it's rare for a game to achieve the universal success of Boulders Gate 3 from critics to Consumers and sales numbers to award shows this game's reception has been overwhelmingly positive it's amassed an astounding amount of accolades already and its Legacy looks to be amongst Gaming's alltime greats and this is a rare achievement but it's rarer still for a game this successful to seemingly come out of nowhere I mean Boulders Gate 3 might be the third game in a legendary RPG series but this is a series whose last main entry released in 2000 23 years earlier and laran Studios might be a veteran RPG developer but they're also one who spent most of their existence being mostly unknown to most people and who remain privately owned and independently funded in a modern gaming Market that's often ruled by only the most well-established names and biggest blockbusters say the story of laran and boulders Gate 3 can look a bit like a freak occurrence that is unexplainable in nature but it's not Boulders Gate 3 is a game fans have spent years asking for it's a game the market has been primed to receive it's a game the RPG genre desperately needed and boulders Gate 3 is a great game and so it seems well worth exploring what exactly makes it great as well as what lessons other games might be able to take from its success and what challenges roleplaying video games are still yet to overcome even in a post Boulders Gate 3 world first though I don't think a game like this can be properly understood without looking at what came before it and I'm not just saying that to have an excuse to talk about RPG history again I'm saying it to have an excuse to talk about Boulders Gate 1 and 2 again I mean I'm saying it because it's vital to the central thesis of this video obviously so who thought 2 hours and 43 minutes of RPG history wasn't [Music] enough it's difficult to overstate the importance of Dungeons and Dragons to roleplaying video games it served as the primary inspiration for most of the's foundation it has been highly influential in both obvious and subtle ways ever since and it led to numerous direct adaptations and yet for all the countless ways DND D left its mark on gaming the original Boulders gate and its sequel have long been seen by many as the definitive DND video games this wasn't necessarily because they were the best I mean not every D and adaptation was great but other great adaptations did exist before during and after the release of bioware's Boulders gate instead it has more to do with what these games represented when Boulders Gate released in 1998 it came after years of failures and struggles for computer RPGs that led some to declare the entire genre as dead and so when Boulders gate went on to surpass 2 million copies sold it was proof that the RPG genre was alive and more lifelike than ever before the only other computer RPG to see sales like this back then was Diablo but Diablo did this by treading new grounds that had more in common with Rog likes than anything tabletop Boulders gate though was the complete opposite being a direct adaptation that harder than ever to Faithfully recreate the ru set of advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition featuring all of the classic classes many of the classic monsters and some of the classic characters that people already knew and loved bis gate was basically as Dungeons and Dragons as a game could be and it would go on to reach a whole new generation of RPG fans for some this game was their introduction to DN d for others it was their introduction to computer roleplaying games and for many it was a formative experience that exemplified what the genre was capable of Boulders gate 2 would released 2 years later with the same engine and rulet while expanding the scale and scope and it went on to receive even greater Acclaim becoming one of the best reviewed PC games of all time it was Boulders gate 2 that seemed to create or cement many of the tropes and features that would be seen in so many big RPGs of the future like the heavy focus on companions who slowly reveal their backstories through dialogue or the importance of optional romances or the general game structure that starts linear before opening up and then ending linear or the Gathering of allies before the final battle Boulders gate 2 established much of the formula that other narrative focused RPGs would follow in the years since still it must be said that by today's standards both of these games can seem dated and in more ways than just their zoomed out appearance ad and D is already a complicated and not always intuitive rule set I mean just look at the number of people who have complained over the years about low numbers being better for Armor class and FAO or just try explaining to someone new what exactly fako actually means what's more these games seem to assume players either already had some familiarity with this rule set or were willing to educate themselves a bit in their own time as a result little is done to help players learn these rules so there's no tool tips to explain debuffs and you can't inspect enemies at all and there's no explanation for things like why certain damage types aren't effective this can make these games feel a bit uncommunicative and cryptic by today's standards and the combination of complicated systems and a lack of in-game information means mistakes were easy to make and these are games where mistakes can be deadly whether it's walking over one-shotting traps or getting hit by one-shotting crits or getting Level drained fighting Undead or getting a character turned to stone with no way to reverse the effect or just creating a bad character in ad and D Mages with slightly too low intelligence can't use any of the best spells and not having 18 strength for a Frontline fighter vastly limits damage potential this rule set provides many choices but a lot of those choices are bad there's also a lack of quality of life features with things like Inventory management or healing your characters outside of resting feeling overly timec consuming and then there's the real time with PA's combat something once popular for how modern it seemed just like the hot new real-time strategy genre that was making waves at the time which is now seen by many as Antiquated a bit like the no longer hot or new RTS genre that now makes much smaller waves so calling Boulders Gate 1 and 2 dated is understandable but there are ways these games still stand amongst the genres best and I think that might be because they tried to adapt dnd's Spirit as well as its rules if the point of DnD D and RPGs in general is to allow players to go on exciting Adventures then Boulders Gate 1 and two are two of the best RPGs ever made the precise way each game does this is a little different Boulders Gate 1 is the quintessential low-level fantasy adventure to the point where it might seem a little too cliche I mean you are an orphan with mysterious Powers who has to flee their home after your Foster father is murdered and you will start your journey by performing tasks like killing rats in a store room but after this introduction Boulders gate opens up giving you complete freedom to travel a vast wilderness full of dangerous Encounters this danger means a lot of dying and reloading should be expected but it also creates a clear sense of progression as you fight to survive in this world while building an effective party from The Game's 25 different companions finding rare equipment increasing in level and learning to wield the vast array of tools provided by the combat system and this combination of danger freedom and depth can create an exciting experience meanwhile the story itself is fairly grounded with the main plot focusing on a political conspiracy in the city of Boulders gate that has the player investigating relatively mundane things like heightened Bandit activity and shortages of iron eventually it does get more dramatic but this is a game where story often seems secondary to just letting players Adventure on their own terms as they Forge their own path through the world this aspect changed in the sequel however Boulders gate 2's best known Improvement is surely its characters Boulders Gate 1 had many companions but each one only had a small role to play with most of their personality coming from their limited voice acting and written backstories that some players might never even check but while Boulders gate 2 lowers the number of total companions each one is now far more developed in fact returning character imoan who is the player's childhood