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Larian made a chill beats Baldur's Gate 3 animation full of references to popular mods and memes

by Jody Macgregor

Larian's community-focused Channel From Hell normally hosts videos like livestreams and developer interviews. The latest upload is a bit different. Borrowing the chill beats aesthetic every videogame from World of Warcraft to Victoria 3 has riffed on, Larian presents Chill Demonic Beats To Long Rest To, half an hour of a relaxed version of Raphael's Final Act playing while Spud Gun Studios' animated versions of the origin PCs relax at camp... Read more.

Larian boss will weigh his words "more carefully" after backlash, says criticism helped him understand why Baldur's Gate 3 "was sh*t"

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Larian Studios founder and CEO Swen Vincke is back again with a reconsidered second statement, following controversy around his previous post discussing the way games are critiqued. Larian shot from a respected developer with a suite of beloved RPGs to its name into videogame megastardom with the launch of Baldur's Gate 3. Naturally, that means all eyes are on the studio - and Vincke - as it works on new project, Divinity. In his follow-up message, he stresses that he sees "great value in criticism," but admits his initial take "didn't land as well as I'd intended." Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Larian boss is sick of players "shi***ng" on new games, and it feels like he's talking about Highguard Baldur's Gate 3 sales have seen an "incredible" surge since Divinity's reveal, despite AI controversy Larian is "sorry" that Baldur's Gate 3's most underrated companion didn't get a "fulfilling arc," with romance on its improvement list

Larian boss is sick of players "shi***ng" on new games, and it feels like he's talking about Highguard

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Highguard is, in many ways, my most-anticipated game of January. Its distinct lack of post-reveal marketing intrigued me, and the idea of a high fantasy extraction FPS game certainly feels very Lauren. It didn't exactly wow me at The Game Awards, however, feeling somewhat like a chimera of the myriad shooters we've seen release over the past few years. The response to its launch has been equally lukewarm, and the internet generally appears divided. While Steam says that 37% of players have left a positive review, if you filter by playtime (we looked at reviews that had logged more than five hours in-game), that number soars to 78% positive - a marked difference from what Steam initially suggests. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Larian boss will weigh his words "more carefully" after backlash, says criticism helped him understand why Baldur's Gate 3 "was sh*t" Baldur's Gate 3 sales have seen an "incredible" surge since Divinity's reveal, despite AI controversy Larian is "so...

Baldur's Gate 3 studio boss calls out "hurtful", "personal" videogame reviewers - "sometimes I think it'd be a good idea for critics to be scored, Metacritic-style"

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Fresh from the trenches of the Divinity generative AI debate, Larian CEO Swen Vincke has taken to the Twitterverse with some moderately spicy thoughts on video game critics and reviewers. Broadly, he feels that we need to work harder to be “critical” without being “hurtful”. He also suggests that the industry could do with a Metacritic-style system for evaluating and scoring reviewers, to “encourage a bit more restraint”, so that "sensitive" creatives don't "lose their idealism and love of players.” Picture me over here, huffing and snorting like a bull eyeing the red-trousered bottom of an atypically fleshy matador browsing the inside of a just-opened china shop. By gawd! A chance to pontificate about my own navel, while bagging a Baldur's Gate 3 headline in the bargain. I have some notes on Vincke’s notes, but before I start throwing my toys around, maybe read the Xitter thread in full, from late last night on the 27th. For those who do not p...

Baldur's Gate 3 mod restores more than 100 conversations and 1,000 lines of voiced dialogue from the early access version previously lost in the ethereal plane

by Jody Macgregor

I played the first act of Baldur's Gate 3 a few times in early access, which is why I'm always slightly surprised on subsequent playthroughs that there aren't a bunch of mind-controlled anglers protecting the dying mind flayer you encounter near the start of the game. They were cut in the final release, along with a bunch of dialogue and scenes, much of which has now been restored by modder HyperspaceTowel... Read more.

Baldur's Gate 3 modder adds legally distinct Poké Balls so you can 'capture non-player characters inside a ball and free them later (or don't)'

by Lincoln Carpenter

In a game packed with interesting items that can be used for all kinds of productive and/or sinister purposes, one of Baldur's Gate 3's more flavorful bits of enchanted ephemera is the Iron Flask, an item you can find early in the game that, as its tooltip says, "can hold friends and foes." The only way to learn what it contains, however, is to throw it—at which point you'll discover the spectator that was imprisoned within is very much a foe to you and everything else in the vicinity. And then presumably you'd be hit with one of its many beam attacks... Read more.

