I'm in Act 3, and I feel the story nearing its end, although there's still a lot more to see. What a fantastic game. Wherever you go, there's something surprising afoot. There are so many little moments that are so memorable and often hilarious.

- Auntie Ethel is such a great, funny villain.

- The mushroom people in the Underdark. Such a unique race.

- Balthazar and the Thorm family in Act 2 are all so gross and macabre in a way that make you both wince and laugh.

- The kid in Baldur's Gate who wants to resurrect the dead.

- Just, everything in the House of Hope. It feels a bit like a Psychonauts level. I love that Raphael is so narcissistic he only wants to have sex with versions of himself. And then makes others watch. And then makes them worship his chamberpot.

The game is consistently rewarding. Despite the huge volume of content, it seems like there's very little filler nonsense. There are basically no moments when I feel I'm wasting my time (except maybe ones of my own making, like if I insist on clicking on every box and stealing every silver fork.) Even some of the random NPC non-quest dialogue is memorable. It's all just so weird and good.

It's just amazing to me that Larian can keep up this consistent level of high-quality writing and production values at such a perfect pace for such a long game. There's so much here that it seems like it already is a GOTY version from two years post-launch after some great DLC.

Big games totally work when they are all killer, no filler. This and elder ring prove that. It’s a lot of work, though, so the expectation that all games must be this good now is unreasonable. I do hope we get more like it, though. Larian quietly became my favorite developer over the past ten years.

Big games totally work when they are all killer, no filler. This and elder ring prove that. It’s a lot of work, though, so the expectation that all games must be this good now is unreasonable. I do hope we get more like it, though. Larian quietly became my favorite developer over the past ten years.

I wasn't happy with how my evil run was going (I got one of the many Minthara-related bugs that messed up progress with her since my save was mostly played prior to the patch that fixed those. It was still broken after the patch) so I decided to see how quickly you can get to the end from the start of Act 3.

BIG ACT 3 SPOILERS WITHIN

There are so many good bits in this game. I thought one dry joke at the start of Act 3 was pretty good:

EARLY ACT 3 SPOILERS

After Shadowheart changes her hair, Minthara and Lae'zel have this to say:

Lae'zel:

Just a heads up. They released a mammoth 20GB patch for the game yesterday. I didn't get a chance to look at it until now. It's got a boat load of fixes (over 1000 bug fixes in total) alongside more performance tuning. They also added a bunch of new animations and other little things like that along with a few new dialog bits.

I hadn't checked out the game on Steam Deck in a good while so I just gave it a spin. Between the last big patch and this new one, the game is in a far better place on the Steam Deck and I'd now consider it completely playable on there. Act 3 still isn't at locked 30 or unlocked 40 (Act 1 and 2 now easily achieve that outside of specific outlier situations. For example, the druid grove now runs at locked 30 FPS when at launch it barely ran at an unstable 20) but the city now averages in the mid-20s, making it much smoother feeling.

Most importantly, they added support for FSR 2.2 for the Steam Deck release (and everyone else. I hadn't noticed until now because I use an Nvidia GPU in my PC and I was using DLAA instead of any of the super sampling tech), which is a huge deal. Previously, the game only had FSR 1.0, which did help a bunch with performance for Steam Deck but left the game looking super aliased, forcing you to use temporal anti-aliasing to make the game look anything other than awful. TAA worked okay but had the effect of putting vaseline on a camera lens. Everything looked smudged and blurry. Now with FSR 2.2, you can get better performance than FSR 1.0 and it also does a fair amount of anti-aliasing on its own , so you don't have to run TAA. As a result the game now looks genuinely great on the Steam Deck's screen and mostly runs at a locked 30 (you can run the game higher than 30 FPS, but if you lock it to 30, it runs in the Steam Deck's sweet spot in terms of performance per watt). On the Steam Deck's screen it genuinely looks like the game's running at native resolution with strong anti-aliasing on. It's quite impressive what they've managed to do to get the game running well on weaker systems.

