Baldur’s Gate III Details and Combat Discussion

We recently had an opportunity to watch some Baldur’s Gate III gameplay footage and read a number of articles dedicated to Larian Studios’ upcoming CRPG. And now, we can follow that up with a press release that shares the game’s detailed description and lists its key features:

DUBLIN, Ireland (27 February 2020) – Larian Studios has been on the road recently, showing off Baldur’s Gate 3 for the very first time. Larian has been working alongside Wizards of the Coast to bring Baldur’s Gate to a new audience and today, they are ready to reveal their next generation turn-based RPG to the world.

Forged with the new Divinity 4.0 engine, Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you unprecedented freedom to explore, experiment, and interact with a world that truly reacts to your choices. A grand, cinematic narrative brings you closer to your characters than ever before, as you venture through the Forgotten Realms of Dungeons & Dragons in Larian’s biggest adventure yet.

Mysterious abilities are awakening inside you, drawn from a Mind Flayer parasite planted in your brain. Resist, and turn darkness against itself. Or embrace corruption and become ultimate evil.

Gather your party and return to the Forgotten Realms in a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival, and the lure of absolute power.

Abducted, infected, lost. You are turning into a monster, but as the corruption inside you grows, so does your power. That power may help you to survive, but there will be a price to pay. More than any ability, the bonds of trust that you build within your party could be your greatest strength. Caught in a conflict between devils, deities, and sinister otherworldly forces, you will determine the fate of the Forgotten Realms together.

Choose from a wide selection of D&D races and classes or play as an origin character with a hand-crafted background. Adventure, loot, battle and romance as you journey through the Forgotten Realms and beyond. Play alone, and select your companions carefully, or as a party of up to four in multiplayer.

No two adventures will ever be the same. The Forgotten Realms are a vast, detailed and diverse world, and there are secrets to be discovered all around you — verticality is a vital part of exploration. Sneak, dip, shove, climb, and jump as you journey from the depths of the Underdark to the glittering rooftops of the Upper City. How you survive, and the mark you leave on the world, is up to you.

• Online multiplayer for up to four players allows you to combine your forces in combat and split your party to follow your own quests and agendas. Concoct the perfect plan together… or introduce an element of chaos when your friends least expect it.
• Origin Characters offer a hand-crafted experience, each with their own unique traits, agenda, and outlook on the world. Their stories intersect with the entire narrative, and your choices will determine whether those stories end in redemption, salvation, domination, or many other outcomes.
• Evolved turn-based combat based on the D&D 5e ruleset. Team-based initiative, advantage & disadvantage, and roll modifiers join combat cameras, expanded environmental interactions, and a new fluidity in combat that rewards strategy and foresight.
• Define the future of the Forgotten Realms through your choices, and the roll of the dice. No matter who you play, or what you roll, the world and its inhabitants will react to your story.
• Player-initiated turn-based mode allows you to pause the world around you at any time even outside of combat. Whether you see an opportunity for a tactical advantage before combat begins, want to pull off a heist with pin-point precision, or need to escape a fiendish trap. Split your party, prepare ambushes, sneak in the darkness — create your own luck!

Then, you might be interested in a couple of rather contradictory PC Gamer articles dedicated to the game. This one bemoans its new turn-based combat system. And this one expresses the exact opposite opinion. An excerpt from the latter:

The old Infinity Engine games and Pillars of Eternity use the same principles and even specific abilities and rules from turn-based tabletop RPGs, but then obscures them to allow everything to flow in real-time. All the maths and dice rolls and single key moments still happen, but they’re hidden away in a combat log and occur so quickly that you’ve got no time to make sense of them unless you effectively play it like a turn-based game.

I want the choices I make to stand out and to be able to point to something and say “that’s what won the fight for me” without searching through a combat log to read some sums. It’s easier to understand the underlying rules and dizzying array of numbers when you’re going through things methodically. I’ve yet to see a RTWP game explain its combat system well, but the structure of turn-based games makes everything much easier to digest.

And as a bonus, here’s another PC Gamer article, this time around focusing on Baldur’s Gate III’s transparent dice rolls.