lot of people lost their mind when it got announced but I was excited for the next Larian Rpg because Divinity original sin 1 and 2 are 2 of the best rpgs I've ever played. So. The Larry and pedigree was what brought me to this game in particular and. 11:30.21 Chris Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Did you play Baldur's Gate and went into ah like after you heard about 3 coming out sort of as in preparation got you? Okay, oh wow those are super old games. 11:36.98 Dave Yeah, yeah, I played them both last year like back to back? Yeah I played them both on the switch and luckily they have an easy mode so you can just kind of like I don't know walk your way through the game. Um, so That's what I did but I did enjoy the story and the adventure in those. Ah but I did play them to kind of get ready for it and we'll talk a little bit later about the connections between them. Um, but to get into some opening thoughts here before we dive into the game itself Baldur's Gate 3. 12:00.90 Chris Nice. 12:13.40 Dave It was my game of the year for 2023 in that podcast I did and I said a lot of things that I forget about now so I can't reference what I said in that episode. But what I'll say now is that not only is this the best Baldur's Gate game. Not only is this the best crpg. 12:32.89 Dave That I've ever played. It's one of my favorite genres. Ah but this is like straight up one of the best games I think that's ever been made and it is the more I think about the amount of work that went into this game on Larian's part and on the part of all the actors and everybody like that. Ah, it's kind of a miracle that this happened and I think that some people kind of took this game's quality the wrong way when it first released and they started to freak out. They were like what if people expect every rpg to be like this because this is this yeah it. 13:07.36 Chris Yeah I remember that controversy that was ridiculous. 13:11.80 Dave This seems like ah, a real 1 of 1 type of thing. It was like this beautiful thing that came together in an incredible game. One of the best games I've ever played and now people have started to calm down a little bit and realize that it is kind of like a. Like a shooting star or something like that. So I don't like this episode. It's probably going to be a long one. I don't have a lot of straight up criticisms of this game. I don't. I don't think there's anything this game does that it's not Excellent. It's really like a remarkable achievement. 13:48.30 Jim Yeah, and shouldn't we I mean if everyone's like oh not, every game can be like that shouldn't you at least want your developers to to shoot for the moon I mean you know different games bring different things at the table if I want a shooter I'm not going to play Baldur's Gate 3 but. Shouldn't you want to create the best game for your clientele? 14:10.44 Dave I think that Larry and in particular are in a kind of unique situation to make this and I think the expectation to make the shooter version of Baldur's Gate 3 is not realistic for most people. Ah. They had the early access period where they put it out. They made a bunch of money throughout early access. Probably they're able to work through bugs and things like that in real time and get feedback and shape things the way they wanted them to be um, so like I think everyone who does make a game. Unless it's like a you know shameless cash grab thing. But I think like most studios that people that are making decisions do want to make the best thing they can make and the people that are working on the games. Definitely want to make the best thing that they can but this is. Seems like such a singular achievement in not only game design but pulling off all of the ideas that they had . It's ridiculously good. 15:13.64 Chris The fun thing about it too is like it. It came out at a time I recall last year and it's the sort of discussion around this that has been going on for a while but it's like the whole discussion of like oh like ea being like super you know scummy about how they monetize. 15:15.51 Jim It's stunning. 15:31.89 Dave Um, yeah. 15:32.69 Chris Um, all these are different like gotcha games. Um I I play wow on on and off um which is I've been playing wow classic with with some of my old friends that I used to play wow with all the time and they're the ones who got me into this but into both's gate and so you know that's another game where they have like microtransactions and all this stuff. So there's. Always been this There's been this conversation going on for a long time about like oh what What are? what are good ethical monetization practices or like ah things like that from gaming studios and then you have this masterpiece come out that is just a 1 time payment. no no bs no anything like that and I think that's it was just like. 16:09.80 Dave Yeah. 16:10.41 Chris Didn't even say anything about it like Larry and no one and the Larian team said like hey we're going to do this thing because we're devout and we're you know we're righteous and good people. They're just like hey here's a game by the way like you can buy it and play it like. 16:22.80 Dave Yeah, and it's only kind of after the fact now like ah the studio head did a talk at Gdc and kind of talked about just like this is this is the way like. To the best of your ability like the way to get people to buy your game and you know break sales records and things like that is to just make a really fucking good game and people will respond to that and you're right like Baldur’s gate three came out and it was kind of like a like an arrow. Piercing through all of these different like discourses about games about how people are chasing games as a service money people are chasing like the microtransaction money. Um and then on the other hand like people are. Saying like these single player games. They don't sell and turn base combat is dead and all of these other discourses in baldur’s gate just like smashed through all of them because it's just really fucking. Good. 17:21.30 Jim It also stood out in a field of standouts like 2023 was no slouch for bad gay like there you know it right? It was hot on the heels of zelda too like I remember. 17:27.16 Dave Oh no, no it will beat Zelda If for all the awards. 17:38.47 Jim Finishing like racing to finish tears of the kingdom because it's like the moment I start Baldur's gate 3 I'm never coming back to this. 17:43.61 Dave Yeah I have not gone back to tears of the kingdom by the way I put it down. Ah not that I don't like the game but yeah, like Baldur's Gate came out and I was like oh well I'll get back to tears of the kingdom sometime I still haven't gone back a one ah hundred and three hours of Baldur's Gate three later. So. 17:57.15 Jim Um, yeah. 18:01.16 Dave Um, let us ah take a little music break now before we get too deep in the weeds and let's come back. Let's talk about what the story set up for Baldur's Gate 3 is music all right? So first things first um I take it that. 18:19.87 Dave Neither of you played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 right. 18:22.24 Jim No. 18:25.87 Chris I why had actually had Baldur's Gate ah a disc I remember the cover of an everything from when I was really little um called bothers gate dark alliance I don't know if that are sorry Baldur's Gate to dark alliance I think it was like a maybe an expansion or the something like that for. 18:32.18 Dave Um, okay. 18:38.55 Dave Oh I think dark alliance is like they're they're like action rpgs. 18:41.98 Chris Is the second one. Okay got you anyway I remember really enjoying walking around in that game but not having a clue what to do because I was like five or six years old or whatever right? It was a really , really long time ago. So that's my only. 18:52.36 Dave Right? Oh yeah, yeah. 19:00.67 Chris Just recall that so much as being like such a good time walking around talking to people and like learning how to read essentially on that game. 19:06.45 Dave Right? So um, the reason I ask is because you know whenever we have a sequel or a game in a series. The question is always do I need to play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 to understand 3 and ah the answer is pretty definitively. No, you don't, this is a separate story. It is set after the events of Baldur's gate 2 but it's a while. So like the events of Baldur's Gate 2 are referenced sometimes in the story and you may meet characters that were around but you don't need to have played that game to understand. So. That's ah, that's when Baldur's Gate 3 starts out you create a character and then you create what's called a spectral guardian character and you'll learn all about what that spectral guardian is so real quick. Let's ah, let's talk about some characters that we made um I made a wood elf druid for my 1 playthrough his name was Rolando. And I picked the druid because the druid sounded fun. I wanted to transform into bears and stuff like that. So that was my pick. 20:12.24 Jim Ah I'll quickly try and run through all the 4 characters I've made real fast. My first one was a necromancer wizard named Levin I. I chose him and played. 20:15.44 Chris Yeah. 20:26.72 Jim The evil way but he was not a dark urge he was just evil. Um, and my goal with a wizard was to see all the spells. The game had to offer because I knew that there was going to be a lot of them and I just wanted to see what all of them did um, kind of right away. So. 20:26.74 Dave Okay. 20:39.40 Dave Yeah. 20:44.23 Jim Ah, my first character was Levin my second was um, a dark urge halfling bard. But I played it resisting the urge as the good way. Um, then my third runthrough I played as Lae’zel and that was my honor mode run. 20:58.44 Dave Okay. 21:01.61 Jim And then currently I am a dwergar and my build is Thor. I'm just throwing a hammer and casting lightning spells. 21:09.60 Dave Hell yeah, okay. 21:10.53 Chris Nice, yeah, ah I guess my one 1 my one playthrough I went with a drow ah warlock um not knowing anything going into the game I just thought oh I like warlocks and other games like dark magic things like that and I think. 21:24.86 Dave Right. 21:28.44 Chris Warlock is a very different thing in in fatherersate or in ah the forgotten realms and it is to other games which ended up being at first being like oh kind of disappointed but ended up being really really fun. Ah basically being an eldritch blast machine gun. 21:43.95 Dave Right? Exactly? Um, Jim real quick. Can you explain what? The dark urge is because when you create a character for people who haven't played you get to select your class and then you get to select like a backstory and I think. 21:46.80 Chris Yeah. 22:00.32 Dave And don't remember if it's actually a class or if it's one of the backstories but 1 of them is a very special thing called the dark urge that will kind of dominate your playthrough. So let's ah, let's get a quick thing about what that actually is. 22:16.14 Jim Yeah, So ah, you know you can pick your character. Um, and you can do a number of different things. There are pre-made characters for you. Um, or you could just make your own. The dark urge is a. Background that allows you to completely make your own character What they look like what class they are however um in this dark dark Urge playthrough. Um, you have a mysterious backstory that we can get into later and there are choices that. 22:49.45 Jim Urges I Guess I should say that only pop up during your conversations when you are playing as the dark urge. The other choices are oftentimes still there. But then there are these special ones that are only for your playthrough and they can be pretty. Pretty game Altering. It's very cool. 23:09.73 Dave Yeah, ah, they're they're pretty fucked up I started a dark urge playthrough and played about 5 hours of it and I already got a taste of like the like we said the the urges that your character gets and if you play into them and let them play out. So really. Messed up stuff happens to characters and things around the world. So that seems like a um like I don't know if it has like a real background in d and d ah, or if it's like new for this game but it's definitely something. Um, interesting. Maybe if you played the game a full time and then you're like I want to have a playthrough that goes completely differently than like the dark urge will probably give you that. Yeah. 23:53.83 Jim That's it. Oh you'll have a good time. It connects to things later on and you could play it one of two ways like I mean three ways. Actually you could be resisting which is like you're trying to do the right thing. 23:53.96 Chris That is definitely my next step. Yeah dark Urge Monk. Yeah. 24:13.40 Jim You can play into the urges and be evil or you could play into the urges and be good and just be like someone who blacks out and wakes up and is like what if I done. 24:23.23 Dave Okay, gotcha all right? So ah, you create your character and in the ah opening cut scene of the game and the opening cutscene is like beautiful cgi cutscene Beautiful in a way you wake up Aboard an illithid. 24:23.40 Chris Ah. 24:38.20 Dave Vessel illithids are also known as mind flayers for people who are unfamiliar; they are like humanoids with octopus tentacle heads and they can mind control people and stuff. Um, and ah you wake up aboard one of their vessels. You've been captured and yeah, so. The opening cutscene shows the mind flayer opening up a little tank in the room pulling out this larval parasite they called tadpoles in the game and they put this into your character's eye. Actually you see it happening to another character first and then they come over and do it to your character. Ah, so that's how the game opens in that very metal way. Um, but that mind flayer ship is attacked and the prisoners are kind of released so on the ship you meet a couple of other characters that are main. Named party member characters for the game shadowheart who's a cleric and Lae’zel who's a githyanki warrior both aboard the ship. They also have the parasites and yada yada yada you fight your way off the ship. Ah, but while you're fighting your way in the ship dragons attack the ship. Ah, with these gith yankee dragon riders. It's ah it's a whole fucking thing. The ship crashes and you have to jump off of it and you're free falling into the ground right before you go splat. A mysterious force saves you and kind of suspends you in midair to save your life. 26:10.30 Dave Now that opening section when you're aboard, the ship is the tutorial for the game and it lasts about I don't know half hour or something like that you meet a couple of characters you do a combat tutorial but all the while like you're just. You're right in the middle of this like this action like you're on this ship, you've been kidnapped. You don't know what they want from you. They put this fucking thing in your eye and then dragons attack the ship and it crashes and it's a hell of a way to ah to start this adventure off. 26:44.18 Jim Ah, you forgot that you go through hell for like a huge portion of that. What? Ah what an opener I mean to Baldur's Gate from just strictly from D and D in the forgotten realms perspective you have already. 