friend easily has more lines of dialogue in Boulders gate 2's opening tutorial dungeon than in the entirety of the previous game and she's not alone every Companion now has a lot to say both to the player and to each other with arguments between companions being common and potentially quite problematic as they can result in characters permanently leaving or just trying to kill each other Boulders gate 2's best character isn't a party member at all though John irenicus is a mysterious yet powerful Mage who serves as the game's primary antagonist and first appears in the opening torturing the players's character for unknown reasons irenicus is competent and intimidating seeming to always be one step ahead of the player as well as just about everyone else and this combined with strong voice acting and writing helps him to steal the scene anytime he's on screen and yet while characters are the most obvious Improvement the sequel makes I don't actually think they're the most important instead the real greatness of Boulders gate 2 is best represented by its Dungeons and Dragons and I don't mean the tabletop game I mean it's literal Dungeons and literal dragons if Boulders gate one is a classic low-level Adventure Boulders gate 2 is this insane highlevel Extravaganza this is a game where it seems like anything can happen where Secrets await around every corner and where you can explore the strangest parts of the Forgotten realm setting and do battle with some of its strongest inhabitants if Boulders Gate 1 style of fantasy is about fighting Bandits and skeletons in forests and tombs Boulders gate 2 is about interdimensional travel secretive Beholder death Cults sadistic games played by Bor dragons and infiltrating vast underground cities using magical disguises and that's still just scratching the surface this difference is evident from the very first dungeon where the player must escape irenicus capture along the way you see the results of irenicus other experiments including people kept alive indefinitely in giant test tubes where they long for death or are tortured past the limits of Sanity you also meet this dungeon's other inhabitants including subservient golems and demons and captur genies and dryads and you see the effects of this experience on your other companions with imoan showing signs of severe trauma oscillating between feelings of intense hatred disgust worthlessness and a longing to escape and be anywhere but here some Fair even worse like poor khed another recurring companion who is now nothing but a bloody corpse for you to stumble upon an event which will deeply scar his wife jira who will still be struggling with this event all the way into the game's expansion this opening is dark memorable and full of Personality dungeons in Boulders Gate 1 were mostly just combat gauntlets with repetitive mazike designs meanwhile dungeons in Boulders gate too are opportunities to tell unique stories and they excel at this with almost everyone feeling distinctive similar praise could be given to Boulders gate 2 side quests some are short and simple but others are anything but take the investigation into the cult of the isas this Quest Begins by the player journeying to the temple District of the main city and coming across an eyess Prophet preaching that the known gods are false and that the temples only exist to grow their own wealth and power this new religion of the unseeing eye is spreading among the common folk and so you can enter into the service of one of the temples to investigate further which leads you to descending and battling through the sewers where you can meet and join up with a veteran Paladin who shares your objective you descend further to eventually find the group's base where you must lie your way into joining the lying part is quite important because the normal way of joining involves removing your eyes as a sign of Faith questioning various members inside the cult reveals that they are actually being controlled by a Beholder a creature of immense power and evil nature and probably too much power for you to Simply defeat in combat you also learn that the beholder is here to try to acquire an ancient artifact buried deep beneath the city and so you descend even further past a small civiliz ation of ghouls who have been living off the corpses discarded by the cult and into the crumbling remains of an ancient city long forgotten by time you then reach a temple at the center of this ruin that contains the artifact you seek only to find its Guardians have been here so long that they no longer remember why they're here or who they once worshiped as a result they're completely apathetic towards the player and your goal as the only emotion they still feel is hatred towards whatever is keeping them in this state however in this universe Gods draw power from those who worship them and as no one actually does still worship this forgotten God it no longer has any real power but as its Guardians still feel hatred towards it the God can't be forgotten completely and so the Guardians remain Bound by their original contract creating a cycle where the Guardians are trapped because of their hatred and hate because they're trapped and so you must find a way to defeat this hatred and end the cycle before doing battle with the beholders inside their own Lair where you can now use the artifact to destroy their leader before finally destroying the artifact once and for all to free the Guardians from their Eternal service and this is all started by stumbling upon a random encounter while walking the streets of the city this takes hours to complete you descend multiple levels below the city meet multiple groups and civilizations down there encounter immensely powerful artifacts and beings gain incredible rewards by way of rare equipment and this is just a side quest it is probably my favorite side quest I must admit but there are others of similar length and quality all of which are completely optional and easily missable and you never know when you're going to stumble upon them or where each one might take you sometimes a quest is just a simple task done for modest reward but sometimes it's not and this is why I still think Boulders gate 2 is great even years later when I said this is a game where it seems like anything can happen where Secrets await around every corner and where you can explore the strangest parts of the Forgotten realm setting and do battle with its strongest inhabitants there was no hyperbole there and and I don't think you can say something similar about many other RPGs in this way Boulders gate 2 feels like this quintessential highlevel DND experience much like Boulders Gate 1 was the quintessential low-level experience and this makes both of them exciting and distinct from so many games that came after other RPGs generally aren't so willing to let players miss out on so much of their best content and with that content you often do know more or less what to expect or they choose to be less open in design to have more control over telling the story they want to tell or they use more balanced gameplay where there is less for players to potentially exploit and less for players to potentially be frustrated by and other RPGs later RPGs are often more refined in both story and gameplay but Boulders Gate 1 and 2 made for their lack of refinement by being exciting to me these are games that capture the spirit of Adventure be it as a result of their freedom their danger their number of Secrets their unexpectedness their sense of progression their sense of Journey whatever it was really the combination of these things and the way they made these games something greater than the sum of their parts that made them special and I know that to say a game is good because it captures the spirit Spirit of Adventure seems like a rather nebulous statement it sounds a bit like a marketing buzzword or something but it's not my fault how it sounds if it's true it's true these games gave players a feeling of Adventure in a way later RPGs often didn't and that feeling is still there all these years later so hopefully that gives you some idea of what these games meant to people even if you haven't played them yourself but regardless many people credited Boulders Gate 1 with Reviving the computer RPG genre and boulders gate 2 for setting a new standard within that genre these were important RPGs and alongside several other games developed on the same Infinity engine for a while the future of both computer RPGs and D andd adaptations looked incredibly bright but in the end