What Baldur's Gate 3 is Like For Someone Who Doesn't Really Play Games

0:00 Over the past few years,

0:01 I’ve been running a series of informal experiments for my wife,

0:04 also known as the lady I live with, where she tries out various video games

0:07 in order for me to see what they’re

0:09 like for someone who didn’t grow up playing them.

0:11 Throughout that time,

0:12 she’s gone from a complete non-gamer to someone with a growing knowledge

0:15 of how games work and I wanna keep seeing how that knowledge grows.

0:18 Now, while she has tried a wide sampling of games,

0:21 she hasn’t gotten all that deep into the vast majority of them.

0:24 For the most part that hasn’t mattered a ton—she’s been able to get a sense

0:27 of what a lot of the games are like by just playing a couple hours,

0:29 but with some of the titles,

0:31 I don’t think she got far enough in to really see what they were about.

0:34 And because of that, there have been a few games

0:36 and genres I’ve wanted to see her revisit for awhile now,

0:39 and at the top of that list are CRPGs.

0:42 In general, they offer players such a wide

0:45 range of approaches for any given situation,

0:46 and as my wife typically has done better

0:48 with games that offer her a lot of freedom, I want to see how she does

0:51 with a game that provides an unparalleled amount of it.

0:54 For awhile, I didn’t know the best way to have her revisit the genre,

0:57 but then luckily for me,

0:59 Larian Studios decided to create a wildly ambitious CRPG that not

1:02 only has appealed to long time fans of the genre,

1:05 but also to people who never thought they would be interested in a game like it.

1:14 And that of course is Baldur’s Gate 3.

1:20 I do know my wife well enough to be sure

1:22 that Baldur’s Gate 3 is not really her type of game,

1:24 but as it has had a way of appealing

1:26 to many people who would say the same thing,

1:27 it’s made me wonder if it might at the very least help my wife enjoy

1:30 the genre a bit more than she did the last time she gave it a try.

1:34 For the informal experiment on role playing games,

1:36 she played a bit of Disco Elysium,

1:38 and Divinity Original: Sin 2, neither of which went all that well.

1:42 Disco Elysium was a bit too out there and dark for her liking,

1:45 and Divinity proved to be especially overwhelming.

1:47 As it is a robust game with loads of intricate systems,

1:50 there was a lot for her to figure out in a short amount of time,

1:54 and she felt bombarded by how much information there was.

1:57 To her it seemed as if every step was accompanied by a tutorial prompt,

2:00 which not only annoyed her because she doesn’t like getting interrupted,

2:02 but also stressed her out due to how much

2:04 stuff the game seemingly expected her to keep track of.

2:07 Each new piece of information made things seem more complicated,

2:11 and instead of her feeling as if she was

2:13 gaining a stronger understanding of what the game was about,

2:15 she felt as if she was only getting further away from having a grasp over it.

2:18 This of course was not helped at all by me who was just sitting back,

2:22 doing my mostly silent observer thing.

2:23 With both games, she thought they were more trouble than they were worth,

2:26 and had no interest in continuing with them,

2:28 and as that video was focused on a bunch of different types of RPGs,

2:31 instead of pushing her to play more,

2:33 I figured it’d be best to just move on to a different kind.

2:36 But since then I’ve always thought that it was

2:37 a bit of a shame that I didn’t have

2:39 her play more because while the starts of these games

2:41 give a taste of what their greater systems are like,

2:43 they open up in so many interesting ways as they go on, so to see whether

2:47 or not Baldur’s Gate 3 could draw her in enough

2:49 to get past her issues with the genre,

2:51 I decided to run another informal experiment.

2:53 As I wanted to ensure that she gets beyond the tutorial,

2:57 I chose not to just sit back this time as a silent observer.

3:00 I did my best not to lead her too much, and I generally waited a bit to see

3:05 how things played out before giving guidance,

3:07 but I did walk her through some of the major mechanics

3:09 and reminded her of how stuff works as she went along.

3:11 As there are so many ways things can go in Baldur’s Gate 3,

3:14 I didn’t set a specific goal or end point for her to reach;

3:17 instead I just let her dive into the world

3:20 and hoped the current would take her somewhere interesting.

3:25 So, this is how it went.

3:43 At this point of her gaming education,

3:45 my wife has experienced a handful of character creators.

3:47 Of all of them, this was easily the one she spent the most time

3:50 in, and that was mostly because of how

3:52 many impactful decisions it asked her to make.

3:54 As a long time D&D fan,

3:56 the classic races and classes just feel like common knowledge to me,

3:59 but as her exposure to D&D has mostly been

4:01 hearing me yelling in bad accents from another room,

4:04 she was immediately lost as there was so much information to sift through.

4:08 There are 11 races each with unique abilities and benefits,

4:11 with the majority of them having subraces

4:13 to choose between with even more abilities,

4:15 13 backgrounds that offer different skill proficiencies,

4:17 and 12 classes that all play very differently from each

4:20 other and within all those classes there are 46 subclasses,

4:24 providing even more variety to what a character can be like.

4:27 Understandably, she felt overwhelmed by the cascade of information and found

4:31 a lot of it hard to parse as she is not familiar

4:34 with the game or fifth edition D&D so reading ability descriptions didn’t

4:37 give a ton of insight on how stuff would actually operate in-game.