26:45.23 Dave You do? yeah you snap between dimensions during that part. Yeah. 27:01.66 Jim Lumped in the forgotten realms in the city of Baldur's Gate. The astral sea with the nautiloid and the gith Yankee Dragon Warriors and then all of a sudden you are careening through Avernus and there's all these demons and imps everywhere Incredible opening. 27:14.00 Dave Yeah, yeah. 27:19.44 Chris Yeah, it just throws you right into it and doesn't really give you any um, any you know it doesn't really say what to do just you're just in this room and it's like here you go have fun like figure it figure it out. 27:28.15 Dave Yeah, yeah, like so I don't have the familiarity with like I know what a mind flayer is but that's that's about it. So as we're snapping between these realms and dragons are attacking I'm like I don't know what is going on but the. The cut scene is like is really really Well-m made So It's super entertaining and cinematic and all that and then yeah, you ah you go down into this beach area around where the ship crashes and that's where you're going to meet most of the other ah members of your party in the game So shadow heart. 27:52.14 Chris For sure. 28:06.53 Dave And Lael we're on the ship with you but you can also meet and I don't think you have to meet all of these I don't even think you have to meet any of them if you don't go talk to him but there's Gail who's a human mag there's will who's who is a human warlock There's astarion who is a human vampire. Rogue type character and there's Karlach who is a ah tiefling barbarian um, all of them also have the parasites. What do you know? So ah, the first kind of kick in the pants to start. The adventure is you've got these parasites in your brain. They're going to turn you into mind flayers. If. Left untreated. So the first in the big quest for a lot of the game is to find somebody or something that can get these things out of your head and you're just kind of pushed off to explore and go find a way. 29:01.26 Chris Yeah, and there's no there's no sort of direction. I mean you can look at your map and see where you can go physically but in terms of like what to do to cure this thing like your characters are just constantly talking like oh we got to get to cure this thing got to get this thing out of my head. Let's cure this thing everyone you run into. It's like there's a dialogue option that says like do you anything about a healer. Can you find a healer like we need to get this thing out of our head? You're just like I have no idea even what I should be looking for so like it really I felt like at first was kind of frustrating but I feel like I've eventually you kind of felt like ah it's just encouraging you I think to just talk to really anyone. 29:22.46 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 29:36.68 Dave Yeah, yeah, and like I think you're, you're built in. You have a couple of directions if you have these people in your party and if you talk to them. Ah, but laisell is ah her people the gith Yankee are like sworn enemies of the mind flayers. 29:37.94 Chris And everything that you can, but. 29:56.30 Dave So she's like okay well if we fight these things all the time. So I know some people that might be able to help so that's like 1 direction you get pushed in. But yeah, you're off at the beginning of the game just literally asking everybody like hey do you know a doctor like is there a doctor on this airplane. 30:11.14 Chris Yeah. 30:13.75 Jim And some of them Some of those healers are just straight up Crackpots I mean just can't do anything for you. 30:19.52 Dave Oh yeah, yeah, we'll talk about 1 in the spoiler section that ended ah in a very hilarious way. So those are your party members and um I want to camp out a little bit about the party members here so again shadow heart La Zell Gail will Asterian and carlack are the main party members. There are lots of others that you can recruit throughout the game depending on which faction you side with depending on your alignment depending on what side quests you do ah but those are the main ones. So um. 30:55.95 Dave I think this is one of the big strengths of Baldur's Gate 3 is that and this is something that like divinity original sin one had like pretty forgettable characters divinity original sin two really stepped up the game there then Baldur's Gate 3 these side characters are like. Pretty wonderful across the board like I didn't use all of them for the whole game and there were a couple that just sat the bench for most of the game but they all have really interesting backstories. The voice acting for all of them is like fucking incredible and they're ah like. Contributions into your party makeup in battle is also really interesting like switching out people for different situations. So I'll talk a little bit more about each of these side characters, their backgrounds and stuff like that and then let's camp out so shadowheart Is voiced by Jennifer english she is a follower of shar who is the god of darkness I think right? Jim yeah right, right? right? Ah shadowheart has lost her memories and she's holding a mysterious artifact that everybody wants. 31:59.00 Jim Yeah yep, she's at correct God Goddess of the Shadow Realm or whatever. 32:11.88 Dave Ah, Lae’zel is voiced by Devora Wilde. I hope I'm saying that. Ah she wants to seek help from the mindflayer hunters and ah eventually discovers something discouraging about her people. Asterion is voiced by Neil Newbon and Asterion's a vampire his backstory is he was dominated by an elder vampire tortured for decades and once revenge carlack is voiced by Samantha Beart and Karlach worked in the Hells and had her heart replaced by. What they call an infernal engine and that engine is going to burn out soon. Gale voiced by Tim Downey tried to become a god by getting into a relationship with a real god and I mean who among us wouldn't um so now Gale. 33:02.50 Dave Oops has this magic consuming orb inside of him. He's literally ticking time. Bomb and last but not least is Wyll voiced by Theo Solomon will has entered into a contract with a devil whoopsie daisy and so yeah, all these characters have these fucked up. Traumatic backstories and um, if you choose to work through those backstories with all of them if you choose to use them in combat spend time with them. You really see how these side characters like they almost kind of make the game like to me the side character stories. Are just as important as the main story in this game and I love all of these characters. They're incredible. 33:44.40 Chris I would argue like oh go ahead, you get. 33:46.18 Jim So sorry I apologize so much that um, playing as those characters actually detracts from the game. I think everyone should make their own character. Um, when I played. 34:03.35 Jim As Lae’zel It did not nearly have quite the punch that having Lae’zel as my teammate had um they don't get any of their voice actors lines because you are the silent protagonist so you completely lose out on the acting. 34:10.29 Chris Oh that's interesting. 34:10.53 Dave Gotcha gotcha. Yeah. 34:21.87 Jim Um, and then you by just making the choices Sometimes you're making choices when you think about what that character went through in your other playthrough. You're like this is completely illogical like why? Why would this person do this? um. 34:34.16 Dave Yeah. 34:38.41 Jim So Their stories are all great. I Recommend everyone make their own character. Um, and they're all somewhat tied in together like it's all kind of about yeah control and sort of um, being mind mind ah brainwashed. Which is sort of interesting to then tie a brain tadpole into this. Um, so a lot of these characters are going through a lot and you really feel for them. 34:58.32 Dave M. Yeah. 35:07.85 Chris Yeah I can imagine if you don't if you don't team up with them or like if you just do hirelings or if you don't flesh out their stories at all the ending would be bending of the game might might be kind of lame like I don't know. Um when you're doing that like the last bit the last ah but just before the credits roll. There's ah, there's a part that if you didn't flesh out all the characters I feel like there wouldn't be there wouldn't be an ending. It would just be oh you killed the big bad. You know, cool. No one cares. 35:29.27 Dave Yeah. Right? Yeah, part of the satisfaction of finishing the game for me was seeing how the characters like the side character stories finished because some of them had wrapped up before I took on like the final stuff. 35:37.59 Jim I Know um. 35:50.49 Dave But a lot of them didn't and the conclusion was literally after we had beat the final boss so waiting to see how those played out but I really can't say enough good things about the writing for the characters. The acting and the motion capture. 35:55.77 Chris Right. 36:08.55 Dave All of that stuff is like you know what? I think about my favorite npc like party members in video games. There's a couple from Baldur's Gate 3 that will 100% be in that conversation like I didn't use a starian a whole lot. But I love acting. That ah Neil Newbon did with Asterion. I love the story that was written for Astarion. Karlach is one of my favorite video game characters in recent memory and it's partly due to her personality which comes from the writing and the acting. It's just really really good across the board. So let's ah, let's just talk who did we? Ah, who did we use most often in this early group? We'll say and we'll leave out the characters that you pick up later. 37:02.98 Jim Um, well so my first playthrough I was the necromancer. Um I gosh I don't want to say things without spoiling them. I used Astarion. And then 2 other characters that we can talk about in a minute but Krista you brought up hirelings. Um, they are horrible compared to the other npcs because they all use withers voice. 37:28.75 Chris Really? Ah, yeah, true. It's kind of weird I only made one like sort of an alchemy bot. Um, when I figured out you could like you know make multiple pots I was like oh I should make one of those and then he was just really awkward and robotic. But you'll never leave camp. So I don't know about it. 37:32.55 Dave Oh okay. 37:34.30 Jim That's it. 37:38.11 Jim Yes. 37:46.45 Jim Yes, well when you know you March around the world and all of a sudden you get an exclamation point above karlack's head or something you talk to her and there's a scene that will play out and you can interact with her. 37:48.44 Chris Can't do combat or anything. 38:00.88 Jim And they're just like what do you need? You're like oh okay I guess someday we're gonna talk to you again. 38:03.60 Chris Yeah, that's weird. 38:03.82 Dave Yeah, right? Ah, the side characters will also talk to each other often which is really helpful for building out that feeling of having a real traveling party. Ah, like they'll comment on stuff that you do they'll comment on stuff that the other people do they will have little like short little exchanges when you're out traveling when you see something um the again like it's part of the thing that makes this what I feel like is kind of like a singular. Game is the amount of dialogue and the amount of interaction that every character can have with every possible version of other characters. It's really wild logistically How this all plays out but the main thing. 38:52.39 Chris Yeah, that's ah I was going to say that's two of my characters. I ended up rolling with Lae’zel and Shadowheart and Astarion but I didn't really actually like Shadowheart much from the get go but her interactions with Lae’zel made me want to keep those 2 together. Honestly. 39:04.34 Dave Yeah, right. 39:10.17 Chris And just kind of make shadow heart work within the mix. 39:13.94 Dave Yeah, absolutely and like Asterian's kind of a dick and like some of the other characters will comment on that like it's it's really good how the party works together and I also want to shout out the voice acting for some other characters throughout the game or. 39:23.89 Chris Um, yeah. 39:32.63 Dave Ah, notable names that are involved and you know it doesn't do much good to mention their characters right now but a big shout out to the narrator. There is a dungeon masters narrator in the game talking about everything that's going on like just a ridiculous amount of voice work. Ah, so the narrator's voice by Amelia Tyler great voice great work doing that and then ah some surprise voice roles by JK Simmons who I did not know was in the game until his character started talking and I was like holy fuck that's JK Simmons hell yeah ah Matthew Mercer 40:05.73 Chris Oh fuck. That's the voice I recognize when he's talking. I'm like why do I know this person who is like oh geez right? Yeah yeah, oh okay, cool. 40:13.30 Dave Oh you know you know him because he's in everything? Yeah, um, yeah, yeah for sure. Um. 40:20.11 Chris That makes that character much more interesting to me and first for some reason. But anyway yeah. 40:24.74 Dave Matthew Mercer does a voice role in the game Doug Cockle who's the voice of geralt in the witcher 3 has a voice role in this game. Ah, but it extends all the way down like basically every character that you can talk to which is most of them all are fully voice acted fully animated. Only like the most anonymous sideshow npcs or like background npcs are not voiced and those are the characters who you'll click on and they'll just have a little text box that pops up but like those those feel like a minority of characters if you just. Grouped everybody up the amount of voice work for all of these is really great and it lends to a game where I want to talk to everybody I want to see what they have to say and um. The way that it's all presented. You know with the camera angle and the voice acting and the motion capture and all of that. Um, yeah, really encouraged me to talk to everybody and learn their stories and things like that. 41:30.56 Chris Like I said before I think just from the beginning the game kind of encourages you to do that because it doesn't really give you any. I mean there might be something like a map marker for a quest or something but it doesn't give you much direction. It kind of encourages you to do that? Um, really talk to everybody and I thought that that would be kind of a daunting task. 41:42.55 Dave Yeah. 41:48.40 Chris Um, going into it. But I think like you're saying because it is so well voice acted every single character that you can't have dialogue with um and and for the most part the dialogue options that you can respond with are really good. Um, which I feel like. 42:05.27 Chris That must be a very difficult task in itself not to actually come up with, you know, a few different things that you can say for your character that have different attitudes and different outcomes and things like that. But actually to write those responses really? well. 42:20.76 Chris There's so many times where like there's insignificant choices I have to make in dialogue. Um, well they seem insignificant at least but I still don't know which option to choose because it's like do I want to do I Want to piss this person off or like maybe. 