For what it's worth, I've rarely had performance issues, even in Act 3. The exceptions are usually when there is a ton of fire and other environmental effects in the city. I never got to Act 3 before the first few patches, though, so maybe that helped.

I finally beat this game, after 150+ hours. I have to say that toward the end I was a bit fatigued. Not because the game let up in quality in any way - to me, it really didn't. Just that, well, it was very long, and I was ready to move on to other things.

So it was crazy to find about all the cut content that was apparently datamined - the upper city, Avernus, Karlach's better ending, and so on. I have no idea to what extent that stuff was ever planned to be in this game, but it's *so damn long* as it is that I'm happy with what we have. I'm interested in DLC if it comes, but I'm going to need a long break. The one piece of apparently cut content that I miss is some reactivity to your choice whether or not to use the tadpoles. All the characters talk about this choice so much as if it's significant, so it's really weird that it turns out not to matter at all.

I've noticed the plot is fairly repetitive, although not necessarily in a bad way. Virtually every character is held in thrall in one way or another to some kind of god figure and has to choose whether to stay devoted or to break free. Laezel - Vlaaketh. Wyll - Mizora. Shadowhart - Shar. Karlach - Gortash. Gale - Mystra. Astarion - Cazador. And apparently, the Dark Urge has something similar going on, although I didn't do a durge run. It almost seems like the same arc repeated over and over. But it's so well done that I do not mind. You could definitely see some parallels to the role of religion - or anything else we are devoted to - in the real world. You could argue that the whole game is about breaking free from those who would manipulate us. The Hope-Raphael subplot in particular is really well done and poignant, and I love Hope for never giving in despite everything.

Karlach was my favorite character. Even though I never managed to romance her, I would happily live out my days in Avernus with her. I'm kind of glad we never get to solve her problem entirely, because that ending is more interesting.

A lot of the performance issues, especially early on, were tied to the game being poorly optimized (which they have since fixed). Outside of Act 3, I didn't have issues. Before the first big patch, Act 3 used to run essentially any CPU at 100% and limit frame rate to under 60, even with the top end i9s and Ryzen 9s. Since the first big patch it's been much less of an issue so basically unless you played Act 3 in the first few weeks after release, you won't have seen the worst of the issues. Since the second big performance patch, Act 3 has run perfectly smooth for me. It's just on very weak hardware like the Steam Deck that parts of the game are still sometimes a struggle to run well.

I always found the complaints about cut content in Act 3 bizarre. Unless you deliberately do things to skip entire sections of content like I did on one of my playthroughs, the shortest time you can get through all the content in the game is like 70-80 hours. For most people on their first run, a playthrough would clock in at well over 100 hours. I think mine was 100 hours on the save file but Steam showed me at around 140 hours, which would have counted redoing things after getting wiped and stuff like that. If the third act was any longer than that, it would have felt like it dragged. As it is, the pacing of the third Act is really good. It doesn't overstay its welcome and always leaves you with something significant to do. If there was an additional 20+ hours of content to it I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the game as much. For example, I quite enjoy Persona 5 Royal, but the last 20-30 hours of it start to feel like a huge slog. I'd much prefer games avoid that.

The one thing I was surprised they left in was a Steel Watch thinking Karlach was also a Steel Watch and telling her to go and get her infernal engine fixed at the foundry. When I ran into that bit I was like "oh they did include a way to fix her engine", but then nothing came of it. There are a few things I'd like to see them finish off and tie up a bit better but it seems like they're actively working on some of it and I imagine the rest will be done in an inevitable Enhanced Edition of the game.

A massive new patch is about to land for the game. Like colossally big. It's 30GB and requires 130GB of free disk space to install. Larian is recommending people with space issues just uninstall and reinstall the game once the patch hits.