4:40 Raz: You get advantage on your next attack roll, so… Lady:

4:44 What would be good for me because I’m a bad player.

4:47 When most titles are teaching the player a new ability,

4:50 they have them just do that ability,

4:52 but at this point she hadn’t even seen what combat looked like,

4:54 so without any sense of framework it was hard for her to make decisions.

4:58 There are ways to change the main character after starting,

5:00 so players are not completely locked into whatever they go with in the creator,

5:04 but it does still ask people to make a lot of important decisions that will have

5:07 a pretty huge impact on their experience before

5:09 they know how the game works at all.

5:11 I kind of wonder if players like my wife who just have no

5:13 idea about how this type of title works would have benefitted from there being

5:16 a playable section before the character creator where players do a combat or two

5:20 as the Origin characters in order to get a sense of what combat is like.

5:23 This not only would teach the basics before asking them to build a character,

5:26 but it also would show off a few different classes,

5:28 so they can know a bit more of what to expect.

5:31 As her guide, I found it tough to succinctly explain all

5:33 of the options to her in a way that didn’t seem confusing.

5:37 Like, for instance, what is the best way to differentiate a warlock,

5:40 a sorcerer and a wizard to someone who sees

5:42 them as synonyms and doesn’t know enough about the core

5:44 mechanics of the game to have grasp over

5:46 the implications that come from their different spell slot situations?

5:49 Lady: They all sound the same!

5:51 And in some ways it felt like this with all the classes, as a lot of them,

5:55 despite feeling unique from each other,

5:56 are only a step or two away from others in terms of function,

5:59 so it was hard to effectively differentiate them

6:01 without giving her a history lesson that would

6:03 almost certainly bore her to a point of having no interest in playing at all.

6:07 So my solution was to pitch the classes

6:09 roughly based on how focused on magic they were—which

6:11 was a bit difficult to do because so

6:13 many martial classes have subclasses that allow for magic,

6:15 but I think I got close enough—and then I just asked her if she’d

6:18 like to be more focused on hitting stuff with a weapon or with spells.

6:22 She said she wanted to be a magical character so that she

6:24 could attack stuff from a distance and not always be in danger,

6:27 but didn’t want something too confusing,

6:29 and after pointing her towards the bard and warlock,

6:31 she went with the latter for one very solid reason:

6:35 Lady: Well, I like this person’s outfit Raz:

6:37 That’s as good of a reason as any to pick em.

6:41 Regardless of the why, the warlock felt like a pretty great option as it

6:44 has a lot of versatility in terms of melee and spellcasting,

6:47 and most of her abilities would be replenished from short rests,

6:50 so she’d get to be close to full power for most fights

6:52 without needing to spend a bunch of time going back to camp.

6:55 Eldritch blast is also just really fricking good.

6:58 Lady: Boom!

7:00 Raz: *laughing* Once settled on Warlock, I went over the subclasses, evocations,

7:06 spells and cantrips she could go with, and during

7:09 that she was reminded of something about me:

7:11 Raz: So, there’s one where you can be in service to the fiend!

7:14 Lady: You sound like a nerd.

7:16 Raz: Bro, I run a YouTube channel about video games.

7:20 What do you mean?

7:21 Lady: I just forget sometimes.

7:23 Raz: Yeah, with all my Chad Behavior?

7:25 How?

7:25 How do you forget?

7:26 Lady: I don’t know.

7:28 You don’t usually tell me about spells and demons and things.

7:33 Raz: Yeah…yeah…it’s pretty cool, isn’t it?

7:37 On the spectrum of degen to normie,

7:39 my wife obviously skews to the normie side of things.

7:41 She doesn’t have an issue with trying nerdier things, for instance,

7:44 this entire series started because she wanted

7:46 to engage with one of my interests,

7:48 but most stuff that falls under the umbrella of nerd

7:51 culture has just never been her go-to form of entertainment.

7:53 While she’s been able to latch on to some of things within it since marrying me,

7:56 others have not been as appealing to her, fantasy settings being a major one.

8:00 For whatever reason, she finds magic and made up worlds hard to connect

8:04 to, so being inundated with so many details about spells

8:07 and elven ancestries and otherworldly patrons right off the bat before

8:11 getting the chance to engage with more grounded elements like characters,

8:14 definitely created a bit of a disconnect.

8:16 To be clear, fantasy games shouldn’t concern themselves all

8:18 that much with appealing to people who aren’t interested in fantasy,

8:21 but it was here that I realized that the more time

8:24 spent focusing on the inner workings of the game’s fantastical elements,

8:27 the less likely she would be to enjoy playing it.

8:30 I’m not sure the best way to ease someone

8:32 who isn’t all that into fantasy into the genre,

8:34 but talking about stuff like dissonant whispers was definitely not it.

8:38 Raz: For that you get dissonant whispers,

8:40 which you cast a spell where you whisper *whisper

8:43 noises* and it scares the fuck out of someone.

8:46 Lady: That the dumbest thing ever.

8:48 Raz: Okay *laughing* After getting the mechanical stuff selected,

8:50 I hoped she’d have a little more

8:52 interest in choosing what her character looked like,

8:54 and while she definitely did, the creator left a lot to be desired.

8:57 She wanted to make herself sort of as a way to be more grounded in the world,

9:00 but due to the lack of customization options,

9:03 primarily in regards to the face, it was impossible to do.