42:31.41 Dave Yeah. 42:34.77 Chris Maybe this is going to cause an issue or they're going to not like me or they're not want to trade with you. Maybe this is somebody who trades with you if you know if you talk to them Correctly, if you choose the right dialogue dialogue options or whatever. But yeah, everyone is. 42:46.19 Jim When in doubt that last dialogue option is always just attack. 42:50.63 Chris Yeah, rare right? You don't have to trade with me , you can just kill him and steal their shit right. 42:51.64 Dave Yeah, you do have that? Yeah yeah, part of a part of it too is like so if you're talking to somebody and you have choices to make um a lot of times the choices you will make will affect. 43:08.87 Dave Like how that person likes you but 1 of the things that I think is incredible about this game is how well it seems like every quest is tied in with every other quest and like seemingly unrelated people will come up later on in the game in different quests. So like. 43:24.87 Chris Here. 43:28.43 Dave How you talk to this person here might affect their role in act three seventy hours later um or like so you do this quest that you think is just a one-off side quest like I'm going to do it to get some treasure or to get some experience points or whatever and then like. 30 hours later something happens that directly ties in with that side quest and this keeps happening throughout the game. It ties in with the main story it ties in with the character's backstory and like the your party members personal quest lines the way that everything. Seems like it ties in with everything else makes those choices that you're making all the more interesting because you don't know when this is going to end like this might keep going forever. 44:21.13 Chris It's funny to you because each of the side characters are like the main characters that you have in your party. They have a sort of um, ah a likeness meter towards you as well and depending on how you interact with people also can affect that you'll. 44:27.34 Dave Yeah. 44:36.48 Chris Choose a dialogue option. Maybe you are talking to some ah you know child or something and and you say something snarky to them and then you'll see on your screen like asterion approves but shadow heart disapproves and you're like what what the fuck like and then by the end of the game. You're like chasing there like who's who's gonna like if I say this like or like. 44:44.63 Dave Um, yeah. 44:55.70 Chris Can I up there. Can I up their approval rating of me if I like if I talk sweetly to this person or like Asterion doesn't really like me much. Maybe I'll be like a dickhead and like he'll he'll like that response like. 45:04.16 Dave Yeah. 45:07.30 Jim And those that affinity will like to adjust certain persuasions that you have later in the game like if someone likes you a ton you know I guess maybe we can get into this with gameplay a little bit but like when you will have to roll dice in this game and it will call. 45:13.52 Chris Right. 45:26.73 Jim Like a skill check or whatever. So if you need to persuade them and they like you, that skill check is going to be easier than if they're like you if they don't like you. 45:30.86 Dave Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of dice rolling in here and like of course it's ah it is a D and D as Rpg So like of course there's going to be a lot of dice rolls but a lot of video games. This is one thing I like about the presentation of it. A lot of video games will try to hide dice rolls from you. They'll happen in the background and Baldur's Gate. 3 takes you to a dedicated dice rolling screen and you click the button to roll the D20 and it rattles around for a couple seconds and then ah you get your result and you get this this great like. Success or like this Burp Bur Bur Bur sad like you know you rolled your ah you yeah you failed. So yeah, um. 46:20.70 Chris The only gripe I have with that is when you're in a room full of traps and you just like spamming disarmed traps to get through this thing. It's just like a constant here. We open the screen and do the dice roll. Okay, let's sit around. Yeah, that's my look. My only great thing is that but other than that, it's very exciting. 46:28.65 Dave Yeah. 46:38.16 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 46:39.79 Chris Button to press when it's like a big thing especially is to try to persuade somebody in conversation and you like to try to deceive them. You see the dice roll well at the end of the game I had so many points in like persuasion or whatever on my main character that I didn't even think about it like if it was ah like if the dice roll needed like under 25 46:56.61 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, there are ah there are some high stakes skill checks and like dice rolls later in the game too. So the tension on that dice rolling screen is great and it really you know this. 46:57.41 Jim So plus 36 46:58.00 Chris Was like oh no problem like I'm not worried about this at all. Yeah. 47:07.38 Chris Um, yeah. 47:15.50 Dave There's a lot of things about this game that really come back down to the simple fact that Baldur's Gate has always been a D and D simulator and you know if you're playing D and D with your friends like rolling the dice is a big part of that and like gathering around and cheering when you get a you know and a natural 20 or something like that. So they really made that a focal point here to bring that into the game. 47:40.66 Jim Some of the dice rules that they do a little bit behind the screen are your survival and your perception checks . It was always hilarious to be running around and all of a sudden all of your characters fail a survival check and you just stop. You're like what is about to happen. 47:45.85 Dave Yeah, yeah. 47:57.70 Chris Right? When you see 4 perception chefs go up and they're all failed. You're like okay everyone freeze don't fucking move like maybe enter turn base mode like I'm really scared right now. What's going to happen? 48:02.96 Dave There's something here. Yeah yeah, exactly. Ah so back to the story here I just wanted to get some thoughts about the way the story is told ah your thoughts about you know, did you enjoy them. 48:05.31 Jim Ah, yeah, it's hilarious. 48:19.28 Dave You know the quote. The main plot: did you enjoy the character stories more? Um, how do we feel about this? 48:28.88 Jim Ah, well I mean I think this is probably the best game I've ever played. Um, the story is great from a D and D perspective from just a simple story that you could. Tell someone else. Perspective. Um, it is super intricate in the choices that you have to make. Um, yeah I'm going to use this time to actually just make a quick like plea for anyone that is listening to this that hasn't played through it and that is making your first playthrough is gonna be your most memorable. And so go in blind and stick to the decisions that you make the failed dice rolls that come the successes just just roll with it because that playthrough is going to be unique and it's going to be yours. 49:11.19 Dave Yes. 49:22.50 Jim And it is going to be so different from everyone else's that you can talk to them for hours about knowing the different permutations but just just roll with it because you're going to have an amazing time and nothing is going to beat that first playthrough. 49:36.60 Dave Yeah, things can go so differently that like we're going to go in the spoiler section. We're going between us. We have 6 playthroughs and I bet all 6 are pretty different from each other. There is just one. 49:37.14 Chris Yeah, it's interesting. 49:52.93 Dave Complex set of decisions that you're making and there are so many important decisions that you make sometimes you don't know that they're important until they're 20 hours in the past and then sometimes you have big decisions where you're like okay ah the game is going to fork here depending on what I do but. Like the amount of decisions that you're making in each quest in each character quest at different stops along the main plot really differentiates playthroughs. So I agree that that first one is kind of going to kind of be your canon playthrough. 50:30.11 Chris Yeah, you're talking about like ah I think the term save scum could come up with your comment Jim like you know, don't don't just like oh I didn't like that outcome I'm going to load my last save or like I know some people some people that I that I was playing with before they would like they'd spam the f 5 button. 50:32.12 Dave Yes. 50:36.64 Jim Um, yeah. 50:47.56 Chris They would just be so like Autos or like quick savings so often like before before and after every interaction. Um and that's fine like play the game How you want to play if that's fun for you. That's great. Um, but I kind of agree I Think the only times that ever would like low to save ah would be like I like I know what? how I want to. How I kind of want this to go or like I kind of know the thing that I want to say but sometimes it's very rare that the dialogue options are kind of unclear about I Guess I Want to say this because I know that this is going to happen. But then you'd get a couple options where you'd be like there must be. This outcome that I want from this or this must be this way that I want to convince this person and then something would go horribly wrong I don't know if it was you know, just because I'm stupid and socially inept or if it's because the game was just weird or just like it I don't know so there would be times where I was like I definitely want this person to be on my side. 51:41.67 Chris Um, going to say this because I think that's what they want to hear and then it wouldn't be and I'd be like that's really weird. That's really strange so I would go back but other than that no I think I totally agree like roll with the punches you like I lost a character because I accidentally killed them only deleted to find out that they could be in your party and I was like. 51:46.99 Dave Um, yeah. 51:48.34 Jim Mm. 52:00.46 Chris Oh shit that person's bad ass. Oh ah, but I'm not going to like go back like I made that choice that wasn't like a yeah anyway. 52:00.79 Dave Yeah. 52:08.70 Dave Yeah, like I think that that's like the big takeaway from the story here because like the main plot is. It's a fun fantasy story and I was legitimately interested in things like what is the cult of the absolute. Actually what do they want and like figuring out that stuff. And whenever you meet a new antagonist like finding out their backstory and how to get past that obstacle and progress. All of that was interesting but like the stuff that really sticks with me as far as what I would say at Baldur's Gate. 3 story is those emergent things that come up. Like the dice rolls that fail the sticky situations we get into because of that the way the character quests turned out based on decisions that either decisions that I made or decisions that that character made ah characters will leave you if they don't like you in this game and like there is 1 ah, main character who I pissed off in the course of their character. Quest and they just said you know what fuck you I'm out and I never saw them again. So that kind of stuff can happen and that all plays into this emergent narrative that I like. 53:22.60 Dave Jim you played a lot of d and d like that's kind of the point of it like the point of ah a d and d campaign is the the stories that rise up along the way more so than like you know the grand plot that you've written for the campaign right. 53:37.15 Jim Exactly And that's to say that's not belittling this Grand Plot. I mean that the background story is super interesting and here intriguing. I mean you want to figure out Why is this happening to me sort of thing but your. 53:42.25 Dave No, it's good for sure. 53:55.36 Jim Your interactions with your party members are definitely what makes it your story. 54:01.74 Chris Yeah I think ah it also the main the main story line The main quest line it does follow a pretty typical hey you're in the World. You have a problem. You know, talk to people or do the thing, do the quests until you find out. Okay,, there's this big bad that kills the big bad. Okay, now there's E 3 Big bad. You have to kill to get to this big bad like bubble ball sort of thing. Um, what's interesting about this game is that there aren't you know there are choices you can make you know you don't necessarily have to kill this big bad. You can maybe. 54:32.66 Dave Um, right. 54:34.52 Chris Do something to not give any spoilers away. Um, it's not like it's a linear progression that's locked into um you know Milestones along a path. Um, you can kind of choose how you want to deal with those Milestones This is really cool. Um I think in terms of just like it being kind of a typical like there is a looming threat. 54:41.12 Dave Right. 