legend

Skipped neither. But I didn't just run on foot everywhere so there's probably some savings there!

It's crazy how volatile the game is. I haven't played in a while now, but shit like this keeps happening and it makes it completely pointless to try and build a character.

FWIW, The Red Prince was not the "real MC" in DOS2. In fact, you can completely abandon him or any of the possible party members in the very first act. All of the party members can also be made your main, or you can create a custom one. You probably could have just mained Ifan and been happy. The story and presentation of it in DOS2 was improved over DOS1, but the story presentation is BGIII is going to trounce both. It's much more immersive this time around.

You can get away with not minmaxing your race, but I would not pick Warlock if you want to be a melee character. If you want an unholy paladin do an Oath-breaker Paladin. Or multiclass with Warlock -- that can be legit and very powerful.

In classic D&D rules, different races have different starting bonuses. For the full list, it's worth checking out DnD Beyond which has all the rules for everything. The race bonuses can be found here (mostly just look at the first section for the races from the standard 5e handbook) Character Races for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e) - D&D Beyond WWW.DNDBEYOND.COM Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) Fifth Edition (5e) Races. A comprehensive list of all official character races for Fifth Edition. However, in the DnD expansion Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, they introduced the "Custom Lineage" race where you can basically decide what race you want and choose your own bonuses. I believe BGIII is also supporting a form of custom lineage in which case you can be pretty flexible to your race choice without it compromising gameplay style. This article seems to support that, but I haven't seen anything definitive. Baldur’s Gate 3 lets you customize your racial bonuses | PCGamesN WWW.PCGAMESN.COM A Baldur’s Gate 3 screenshot seemingly suggests that the popular Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything ruleset might allow for more customizable racial attributes.

Sorry to hear that Chris! That really sucks. At times like these I try and take comfort in knowing that it will be fixed and mostly you just have to wait through it. (With games of course)

I think I need to get to work on that asteroid defense space AI and robotics fleet.

I love how blockchain bros will nod a long with the idea that their "owned" item is actually hosted on some private server somewhere without a hint of irony.

Yeah I played through all of the early access when EA first released. But I deliberately haven't played any of the massive updates since then because I already played enough to know it will be great and I didn't want to feel like I was retreading ground when the full release came out.

To be clear, I didn't mean what I said to be a criticism of the game. Just a warning to keep expectations in check.

BTW, if anyone wants further corroboration of Emad being garbage, you can also check out this article on him. The AI Founder Taking Credit For Stable Diffusion’s Success Has A History Of Exaggeration WWW.FORBES.COM Stability AI became a $1 billion company with the help of a viral AI text-to-image generator and some misleading claims from founder Emad Mostaque. I know of a few people in the AI community who joined Stability and then left after only months on the job.

My understanding is the quality of out-sourced programmers in India is poor (I'm sure there are great programmers in India in general -- I know a bunch -- but the outsourced coding business specifically is bizarre). Even so, I doubt it. AI code generation is still filled with bugs except for things that you almost perfectly already find by googling or are very self contained functions. Also, Emad is a charlatan with no real experience who, like Musk, takes credit for other people's work. You shouldn't believe anything that comes out of his mouth.

Nope! And the people saying it will have the worst arguments that hinge on the premise that a "super intelligent" AI is equivalent to a genie/god, capable of doing anything, and that it will magically form on its own over a few days without the need of actual science and engineering. Worst case scenario with AI tech development is a small percentage of corrupt humans centralize power and use AI and robotics to oppress the larger population. Incidentally, if the people who cry that AI will go rogue and kill us all got what they wanted, this more plausible horrible outcome of humans oppressing other humans by wielding AI becomes more likely.

Not quite. Both web3 and modern AI are overhyped, but unlike web3, AI tech is actually useful and will continue to get even more useful.

It's just 2^14

As much as I love Larian, this won't be that meaningful. If there are only 14 independent outcomes featured in the ending that each can only go one of two ways, then you're up to 16384 possible endings and you'd only have to play the game twice to see the resolution to each of those 14 outcomes (once with them all in one state and once with them all in the other). BG3 probably has some interaction between choice and it may be more than 2 ways for each to go, but the point is cross products make big numbers from small numbers.

It really feels like a modern action-adventure game to me because many modern action adventure games have more defining "RPG" elements than this does That's not necessarily bad, but is what it is!

I finished all side quests and about half the hunt board and my PS says that I played for 35 hours. I didn’t skip cutscenes either.

I'll be 40 this year. I'm kind of looking forward to it so that it stops hanging over my head. It will be done and then I can move on. I realize this is a very CS-centric perspective, but I do think the significant digits of binary correspond to more meaningful landmark ages in human life than decimal digit flips, and I do try to remember that. 1 -> When you turn one, this is pretty significant relative to being born. 2 -> Yet again, very significant. We call it the terrible twos for a reason. 4-> Your language is readily understandable by adults other than your parents and you have some meaningful mobility much to the peril of your parents. 8 -> You've got some big boy/girl pants now. Probably an opinion or two that isn't utterly worthless too. 16 -> Most of your meaningful physical development is finished or nearly finished. We'll even give you some responsibility and you really want for your own independence at this point. You're pretty ignorant about the world though and struggle to make it on your own. 32 -> You're a practiced adult at this point. Your prime as a person has begun. 64 -> You're now an older adult dealing with the perils of age at an ever accelerating rate, but you do still have life left and you hopefully have a lot of wisdom and experience to show for it. Not sure anyone has ever made it to the next one: 128. But if they have, it's significant in that everyone is marveling at how you're still alive. From this ordering, 40 isn't really all that special. If I had to add one more milestone, I'd probably make it 24, which is still pretty close to meaningful changes in binary: 11000 It does, however, mean that 33 lines up pretty well with the 32 milestone! But maybe you should think of it as already passed in that case!

Credits roll. Overall I enjoyed it! Not perfect but I've already commented on why. Ending got me in the feels in a few places and even though it's completely absurd I really enjoyed those final QTEs on the final boss

Larian is pretty famous for their humor in games and wacky gameplay. Their games--at least since Divinity Original Sin 1--always come across as passion projects from people who love gaming and the gaming community. Prior to TotK I would have given Divinity Original Sin 2 the nod for the most fun systems allowing for emergent gameplay. Even if you're not into turn-based games, it might be worth giving their games a try sometime.

I'm pumped.

Well, I guess I never expected Blade Runner 2049 to be good and it's one of my favorite SciFis of the last 20 years or so, so maybe they can make it work!