A ton of cut Baldur's Gate 3 early access encounters, including over 100 chats, have been resurrected by a modder

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Baldur's Gate 3's shift from early access to full release came with heap of tweaks and changes as Larian finalised their huge RPG. Naturally, this meant certain bits or plans not making it into the final cut, and if you've come to long for any of those after playing them initially or hearing about them, then odds are a new mod is right up your alley. It's also really cool if you, you know, just want more BG3. Read more

'This game could never be made by AI… it's too human,' says Baldur's Gate 3 actor Neil Newbon after wrapping a playthrough on stream

by Jody Macgregor

Over the course of two years and 126(!) episodes, Astarion actor Neil Newbon has been streaming a co-op playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 alongside his friend Tom de Ville, with occasional guests like Amelia Tyler and Devora Wilde. And yes, he did romance himself. The series has finally wrapped up now, and Newbon spent a chunk of the final episode summing up his feelings about a game he clearly enjoys playing as much as he enjoyed working on... Read more.

Baldur's Gate 3 sales have seen an "incredible" surge since Divinity's reveal, despite AI controversy

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Who would have thought that a predominately single-player, non-live-service RPG would hit over 100,000 concurrent players two and a half years after it launched? Baldur's Gate 3 is just built different, and the genre-defining fantasy game has done just that. According to SteamDB, the game hit 111,544 concurrent Steam players on Sunday, January 18, and Larian CEO Swen Vincke says that both it and Divinity Original Sin 2 have seen a spike in sales since the announcement of Divinity at The Game Awards. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Larian is "sorry" that Baldur's Gate 3's most underrated companion didn't get a "fulfilling arc," with romance on its improvement list Former GTA dev congratulates "bold" Larian Studios for stepping away from Baldur's Gate 3 Baldur's Gate 3's Devora Wilde is okay with being typecast, especially if she gets to be "badass females"

Larian's learnt a lot from Baldur's Gate 3 going into Divinity, including the fact that hand-crafted loot is probably better: 'Randomization did not save us much time'

by Harvey Randall

Larian's next game, Divinity, is gonna have some big changes to the usual Original Sin formula—and it's thanks to Baldur's Gate 3, so sayeth a Larian lead in a recent Reddit AMA. Nick Pechenin, head of design at the studio, said that its take on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset informed a lot of how Divinity's shaping up... Read more.

'I wish Wyll had gotten more content' says the Baldur's Gate 3 writer who wrote him, and splitting his story between devils and dads 'might have been a mistake in hindsight'

by Joshua Wolens

Baldur's Gate 3, you may have heard, was quite a good videogame. Good enough to make PCG history, even. But not every part of it shines equally. Wyll, the origin character and (if you're not playing as him) party member, is notoriously a little underbaked. He's so straightforwardly good as to be, well, maybe a little dull, and he even gets outshone by other characters in some of his own big plot scenes—not because of a deficit in his performance, but because of how those scenes were written... Read more.

Larian is "sorry" that Baldur's Gate 3's most underrated companion didn't get a "fulfilling arc," with romance on its improvement list

by editor@pcgamesn.com

We all have our favorite Baldur's Gate 3 companion. It normally follows a similar pattern: Shadowheart and Astarion lead the pack, with Karlach also lurking near the top. Minthara has etched herself into history as yet another one of gaming's 'gothic baddies,' Gale is the cutesy UwU romantic, and we'll never forget that Halsin trailer. The one person we do often forget about, however, is Theo Solomon's Wyll, the infinitely good Blade of Frontiers. But I'm not innocent here, either: as much as I wanted to find a spot for Wyll in my party, between Astarion's deft hands (minds out of the gutter), Shadowheart's healing, and my consistent lack of tankiness, I never quite found a spot for the troubled yet heroic Warlock. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Former GTA dev congratulates "bold" Larian Studios for stepping away from Baldur's Gate 3 Baldur's Gate 3's Devora Wilde is okay with being typecast, especially if she gets to be "badass females" Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newbon isn'...

'That's pretty cool': Larian boss Swen Vincke responds after Stranger Things co-creator credits Baldur's Gate 3 for inspiring the show's climactic battle

by Andy Chalk

team of would-be heroes working together to take down a powerful bad guy that none of them could handle on their own is hardly a novel concept. One might think of the Super Friends, for instance, or the time Kiss battled an evil genius to save an amusement park. So it's maybe a bit, well, odd that Stranger Things co-creator Matt Duffer credits the inspiration for the show's finale to Baldur's Gate 3. But it's also pretty cool, right?.. Read more.

Former GTA dev congratulates "bold" Larian Studios for stepping away from Baldur's Gate 3

by editor@pcgamesn.com

Why take a risk? With development cycles and budgets ballooning in recent years, a flop of a game could spell doom for a studio. If you're the size of Bethesda or CD Projekt Red, you can spend years rebuilding trust with a series of updates to Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077, but for smaller studios commercial failure could be a death sentence. That's why former Grand Theft Auto developer Obbe Vermeij has gone on the record to congratulate Larian on its "bold" decision to step away from the Dungeons and Dragons license and Baldur's Gate series. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Baldur's Gate 3's Devora Wilde is okay with being typecast, especially if she gets to be "badass females" Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newbon isn't sure about a mocap Game Award, but he's got a great alternative "F**k AI in performance," says Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newbon: "it's dull as hell," and companies should "spread the wealth"