54:52.90 Chris You need to get to the end of the threat and kill it. Um, but even that's not even fair to say because there's ways to play the game where you don't I guess so you don't make it to the end so and and the credits are also so. 54:52.93 Dave Right. Yeah, so it's like yeah like yeah like they'll give you that quest and they'll say okay like you know this person they're in this place they're evil we need you to kill them so that we can make progress through this land and get to the next. Place and then you go talk to that person and yeah, they might be evil but they've got their things going on and they might make you a deal that says hey I need I know what you really need is to get to this place team up with me and I'll get you there too like you don't have to you know we don't have to Fight. We're not so different from you and I and you can. Follow that you can treat them. You can kill them. You can do quests for them but then betray them at the end. There's all manner of ways like there's some of those characters that like they can become party members or they can be. That big bad that you killed along the way just depends on how you want to deal with everything So like again, the complexity of how these quests work and how it ties together and then like okay so that's how you handled this quest now the rest of the game is going to be a little bit different because of how you did that. 56:10.93 Dave And it's just like constantly morphing to fit what you've done and it's just yeah, it's again, a logistical nightmare I imagine to make it all work but like the finished product is just so good and memorable. That's another thing. Another reason why like this is a. 56:20.10 Chris Sure. 56:30.11 Dave A 1 of 1 game and I can't really expect every other rpg that comes out after this to be like well we gotta do what baldur's gate 3 did. 56:39.92 Chris Yeah I didn't Larian say that Larian is doing their own IP. 56:43.63 Dave Yeah, so they said they're done with Baldur's Gate they said they're done with Baldur's Gate 3 and Baldur's Gate in general and the next thing they do is going to be something completely unrelated. 56:51.00 Chris Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? That's I mean you take ah you take an existing I p and make a masterpiece out of it I I think a lot of people like kind of like to what you're saying like all can we expect you know greatness from any other rpg like this. Well. I mean Larryn has the the the ability to deliver something incredible, but they're going to be starting from the from literally like underground like from the thought process of like what world are we going to create and that's that's going to be interesting I'm sure probably won't be for another decade before we see anything about that. 57:14.24 Dave Um, oh yeah. 57:19.21 Dave Yeah. 57:28.44 Dave Big. Ah I'm not sure exactly when it started but like they were working on it for a while and then it was in early access for several years so it was ah a big project and my. 57:29.51 Chris Didn't this intake like 13 years to develop or something. 57:39.34 Chris Yeah. 57:44.12 Dave Ah, my condolences to whoever takes on the feet of trying to make Baldur's Gate four if it's not Larian because they've got a high bar to live up to so let's ah, let's listen to some music. Let's come back. Let's talk about aesthetics for this game. 57:48.29 Chris Right. 57:54.50 Jim Mm. 58:02.70 Dave All right? So just a little ah section here talking about music and a visual presentation. Um, I think that the music is probably the least remarkable thing about the game. That's not to say that it's bad but it is very much like a calm background. D and d adventuring music for a lot of the game especially when you're out in the environments when you're in your camp some of the songs like the main theme is this big boisterous triumphant song that gets remixed and reused throughout the game. But other than that a lot of the music is pretty like laid back chill adventuring music like if you were playing tabletop and you went on Youtube and googled tabletop background music and then you know you got a playlist. 58:56.15 Dave That's kind of like the tone that the soundtrack is taking here. 59:02.22 Jim Ah, yeah, and I like that a few tracks all of a sudden. They're just you, you'll get used to sort of the ambiance and then all of a sudden they'll just hit you with a few tracks while singing in it. Ah, but the singing is it is but the singing is good too like. 59:10.49 Dave Yeah. 59:14.55 Chris Um, yeah, it's kind of jarring at first. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good if it's not overproduced. Everything sounds very just like they're using real instruments and real voices. All these things sound like that. 59:15.91 Dave Um, oh yeah, oh so. 59:19.21 Jim So it's just kind of wild. 59:30.14 Chris Really really good. 59:30.49 Jim Did either of you play with ah like a bard a little bit and set up like a bard band. 59:31.84 Dave Oh just my darker age character is a bard but again I only played like a handful of hours. So I didn't get super far into that. 59:46.40 Jim There's legit like 6 different songs that they then coded in for you to play, how many different instruments can you play, 5? and and if you can like just. 59:53.89 Chris I Think so yeah. 59:55.60 Dave Ah, there's a lot. 59:59.26 Jim Listen to them on Youtube as a full bard band and like it's all still good music. 01:00:01.75 Dave Nice, yeah. 01:00:05.10 Chris That's awesome. I didn't even know that I had made Wyll for a bard for some reason that I don't remember why. But anyway I think I just needed something for a second anyway. I was really bad about being stuck with the same 3 -4 parts like my party was just. 01:00:09.11 Jim So. 01:00:22.30 Chris Like asterion shadowheart Lae’zel the entire time I tried to play with will a little bit because I thought he was kind of an interesting character but that was like really short lived I stuck with those those 3 the entire and the others had like no love until the end of like act 2 when I was like I kind of want to see these people's storylines a little bit. 01:00:29.66 Dave Yeah. 01:00:40.70 Dave Yeah, yeah, those songs with the vocals are good. They kind of reminded me of how the witcher uses songs with vocals. Ah, for. 01:00:41.32 Chris But yeah, um. 01:00:54.75 Dave Kind of like an effect rather than like they're singing words and you're going to listen to the lyrics or something like that with 1 huge notable exception in act 3 which we'll talk about in the spoilers section. But I busted out laughing when that song came on yeah Disney ass. 01:01:04.45 Chris Um, yeah, yeah, save here what the. But yeah, that's ah that theme that keeps playing throughout pretty much the whole game. 01:01:07.76 Jim Um, Chef Chef's kiss. 01:01:13.54 Dave Ah, villain song. Yeah. 01:01:19.71 Chris Um, it's a good theme so it's good that it happens that way I also thought for a while is like yeah this is kind of getting a little like I guess underwhelming when you come from other games like final fantasy fourteen I don't know if you guys ever played it but like every area has ah an amazing ah track to it. Every boss has an incredible, absolutely incredible. 01:01:39.48 Chris Song that goes together with a boss fight or whatever. And so yeah, when it doesn't really change up too much. It's time to get sort of underwhelming but then I kind of thought about it more like there is a lot of I mean in those types of games I think the music lends itself to the action and the pacing of it but the action and pacing of. Ah, of Baldur’s gate 3 like there is the action. There's like the combat music that fits it perfectly and at the same time I find myself focusing a lot on being effective and being very efficient in combat. So I don't really need to be crazy. 01:02:17.90 Chris You know music blasting in my face and when I'm doing dialogue options I don't want to be sort of distracted by the music. I kind of thought about this more I guess more towards act 3 where I was just kind of really focused on what was going on. Um in the story and the dialogue and things. So I think it works to its benefit to not be. 01:02:23.44 Dave Yeah. 01:02:33.73 Dave Yeah, for sure one other thing about this game's presentation that I think works really well is the visual presentation and I will say like a more cinematic presentation than crpgs Normally do even. 01:02:35.00 Chris Changing it up all the time. 01:02:52.20 Dave Modern crpgs like disco elysium or divinity original sin or something like that. Um, and I said you guys don't know this because this episode you know it's in the future but I did an interview where I talked with ah Felipe Pepe who wrote for and edited a big as. Book called the crpg book is a crpg expert and we talked about why Baldur's Gate 3 appealed to mainstream more than crpgs normally do and one of the things we talked about was visual presentation because this is not um. 1 of those games where you just have this big text scroll that you're reading on one side or at the bottom of the screen and your characters are these little tiny. Ah you know, pixelated things way off in the distance or like really far zoomed out. This takes like that camera framing from like the witcher 3 and mass effect and stuff like that and puts all these characters right up on the screen so you can see them. You can see their faces. Ah every single character that you can talk to in the game is voice acted and motion captured so and there's a lot of like. Different motion capture works for different characters too. So it has a more cinematic presentation than the average game like this, including you know baldur's gate one and two I mean ah, you may think of other rpgs like this like skyrim. There's a lot more motion capture. 01:04:23.82 Dave And voice acting in this game then in skyrim the characters feel more alive than characters in like the Bethesda fallout games or something like that. So that presentation helps you connect with the characters but also like I don't know. It just looks yeah I I'm not sure why this appeals to mainstream more often. But I definitely think this is a factor because this is like a breakout hit as far as this genre is concerned. 01:04:57.57 Chris Yeah I would say I think people are generally attracted to or want to see humanistic things in everything right? So the more that you put in the more humanistic elements. Music's kind of the same if you have. 01:05:05.20 Dave Um, yeah. 01:05:12.35 Chris Very like processed and robotic type things that go on people may not know that that's what's going on but they will prefer something that is more human to it. That's you know the drum hits are a little bit off or the facial looks or sorry and in music the the pitch is a little bit off. So I think when you have a game like. But gate 3 where every character essentially has really sort of ah detailed facial expressions. They have movement when they talk they have all these different things that is. It's definitely way more human than like you're saying mass effect or something where they kind of just stand there. You know their faces. Don't really move much their mouth moves and they just kind of like maybe sway back and forth a little bit like it I think that that that is definitely going to attract a lot of people because they'll see in a video all like look at this look at this character that you know not only do they look really good. They're well designed but they're. Actually having a conversation. It feels like you're having a real conversation. It feels very human, almost. 01:06:06.28 Dave Yes. 01:06:09.11 Jim They all have like a really good number of idle animations too like Lae’zel is always grinding her sword or hammering a piece of armor. 01:06:15.64 Dave Um, oh yeah. 01:06:18.73 Dave Yeah, Karlach is always like hopping around you know, ready to go. 01:06:23.93 Jim And now obviously a lot of the art direction is based on d and d which was not like Larian had nothing to work with. They literally walked into kind of prewritten pre-drawn environments. 01:06:36.91 Dave Right? yeah. 01:06:41.23 Jim But some of them are just so well done. Um I mean the under dark is probably one of the most beautiful environments I've ever seen. It's just gorgeous. 01:06:52.60 Dave Um, yeah, kind of along those lines too like you are working with fantasy ah races and creatures and things like that. But this game is rendered in like a. Quote realistic type of way like it's not a super stylized look to the characters. Um, they're kind of rendering them as realistic as possible and I think that like you could have run into. Just things looking really goofy and like not being able to take them seriously at all like the githyanki could easily look super goofy and you just laugh. It. You know, look at these like Shrek looking motherfuckers or something like that. But ah I think that they walk that line really well where you have like these. 01:07:32.84 Chris Yeah, right. 01:07:41.33 Dave You know, like the tieflings they look like demons basically but the way that they're designed um, that's not how they feel or they don't look goofy. Um, there's all, there's one Githyanki character that I thought looked pretty goofy and it's just because I don't think beards look good on those characters. 01:07:59.82 Chris Yeah I think I know you're talking about? Yeah, ah. 01:08:01.23 Dave Yeah, everyone else everything else looks good I mean even when you're talking to an animal or something like that like all that presentation is really good. 01:08:09.30 Chris Yeah, if you like I play on an ultra wide and there'll be times will I'll be playing and ah my wife would walk in and she’ll kind of like walking through Baldur's gate or something I'll shift my camera around and it'll be as like this massive vista of like you know with the the docks and the ocean and the buildings and everything she'd be like that look so real. 01:08:24.78 Dave Either. 01:08:28.75 Chris Like is this a game or a movie like what's going on. It's incredible. 01:08:33.16 Dave Yeah, 1 other thing too. You kind of mentioned. Um this game has that isometric camera perspective that crpgs normally have. But you can freely control the camera in this game too. You can swing it around. You can have it go behind your main character kind of like in the witcher or you know a regular third person game or something like that. So you? Oh yeah ah yeah I played like that the whole time. 01:08:59.93 Chris Did you play primarily in isometric? Ah weird I played it mostly I like was sort of with it behind me using the WAsd keys to move it around. It took me a long time to get used to the camera. Honestly, I hated it at first. 