that future wasn't to be and the standard set by Boulders gate 2 was in some ways never surpassed of course there were meant to be successors there was even meant to be a sequel Boulders Gate 3 the black Hound began development in 2001 under ice windale and plcape tourment developer black Isle Studios and it focused on an entirely new story alongside D and D Third Edition rules and yet despite being officially announced in 2002 it would end up being cancelled one year later when interplay lost the rights to the D and D license 2002 also saw the release of never winter knights from BioWare who returned to D and with a fully 3D engine and yet despite Innovations in multiplayer and user created content Neverwinter Knight single player was generally seen as inferior to bioware's earlier efforts and that's basically how things continued 2003 brought the temple of Elemental Evil from troa games 2006 would see a sequel to Neverwinter knights from Obsidian Entertainment 2009 brought Dragon Age Origins again from BioWare and all of these games had strengths but none would beat Boulder's Gate at its own game and then Mass Effect 2 happened and then Skyrim happened and then big developers didn't want to make a spiritual successor to Boulders gate anymore because Boulders gate sold 2 million copies and Skyrim sold 20 million copies in less time so who needs d and d and a small subset of RPG fans when you can instead appeal to everyone and make way more money so after this there were no new big budget D and D adaptations or similar but there were still Indie Games in fact one such smaller Studio beam dog the developer behind The Boulders Gate enhanced editions would even release a new Infinity engine based Boulders gate expansion with Siege of dragon Spear and so after all those years fans finally had a real genuine new Boulders gate there was just one small problem which is that it wasn't very good but indie games and crowdfunding did revive the idea of a spiritual successor and so there was pillars of Eternity from obsidian in 2015 and Pathfinder kingmaker from alcat games in 2018 and these games got sequels and there were also others and these were not bad but they were Niche they had limited appeal because they looked old and complicated and were often using Nostalgia which not everyone has and so Boulders gate story came to an end not with the bang the fitting of a series that brought RPGs back from the dead but with the whimper of just another once great thing destined to be mined for Nostalgia for all eternity because apparently that is the fate of every once great thing these days enter laran Studios a Belgian developer founded in 1996 who first gained recognition for the early 2000s heavily Diablo inspired action RPGs Divine divinity and Beyond Divinity Lan's next RPG was the modestly received Divinity 2 ego draconus in 2009 followed by the more strategy focused Divinity Dragon commander in 2013 and yet by this point laran Studio still wasn't particularly well known and those who were familiar with their games would probably classify them under the derogatory if affectionate title of eurojank but Lan's next game would be a bit different Divinity original sin released in 2014 and was funded through Kickstarter but unlike most other kickstarted RPGs of its era Divinity original sin didn't seem quite so focused on Nostalgia to an extent I mean the first line of the original Kickstarter campaign did read picture a modern version of a world like Ultima 7 but even in its inspiration original sinim seemed to be doing its own thing the Ultima 7 connection seems largely the result of the world design that emphasized environmental interactivity a feature largely missing from most other RPGs mainstream or Indie this interactivity was then used as a Cornerstone of original sin's Quest and puzzle design providing most problems with multiple Solutions as well as its combat where environmental effects could be manipulated leading to a wide range of devastating and sometimes unexpected consequences to this day the early and midgame combat in Divinity original sin 1 Remains the most chaotic and creatively fulfilling of any RPG I have ever played but original sin was also different in other ways its story was mostly light-hearted and comedic particularly compared to some of its peers it placed a heavy focus on Cooperative multiplayer mode a feature that proved highly popular and it was entirely self-published and self-funded unlike Lan's previous games so Divinity original sin was successful and in 2017 it would be followed by a sequel Divinity original sin 2 would once again be crowdfunded and self-published but in the years since laran would scale up production by taking on more staff and opening up new Studios outside of Belgium leading to the team roughly tripling in size to 50 people the result was a game similar to Original Sin one but with noticeably enhanced production values including better graphics and full voice acting an impressive feat in such a dialog heavy game in the end this paid off as Divinity original sin 2 was massively successful for an indie RPG both critically and commercially it was shortly before the release of original sin 2 that laran would be contacted by Wizards of the Coast about making a new Boulders gate this was something multiple Studios had pitched for in the many years following Boulders gate 2 including laran themselves back in 2014 after the release of original sin 1 where they were turned down but original sin 2 impressed Wizards of the Coast in pre-release and so plans were made to bring Boulders gate back to once more create a triple a RPG with tabletop inspired design RPGs did change over time they became more console focused more streamlined more action-based and more cinematic and this was accompanied by mainstream success and higher and higher budgets the argument in FA neither of these changes has always relied on necessity that you can't have one side without the other and so the streamlining and the action combat and so on were a price that had to be paid to ensure these games had the mainstream appeal that big budgets demand and for years this narrative was basically disprovable RPG fans could and did say that modern RPGs were overly streamlined or not RPG enough but no one could Pro prove this wasn't the right financial decision for developers Skyrim sold a lot more than any RPG before it and then it just kept selling more and more and even the best laid arguments can fail in the face of loads and loads of money and so people could say whatever they wanted and it didn't matter what did matter was what the ones who made the decisions fought and clearly for those whose opinions were valued the way to make a successful RPG was to chase Mass Appeal this is corroborated by many statements made by RPG developers during the kickstarter boom where the main reason developers gave for turning to fans for money was because Publishers wouldn't Finance traditional RPGs anymore and so Boulders Gate 3 was significant because it was a chance to test for logic that had driven the RPG genre since well basically since the success of Boulders gate 2 logic that said traditional or tabletop inspired design holds games back from being successful and then Boulders Gate 3 released and by this point the results probably speak for themselves but it is worth clarifying that Boulders Gate 3 is by sensible metrics AAA and it is also by reasonable assessments a very traditional and tabletop inspired game not long after the release of Boulders Gate 3 another big RPG released which led many to pit the two games against one another in a head-to-head where Boulders Gate 3 was everything good about RPGs and Starfield was everything bad part of this narrative was that Starfield was this AAA RPG from literally the biggest company in the world whereas Boulders Gate 3 was this Plucky little indie game from a developer many people hadn't even heard of before and in a literal sense Boulders gatee 3 could be considered an indie game in that laran are independently owned and financed and boulders Gate 3 is self-published in reality though this isn't what Indie usually refers to I mean most indie games do have Publishers and some even have bigname financers so in practice the term indie game nearly always refers to the developer size and budget and if you compare Boulders Gate 3 and Starfield by developer size you'd find that Boulders Gate 3 had around 450 developers and Starfield coincidentally also had around 450 developers which is not to say these games had the exact same budget