9:06 Lady: That looks nothing like me.

9:07 Wanting more choices for this sort of thing has

9:10 nothing to do with being an inexperienced or experienced player,

9:12 but for the purposes of this experiment,

9:14 it was a shame to see her get excited at the prospect of making herself

9:17 only to find that the game didn’t offer enough customization for her to do that.

9:21 It turned something she was interested in into a disappointment.

9:24 For a game that is so focused on a custom experience,

9:26 it’s strange that they went with presets for the faces and not sliders.

9:30 All in all, even though she felt a bit let down

9:32 and in over her head because of all the information and magical

9:35 nonsense presented to her, she was content enough with where her character

9:40 ended up and ready to see what the game was really about.

9:46 To keep things feeling as approachable as possible,

9:49 she opted for the explorer difficulty which, among other things,

9:52 doubles health and increases the proficiency bonus for the party,

9:56 making it more likely to survive and roll well.

9:58 When she finally got into the game proper,

10:00 I had her test out playing with a mouse and keyboard versus a controller,

10:04 and she vastly preferred the controller.

10:05 Being able to move her character

10:07 with the joysticks instead of pointing and clicking felt

10:09 much more natural to her, and the simplified

10:11 HUD made the screen feel less overloaded.

10:13 Honestly, Larian did a pretty incredible job with how they

10:17 incorporated controller support—for a title as complex as Baldur’s Gate 3,

10:20 it is a hard thing to accomplish,

10:22 and while obviously playing in this way doesn’t end up being

10:25 as precise or efficient as playing with a mouse and keyboard,

10:27 it more than gets the job done through effective

10:30 uses of option wheels that cleanly contain everything that’s important.

10:32 One of the main downsides of this approach though is that it

10:36 led to my wife favoring the first wheel that comes up,

10:38 only checking the others when she was

10:40 really desperate for a move that could work,

10:41 and this certainly limited her go-to options a fair bit.

10:44 With that said, the wheel it defaults

10:46 to is filled with the most important moves,

10:48 so she wasn’t at a huge disadvantage because of it.

10:51 Once out of the pod, she immediately ran into an age-old issue for this series:

10:55 Lady: It didn’t tell me anything about what to do.

10:58 Raz: What do you mean?

10:59 Lady: Like there’s no,

11:01 there’s no objective While she could intuit that she should find a way

11:04 out of wherever she was as the place was gross and on fire,

11:07 she wanted more specific directions.

11:08 She didn’t really know who she was or why

11:11 she was there or what her character wanted,

11:13 which made her confused on the best course of action.

11:16 Was she supposed to kill the people that put her on the ship?

11:19 Was she supposed to destroy it?

11:20 Was she supposed to just jump off of it?

11:22 As she still doesn’t feel all that comfortable when trying out a new game,

11:26 she wanted more than just an assumption.

11:27 Had she been playing on mouse and keyboard,

11:29 she would have been able to scroll over the mini-map to see the objective,

11:32 but as she was on controller there was no way to do that.

11:35 Now, the game does normally show the objective

11:37 on the screen when you get a new quest,

11:39 so I thought it was a little strange that it didn’t do it here.

11:42 At first I assumed it was just a choice

11:44 by the developers to wait to introduce the journal until

11:46 the player got a little further in, but when I

11:48 replying the intro to capture some b-roll footage for this video,

11:51 the objective to escape the nautiloid came up right away.

11:54 Presumably this means that it not showing up for her was

11:57 just a glitch that has since been patched out.

11:59 Throughout the Gaming For A Non-Gamer series she

12:01 really hasn’t run into all that many glitches,

12:03 and even though I wouldn’t say she experienced a ton of them in Baldur’s Gate 3,

12:07 it definitely had more than any game she’s played before.

12:10 Aside from this instance of her feeling a little

12:12 directionless from not being told what to do,

12:14 none of them had that much of an impact on her playthrough,

12:17 but it did make me consider how

12:19 disruptive bugs can be for inexperienced players.

12:21 Obviously glitches, unless they’re really funny, are bad for everyone,

12:24 but for those still learning game conventions,

12:27 there’s a higher chance that it will be hard for them

12:29 to identify that what they’re experiencing is even a glitch,

12:32 causing them to learn all sorts of unintended and wrong lessons.

12:35 Unfortunately, bugs are just a part

12:37 of games—while some titles are cleaner than others, no game is free of them,

12:42 and when it comes to one as massive and complex as Baldur’s Gate 3,

12:45 the reality is plenty will slip through the cracks.

12:48 I will say to Larian’s credit, I believe all the bugs my wife ran

12:53 into have been patched out since she finished playing,

12:55 so it is good that they have a finger on the pulse of the issues

12:58 with the game even if it’s not ideal that they’re there in the first place.

13:01 Anyway, luckily for her, despite being unsure of what she should do,

13:05 the Nautiloid is incredibly linear and funneled her where she needed to go.

13:09 Also, after recruiting Lae’zel, she was given some explicit directions

13:12 from her, that helped fill in the gaps a bit.

13:14 However it did also lead to her entirely ignoring Shadowheart

13:17 as Lae’zel said not to touch anything without knowing its purpose,

13:20 so that was not ideal.

13:21 Raz: You can interact with a lot of this stuff.