Things added:

• An entire new epilogue sequence that takes place 6 months after the game ends that factors in all of your choices made and has thousands of new lines of character dialogue
• The inventory system we always wanted where you can access anyone in the camp's inventory from one screen. No more shuffling party members just to get an item off someone you don't have in your party
• A new difficulty mode above Tactician called Honour which is basically an ironman mode. No save scumming. One save file. More difficult than Tactician. Some form of permadeath (it's not clear if they mean that if the party gets wiped then they show you a stats screen or if your player character gets killed at all. Either way it's brutal)
• A new custom difficulty mode that allows you to make the game easier or harder or allows you to do a bunch of other little things
• A bunch of new performance fixes, including a few fixes to issues introduced in Patch 4. I ran into some of these, including some weird texture pop-in stuff that sounds like it's been fixed.
• Probably a bunch of other stuff. The notes aren't out yet so I haven't been able to read through them

Man... they'll probably completely finish patching this game before I ever finish it. I've put it to the side for a bit to play some other stuff but also, I'm still just making new characters all the time rather than just beating the game. The one I've settled on for now is a Dragonborn Wild Magic Barabarian/Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer. That seemed like a cool build to me. The only bummer is that since the level cap is 12, and you need 3 levels in Barbarian to get the Wild Magic Rage, I now can't get to level 11 in Draconic Sorcerer to get the Fly subclass feature, which would be way cooler.

Damn I can’t believe Baldurs Gate 3 came in right at the end of the year to steal goty from Baldurs Gate 3.

I’ve finally put in a significant amount of time into this game, enough to feel like I can actually weigh in on it (or rather, the first portion of Act 1). Let me preface the rest of everything I say with the fact that I really like this game, it’s a lock for my top 5 for the year, and I would love to keep picking away at it for the next several months.

What Bailey said about the game feeling like it’s run by a terrible DM is 100% accurate to my experience. As the person in my various groups who ends up running the games based on no one else stepping up, I can safely say that BG3 does a really poor job signposting companion reactions and consequences from decisions. A good DM shows you the barrel of the gun before pulling the trigger, to use a term Austin Walker frequently discusses. I know this isn’t a D&D-specific issue because there are tons of D&D podcasts that do this well. BG3’s DM feels more interested in saying “gotcha”, which is fun for being surprising and extremely frustrating when you’re invested in roleplaying the character you made.

I also find myself getting into the occasional conversation with someone besides my main character (despite controlling my main character before a battle) and not being able to switch over to them. Since my Paladin is very good at Persuasion, this can mean immediate failure in a negotiation without me being able to do anything about it. The generous deployment of quicksaves certainly helps mitigate this, but it all adds up to an experience that annoys me the longer I sit down for a given session.

Overall, I really like this game, but I’ve recalibrated my thoughts on it from “this is D&D” to “this is the best Dragon Age game ever made”.

yeah i'm stoked on this patch! i think it's going to trigger me to start that 2nd run (and potentially replay the ending of my first run).

nice to see the vibes remain so positive on this one- Larian seem to be in a good place. (oh god please no terrible work/life exposés in 6 months)

The download space/requirements take the piss

"Just delete and download the game again!"

We don't all have amazing internet

Really looking forward to seeing what the epilogue has to offer. Not sure how that's going to work, since my ending was a cliff-hanger in Avernus. But what's up with "Added a profanity filter for custom map markers"? This is an M-rated game anyway... I don't get it.

@allthedinos: There is an option under gameplay settings to auto-select your character after combat ends. This usually, although not always, makes it so that your character is the one initiating conversation.

I love this game, but I'll say the same thing I've said about every Witcher game: why the fuck does it take the developers months after the game is out to make an inventory system that makes common fucking sense? Yeah, I love that they keep improving the game. But c'mon, CDProjektRed, you had to know that Geralt's inventory sucked. What's the excuse by the third game? C'mon, Larian, you had to know that the party's inventory sucked. What's the excuse by the third full year of early access?