01:09:04.28 Dave Oh you didn't okay, still like I. 01:09:12.18 Dave Interesting. The controls like clicking to move and then also moving the camera with the Keyboard took me a minute to not a minute. It took me literally hours to get used to. 01:09:14.79 Chris I really didn't like it at first. But yeah. 01:09:25.51 Chris Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:09:27.32 Dave But I did play with that isometric perspective for the whole game. 01:09:32.40 Chris Um, interesting I feel like it just takes away so much of the scenery and everything. 01:09:38.30 Jim You're probably right like Chris did you. I can't imagine trying to find anything hidden the way that you played. Okay i. 01:09:43.00 Chris I mean I would switch back and forth. You know when I needed to yeah use press the o key and it'll go up to isometric. But yeah I just felt like the visual of it having it kind of like you know behind your character in that third I guess it would be third person right. 01:09:45.25 Dave Right. 01:09:57.85 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:09:59.33 Jim Yeah I I loved finding those moments where I'd be like I bet you this would be a cool view and then zooming in to see that and always okay. 01:10:01.56 Chris Yeah. 01:10:08.55 Chris That's so funny. Our experience is totally opposite. I only use isometric when I feel like I need it. 01:10:12.89 Dave Yeah I think it's just because like I don't know I play a lot of these games and these games to me like this genre almost is an isometric camera perspective genre. But I did think it was cool that you could kind of make the camera. 01:10:16.70 Jim Ah. 01:10:31.00 Dave Do whatever you want it to do like frame it up. However, you want when you're running around or when you're, you know, exploring stuff like that. So I thought it was neat that you could, you know, do a more cinematic like behind the character third person camera so it's cool that you did like the whole game that way. 01:10:48.32 Chris Yeah, pretty much I mean you guys are like moving the camera around and everything right may not just rotate it but like using your W a is you know like okay gotcha. 01:10:50.53 Jim Um, yeah, all the time. 01:10:51.49 Dave Oh yeah, yeah yeah, you yeah, you have to like you have to have the camera follow your characters and stuff like manually. So. 01:11:05.34 Chris Yeah, right? Oh true I Guess it's always kind of like that Anyway, sorry it just took me a while to really get to grasp it to get a hold of the camera and everything but once I did I Really liked it a lot and I found myself going back to playing like ah. 01:11:07.46 Dave Yeah, oh that's cool. 01:11:09.91 Jim Oh. 01:11:23.10 Chris Wow where it's just like constantly following you. You can't really control your camera at all other than just panning . I was like man this is tough like I want to go see what's up there like and I have to actually walk over there like. 01:11:31.44 Jim Ah. 01:11:36.44 Dave Um, yeah, well that's where that isometric perspective is good because when you're doing that you see what's up there right? away a lot of rotating the camera though. 01:11:46.77 Chris Yeah, sure. 01:11:47.48 Dave So let's talk about gameplay in Baldur's Gate 3 01:11:59.56 Dave This is based on fifth edition dungeons and dragons. Ah we talked about this earlier in the episode but ah, 2 of us on the podcast have very little or no d and d experience. So no, you don't have to be a d and d expert and one of the things I really love about this game and Larry's approach to. Making sure that people can play this game is that they make a real effort to teach you the terminology in the game in context right? at the second when you need to know it. This game has a really smart kind of nesting u I glossary system. Where let's say you pick up a scroll and you go to your inventory you click on the scroll. It says this is a scroll. It does this spell and then you mouse over that spell it will bring up another box to say what that spell does and let's say the spell you know says it puts reverberation on the Target. You're like I don't know what the fuck reverberation means you mouse over reverberation. It brings up another box that explains what that means and then you can close all the boxes and you're like all right I get it. We're moving on Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 did not do this at all. Not even the modern re-releases of the games that don't come with the game manual. So ah, that's why I played those games again. They took the effort of writing tons of ui work to make this as approachable and learnable as possible. 01:13:12.77 Jim Okay. 01:13:31.95 Dave And I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this because before I bought the game I asked some people that played it in early access because I was worried I was like well if they do it like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 did I'm not going to understand what's going on but they took all this effort to teach you what everything means and. There's a lot of stuff so like obviously you're going to have you, you might be a little overwhelmed by terms and proper nouns and stuff like that. But they do teach you. So if you're willing to read through those nesting glossaries you will learn what's going on. So Chris did you have this same kind of experience as me because Jim's kind of the Jim's the d and d expert here. 01:14:15.30 Chris Yeah I kind of like quickly ah learned what a T button did um in terms of those things like inspecting um things in your inventory or whatever. Um I have ah actually just to kind of say it anyways on the fence about buying this game which I feel like at this point if you. 01:14:20.10 Dave Yeah. 01:14:31.77 Chris Have been on the fence and you didn't do it. You might not ever but please do like um I've had a few friends who didn't know that you can inspect in this like Ui thing so you got a press T hover with something press T go to the thing that like has a underline on it. Press t. 01:14:32.68 Dave Yeah. 01:14:39.50 Dave Yeah. 01:14:47.58 Chris That thing will just keep going until it ends and you can kind of find out what something does. Um I've had a couple of friends who didn't know that you could do that and like they didn't even know like what half of the weapons in the game did because so much info like you'll you'll hover over a weapon and it'll tell you like it's base damage and like maybe 1 of its effects but then they'll be like a little bit more. 01:15:05.39 Chris Be like a little ellipses and if you don't see that and you don't inspect it like there could be a whole other effect that it does and you don't even know like yeah so you have to kind of inspect everything in that way. Um, especially as the game progresses and things get a little bit more complex and intricate. Um, but yeah I think that. 01:15:08.67 Dave Yeah. 01:15:24.40 Chris A lot of I will say a lot of the 200 hours that I put into the game was ah going through those menus and making sure that I understood what things did and it's a lot like there's a lot of stuff and I would say this doesn't really come to the game's detriment but because you can choose. Whatever you want to do at any time essentially and you can choose whatever class you want to play whatever spells you want to learn or whatever. There is still a lot. So like you're saying what? what the fuck's reverberation. Well, it's like what are lightning charges, what are like if I went lightning and you went thunder you know wizard or whatever or Sourcer like. You can do any of those things and there's nothing that tells you like hey you know this is what this does you have to just go through them and do them and I feel like a lot of the time in that game is spent reading tool tips but that's not a bad thing. Um, in my opinion. It's interesting because you can start to formulate ideas about how you want to. 01:16:13.46 Dave Um, yeah. 01:16:21.55 Chris Like set up your party or set up your prepared spell, set up your um, you know before you go into a fight like do I want to have this person in front or in the back or hiding in the corner or whatever. Yeah, so. 01:16:32.17 Dave Yeah, there's just like D and D is so complex. There's so much stuff that if you're not an expert going in. You're either going to really struggle or you're going to spend time in that. 01:16:51.27 Dave Menu reading about what everything does. So Yeah I definitely spent like many hours cumulatively just reading what does this status effect Do what?? What does this word mean so much stuff but I would much rather them like. Make this complex game with this seemingly infinite Possibility space. Ah, and then have all of these things that I have to learn then either dumb it down and have it be too simple or just straight up not teach you and just assume that you. Either know or that you're going to play with a wiki open on another screen or something like that. 01:17:29.62 Chris Yeah, or like you'll go through all the tooltips and then you'll hit level 4 and be presented with your first feet and be like what a fuck now have a whole other book to read like Jesus Christ yeah 01:17:36.83 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, ah. 01:17:46.77 Dave Speaking of ah yeah, speaking of the game takes you from level 1 to level 12 and it's capped at level 12 because in d and d once you get past that point you're basically working on like the level of gods and ah. 01:17:47.96 Chris There's just so many options. Yeah. 01:18:03.82 Dave Larian said they capped it there because they just couldn't program higher level stuff because it's just too complicated and ah so this is like the. 01:18:18.12 Dave Nitpickiest of nitpicks but like I hit level 12 like 20 hours before I finish the game so there was a bit of like man I wish I could get a few more level ups in just to keep that cadence of level ups going. But. 01:18:32.73 Dave Once I realized why they stopped it at level 12 I'm like yeah that makes sense because you like with the amount of interaction and we'll talk about it but the amount of interaction with your skills and spells and stuff in this game just those god level spells just would not like they couldn't do it like. Literally could not do it so it makes sense. 01:18:53.43 Jim They had to limit the amount of spells that they even have for spell levels that are in the game and I completely understand like scrying which is a spell that thinks the crystal ball like I'm going to watch you from afar. How do you do that in a video game? 01:18:59.63 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:19:10.18 Dave Right. 01:19:12.85 Jim Like oh I Just want to pick this random character and see how they're cooking dinner. It doesn't make any sense right. 01:19:15.83 Dave Yeah, so. 01:19:20.58 Chris I don't think it honestly needed to go past level 12. I didn't honestly maybe and I was just playing. I wasn't playing on tactician I was on the middle balanced mode. But by the time I was 12 and I got some help from some online stuff to like see ok I don't really want to play a cleric. 01:19:26.17 Dave Right. 01:19:38.53 Chris Um, but I do want to have a decent build for them. So like I would look up ah a build and just kind of see what some good or better spells would be just to know because I don't you know, stepping into the game not knowing anything. Um, so there's a couple things that I'd like to take and was like yeah, let's get a good build going. But by the time I was over 12 and had some of the better pieces of gear like I think there's 1 particular boss I remember who I don't even think they even got an attack off because I just like at that point I was like I had us I had a spell that I could like. Blind them I had a spell that could paralyze them I could I just had all this stuff that was like you know it just kind of became overpowered at some point with the combination of gear and levels. So I don't think that you would ever need to go past level 12 like in this game. 01:20:17.22 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:20:25.25 Dave Yeah, there. There was a point like maybe around level 10 or so with that was kind of the point where I started to get like some of the game's best gear and. Really figured out my party composition and my strategy for most fights and I really didn't struggle in combat until there were 2 bosses late in the game who were real sons of Bitches. Ah, but I mean like 45 minutes. 01:20:58.95 Dave Plus fights like they're real tough. But other than that I didn't. It wasn't like I needed to gain levels because I'm struggling with the game or anything like that. It's just like my lizard brain is like hey you haven't leveled up in a while this feels bad So it's It's just that. 01:21:17.32 Dave And then you know like I said it's like I had to learn like oh yeah, like these super high level spells in D and D would literally like my computer would explode if they tried to like program the effects on the game world and stuff like that. So I get it? Um, so in the game. You Ah you spend a lot of time exploring. So Let's talk about that before we dig into combat. Um, we talked about the camera perspective that you can switch around a big shout out to the key you pressed to highlight all interactable objects in the rooms that you go in because there's a bunch of stuff. 01:21:51.63 Jim M. 01:21:55.64 Dave And you don't want to miss like a button hidden on a wall somewhere just because it didn't stick out from the environment so that is a savior and then there's a lot of time spent just exploring around trying to get past obstacles in the game world. 01:22:02.43 Chris Right. 