I mean it seems safe to assume that one of these games spent substantially more on marketing than the other but but in what is arguably the most important metric the human labor involved these two games were of comparable size and 450 developers is AAA territory which Boulders Gate 3 does reflect this is a big game how long to beat clocks the average playthrough at around 115 hours and not only is this impressive in its own right it's even more impressive considering this game strongly play and the fact that no one will see all of its content on a single playthrough and just like divinity original sin 2 before it Boulders Gate 3 Once More UPS the level of presentation with not only full voice acting that is consistently good but also a new cinematic approach to dialogue featuring Dynamic camera angles and high quality facial and character animations the soundtrack art design number of unique assets and general level of detail also regularly impresses and while there are games with better technical presentation bers Gate 3 still excels in its quantity of quality it reaches a fairly high level and then it maintains this for far longer than most other games could so this is a AAA RPG in the ways that count and yet unlike so many other big budget RPGs of the last decade Boulders Gate 3 doesn't make many concessions in in order to do this this is a faithful Recreation of Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition it doesn't include everything there are for example far less subclasses than in the tabletop game but when far less subclasses still means that there are 46 to choose from it's hard to really hold that against the game and once the game is underway combat is fully turn-based with spells and abilities to use in combat being plentiful quests only gently hold the player's hands with many quests as well as Solutions zones rare items and entire main companions being easily missable the world itself is highly interactive and aims to reward rather than punish creativity in experimentation the role of dice RS is celebrated rather than hidden away dialogue is regularly reactive consequences are frequent and far-reaching the 18 plus age rating is used to its fullest with plenty of body horror and body appreciation sometimes even both at the same time there are no additional monetization methods whatsoever and this game was even in Early Access to help incorporate player feedback in the development process which does make me wonder has there ever been another narrative focused AAA game that used Early Access because I can't think of any and there are arguments against the idea but Early Access is something laran found helpful in the past and so it's something they did again here despite it being unheard of for a game of this type in budget and really this exemplifies Boulders Gate 3 to me this isn't a game that follows the established rules for AAA RPGs it's simply an RPG made in accordance to its developers vision that just so happens to have a AAA budget and as a result this is a complicated and deep game I think it's easy for experienced DND or Pathfinder players to look down on Fifth edition's relative Simplicity but the key word there is relative if you compare fifth edition to a more complicated tabletop rule set it can seem simple I guess but bers Gate 3 is a video game and most AAA games RPG or otherwise are far more streamlined and immediately accessible than this for inexperienced players Boulders Gate 3 still front loads a ton of information that can be difficult to take on board in this way it's much like many D and D video games of old and yet where Boulders Gate 1 and 2 felt like they required pre-existing familiarity with DND D or at least a childlike sense of curiosity and stubbornness to understand what certain things mean and where you might be going wrong Boulders Gate 3 is by contrast a willing and capable teacher the addition of not only tool tips but inspectable tool tips goes a long way towards helping players to learn but it's not just tool tips the examine enemies function gives you all the information you need to make the right strategic choices in combat so no once the manual is necessary meanwhile the rapidly expanding hot bar at the bottom of the screen can look quite daunting Until you realize you can select individual Parts including the action and bonus action icons to see exactly what you can do and when meaning there's no need to remember every tool tip in front of you not everything is obvious but this is a long game and players can learn by doing and seeing for example I'm sure many players are confused the first time they encounter something like advantages and disadvantages in combat but you don't need to research what these terms mean because sooner or later you'll see them during skill checks and things will click when you see two dice being rolled rather than one there are countless examples of things like this that players will learn and this leads to a noticeable progression as you become more knowledgeable for experience this is what video games are trying to simulate when they use abstractions like XP points and levels and just like leveling up in games can be satisfying so too is becoming more knowledgeable over time in fact this was a big part of why Boulders Gate 1 and 2 were enjoyable the systems in these games can feel a bit like an entirely new language and being forced to learn that language only to realize hours later that you've become quite fluent is rewarding this is why people enjoy Mage battles in Boulders gate 2 the these were never strategically fulfilling encounters they were always just a test of whether you can speak Boulders gate 2's language in this case by selecting the right counter spell to negate the enemy mag's defenses to actually damage them Boulders Gate 3 is similar learning that ritual spells don't consume a spell slot and can be active all of the time or learning to take advantage of various consumables or understanding concentration and taking enemy concentration or upcasting spells or maximizing rest usages or taking advantage of environmental hazards or learning how to build an effective character or whatever these are all things that aren't initially obvious but are easy enough to learn as you play and naturally try things out and see different outcomes and this works surprisingly well because you don't need to know every intricacy of this combat system to enjoy it and if you do enjoy it those intricacies will eventually reveal themselves to you this doesn't mean that Boulders Gate 3 is a perfect teacher I remember feeling quite confused when I found an item that had ranged spell attack plus one and another item that had plus one bonus to spell save DC and spell attack roles because are these not the same thing and if so why are they presented differently and if not then what exactly is ranged spell attack is it just another way to say spell attack role because if so just say that that makes sense but that's not what it says there's no tool tip to explain this for some reason so even now I'm not sure what ranged spell attack actually means and I've played this game twice and likely have more experience with RPGs like this than most somehow I think this might not be the only confusing rule or description in this game and if something like this can confuse someone like me then I'm sure plenty of other things have confused plenty of other people but for all of Boulders gate 3's rules and complications the important part is that they never feel insurmountable which I'm not sure is true for many newer RPG fans when it comes to older RPGs and so if anyone decries Boulders gate 3's fifth edition simp icity then that's just their opinion I guess but I think they're comparing this game to the wrong things this is a AAA video game and compared to its peers Boulders Gate 3 does have depth and it really doesn't make many concessions and in the modern Market that seems far more impressive to me than its AAA presentation still the AAA presentation was surely vital to its success RP G fans have been asking for more complicated and traditional RPGs for years but only some of those same fans actually play the more complicated and traditional lower budget RPGs that have existed a game with AAA presentation seemed needed to make mainstream audiences pay attention and be willing to give games like this a go and then once that game finally came along the result was like gold dust people crying out for a through RPG finally had their champion and they flocked to support it in droves it also probably