13:23 Lady: But she told me not to!

13:24 Raz: Oh kay.

13:24 You don’t have to.

13:25 Then don’t.

13:25 Lady: But she told me not to!

13:26 Raz: That’s fine.

13:30 The feeling of being unsure on what she was supposed

13:32 to do unfortunately stuck with her for the majority of the playthrough.

13:35 Once at the beach, the game finally prompted her to look

13:37 at the journal where she learned the primary goal of act 1:

13:41 find a cure, but this goal ended up being a bit nebulous for her liking.

13:45 It is a big ask without a clear answer, and of course,

13:48 this mystery is intentional and something

13:50 many players will find exciting to uncover,

13:52 but she hoped for a more solid answer

13:54 to the question of what to do and where to go.

13:56 Throughout these experiments,

13:57 I’ve found that she likes certain types of freedom,

14:00 mostly freedom over the ways a task can be done,

14:02 but when the task is as open as explore the area,

14:05 she feels a bit out of the loop and worries

14:07 about wasting time on things that won’t work toward her goal.

14:10 And this wasn’t really helped by the fact

14:12 that every time she did chase down a lead,

14:14 very little came of it and she really was just pointed in a new direction.

14:18 Lady: What a let down.

14:21 While she did struggle with feeling comfortable

14:23 in what she was supposed to be doing,

14:24 the game did do a pretty good job of showing

14:27 her how she was supposed to be doing things.

14:29 In general, the slower pace of Baldur’s Gate

14:31 3 made actions and instructions easier to follow.

14:33 It also has solid tutorial prompts that didn’t fully

14:36 interrupt what she was in the middle of doing,

14:38 but did draw enough attention where she rarely missed them entirely.

14:41 On top of that, they are pretty well paced,

14:43 making it so she didn’t feel like she was drowning in tutorial

14:46 messages in the same way she had with Divinitiy Original Sin 2,

14:49 even though she was getting as much if not more information.

14:51 Although some of them do trigger after doing a related action, which,

14:55 depending on if you are focused on some other task,

14:58 can cause the information to be easier to gloss over.

15:00 As for combat, she ended up being somewhat mixed on it.

15:03 At first she loved its turn-based nature

15:05 as meeting the demands of fast-paced action oriented combat

15:07 can be a lot to deal with and often calls for more skill than she has.

15:11 The game gave her time to make decisions and she didn’t have to deal

15:14 with the frustration of dying over and over

15:16 again for not being quick or accurate enough.

15:18 However, it still was a lot to keep track

15:20 of as she not only had to control her own character,

15:22 but also all of the ones who joined her party,

15:25 which wasn’t really something she expected to have to do.

15:27 Honestly, she was still trying to get a grasp over her own character,

15:30 so having to quickly figure out the abilities and strengths of 3 others that she

15:33 had no part in creating made things a fair bit more stressful for her.

15:37 Additionally, this meant most of her time

15:38 in the fights was spent taking actions as other people,

15:41 leading to her barely feeling like she got to engage

15:43 with the character she had spent so much time building.

15:45 After a few fights, she wished that the companions either

15:47 had a simplified move set or could be controlled by AI,

15:50 so that she could just focus on her own character.

15:52 Frankly, it is a bit surprising that there

15:54 isn’t an option to have the companions just

15:56 be controlled by the computer as the game

15:58 is more than capable at simulating their moves,

16:00 and in fact, there are a few times where it does,

16:04 and it actually created a pretty interesting encounter.

16:07 When my wife came across Lae’zel captured by some Tieflings,

16:09 she wanted to try to work things out in a way where Lae’zel could go free,

16:13 but the Tieflings could live as well.

16:14 After a bad roll though, she was left with subpar options,

16:17 and decided that her best bet was to free Lae’zel

16:19 and then run away or just knock out the tieflings.

16:21 At the start of the fight,

16:23 the game introduced the non-lethal attack option, so she opted to use that.

16:27 However, she freed Lae’zel before knocking them out though,

16:30 and without any hesitation Lae’zel ran right up

16:34 to the tieflings and somewhat understandably obliterated them.

16:39 Lady: Oops.

16:40 Raz: *laughing* Lady: Wait, now what?

16:44 This created an intriguing dynamic where Lae’zel clearly

16:46 would be a useful ally for the party,

16:48 but also feels like a bit of a loose cannon

16:50 who might act to suit her own needs over everyone else’s.

16:53 This tension completely evaporated though once she joined

16:56 the party and was under my wife’s complete control.

16:58 To be clear, I think that for most players,

17:01 controlling the entire party will be the best way to play the game

17:04 as a ton of the fun comes

17:05 from combining synergies and tactically placing your characters,

17:07 but I do think there are many people who would benefit from the computer taking

17:10 the reins of the companions to allow them to just focus on their own character.

17:14 Not only would it relieve the pressure of having so many responsibilities,

17:17 but it’d also create neat dynamics between the player and the party as they

17:20 will have to learn how to rely on them instead of essentially just being them,

17:24 which is how my wife felt.

17:26 Lady: This feels like me if I’m controlling her.

17:28 Ultimately, she found all of the responsibilities she had

17:30 to keep track of during fights to be tedious.

17:32 While a part of her appreciated having time to think things through,

17:36 she actually found herself missing the adrenaline that comes

17:38 from those more action heavy titles she often struggles with.