Just as a note, despite what Larian said, I was able to update the game just fine on a Steam Deck that didn't have even close to 130GB of space available for the update. I'm thinking their warning is more for Playstation users since Playstations have always been really weird about needing a bunch of extra free space for updates.

I gave the new Honour mode a try.

Pour one out for Rock the half-orc paladin. He was too handsome (but definitely not too smart) for this world. He lasted about 38 minutes before he succumbed to the little brain guys at the crashed ship who (Honour mode spoilers) HAVE A NEW RANGED ATTACK THAT HITS FOR HALF YOUR HEALTH AT LEVEL ONE. JESUS MURPHY WHAT THE FUCK

Unfortunately, his half-orc paladin son, Rock Jr., didn't last any longer since I forgot to split up the party before trying to sneak past the brain guys so Shadowheart just ran into a fight against them all.

Luckily Rock's half-orc paladin son from his secret family, Rock III, successfully snuck past and has a full party now. I'm sure given everything that's happened so far that Rock III is in for a nice long, definitely not precarious life.

For just a small example of how devious they are with this mode, they made the commander guy who's fighting an illithid kill him way faster, so basically instead of 10-15 turns to make it to the control panel at the end of the tutorial ship, you have like 3-5 turns before he turns around and starts one-shotting your party members.

Oh and to answer whether it's permadeath or not, it seems to be if the party gets wiped then it's over. The game still gives you scrolls of resurrection.

So I'm doing a Dragonborn dark urge run and discovered something important.

Because of how large and differently shaped Dragonborn heads are, hats don't really work. Larian being Larian, they just leaned into it and made all the hats and helmets look as goofy as possible. Most of the hats have "Ryan Davis wearing a tiny sombrero" energy. It's so great.

PS: I refuse to change my Dragonborn's outfit because his marbled black/green + gold skin matches his robe and it looks sick as shit. I also love that they just went fuck it and put in a Dragonborn head that's literally the Predator (it's even refers to the Predator in the name). Perfect for dark urge runs.

Since I couldn't get a flying warrior with my previous "Dragonborn Wild Magic Barbarian/Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer" build due to the level cap, I settled on a new build of an Eldritch Knight/Storm Sorcerer. Its pretty fun to just be able to shoot spells, fly up to a dude, then next turn stab them with a spear and beat them with a hammer because, oh yeah, she also dual-wields. I'm having a hard time thinking of anything cooler than that, so this might be the character I finally settle on to finish the game.

@ben_h: thank you for returning that ICONIC delivery of "BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC!" back into my brain. god, i didn't know the man but i feel like Ryan would have loved BG3.

ANYWAY- the new Epilogue is very heartwarming, everyone should check it out.

@ben_h: Further to this, I find I only like the way hats look on Dragonborn characters because there's no hair to clip through the hat.

Finally trying to return to this because of all the "well obviously Baldur's Gate 3 is the best game ever" talk across my various podcasts. Hell, even my sister whom I'd convinced to give the game a shot while I was on the hype train only to find its turn-based combat incredibly off-putting has *checks notes* sunk 220 hours into the game since making that comment. Meanwhile I've got 37 hours across two saves, one 24 and the other 10 in which I accomplished everything from the first save in half the time apparently...

Dropped the first save because I made some decision I think I mentioned elsewhere here that had me siding with the goblins and basically cut everyone out of my party but one or two people, which I thought was funny until I realized I didn't like using the other characters in combat at all.

This second save is on Explorer difficulty and I'm still finding the combat weirdly difficult because of the limits on magic uses, how far away the enemies always are at the start and how much stronger they are than you, even on easy. I'm about to advance past the first area for the first time, into the Moonrise thing, and my main goal is to figure out how to stop playing this game like it's an XCOM reskin...Everybody keeps blathering on about how infinite the game feels, but I haven't got any memory of the game feeling any more complex than Cyberpunk's or Dishonored's "fumble around in stealth until you do something dumb then kill everyone that's mad at you" binary.

...Which of course means it's all my fault, probably, but...*fingers crossed*