helped that these days DND D is cool if by cool you mean popular with overly online people like the average twitch and YouTube viewer which actually sounds like one of the least cool things in existence now that I've said it out loud so maybe it's better to say that these days D and D is mainstream and at least it is compared to 30 years ago and in a world where almost every single large streamer and EB has used D and D campaigns as a way to make easy content at some point there's likely a large number of people who have watched others having fun with DND D and wanted a chance to try it themselves and picking up some hot new video game is much easier than finding a group of like-minded people to meet up with regularly for an actual campaign this was always a key part of my computer RPGs became popular in the first place and so in a time when D and D is more popular than ever it makes sense that there would be an eager audience for good DND video games and so Boulders Gate 3 is a rare game being both truly AAA and truly an RPG and it turns out there is an audience for that and a surprisingly big one at that but this is still only scratching the surface because Boulders Gate 3 is much more than just a recreation of DnD D's rules with good graphics there are a lot of things you can praise Boulders Gate 3 for but this is the most important to me Boulders Gate 3 brings back the sense of adventure that many RPGs lost with time and the way it does this this is a bit like the original Boulders gate games there's lots of player Freedom you can stumble into dangerous situations there's lots of secrets to uncover some outcomes can be highly unexpected there is a clear sense of progression and there is a feeling of going on an Epic Journey spanning many levels and hours and yet despite these similarities there is a massive difference in how these games depict their worlds which was that Boulders gate one and two were broad they were open and expansive but Boulders Gate 3 isn't instead it's dense in fact this might be the most densely packed RPG I've ever seen just like divinity original sin before it Boulders Gate 3 maintains a heavy focus on environmental interactivity this includes all objects being modeled and movable as well as environmental effects like water oil and fire which can also be combined but this also includes verticality and nonlinearity built into the level design as well as stealth systems and physics systems and a whole range of magical spells and effects that can play into everything else just mentioned this has led many to describe Boulders Gate 3 as being like an immersive Sim and just like a good immersive Sim this creates emergent gameplay where players are provided with an assortment of tools and mechanics that they can then use and combine to create their own solutions to problems be they navigating spaces solving quests or succeeding in combat this doesn't just creates a lot of player choice it also makes those choices more authentic because you're not simply picking from multiple choice options in dialogue to determine which of the scripted outcomes you want from a specific Quest not the multiple options in dialogue is a bad thing and this is something Boulders Gate 3 also has plenty of but providing choice in how you navigate and interact with the environment built into every part of the level design on top of choices in dialogue simply provides way more player agency than dialogue and predetermined choices alone ever could the best example to illustrate this has to be the goblin camp in act one this would be where I explain the various options available which is something I've done before in other videos like with navigating Liberty Island in DSX or infiltrating for Deadlight in Pillars of Eternity 2 the problem with doing this for the goblin Camp however is that there are so many options I'm not sure I can cover all of them I'm not even sure I know all of them so this isn't an exhaustive list or anything but I'll give it a go firstly there is gaining entry which can be done through diplomacy sneaking disguising yourself smearing feces on your face to gain sympathy or just straight violence then in the outer Camp you can interact with various goblins and partake in various Goblin activities which goblins being goblins means they can often accidentally go wrong and lead to violence anyway but why wait for accidental violence when you can be deliberately violent through using the environment to set up traps or start killing goblins in their sleep or poison the alcohol or just invite violent friends you can even be peaceful regardless you'll eventually head inside where you can go through the front door and pass a dialogue check or smash a hole in the wall and climb in through the rafters or find a secret passage around the side and enter through the torture room and inside you can play along maybe accidentally find more trouble or not maybe freeing prisoners or not maybe starting trouble yourself by killing people in secret or freeing spiders to kill people for you or just assassinate the leaders or don't do any of that side with the goblins properly sign up to a cult maybe get a brand burnt into your flesh ravage a local Druid Grove murder and maim a little bit maybe a lot and then party with the goblins afterwards your your camp this time only to fail one single skill check and end up being forced to kill them all anyway yeah [ __ ] you to Min far this was on my one save only playthrough and the only reason I did all this was for you not that I'm still mad about it or anything so the possibilities are well not actually endless but they are abundant enough to occasionally seem that way choosing to fight doesn't just mean that's the only chice choice being made either you can take advantage of High Ground set up choke points position yourself to push people off Bridges or chasms move barrels to explode as and when needed disabled drums used for sounding the alarm and so on this is Boulders gate 3's version of a dungeon by the way but rather than just creating a combat Gauntlet it's instead designed as this immersive living space comprised of a multitude of different interactions and options and it's fantastic it seems only fair to point out that while there are other locations similar to this the goblin Camp really is the stand out rather than the standard but this focus on multiple options multiple approaches and multiple Solutions does remain throughout the game some have described this as being similar to an actual tabletop experience where your options are only limited by your imagination and that's a bit of an exaggeration video games always have far more more limits than this no matter how welld designed they are but Boulders Gate 3 does manage to surpass what people have come to expect from bajre not because the developers thought of and accounted for every possibility but because they designed the world in a way where they don't need to think of everything themselves they just give players a set of tools and allow players to think for themselves this also means exploration is rewarded this world is packed with possibil ities so the more you dig into its many nooks and crannies the more possible solutions you uncover and there is a lot to uncover from hidden areas to hidden items to new interactions or entirely new quests if you explore you will be rewarded and some of this stuff is important content you can easily Miss big quest lines or impactful permanent sta bonuses or sometimes even Companions and at no point is this spelled out for you there's no radiant Quest system here where NPCs come to you quest markers only give a general location and never tell you exactly what to do when you get there and the order you do quests is left entirely open with even major zones like the underd dark or the GI yane crash being skippable the combination of lots of options and little handholding does admittedly mean players can make mistakes and possibly quite big ones this is something modern game developers sometimes seem terrified of and so for years games have went to Great lamps to protect players from themselves adding in fail safes and restrictions and regular guidance but not Boulders Gate 3 in fact Boulders Gate 3 doesn't just let you make mistakes it almost seems to want you to make them and feels gleeful pleasure whenever you do on my first playthrough Lael died because I didn't res resue her in time which is okay because I thought of trying a resurrection scroll on her corpse and much to my surprise it actually worked which I think is because