17:40 I’m not sure exactly what the best middle ground would be,

17:43 but this definitely was too far in the other direction.

17:45 Part of her lack of excitement with combat came

17:47 from the fact that when she succeeded or failed,

17:50 she didn’t feel like it had much to do with it because

17:52 it was based on a die roll instead of her own skill,

17:55 leaving her feeling detached from the action.

17:57 Enemy turns also would go really fast,

17:59 and it wasn’t always clear to her what they

18:01 actually did or what the long term effects would be.

18:03 Despite some elements that made parts of the game easier to understand,

18:06 all of this other stuff created a disconnect between her and the game,

18:13 and unfortunately that list only kept getting bigger.

18:18 A major appeal of Baldur’s Gate 3 is that there

18:20 are a ridiculous amount of ways to engage with any situation,

18:23 allowing for a ton of player freedom, which I thought would be great for my wife

18:26 as she generally does better with titles that offer flexibility.

18:29 Unfortunately though, a lot of the creative ideas she came up

18:32 with to get past obstacles didn’t end up working.

18:35 For instance, one of the first things she tried to do

18:37 after landing on the beach was get into the Overgrown Ruins.

18:40 Upon meeting Shadowheart,

18:41 it was mentioned to her there may be another way in at the top of the hill,

18:46 so my wife did what seemed to be the most logical thing to do.

18:50 Lady: This is not going the way I wanted it to.

18:53 I wanted to look really cool in front of her, but Raz: By trying to climb?

18:57 Lady: Instead I just look stupid.

19:00 She hoped it would be like Breath of the Wild and just let her climb up,

19:02 but obviously that’s just not how Baldur’s Gate 3 works.

19:05 Climbing is only possible on very specific surfaces,

19:08 which is pretty common in games,

19:09 but to be honest even I’m surprised that there isn’t a climb ability tied

19:12 to a skill check or the rope as it is such a common action in D&D.

19:16 Determined to still get to the top,

19:18 she found some rocks she could jump to and tried to get up that way,

19:21 but as her character had low strength, her jump range was pretty small.

19:24 While she definitely could have reached the top had she

19:27 positioned herself a bit better and had a little more patience,

19:30 the window of space was tiny and easy to miss,

19:32 so she felt like she hit another dead end.

19:35 Eventually she made her way around by just

19:38 walking and encountered another locked door to get through.

19:41 After failing a persuasion check, she tried a bunch of different things

19:45 to progress like breaking the lock with a dagger,

19:47 burning the door down with a firebolt,

19:49 shoving a pile of rocks to open up another path,

19:51 jumping on a railing to get on top of the ruins,

19:54 and obviously none of them worked and obviously none of them worked.

19:57 Lady: Oh come on!

19:58 Part of this was because some of her plans were

20:01 just outside of what the game could accommodate, but others,

20:03 like burning the door down, were on the right track,

20:06 it’s just that her character wasn’t really

20:08 capable of doing it with her abilities.

20:10 However, she couldn’t really tell the difference between

20:11 the two types of failure as she didn’t pick up on the subtle ways the game

20:15 was trying to communicate that something might work,

20:16 making her feel limited in terms of how she could overcome obstacles.

20:19 Eventually I decided to show her it was possible

20:21 to do stuff like break down the door by having Lae’zel,

20:24 but that mostly led to her feeling disappointed

20:26 that her character was ineffectual with this type of stuff.

20:29 Now, she did appreciate that there

20:32 were solutions to problems beyond just fighting.

20:35 For instance, after failing to sneak past some goblins,

20:38 she was able to talk her way out of the situation by intimidating them.

20:44 Lady: Ha ha!

20:46 Raz: Nice!

20:48 Lady: I’m powerful…I’m very powerful.

20:52 She ended up doing this a handful of times,

20:55 and as she didn’t want to engage with the combat

20:56 that much as she didn’t really like it,

20:58 there was always a nice bit of tension whenever these checks

21:00 came up as she felt like there was something to lose,

21:03 so she felt really excited whenever she would succeed.

21:06 One thing that did feel weird to her with a lot

21:08 of the skill checks though was that her character never actually talked.

21:10 This made it so there would be times

21:13 where she succeeded in a persuasion or intimidation check,

21:15 but didn’t find the scene to be satisfying because it didn’t

21:18 feel like her character was actually doing anything Lady: I’m so confused.

21:21 Was I talking for him or for me?

21:23 Raz: No, you’re talking for you, and you’re kinda in the conversation… Lady:

21:26 But they don’t show me saying it.

21:28 Raz: You’d have preferred if… Lady: Yeah, that’s stupid.

21:29 To be honest, this is something I

21:31 struggled with too when playing Baldur’s Gate 3—there

21:33 are times where the created character doesn’t

21:35 really feel like a part of the world.

21:37 You do see what they say and think through text,

21:39 but them never vocalizing it does create a bit of a disconnect.

21:43 From a logistical standpoint though, having voice acting for the main

21:46 character would either require an unreasonable amount

21:48 of lines or for them to scale back on the amount of options there are,

21:53 neither of which are good solutions.

21:54 At some point a game of this scope is going to have

21:57 to make some sort of concession that won’t work for everyone,

21:59 and having a non-voice acted protagonist is an understandable one

22:02 even if it can be a bit jarring at times.

