D&D: Baldur’s Gate 3’s New Patch Rewards Pacifism, Inspiration, And Dialogue
A new patch has dropped for Baldur’s Gate 3, everyone’s talking about it, especially your companions now that their dialogue has been revamped.
Baldur’s Gate 3 continues its early access reign of, well, not terror so much as a reign of testing to see what does and doesn’t work. And in the patch, you can see Larian Studios’ attitude of ‘let the players drive the play’ at work. Fans of both Divinity 1 & 2 will recognize this ethic at work, but even in the two-odd months since the game’s been out (and has it really been two months?), they’ve already transformed the game in some fairly substantive ways. Companions act measurably different now, for instance, and even in the latest patch they’re opening up more flexibility with the choices available to you.
In short, Larian Studios wants to capture, as best as they can, the feeling of playing D&D on the tabletop, and to accomplish this, they’re doing some of their absolute best work. Just take a look at the new patch, and let’s talk about how far we’ve come since the launch date.
via Larian
Our games have always been about rewarding creativity and exploration, but some people were disappointed with the lack of experience rewards for pacifism, and creative solutions that utilize the road less travelled. Patch 3 introduces rewards for avoiding combat situations, whether in dialogue or through exploration and environmental puzzle solving. Now, all you pacifists will be able to carve out a journey more true to your character’s identity. Or, it’ll just offer more options for specific circumstances.
Neat Factoid: 56% of players avoided combat with the Goblin Rooftop Ambush. Now those players will be properly rewarded without needing to kill the Goblins anyway.
Seeing them upgrade the ability to deal with encounters through exploration and ‘puzzle solving’ is great, considering the high degree of object manipulation implemented in the game. You can pick up and move crates, urns, vases, rocks, and more. There are plenty of times you could escape a fight or block off enemies, and having the option for a pacifist run is sure to challenge many a player.
Speaking of challenges though, one of the things that has been challenging players is balancing the relationships with the main companion NPCs. They have, if you’ve played the game, some rather strong opinions about what actions you do and don’t take. But. That will soon be changing.
On the topic of behaviour, we’ve certainly noticed your companions were perhaps a little negative at times. We’ve taken steps to move away from frequent nitpicking, so that they’ll start focusing more on the bigger picture. Companions will now be more tolerant. Not nitpicking about every single little thing they don’t like but rather focusing on the things they do like while still maintaining their personality and having strong beliefs about certain things. In short, they’ll feel a little more like companions.
Neat Factoid: For all 204k of players who let Astarion chow down, you won’t have to deal with SH’s approval dropping in what should be a private moment between the two of you.
The other big thing they’ve addressed are the skill challenges out there. There have been a few “gates” as Larian puts it, where a failed roll keeps players out of content. And, while that leads to memorable moments, it also means that players are missing out on parts of the game.
Dialogues with particularly harsh or dramatic skill checks have been rebalanced – instead of failing an entire situation based on one difficult roll, you’ll have a higher chance of succeeding the roll. This is to stop dice from locking you out of content unless the situation really merits it. Ultimately, however, you’ll still have to flow with the will of the dice.
Neat Factoid: A little over half of all players who use Speak with Animals on the Owlbear still fail the overall encounter. These success numbers only vary by about 5% for those without Speak with Animals. We’ve tweaked the DC here to reward investing parts of your character in animal handling.
Anyway, that’s just a taste of what’s new. So if you haven’t yet, try out Baldur’s Gate 3 today.
Happy Adventuring!