01:22:14.18 Dave And 1 thing if you're familiar with d and d one change that they made for the game is you don't have to roll dice to do things like jumping or throwing something out of combat well well in combat, you don't have to roll a dice to jump. For example, they were just like you know what. Ah, your characters are athletic. They just jump that. That's all there is ah so um, that was a good touch because ah there is some I I don't can't think of a better term than puzzle platforming to like figure out how to traverse this world around. So it's like. 01:22:35.66 Jim No. 01:22:51.23 Dave You know you can try to jump over this or you can try and find an alternate path. You can use teleport spells. The druid can turn into animals. They can fly and you get scrolls that can do stuff to move you around. But ah, there is a lot of puzzling out like okay I see a place over there. Maybe there's a treasure chest or something. How do I get there and that was always fun to figure out. 01:23:17.17 Jim They did a really good job of placing. However, it is small and simple. They were just little puzzles throughout the world as well. You're always coming across a chest that might like you can't just lock pick open or um. 01:23:23.12 Dave Yeah. 01:23:34.89 Jim You know here's a puzzle and if you do this a door opens over there. Um, there's a whole lot of just puzzle solving and it might not always be the hardest in the world but it definitely shakes up gameplay enough that it keeps things very interesting. 01:23:47.35 Dave Yeah, you. 01:23:51.12 Chris Yeah, and I feel like ah 1 thing that took me a long time I think it was probably not even to like lady act 2 that I kind of realized like you know what? if I can't figure this out. There's probably a tool somewhere in my inventory to help me, do it like I have a scroll that can you know give me fly or like you're saying like you know. 01:24:00.60 Dave Yeah. 01:24:09.90 Chris Can throw this thing over there to make it explode but blah blah Whatever it is like there's There's usually something in your inventory that can help you fix something and also something that I think I under use it a lot but I would like to use more in my next playthrough is like if you feel stuck with something because things are moving too quickly or whatever going to turn base Mode. You can activate turn base mode and you can like there's a lot of things that I can look back on it being like me I should just not that way with that with turn based mode like I feel like I could have done this more efficiently or I could have like saved this person or whatever it was um, that's ah, a feature that I feel like is not highlighted enough. 01:24:39.20 Dave Yeah. 01:24:47.50 Chris Um, just being able to freely go into turn base mode. 01:24:47.97 Dave Yeah, another kind of puzzle out another kind of puzzle situation that just came to mind is like you know, maybe there's a ledge and there's a treasure chest or like it's literally the place I need to go. I need to get up on this ledge but I can't jump that high. 01:24:48.78 Jim M. 01:25:06.39 Dave And I don't have a way to teleport up there but there's some crates around and you can manipulate a bunch of objects in the environment you can drag them and drop them. You can pick them up and then put them places one of my characters use in combat to very funny effect often? Ah, but so it's like you know. Maybe I don't have these more advanced techniques. Well you can literally just stack boxes and climb on top of them to get to this place that you can't reach either so you do have a pretty good set of tools outside of combat to help you reach new places. Um. Maybe help you survive if you have to reach some place that's really far down as well or sometimes you just tank like you know you're like oh jump. Everyone's going to lose 100 hp by jumping off of here. But we don't really have a choice so it's just ah, you know moving around in the game world is not really an afterthought in this game. You. You do have to puzzle out how you're going to get to the places you're trying to get to sometimes and it's good fun. It. It works your brain in a way that the combat system really does but outside of combat you're also working your brain that way too. So let's talk about that combat. 01:26:22.97 Dave Um, it's turn-based combat and it's real turn-based combat, the type where you can sit and think as long as you want for the move you're going to make and depending on what difficulty you play on. You will probably want to be pretty careful about how you play now. Chris you said you played on the default. Difficulty like the standard or whatever. Yeah that's what I played on to Jim's done tactician and honor mode right. 01:26:43.63 Chris The balanced year. 01:26:50.55 Jim Yeah, you can. I don't think you can do this with honor mode but you can adjust it once you're in the game from the menu so I started my first playthrough on normal and then very quickly bumped it up to tactician. 01:26:58.30 Dave Right? right. 01:26:58.64 Chris Ah, yeah, yeah, you can change it. 01:27:04.35 Dave Okay gotcha and then. 01:27:06.60 Chris How much more just do it. Did you play it at all and but unbalanced I mean okay I was going to ask like if you could see a met major difference between the 2 01:27:09.80 Jim No, at this point I the game claims. It's there. But I mean honor mode. There's a huge difference and it's not just the single save like there is. 01:27:19.88 Chris Oh sure. Sure. 01:27:26.18 Jim Bosses in the game where their legendary action is just an Insta kill and so like that that was very stressful. 01:27:30.35 Chris Oh wow. 01:27:30.90 Dave Ah. 01:27:32.96 Dave Yeah, honor mode is super difficult difficulty and Permadeath like you die you start over from the very beginning right? yeah. 01:27:41.83 Chris Right. 01:27:42.60 Jim Yeah, correct and you get 1 save through so like or save file. So like if you make somebody mad and they're and they're an enemy. You can't like f 5 save scum go back. Let's redo that nope that person hates you now. 01:27:55.73 Dave Right? Yeah, so ah, all that to say combat is involved unless you're playing on the easy mode and if you want to play on easy mode by all means play on easy mode I think that you should play this game. However, however, you want to allow yourself to experience it. But the combat that we played on like the standard and then higher difficulties takes a lot of strategy. It's very very tactical. We'll say so each character by default can move a little bit. On each turn they can take an action and then they can do a bonus action. Ah and different skills can be like 1 skill will be used as a regular action but can't be a bonus action and vice versa. Later on this gets more complicated as you get more skills. You can take more actions, you can do more bonus actions. Sometimes you can use a regular action as a bonus action bunch of stuff that can happen. Um, one thing that I did not love about this and it's just a d and d thing. Is the use of spell slots for your spells so divinity original sin 1 and 2 use this action point system. So you could use your spells as many times as you want if you had the action points on your turn to use them; this one has spell slots. 01:29:23.67 Dave Like the d and d rules. So let's say your fireball spell you can only use it 3 times because it's a level whatever spell and you only have 3 slots for that level. So once you use that you can't use that fireball spell again until you do a rest or a short rest. Which you can do instantly outside of combat or a long rest that takes you back to your camp and ah the system of doing this I thought was interesting like you need camping supplies to camp and do a long rest. I thought it was interesting to break up the adventure and kind of give you that narrative thing where like yeah your traveling party is going to have to rest sometimes they're going to have to eat sometimes. Um and I had fun kind of. Choosing what everyone was going to eat at night. It's like all right 40 sausages for the entire party tonight or you get an achievement for um, doing a long rest where you only have alcohol as your food for the night so since you need those supplies I became like the most notorious snack bandit. 01:30:22.14 Jim Ah, first. 01:30:25.65 Chris Right. 01:30:26.81 Jim And the. 01:30:34.36 Dave In Fey Run just stealing all the cheese and sausages and fruit that I could find everywhere. Um, but yeah, this ah managing your spell slots and like managing your resting to replenish those is. 01:30:34.76 Chris Specific. 01:30:49.92 Dave Kind of an interesting limitation on how you can approach combat, especially if there's a long series of fights. You need to really hold back on your most powerful stuff until you really need it. So This is probably the biggest. Limiting factor on what you can do in combat. So What did you guys think about this? 01:31:11.96 Chris Oh you can go version. 01:31:15.36 Jim Ah I mean it's definitely ah, a system that is in d and d but there's like in d and d there's no limitation to the number of short rests. You can take in a day whereas in this game. You only get 2 short rests per long rest. 01:31:29.74 Dave Right. 01:31:33.00 Jim Ah so certain characters operate on either a long rest or a short rest and like a monk or a warlock is sort of a short rest based character so in I think your standard. Game of d and d the fact that you can take an unlimited number of short rests throughout the day makes those characters that much more viable whereas here. It definitely is. They almost felt like to me when I played them that they were the stop gap like when I would get to a certain point and be like all right I took my 2 short rests I guess it's time for a long rest. Whereas when I went with more of a long rest based party I really felt like I could kind of go as long as I wanted. Um i. It's definitely like it definitely put the pressure on before I realized that I need to pick up every Apple core. 01:32:27.66 Jim I found it because there was definitely a point in the first like my first run through where I was like I'm running out of camp supplies and I am like nowhere near the end of act 2 and there's nowhere to get them so it is definitely provided and. Like a nice puzzle. Um I I found it. Interesting I should say I think that that is one of the things that didn't translate over incredibly from tabletop to video game. Yeah. 01:32:56.44 Dave Yeah I think that the reason it doesn't translate seamlessly over from tabletop to video game. If you just have way more combat in video games than you do in a tabletop session like the limited tabletop. 01:33:14.11 Dave You know between D and D and then a couple other times I've played other systems ah but video games just have way more combat so it puts more strain on your resources if they're limited in that way Now. That being said, I didn't find myself screwed because I was out of. Ah, spell slots that often. Although it certainly happened in act 3 plenty of times I got in some really hairy situations because I was just out of spell slots for everybody. Ah, but yeah it is kind of like. 01:33:48.12 Dave I'll kick to you Chris but like it kind of put sometimes just felt like it put a halt on the momentum of the adventure. He's like oh everyone's out of stuff. We got to go do the long rest now. 01:34:01.62 Chris Yeah, ah I had a very opposite experience. I had so many camp supplies and it's not because I hoarded them I think actually near the end of the game I stopped picking them up because I just wanted to save an inventory weight or whatever. It's called your backspace I ah. 01:34:11.49 Dave Right. 01:34:12.62 Jim Nice. 01:34:17.33 Chris I think I mentioned early that I tried to play this game very very efficiently especially in combat and things like that. Um, and I I had a party that was like I had a Starrian and lall and they're both just I mean they're their auto attacks are there some of their strongest things that they can do um and they can They can get more actions and things like that they can be. Leveled up in a way where they don't need long rests at all, they don't really need a lot of short rests. So as played a warlock who just benefits from short rest but also just her cantrips or her bread and butter. Elderdris Blast is just like massive right. 01:34:48.76 Dave Yeah. 01:34:53.24 Chris So I Just only had one character that was really using a lot of spell slots and I just learned to be very efficient with it. Um, but that I think I realized later on um, acted to my detriment um because a lot of the ah. 01:34:57.69 Dave Yeah. 01:35:10.71 Chris The character story stuff that happens happens at night when you go and end the day and do a long rest and if I didn't do it often I tried to be as efficient as possible and that was my detriment because I I missed a lot of stuff so nearing the end of the game I was just like long resting just to see like you know like okay, let's. 01:35:13.26 Dave Yes. 01:35:30.00 Chris But talk to all the quests, give it everybody has an exclamation point above their head and then just like basically going to bed ending the day and just doing it again just to make sure I cleared everything out right? But by that point when you're already in act 3 you know people have left my party. 01:35:33.60 Dave Yeah, right. 01:35:48.29 Chris You can't go back and do this quest because it was back in act 2 You can't go back to act 2 like so I would say be a little liberal with it. You know, just do it. You don't don't be so uptight of a hell like I was just trying to be so efficient with it. Um. 01:35:50.88 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:36:00.50 Dave Yeah I think in act one I was overflowing with camping supplies and then in act 3 I ran out like often and I literally stole food from tables and stuff like that to get? yeah. 01:36:16.55 Jim Ah, ah make ends meet. 01:36:17.73 Chris Ah. 01:36:19.40 Dave I and I like to buy food at food vendors in act three Yeah I know right? but it is. 01:36:21.78 Chris Oh man I can't imagine. I think last time I checked in my bit like in my bank I had like 40 of the like camp like the 40 camp supply packages like just sitting there plus all the other food like sausages and wine and cheese and shit like. 01:36:33.41 Dave Ah, Jesus yeah I yeah that was like my party rolling up to the food vendor just being like give me all of your finest sausages and cheese sir and then we take them off into the woods and and go camping. Yeah so anyway. 