22:05 Anyway, despite her successes with intimidation,

22:07 she found talking her way through things

22:09 to be less effective than she would have liked.

22:11 This was especially true during the section

22:13 where she was tasked with finding Halsin.

22:15 She figured her best bet would be to talk

22:17 to people to see if they’d have any information,

22:19 and as every NPC in Baldur’s Gate 3 can be talked

22:21 to, she assumed there would be a lot of information to gether,

22:24 but most don’t, and very few had specifics about Halsin.

22:27 So my wife ran from person to person trying to learn something,

22:31 and got annoyed that she couldn’t just

22:32 bring up Halsin with anyone she talked to.

22:34 Now, I imagine there are many reasons to not

22:36 add a dialogue option like this to every NPC interaction,

22:39 but as my wife’s primary focus was finding the druid who might know a cure,

22:43 it didn’t make sense to her that her character

22:46 could only ask certain people about him.

22:47 Every other conversation felt like unnecessary distraction,

22:50 and eventually led to her not thinking it was worthwhile

22:53 to talk to anyone even though it would have led to answers.

22:56 All of this is to say that while Baldur’s Gate 3

22:58 does provide a tremendous amount of flexibility with its major mechanics,

23:01 whether that be in the form of dialogue or abilities,

23:04 she still ran into the issue of the game not

23:06 letting her do things that just made sense to her.

23:08 Another aspect that hampered her enjoyment that I didn’t really

23:12 expect was how grossed out by the game she was.

23:14 And in fairness that was a massive oversight by me as there is a lot

23:18 in this game that a normal person would

23:21 rightly be grossed out by: Lady: I like—uh.

23:24 Like, I can’t do that!

23:28 Lady: Oh my god.

23:30 What the hell.

23:32 Oh my god.

23:34 Oh my god.

23:35 Oh my god.

23:37 Lady: Oh my god, dude.

23:39 I don’t.

23:40 This is disgusting.

23:42 Lady: This game’s gross.

23:43 Raz: What about it?

23:45 Lady: Ugh.

23:46 This is terrible.

23:47 Raz: Then don’t do it.

23:48 Lady: I don’t want to.

23:49 Raz: Then don’t do it.

23:50 Lady: I don’t want to do it.

23:54 Lady: Oh my god!

23:57 Please don’t put that in the video.

24:03 This isn’t to say that these examples of violence

24:05 didn’t register as intense to me at all,

24:07 but I definitely am desensitized to fictional violence in a way my wife is not.

24:11 Every time something came up, it pulled her out of what was happening

24:14 and just wasn’t something she wanted to engage with.

24:16 This is far from the first time she’s been grossed out by a game,

24:20 but as this is probably the most amount of hours

24:22 she’s put into something for this series aside from Animal Crossing,

24:25 and it is very deserving of its M rating,

24:27 it is easily the most violence and gore she’s experienced from a single title.

24:31 I imagine there are a plethora of reasons that all the grossness

24:35 in Baldur’s Gate 3 bothered her far more than it bothered me,

24:37 but I’d have to imagine the biggest factor in that is my exposure

24:40 to these kinds of elements from years and years of playing video games.

24:43 It’s the sort of thing that is easy for me to compartmentalize,

24:46 but for her it just felt uncomfortable.

24:48 Aside from these aspects making her less interested in the game,

24:51 it also had some gameplay consequences,

24:53 the biggest of which being that she didn’t really loot bodies as she

24:56 was weirded out by the idea of taking stuff off dead people.

24:59 This meant she had way less stuff to work with and missed

25:02 out on gear that definitely could have helped her and her party.

25:04 Honestly though, she didn’t have a ton of interest in helping her party,

25:08 as she kind of hated all of them.

25:11 Lady: He’s just like a jerk.

25:15 Lady: She just tried to hurt me.

25:17 Raz: But then she didn’t.

25:19 Lady: But she tried.

25:21 Lady: She’s kind of a bitch… I really

25:28 like all of the characters in Baldur’s Gate 3;

25:30 they are fun and interesting and layered,

25:33 but not all of them are all that lovable right off the bat, and really,

25:37 Lae’zel, Astarion, and Shadowheart are probably

25:39 the three who leave the worst first impression.

25:41 They aren’t nice, they don’t come off as all that trustworthy,

25:45 and Lae’zel and Astarion literally consider

25:46 killing you when you first encounter them,

25:48 so for her the idea of traveling with them felt

25:50 off as she fundamentally didn’t align with anything they were about.

25:53 I do think it’s worth noting that she missed Gale entirely

25:57 and by the time she met Wyll she pretty much was over the companions,

26:00 but I do wonder if she had met these two first whether or not

26:03 her opinions on them as a whole would

26:04 be different as they are far less abrasive.

26:06 After a while, she expressed wanting to leave the companions behind

26:10 as she was tired of controlling them and dealing with their weirdness.

26:13 Lady: No, it wouldn’t have.

26:17 What do you mean?!

26:19 Knowing that it’d be difficult for her to take on the wilderness alone,

26:22 I figured it was time to see if she’d have more fun playing some form of co-op,

26:26 so I rolled up my own character and joined her adventure.

26:36 As I don’t have an extra PC,

26:38 we opted to play split screen local co-op, which worked decently well,

26:41 although there were times where it was a bit visually overwhelming,

26:44 and also we lost out on some

26:45 functionality like having the mini-map during combat.