she had been in my party during the opening but on my second playthrough Resurrection Scrolls weren't enough to solve my problems I accidentally killed housein by encouraging the goblin kids to throw sharper rocks at him I mean come on house they're just rocks you didn't have to get mad about it I was going to free you afterwards meanwhile will left when I killed a few teelings what the hell will they're just teelings then carlac attacked me on site you slaughtered them to a man did it make you feel important huh did it make you feel big I mean actually carlac it was a misunderstanding then laelle turned on me for being rude to her contempt for power contempt for Allegiance I am done with you like what I thought you GI Yankee liked assertiveness but this was too far jira then took issue with me dooming last night in I trusted you sanas forgive me I let you in which I guess is understandable but we could have at least talked about it first and then there's minara you've played your [ __ ] you minara not that I'm still mad about it or anything at least Gail's still around good old Gail who knew it would be such a good decision to not bite his hand off and Shadow heart's here also and she's fine I don't deserve to be anyone's daughter uh she'll get over it I think for some of this I may have had some inclination of what I was doing but house in Lael and minara were genuine accidents and I was amazed at how willing the game was to let me make such accidents players not paying attention could easily mistake housein as just a bear and there's no indication that killing the Angry Bear meant you were permanently losing a party member meanwhile on my first playthrough when I was always trying to do the right thing I still got lasel killed by being negligent and I didn't even realize I was being negligent loading saves can protect players from pretty much anything but only if they realize they made a mistake and do reload yet Boulders Gate 3 doesn't think it's necessary to tell you about mistakes and why should it in Boulders gate 3's eyes there are no mistakes just happy little accidents and so companions can be lost in multiple ways many Quest giving NPCs can die long before their quests are given players can die as well when you fail to show enough reverence or common sense and all sorts of other things can and probably will go wrong at some point and the game just keeps going encouraging you to let the dice fall where they may and roll with the consequences no matter what they might be and it's great mistakes are exciting and it's in knowing that things can go wrong that makes things going right feel meaningful this this is just a game after all there's no need for everything to be overly safe people want danger and consequences it reminds me of when I did a playthrough of the Mass Effect Trilogy making all of the worst possible decisions and neither the game nor my companions barely acknowledged any of it and instead just kept treating me as the same old amazing Commander Shepherd not that a playthrough of Boulders Gate 3 making the worst decisions possible works well either but it's not because the G game doesn't react to this it's because you wind up getting your brain sucked up by a mind flare as soon as you're out of a tutorial and these are not the same and as for danger Boulders Gate 3 is also happy for you to walk into some pretty challenging combat encounters before you might be ready for them this was also true in Boulders Gate 1 and particularly two where endgame content was deliberately made possible to encounter early on so players could get destroyed by it and then come back later When stronger and there were times in Boulders Gate 3 particularly in act one where fights seemed too hard and this served as a suggestion to maybe go somewhere else and come back after one or two more levels if you play with a single save knowing the right order to tackle certain combat encounters is one of the most important parts of success and this does make the world feel dangerous and yet as much as exploration is enjoyable and rewarding it rarely feels necessary I mean there are a lot of chests in this game and barrels and vases and crates and shelves and backpacks and book piles and Trunks and desks and packs and sacks and hopefully you get the idea in fact I'm not sure why I'm giving so many examples as I'm basically just making more editing for myself there are a lot of containers in this game and being the highly interactive world that it is you can loot every single one of them but you don't have to there can be useful items inside containers like food Alchemy supplies and bonus gold but the best items are not found in the most mundane places things like food supplies and gold can be helpful but they're not needed Alchemy for example is really useful but you could easily ignore it the entire game and not feel like you're missing out or playing the game wrong likewise there are a lot of notes and books and journals and letters and the like and these are sometimes interesting and sometimes give you hints or fill in details around quests and LW events but they're also not necessary you can read everything if you want or just read some things when you're in the mood or read nothing maybe claim your character is illiterate and use that to justify your internet induced short attention span and it'll be fine just like you'll be fine if you skip lots of quests or combat encounters less XP means less levels which makes you significantly less effective in combat but there's no harm in a little challenge some people have criticized the fact that people doing everything will reach max level long before the end of act three but that just means those players get to enjoy being stronger sooner and spend more time at max strength that is your reward and the e e with which you hit level cap also means players aren't punished for not exploring and killing everything in site for maximum XP this is particularly appreciated on repeat playthroughs as it means you can skip less interesting combat encounters and not worry about falling too far behind later on in this way Boulders Gate 3 Strikes a great balance between rewarding exploration without requiring it and rewarding forign players without overly punishing those aren't basically you can play your way and this is achieved without streamlining or level scaling or handholding or excessive linearity and when you combine this emphasis on Choice with the emergent gameplay and interactivity and the dense World design that rewards exploration and the ease with which you can make mistakes or mis important content and the sense of danger the world can provide then the result of all this is a world that feels exciting much like how the original Boulders gate games felt Once Upon a Time this is what I mean by the sense of adventure and I do think this is an important quality that people can underappreciate at times a big part of why people like RPGs over other genres is because they provide us with choice and boulders Gate 3 simply provides more Choice than most in all sorts of different ways there's a sense that this game goes above and beyond what people are used to and what most people expect and there's even more to this than what's already been mentioned like having the ability to speak to the dead or to speak to animals who do actually act like animals or having the option to play as any origin character for a slightly different experience with some entirely new content or play as the dark urge for even more differences or some of the more unexpected moments of compan reactivity or how many class and race tags are accounted for in dialogue or the dog playing fetch this one's a big deal uh to me anyway I didn't expect him to run off and return the ball after I threw it for him but he did that's better programming than some real dogs have modern video games are impressive in that they are technical Marvels but if you play a lot of games this is just something you become accustomed to and as a result things often stop seeming impressive but when a game comes along that does more than what people are used to this makes it stand out and can bring the magic back and I think that's what Boulders Gate 3 is for many people it's a game that does more and brings back the magic of the medium still this wouldn't work so well if it wasn't backed up by the rest of the game play [Music] in a time before Boulders Gate 3 laran were best known for Divinity original sin 1 and 2 and Divinity original sin 1 and 2 were best known for their amazing turn-based combat