01:36:43.41 Chris Yeah. 01:36:50.40 Chris That's awesome I did hear though sorry this is kind of interesting I don't know if it's true. But I I did hear that like there were some. There are some voice ah voice lines in the game where people are so saying things like oh I'm so tired or I could use arrest or like something like that bubble. But. 01:37:04.12 Dave Oh yeah, they do? yeah. 01:37:08.26 Chris And so when you're not, you don't need it like everyone's totally fine, but it just happens after you've played so long so there is some some rumor or something about like Howlarian did have the idea to make people need to be hungry or need to sleep having a sort of a different sort of like hunger meter attire like. 01:37:21.11 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:37:26.87 Chris Sleep meter or something like that. But maybe had taken it out just to um, make sure the game flowed a little better I don't know if that's true, but it is an interesting thing that those voice lines are in there I. 01:37:37.25 Dave Yeah I don't. I don't think this game would have benefited from having a hunger meter or a sleep meter or something like that. But it is interesting. Maybe they were considering it? Yeah um. 01:37:46.91 Jim Oh. 01:37:49.20 Chris Well because it's interesting that you can take you like when you do a long rest you end the day do a long you can choose how many supplies you would need to use. But why would you ever use anything less than 40 was kind of my question. Ah. 01:37:57.67 Dave Right? Yeah I guess like if I had less than forty I Just wouldn't long rest so we would just leave camp instead of resting. So yeah, oh. 01:38:12.96 Chris Um. 01:38:13.53 Jim They double it on higher difficulty you need 80 But um I do like the camp um aspect of it like you have all these moments where you're out exploring the world and then going back to camp and just talking to people. 01:38:15.91 Dave Jesus yeah. Yeah. 01:38:29.99 Jim Thought was like a wonderful shakeup. It's kind of how you experience their stories. Um the camps differ like in all the different environments. The camp environment will be different and unique and very cool. Um I actually really liked that. 01:38:36.38 Dave Yeah. 01:38:46.51 Jim Aspects of it. Oh I'm going to go back to camp because I need to quickly talk to Gail about something. 01:38:49.53 Dave Yeah, and characters in camp will comment on what the last mission was, they'll comment on things that happened like say something really messed up happened to 1 of your characters like everyone in camp will be talking about it when you get back. And that's always really cool again. It makes it feel like you're a real group traveling together and like the things that affect one person affect other people too. So that stuff is cool. One of the camps is really small and I had this. Ah this bad situation I had to reload. 01:39:25.28 Dave Ah so Gale died during combat and I brought him back to life but he had this status effect called like I don't know like death stench or some shit like that and it hurt everyone that was you know within a certain area near him. And there's a dog that you can get in camp and the dog kept wandering over next to Gail and he died because Gale smelled so bad. So ah, yeah, stuff can happen in camp. There's some ah like big story events that can happen in there too. So. 01:40:00.97 Dave I spent a lot of time in camp and you know it's worth your time but sometimes we got to a point where it was like I really want to continue with something but I can't because I'm out of spell slots and I just need to rest. But yeah, so let's talk about the tactics of combat. Um, Divinity Original sin 1 and 2 were really great for environmental effects and setting up how important things like electrifying a puddle of water or setting the environment on fire and stuff like that would be. They also had high ground and low ground. So Archers will be better if they're perched up on high ground than if they're shooting from below something for example and spells work that way too. So Baldur's Gate 3 brings that stuff in and also keeps a big emphasis from those older games on status effects and turn denial. Every single enemy can have some kind of status effect which is great so putting together ways to stop the enemies from acting get status effects on them set the environment on fire if you want to. Um, synergize your party member strategies to get these elemental effects going. You can set up a really good order of operations with your party and then adjust to what the enemy does and the tactical depth to all of this like when you combine it all together. 01:41:35.90 Dave Pretty much unlimited like and I 1 thing that I think is cool about this too is I didn't play with anyone who felt bad in combat it was like there wasn't anyone who I tried to use that just. Didn't feel like they could accomplish anything like everyone had a role to play in the tactics. So the depth of all of this is ridiculously good. 01:41:59.91 Jim And don't be afraid to use your environment too. I mean like there are barrels and things everywhere where it's like all right I'm gonna knock this water Barrel over to create a puddle and then if I use ice on that there's a whole sheet of ice that now the enemy has to walk across. 01:42:04.72 Dave Um, yeah. 01:42:15.31 Dave Yeah, or or pushing people off of ledges into bottomless pits. Yeah. 01:42:18.53 Jim Ah, very very cool. No, but when all else fails just throw them in there. 01:42:22.64 Chris Yeah, but careful if you push someone off a ledge you lose their loss So that's no fun if it's yeah. 01:42:30.83 Jim You. 01:42:31.18 Dave Yes I did that with someone who had a quest item one time because I didn't know they had the quest item and um it luckily it teleported the quest item back to the spot where they were standing but otherwise yeah. 01:42:45.80 Chris Oh that's good. Yeah, as playing the Eldritch Blast Warlock So I was just blasting everything off of ledges and things like that very freely in the beginning parts of the game but I remember killing a boss that way and learning later that they had ah. 01:42:48.89 Dave Oh right. 01:43:02.82 Chris I Don't remember if it was some kind of item that had some piece of gear that I think would have been really good for me. But um, yeah, that sucks. Um, yeah, there's a lot of that environmental stuff that um, another thing too is. 01:43:04.75 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, so ah. 01:43:16.64 Chris You can't do this with every boss. But if you walk up to something and you know it's a boss you can right? click it and examine it and see all of its ah, its resistances, its vulnerabilities. You can see a lot of these special abilities that it can do and once I started doing that. 01:43:33.95 Chris Pretty much all the encounters became much easier because I could set up my party. Um, in certain you know areas in the Arena Um, or in that battlefield in ways that would benefit me and kind of Dis disadvantage that rather than just like you know, just. Steamrolling into it and just like expecting to set up later sometimes you don't really have that opportunity. 01:43:56.83 Dave Yeah, all of the combat encounter areas are set up really interesting too like there's often um, like high ledges or edges that you can push people off of. 01:44:11.43 Dave You know if you're inside like you can probably climb up on like a ledge or up in the rafters and like enemies might follow you up there and all the things that we've said like that you can do to the enemies you know, pushing them off ledges or stuff like that they can do that to you too. 01:44:25.62 Chris Right. 01:44:26.66 Dave So I had to reload a couple of encounters where it's just like nope my main character got blasted off into the void so we have to reload like the enemies feel smart enough even on like the balanced mode where. There were very few fights that felt like total cakewalks. They all required some degree of strategy and even the easy ones because you don't get like a full heel after every combat you still need to be efficient with it because then you, you know if you don't you have to use your short rests. If you use up all your short rest then you have to go do a long rest and if you're in a dungeon. You can't long. Rest. So like you do need to ah like you said Chris try to be efficient with everything that you're doing but like I don't know I'm just I was just constantly amazed by like. 01:45:20.67 Dave How quickly a lot of the fights turn into chaos and then you have to adjust to what's going on use every tool in your tool belt to try and get out of them like there are some boss fights where it was like you know I used every scroll that I had every single one that I thought I would never use. 01:45:40.90 Dave I Had to use them and I love games like that that force you to use those items. 01:45:45.70 Chris I just killed the boss before they could do anything and had a problem with it, just kidding. There was one boss fight that was actually very very tough. I think we 'd mentioned it earlier. I'm sure we're talking about the same one. We'll talk about it in spoilers. But yeah. 01:45:47.63 Dave Yeah, yeah, if it is no big deal. Yeah. 01:45:47.94 Jim Yeah, ah. 01:45:59.55 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:46:00.31 Jim The amount of times in this game that I would set up a bunch of bomb barrels together only to have combat accidentally start and the enemy would just use the bomb barrels against me and like I tpk was I mean. 01:46:12.11 Dave Yeah, so. 01:46:13.66 Chris Yeah, right. 01:46:17.41 Dave Yeah, and I think depending on who you have in your party, your approach to a lot of fights will be very different if you're fighting them straight up and then. 01:46:17.99 Jim At least 3 times. 01:46:34.12 Dave If You're not going to fight them straight up and you're going to try and do like the bomb barrel thing like you just stack up a bunch of bombs because you know like this thing's going to Agro at some points I'll just stack up these barrels here when they do Agro We'll hit it with some fire. It'll explode and we will profit and we'll move on like you can do a bunch of goofy shit like that too. On top of the super strategic depth that all of your character spells and stuff has, this game has 12 character classes and 46 subclasses. So All the possibilities that all of these things can do um. And they all seem pretty viable to me. Ah in combat so without any spoilers. Let's just mention what side characters we liked to use. Did we have any kind of general strategies that we found to be really fun? 01:47:31.10 Jim Ah, the the 1 thing about this whole class and subclass thing is you can actually start to mix and match classes and subclasses and some of them play together really really? well. So um, one of my favorites. Um. 01:47:35.80 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:47:40.38 Chris Um. 01:47:48.80 Jim My Lae’zel run um I used Karlach for the first time and um her as just a thrower like just I'm going to stand in the back and Chuck the weapon at you if you took her. 01:48:00.75 Dave Yep. 01:48:03.63 Jim Like a barbarian and then also sent to put her a little into rogue. Um, she would get an additional bonus action and so you could do 4 throws and around and just start wiping the floor with people. Um. 01:48:16.70 Chris Geez literally picking people up and wiping the floor. Ah. 01:48:21.30 Jim Yes, yeah, throwing people into other people or just off the edge. It's like I don't want to deal with them so that was always good. Um I I do. I have a soft spot in my heart for kind of like that. What is considered the traditional D and D party is a fighter, a cleric, a thief and a wizard. 01:48:23.44 Dave Um, yes. 01:48:24.87 Chris Yeah, ah. 01:48:40.20 Jim And ah one of my runs was that and I really like that because they all have their own very specific park to play the fighter is just get in your face and do damage. The cleric is kind of holding the line and keeping people going. Um then you know. 01:48:47.17 Dave Yeah. 01:48:58.59 Jim Sneaky Rogue boy is in the back sniping people and then the wizard just pops in the wall of fire and stands in back. I really like stuff like that. 01:49:10.15 Chris Ah, yeah I didn't even know that was sort of the traditional role. That's now that I think about it that is exactly what my party was essentially I didn't have a wizard. But yeah I had that traditional role so that makes sense. Yeah, you have people like ah. 01:49:23.92 Chris Like I didn't real I got into multiclassing kind of early on and I was like oh this is really fun and I had Lae’zel multiclass as like a fighter cleric or something so I thought it'd be cool to give her um some of the the divinity ah reactions or something like that and then. 01:49:43.93 Chris Read somewhere I think I was just on Reddit on the bg3 Reddit and someone was saying something like oh, what's the best fighter build and then everyone was just like oh you should just ah put 1 level or sorry 2 levels in a fighter three levels into fighter and then multiclass over to 4 more levels in a fighter and then finish off the rest and fighter. They're just like. 01:50:03.43 Dave Um, yeah. 01:50:03.51 Chris Just keep the whole fighter the entire time. Um, yeah, and so I was okay, yeah, maybe it is really good at higher levels to just do that and then I realized oh she has like a third attack like that she can do so at some point I was like using haste on her so she would have like. 01:50:12.20 Dave Yeah. 01:50:20.58 Chris 3 actions at some times and so it was like that's nine nine swings of her sword like it's saint. Do you know I mean so she became kind of ridiculous and esterian kind of was this very similar having um, 2 to 3 actions at any given time. 01:50:23.80 Dave Yeah. 01:50:39.61 Chris Using Haste or things like that. Um, yeah I think Haste haste kind of ah it's It's a fun spell but I feel like it kind of trivializes a lot of the content if I'm being honest. Um, yeah, um, so if you want to challenge mode I think. 01:50:47.13 Jim Oh it's busted. 01:50:54.72 Chris Don't they do that in the honor mode where you can't use it or it's like nerfed. 01:50:58.77 Jim It's the traditional way which in this game if you haste you just get a full other action. So like yeah 3 attacks become 6 sort of things in the real dnd haste. Gives you one additional additional action which you can use for 1 additional attack. So um, three attacks becomes 4 well it is it lasts for a minute a minute is considered. 01:51:19.61 Chris I see not for 10 turns or whatever. 01:51:21.64 Dave Um, yeah. 01:51:27.15 Chris Oh got you gotcha? Yeah yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, some of the interactions between those spells and certain classes I think yeah if you're doing like 200 damage with a single character a turn. 01:51:29.49 Jim Ah, 10 rounds and what cause one round is like 6 seconds 01:51:34.62 Dave Gotcha. 