26:47 Also the screen is always split regardless of how close you are to each other.

26:51 This is a departure from how Larian’s last game,

26:54 Divinity Original Sin 2, did it,

26:55 and I am not entirely sure why it is not the same

26:58 here as as being on one screen creates a much cleaner look.

27:01 With that said, I think my wife probably benefited from just being able to focus

27:04 on her part of the screen and not

27:06 having to deal with transitioning between the two modes.

27:08 Anyway, given that it would only be the two of us moving forward,

27:11 I chose to play as a paladin so

27:13 that I’d be able to tank hits, deal solid damage,

27:15 and keep us healed as best as possible, but honestly,

27:18 I wasn’t needed that much for a decent chunk

27:20 of time as she kept talking her way out of fights,

27:22 so mostly I just followed her around as she

27:24 looked for the safest path to the goblin camp Raz:

27:26 Oh is there a different… Lady *gasp* Raz: *laughing* Once we got to the camp,

27:32 she struggled with figuring out what to do next.

27:34 As I mentioned before,

27:35 she kept trying to talk to people who might give her information,

27:37 but almost always ended up having to engage

27:39 in an unrelated activity that she found pointless;

27:41 I found them to be pretty funny though.

27:43 My favorite came up when one goblin ordered her to kiss his feet,

27:47 and after we beat the crap out of his gang,

27:49 she turned the command around on him.

27:51 Then in a moment of morbid curiosity,

27:53 she decided to show no mercy and finish him off,

27:57 causing the entire camp to attack us Lady: Yeah, I didn’t like that.

28:01 I don’t know!

28:02 Raz: Why’d you..We have to fight these guys!

28:05 Lady: I don’t know!

28:06 I don’t know!

28:07 I didn’t do this on my playthrough, so I didn’t know this would happen,

28:10 and it obviously makes sense that hitting

28:12 a defenseless goblin would make other goblins pretty mad,

28:14 but she thought that it might make them respect her out of fear,

28:17 which I think tracks decently well, even if it very much was not the case here.

28:20 Unfortunately or maybe fortunately depending on which on of us you ask,

28:24 we ran into a glitch here where the game wouldn’t load both screens,

28:27 so we really couldn’t progress, forcing us to reload a save.

28:30 When this happened, she asked if we could

28:32 load from before she decided to kill the goblin,

28:35 engaging in her first bit of save scumming like a true Baldur’s Gate 3 player.

28:39 From there she made her way further into the goblin camp,

28:41 got a bit more information about Halsin and where he might be,

28:43 and after a lot of aimless wandering, found him in some cages.

28:46 To get there we had to go through a few small fights,

28:49 leading to us using all our spells and short rests.

28:52 What I should have done was advise her to take a long

28:55 rest so we could get everything back and be ready for combat.

28:57 What I did instead was forget to say anything,

29:00 so when the combat started, we were in a bad spot.

29:03 Despite that, we managed to get really far in the fight before I got downed,

29:07 and by the end it was pretty much just her and a goblin left on the battlefield.

29:11 Without any of her most used options being good enough to finish the job,

29:14 she looked through the rest of her stuff

29:16 for a hail mary and found a smoke powder satchell.

29:18 Now, I am not exactly sure what happened next, but from what I can tell,

29:22 she lined things up so that she would be outside of the blast radius,

29:25 but during the throwing animation,

29:27 her character stepped into the explosion, instantly killing her.

29:31 Lady: Are you kidding me!

29:34 You told me I wasn’t in the way.

29:37 Raz: *flabberghasted laughing* Lady: You told me I was fine!

29:41 Raz: It was pretty close.

29:43 It is definitely possible that I am missing something,

29:45 but her dying here, while hilarious, was a bummer because she did something cool

29:48 in a way that seemed like she should be safe,

29:50 but due to an animation outside of her control, got killed anyway.

29:54 Our second time through the fight went much

29:56 better as we took a long rest beforehand,

29:58 so she actually had spells and abilities

29:59 to rely on, and she used them pretty effectively.

30:02 She applied hex for extra damage,

30:04 took out a goblin who summoned a spider causing that spider to vanish,

30:07 and used sleep on the worgs to get some free hits in.

30:10 Even though she still didn’t really like the combat,

30:12 without having to think about anything but her own character,

30:14 she was more willing to engage with her full

30:16 kit instead of just finding the simplest answer, which was great to see.

30:20 After finally finding Halsin and being told that he couldn’t actually do

30:23 anything about the whole getting cured thing but might have another lead,

30:25 she reluctantly agreed to help him take out the leaders of the goblin army.

30:29 Knowing that this task would be above what the two of us were capable

30:32 of, we decided to invite two of our friends to get a full player party going.

30:36 One joined in as a powerful and quiet storm

30:39 cleric with tremendous and devastating control over thunder and lightning,

30:42 and the other played a gnome bard

30:44 with a drum proficiency named Mark Wahlberg… Mark Waahlberg:

30:47 Waaahlberg Sorry, Waaahlberg.

30:48 So that’s the energy we were working with.

30:51 One unexpected element of this fight was

30:53 that my wife had to control Halsin’s actions.

30:55 Lady: Am I in charge of this fucking bear?

30:57 Raz: Uh.

30:57 Lady: I am in charge of the bear.