so you could say Boulders Gate 3 had some pretty big shoes to fill and yet this time laran didn't have the same complete creative freedom because Dungeons and Dragons rules have already been written and boulders Gate 3 is a faithful and competent adaptation the changes laran do make are small and sensible and perhaps unsurprisingly turn-based DND combat does translate pretty well to a turn-based video game so Boulders gate 3's combat is good but is it Divinity original sin good these games do make for an interesting comparison there are obvious similarities with both being turn-based both being made by laran and both running on the same game engine and yet on the other hand this is a question of tabletop thereus something made specifically for a video game and there are plenty of mechanical differences between the two the most obvious is that Divinity original sin used a shared pool of ability points for all actions including movement with spells and combat abilities being largely governed by cooldowns Boulders gate instead has a set number of actions and bonus actions per turn with spells and combat abilities having no cooldowns and instead being governed by limited uses per rest in Practical terms this means you can do a lot more each turn in Divinity which can make combat more involved but the less actions of bould's gate gives combat a more deliberate feel and can lead to each action seeming more impactful Divinity original sin also has a far greater emphasis on environmental effects and manipulation with most spells having environmental components leading to a sense of constant Environmental Management in Boulders Gate 3 environmental effects are rarer and feel more like a nice bonus than a core component of combat but again this can make each one feel more impactful with clever use of the environment often feeling like a decisive factor and so in terms of how combat actually plays Divinity original sin is involved and Flash while Boulder's Gate is deliberate and impactful and this largely reflects their tabletop vers video game Origins basically if these were racing games they would look similar but once you played them you'd realize that Divinity original sin is more of an arcade racer while Boulders gate leans more towards racing Sim I don't actually know how many of my viewers play racing games which is a shame because it means you can't appreciate how great that metaphor is but people do understand what simulation means and boulders gate does have more of a simulation field to its combat where Divinity is more video gamey this is particularly true in the class and progression systems Divinity original sin is functionally classless and every character can mix and match freely to learn loads of powerful abilities with all characters potentially playing similarly meanwhile in Boulders gate a character's class is a massive part of their identity and different classes are really different in and out of combat now I imagine roundabout now is where some people are probably wondering where I'm going with all these comparisons but surprising as it might be to you I am building towards a greater Point here which is that I think Divinity original sin 1 and two have combat that's often more fun and can even be more strategic but I still think Boulders gate 3's combat might be a little better and the reason is primarily the simulationist aspects that make choices in and out of battle feel more impactful and meaningful of course if the competition is so tight that picking a winner is even difficult that in itself is High Praise and proof that Boulders Gate 3 has great combat and laran did a great job at adapting this rule set I also think it's only fair to say that I'm comparing these combat systems in single player in Co-op it isn't close Divinity original sin wins easily as there's so much more to discuss between players about ability and environmental synergies that just doesn't apply as well to Boulders gate but otherwise I think Boulders Gate 3 has the edge still there are more differences than this which also play an important role the first is resource management as most spell and abilities have a limited number of uses per rest it means your actions can have further reaching consequences than just a single encounter this introduces a constant question of whether to use your best abilities now or try to preserve resources for later and not only is this a strategically engaging question on its own that incorporates risk vers reward it also adds a lot of variability and possibly Dynamic difficulty to encounters the same fight can play out quite differently if you're caught out when low on health and resources verse at full strength and the less you struggle in combat the less often you'll probably rest allowing you to naturally modify the difficulty as you try to stretch your resources as long as possible making things harder there's also something satisfying about knowing you're in for a tough fight leading you to rest up and go in with full strength for once ready to use everything you have available if you usually play conservatively this can lead to a very Rock Lee verse gar taking off the training weights moment you know that's also a good metaphor that I'm not sure my audience will appreciate uh let me explain you see Rock Lee is just like this little karate boy who no one takes seriously and he doesn't even have any of that Ninjutsu [ __ ] and you think oh it's just it's just little weights what's what's that going to change against [ __ ] gar but then they they hit the floor and it's like and that was cool just like how are you feeling Boulders gate saying it out loud actually doesn't sound that cool anymore which is weird uh you probably just had to be there yeah that's what it is Resource Management adds strategy and variety but in true dndd video game fashion Boulders Gate 3 still fails completely at finding a way to balance resting meaning its resource management is somewhat trivialized the way resting is meant to be limited is by requiring food but even with the raised requirements of tactician difficulty you still find so many camp supplies that this limitation is a joke some consumables like elixir and unique Buffs like Bliss spores and morning Lords Radiance are per rest which does provide at least a little incentive to try to foro resting sometimes but this isn't nearly enough the obvious solution to this is just balance camp supplies better I mean Boulders Gate 3 is willing to let players get into dangerous situations otherwise and players could always buy more supplies if they get truly desperate so the copious amount of supplies given out just seems unnecessary still an even better solution might be to incorporate the passage of time I.E each rest into certain quests and World elements so that resting passes time and players feel incentivized to rest less for narrative reasons the easiest way to do this is by having some quests fail after a certain amount of time passes and that was actually something that happened in Boulders Gate 1 and 2 sometimes but most players dislike being punished so strictly so I think a better way to do this is just modify Quest dialogue to reflect the passage of time when it makes sense to do so and maybe throwing the occasional bonus reward for players who are faster rather than focusing on punishing those who are slow by removing content this would add to realism and be a further way to create consequences based on players actions in game but it would obviously require more work to implement still how to prevent rest spamming is a classic crpg problem that was also present in the original Boulders Gates so I feel it is worth considering how this could be most effectively solved I also feel it's warranted to hold this against Boulders Gate 3 because this game doesn't doesn't just allow players to rest too often it actually punishes players who don't rest enough because resting is how you trigger many companion and story events including romances meaning any accidental insomniacs can miss out on some really important events and this is surprisingly easy to fall prey to on my second playthrough I reached the end of act two very quickly due to most Quest givers dying and then when I started resting just in case before the ending of act two I had seven Camp events trigger in a row many of these were dark urge or albear Cub related but still all of this could have potentially been skipped over if I just played the game the way it was intended and only rested when low on resources and this is severely punishing as