01:51:44.30 Dave Yeah. 01:51:47.90 Chris With impunity like there's no yeah, like each weapon swing is like a 96% chance to hit with advantage. You're like okay yeah, this stuff is getting a little too easy like. 01:51:52.47 Dave Yeah. 01:51:59.64 Dave Yeah, ah with my party I had so my character was a druid so I like druids because they could be big strong melee fighters if you turn into the bear or later on you can turn into a dinosaur and shit. Ah so the druid was that but. Druids can also use a lot of magic so depending on what the situation needed the druid could kind of switch between those 2 roles. I had shadowheart who I respect to be more of a healing cleric so shadowheart was a healer. And then also a good mage if she needed to be. She had some really strong stuff and then I had Lae’zel and Karlach both on the front line just like a wood chipper Basically they were just destroying everything and then yeah Karlach had the ability to to throw ah dead bodies. 01:52:52.49 Dave So Karlach would often kill a character then pick up the dead body and throw it at another enemy which would knock them down so that was ah a lot of fun to do and then later on in the game I got an item that made carlack giant so she would just just wreck shop. 01:53:10.86 Dave Ah, so that was my main party was Karlach, Lae’zel, my druid and then shadowheart and sometimes especially if I was doing a side quest I would get will in there or Gale um not often astarian unless I really needed. Ah, sneaky sneaky stuff outside of combat. So. 01:53:31.60 Jim 1 of the the ways that as my evil playthrough that I played and I don't suggest people play this because it bogs the game down so much was essentially a full pet build. So I was a necromancer wizard and when I was. 01:53:44.71 Chris Oh. 01:53:50.73 Jim All topped up on all my undead I could have gone at 1 time I would have 10 undead under me my front liner was a character that we'll get into in the spoiler section who was ah could also raise some undead. And then I would have a druid who we'll get into in the spoiler section who could have 11 summons of her own and then I would just have a starian blinking through all of this with double crossbows just getting in people's spaces. Um and just blasting them. But. It would Bog the game down so much because all of a sudden it would be my turn . I had 20 things I had to move and it actually slowed the game down. I don't recommend people play it like that. 01:54:32.00 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:54:39.48 Dave I think ah Aaron was ah Aaron was supposed to be on this episode with us and I think he played that way too. So yeah, um, yeah, just ah, just a little touch of the different combinations strategies that you can. 01:54:55.25 Dave Play with in combat here like I said, like the depth to party composition and then the depth to the skills and how you manage the situations in combat seems pretty limitless and especially I Assume once you're on like honor mode or something like that. That like your tactics have to be sound in order to make progress. 01:55:24.52 Chris Yeah I think there's even that one boss fight we mentioned earlier that you do get an ally Well, there's a possibility that you can have an ally and if she wasn't there. Ah honestly I don't know how you could. You couldn't really. 01:55:30.84 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:55:40.11 Chris Set your party up for this. You can't plan for it. There's nothing you could do if she wasn't there. I definitely would have liked a full party wiped and just yeah would have had a really really hard time with that. I think yeah, we must be talking about the same one? Yeah um, yeah, there's a couple of those interactions that are just. 01:55:42.69 Dave Yeah, same here. Yeah for sure. 01:55:58.67 Chris Yeah, they seem kind of broken and there's also ah, 1 thing that I've kind of mentioned how about combat I don't know if you guys got used to like maybe clicking portraits when you were trying to attack something to attack it. But I don't know how many times I got so frustrated, especially with astarian. Um, I went in with like ah double hand crossbows so would have like a bunch of attacks that I would like need to click ah like click enemies on and like if they were kind of like characters that had like kind of weird animations. They would like jump around a little bit or whatever I would click the ground and I would attack I would. 01:56:30.93 Dave Oh yeah. 01:56:35.90 Chris Shoot an arrow at the ground next to them because they'd jumped right at the moment I was clicking Oh that was so frustrating. So yeah, there's a couple of those little things that are just kind of like how can you avoid that is this me being bad or is this bad design like I don't know like. 01:56:38.58 Dave Oh yeah, I bet. Yeah. 01:56:47.15 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:56:50.70 Jim Yeah before I got super comfortable with the camera if somebody would get Mobbed There were plenty of times where one of my guys would just attack another one of my own party members because I meant to click a bad guy and it's like oh you just did like. 01:57:00.28 Chris Yeah, right. 01:57:06.24 Jim 30 damage to a guy I didn't need you to do that too. So. 01:57:06.61 Dave Yeah, that feels bad. Yeah. 01:57:09.70 Chris How wild is wild magic by the way I just like it if you could just like on a scale of 1 to 10 because my next playthrough I would like to have like a wild magic sorcerer just doing weird stuff. 01:57:18.48 Jim Um I Love that build. I haven't used it in this game. Um, knowing what I know about it, some pretty wild things can happen and I don't know if they do, so there's I think 50 different things because every time you. Cast a spell.. There's a chance Wild magic could happen if you roll a D 20 and then you roll a D 100 and I think 50 different things can happen. It. Yeah exactly and I think 50 different things. Can. 01:57:39.33 Chris Right. 01:57:47.63 Chris It's a lot of sides. 01:57:48.83 Dave It's a big dice. Yeah. 01:57:51.64 Chris How do you tell? what? you rolled like anyways I yeah of course. Yeah, yeah. 01:57:55.97 Jim Oh so it's actually two d ten s that you roll and one of them is your 10 and the other one's the 0 to one. Ah but like 50 different things can happen everything from your skin turns blue you turn into a flower pot to you cast fireball on yourself. So like. 01:57:58.61 Dave Okay, okay, yeah. 01:58:12.33 Chris Oh damn. 01:58:15.35 Jim You can have some like tpks on accident because everyone's grouped up your level one. Your cantrip goes wrong. Fireball is cast on you. Everybody's dead. 01:58:22.77 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure how it works in the game but um, it is a fun mechanic to have programmed in. I always liked using um metronome in Pokemon Just ah, you know see what happens? Yeah, so. 01:58:23.84 Chris All right? That's fun. That's going to be a lot of fun. 01:58:37.64 Jim Yes, yes. 01:58:41.98 Dave Ah, let's roll into the wrap up section in housekeeping before the spoiler section. We're already at 2 hours here so this might be the first episode that I actually have to split into 2 episodes and then release separately. So YOU think. 01:58:56.20 Chris Yeah. 01:58:56.22 Jim Yeah, yeah. 01:59:01.56 Dave If someone has listened this far in the podcast and they don't already know the answer to this then they weren't actually listening but guys who would you recommend play Baldur's Gate 3 and if you have any wrap up thoughts about it here is the place for that too. 01:59:20.56 Jim Ah, so I mean it's probably the best game I've ever played. Um I do have some criticisms but in all honesty, they are pedantic at absolute best. Um act one is. Simply perfect I think it should be taught in schools as part of a public education. Um I'm on my fourth playthrough at the moment I've dumped 500 hours into this game. I already am planning 2 more playthroughs currently? Um I I know. 01:59:43.68 Dave Ah, yeah. 01:59:44.90 Chris Ah. 01:59:51.50 Dave Oh Jesus. 01:59:52.67 Chris 5 01:59:57.78 Jim It's a new game like it's only has been out for nine ten months now but like ever since its release it just dominates my thoughts. I theory craft in my head I think about the design choices in this game that are incredible. From a d and d standpoint I actually think it's a really cool campaign. It adds a lot to the world. It changes some of the lore actually like they got the liberty to change some stuff which wizards of the coast are going to adopt. Um, it's just absolutely incredible. I I don't know if I have anything else to say about it. I recommend it to everyone. I think that again it needs to be played in schools. Yeah. 02:00:47.79 Chris Ah, yeah I Honestly these days I think for a long time Honestly I haven't really played a lot of single player. Um game I mean this game has multiplayer too. But I haven't really played a lot of sort of single player adventure games in quite a while. I kind of got on the Mmo train for a long time and did things like Mobas and things like that. But. There is every once in a while where there's a game that kind of piques my interest um that is a single player game and this one I'm really glad it did. I'm really glad I was pushed to buy it because I Absolutely loved it. Um, you know, putting down other games. Um putting down games like and Mmos where you kind of do need to play a lot. Um. To to be good to just be like sorry guys like to my guild and friends like I I'm playing about I'm playing Baldurr's gate like I don't know what to tell you like I can't focus on rating I can't focus on these other things that I need to do for for and Mmos I Just like you can't stop thinking about what I'm going to do next. 02:01:41.95 Dave Um, yeah. 02:01:42.63 Chris In this game and like I mentioned before I kind of put the game down for a while it was just kind of due to real life stuff wasn't we playing any games at all. Um, but um, yeah, now that I'm kind of back into it. Um, thanks to things to Dave and getting me on this podcast will probably be hooked again. Being back on it in terms of who I'd recommend it to. Um, I would say I mean I think even if you don't like the idea of turn based combat. Um, but you do like a good story I think that the turn based combat in this game could grow on you for reasons that we discussed before visuals and um because it is interesting. The interactions between everything. Um. Yeah I think if you I guess if you don't really like story um things like that. Maybe maybe the game's not for you. But even then like you might be somebody who's really into into this thing like theory crafting and things um being being sort of a tactician um to use that word. To craft the battlefield the way that you want to yeah it it is. It's going to be fun I think you will enjoy it I think it's definitely worth every penny that you'd pay for it. So yeah I don't I can't really think of anybody that I wouldn't recommend it to unless you just don't like video games. But then I think a lot of people who. Don't like video games saw it picked it up and tried it as their first video game and loved it. So yeah. 02:03:03.69 Dave Yeah, yeah, it definitely did transcend like the types of games that people normally play. So I think I've heard and seen enough out there from people who I would normally say like well if you don't like ah you know a D and D ass like rpg. 02:03:19.88 Dave Maybe don't play this but this game has seemed to appeal to a lot of people that don't normally like a d and Ds Rpg so I think that there's just such a quality across the board here that I like. If you are someone who really responds to a branching story and characters and things like that. This game is excellent at that and if you're someone who wants really crunchy combat and mechanics to like sink your teeth into this game has that too. And if you like you know a story with good presentation and acting and things like that this game has that like it. It really does have something that would appeal to lots of different types of people. So like I mean ah if you really don't want to play a game. Like this and you know yourself then don't force yourself to play it of course. But for everybody else I do think there is something to appeal and if you're someone who likes all of those things above then you're going to end up like the 3 of us just basically having nothing but good things to say about it. I do think this is one of the best games ever made and I think that like I I think I've said that about some other games on the podcast as I did the recording and then as I look back a couple years later I'm like was that really one of the best games ever made I'm not sure. 02:04:46.87 Dave Ah, but this is and I will look back on this in like 10-25 years and be like fuck that was a really good game. What ah like how did they make this so that's really what I'm going to take away so it's an easy recommendation to anyone who thinks they might be interested in it. So yeah. 02:05:06.77 Dave Let's ah, let's do a little bit of housekeeping before spoiler time. So ah, thank you for listening up until this point spoilers are going to begin soon. So you can hop out when the music break starts but before you do that please consider leaving a rating and review for this podcast on your favorite podcast app of choice. Ah, the podcast is also on Youtube if you want to do Youtube things over there like subscribing in that whole deal. You can join the discord server and come in and talk about your adventures in Baldur's Gate 3 if you missed when we had the special channel in the discord server. Hop on in now talk about your experiences listen through the spoiler section if you want to hear what happened in our playthroughs and then come in and share what happened in yours you can also support monetarily for as little as $2 per month on patreon.com/real Dave Jackson you'll get to vote in polls for what games I do on the show as this episode airs. There should be a new poll coming up in a week or so at the beginning of May and yeah, it's a good time. It helps me out with costs associated with running the podcast and helped me pay for my trip to Pax East not too long ago. So that's really helpful and last but not least I have another show called a top 3 podcast where we do top 3 lists, we do drafts and things like that. That's a comedy show. It's a good time and yeah I think I think you'd enjoy that too. So. 02:06:36.68 Dave With all that being said, we're going to take a break and when we come back. It's full spoiler time for Baldur's Gate 3.