31:00 We assumed he’d be controlled by the computer in the same

31:02 he was in the fight before especially because he has

31:04 a whole spiel about how he he can only be in bear

31:06 form and won’t be of much use aside for attacking goblins,

31:08 which made it seem like we’d have to keep up with him as he went on a rampage,

31:12 but obviously that wasn’t the case.

31:14 Regardless, despite not loving having to control him,

31:16 given that his best option for was generally to attack, it wasn’t a huge deal,

31:20 and as he’s so powerful,

31:22 when he did well she even took some pride in it MW: This bear is pretty good.

31:26 Raz: This bear is very good.

31:27 Lady: Thank you.

31:29 Raz: Now you’re claiming the bear?!

31:31 In general, this string of encounters was the most

31:33 fun she had with the combat in the game.

31:35 She did feel a little pressure to act fast

31:37 as to not hold things up for our friends, causing her to be a bit more likely

31:41 than normal to just go with whatever seemed fastest,

31:43 but she still usually picked good options.

31:45 What she enjoyed most about playing with a full group though was just

31:48 that we got to goof around both

31:50 with real life conversations and in-game mechanics.

31:53 MW: Wow, you don’t even care about when I inspire you?

31:55 Come on now.

31:56 Lady: I mean, your song right now is a little weak.

31:59 MW: What?

32:00 Oh my gosh, good luck fighting the goblins yourself.

32:04 Raz: I bet you it would be a lot better

32:07 if he had picked any instrument other than the drum.

32:11 Lady: It’s so painful.

32:12 MW: Nah, you guys listening to solo drum songs the whole battle.

32:19 Lady: It’s literally mind numbing.

32:22 Raz: You started combat and I am the only one in view.

32:26 Lady: The bear is on fire.

32:29 Uh oh bear.

32:30 Raz: This is horseshit.

32:32 No, uh oh me.

32:34 I’m fucking half dead.

32:35 Lady: Don’t worry Mark Waaahlberg’s got a drum beat for you.

32:38 MW: Yeah, oh this guy’s trying to counter

32:40 my drum beat with a different drum beat.

32:42 All right here we go.

32:43 It was just fun for her to be playing with a group

32:45 instead of having every moment and decision be on her shoulders;

32:48 this more casual feel was a nice change of pace for her.

32:51 After a few tenuous rounds where I kept dying, and the three of them carried,

32:55 she ended up getting the final hit in on the last

32:59 enemy through a great use of eldritch blast.

33:01 MW: Oh you got him.

33:02 Raz and Lady: *laughing* With Halsin and the grove saved,

33:05 it seemed like things wouldn’t get any better than this, and this would

33:10 be as good a spot as any for her adventure to end.

33:19 Unsurprisingly, Baldur’s Gate 3 didn’t end up being

33:21 a game for my wife—her interests just don’t align

33:24 with the genre and while it does do a lot

33:26 of things that make it somewhat approachable for inexperienced players,

33:28 its depth of mechanics and information was

33:30 more than she was interested in engaging with.

33:32 The only way I could see my wife playing more of it

33:35 is if we were to continue with a full party of our friends,

33:37 but honestly that just has more to do with it

33:39 being fun to play games with friends than anything else,

33:41 and I’d bet a fair bit of money that she’d get way more

33:44 enjoyment playing 4 person co-op with a game that is more her speed.

33:47 For all of its complexity, Baldur’s Gate 3 does a much better job

33:50 than I would have guessed at making itself approachable,

33:51 but there is only so much a game

33:53 of this scope can do in terms of onboarding inexperienced players.

33:56 There is also only so much it can do in terms

33:58 of allowing players to do stuff that they want to do.

34:01 For instance, she was playing actual D&D, I’d be able to accommodate her ideas,

34:06 it’s impossible for Baldur’s Gate 3 to accommodate everything.

34:09 So, yeah, maybe that just means I need to actually have

34:11 us play D&D now instead of continue to put it off.

34:14 Even though she did not enjoy most of her time with Baldur’s Gate 3,

34:18 I am glad she at least was able to get a small taste of what makes Dungeons

34:22 and Dragons and games like it so much fun—being

34:24 able to have stupid little adventures with your friends.

34:27 MW: Ahhh what a beautiful, serene look out.

34:33 Nothing could ruin it.

34:36 *drumming* Speaking of ruining nice things,

34:43 something else that often gets ruined because of bad actors is the internet.

34:47 As useful and fun as it is,

34:48 there are also a lot of risks that come with using it,

34:51 and they aren’t always obvious.

34:52 Links that look legitimate could be from a scammer trying to steal your account,

34:56 public wifis that appear to be from a cafe may actually be a trap meant

35:00 to intercept your traffic and all this makes

35:02 being safe out there feel pretty daunting.

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36:05 For all of you still here, hey!

36:07 Thanks to my patrons for making this channel possible,

36:10 and I’d like to give a special shout

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36:14 That’s all.

36:15 I hope you all have a great day and/or night,

36:21 and I will see you in the next one.

36:27 Lady: That’s disgusting.

36:30 Raz: What’s wrong?

36:33 Lady: That’s disgusting?

36:36 Raz: What about it?

36:41 Lady: What are you talking about?

36:43 That’s disgusting.

36:43 Raz: What about it?

36:46 Lady: Everything.