they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions uh or in this case two generous camp supplies with hell being missing out on seeing your character bang your favorite party member or something that said I do love Resource Management in RPGs I'm glad it's a part of Boulders Gate 3 I'm still mad it was removed from some other games and I absolutely want more games to incorporate Resource Management elements it is a way to add to strategy and consequence but this is one of the areas Boulders Gate 3 does drop the the ball a bit in contrast if there is one area Boulders Gate 3 doesn't drop any balls an area this game Champions balls not being dropped like a juggler trying to prove the value of their life choices it's encounter design turn-based combat is slow and while video games are faster than tabletop by virtue of automated dice rolling this combat still tends to be slow by Gaming standards for this reason it's easy for turn-based combating games to feel repetitive or tedious if encounters become overly similar or underly challenging but luckily Boulders Gate 3 understands this with almost every encounter designed to be distinctive in combatants environment or both to create a sense of constant variety that can radically alter how different encounters play out Boulders Gate 3 even handles boss encounters really well with unique Buffs legendary resistances and the Unstoppable condition all working to prevent bosses from just being nuked down instantly or crowd controlled into Oblivion without simply resorting to Flat immunities or overly specific gimmicks this means bosses need to be ground down gradually which gives them time to use their various unique abilities to test players ability to react and deal with this rather than just testing whether players have a strong build that can obliterate at everything in a single turn so encounter design is overall really good and good encounter design is the best solution to a slow combat system that said laran do try to stop combat from being overly slow where possible like using a party size of four rather than the six of the original Boulders gate or allowing enemies to act simultaneously in encounters with large numbers of combatants or just making minor changes to D and D's rule set to make characters a bit more effective so combat is resolved a bit more quickly in fact there are a lot of changes to the fifth edition rules to make them better fit the needs of a combat heavy video game too many changes for me to want to list them all but the general Trend seems to be towards streamlining things that might confuse or frustrate players while adding to the number of options players have each turn in combat like by introducing unique weapon abilities that refresh each short rest or turning things like shove into a bonus action to allow more shoving originally I was feeling a little guilty shoving away so liberally but eventually the AI started shoving me back at which point my guilt disappeared much like some of my party members the biggest change however has got to be allowing players to examine all enemies in combat to see a detailed breakdown of their stats this has a big impact on gameplay but giving players this extra information does add to the strategy of combat as it lets players incorporate this information into their decision- making this does come at a slight cost to realism but in a combat heavy video game trading some realism for better combat seems worth it I'm not sure I'm really qualified to say whether all of these changes are good but I do think a lot of them are at least sensible and the fact that D and D fans rarely seem annoyed says something in itself in my eyes people can be Pur s about things they like and react strongly to even minor differences and the fact this hasn't happened much is kind of proof that laran did get most things right instead the biggest area of criticism people have made against these systems seems to be with fifth edition itself rather than anything laran have done fifth edition does have its detractors and the character systems are more simplified and therefore less fun to min max than say alcat PA games the place where this seems most noticeable to me is feat selection where not only does the level 12 cap only allow for three total Feats per character but the selection also just isn't that exciting a lot of these Feats are just plus one to a certain ability plus a bonus to something else like skill checks but skill checks are already pretty easy to pass and are optional so it seems hard to justify most plus one to Ability score Feats over the ability Improvement feat that just gives plus two and a lot of the remaining Feats are rather specific some of them are amazing on certain builds like Tavern brawler for open hand monks but a good character system means lots of viable choices and with only three total Feats every feet gained should really feel impactful this makes me wonder if the relatively low level cap of 12 was actually the best choice giving that this is a long game game and events in the story are high level as hell literally sometimes so a higher level cap with an accelerated XP progression would make sense as a way to add more depth to character building instead it seems Lan's solution to spicing up progression was the introduction of elid powers on the one hand these tie into the story in a meaningful way while providing more narrative choice and are a useful Quest or loot reward for the game to hand out at regular intervals on the other hand the though while these do provide a range of semi-useful combat abilities combat abilities are already pretty plentiful by the midgame and most of these aiid Powers don't revolve around synergizing with a character's pre-existing build in a way that might make character building more interesting for say fifth edition haters but I personally am not a fifth edition hater because no matter what criticisms could be made against it there is one thing it does well that I never want to live without which is removing pre-buff thing you see I don't actually care about tabletop all that much I just really like video games and after all these years of playing second and third edition DND d games as well as more recent Pathfinder games often at high difficulties where effective play is required I didn't even realize how much I hated pre-b buffing it was just something I grew used to before a difficult combat encounter you just use all your best Buffs it's just what you do because once combat starts you don't actually have time to cast all these Buffs and these Buffs matter because not only are they good individually but their effectiveness tends to stack on top of one another making pre-buff this universally useful yet cheesy meta strategy that has haunted this type of game for as long as I've been playing them but not in bod gate three because fifth edition adds concentration which means casters can only maintain one concentration based spell at a time and that's it that's all it took no more endless pre-buff God I love concentration I love the concentrating I love the option to break enemy concentration and most of all I love not spending hours of my life precasting the same exact spells over and over before every single fight every single rest every single reload just to be effective in combat what's even the downside of concentration I mean maybe the added dice rolling for concentration checks might slow combat down but uh not in a video game where the dice are automated so I think fifth edition is overall all right I think the changes laran made are overall good I think the combat system is overall great and I think the encounter design is overall maybe the best I have ever seen in an RPG and encounter design is one of the most important parts of combat Boulders Gate 3 also retains an enjoyable sense of progression and itemization where both loot rewards and level UPS lead to substantial impacts on your power level as opposed to incremental fluff where progression is designed around the dopamine provided from seeing numbers on a character screen go up even when there's no real difference being made to combat this is EXP Ed of a d andd game of course but it's still good to see the addition of a turn-based mode outside of combat is also a smart inclusion allowing for more precise positioning pre- battles or evasion from traps and environmental effects outside of battles instead if there is one final area that I think does deserve criticism it's difficulty but this is a hard aspect to criticize because it's something that has changed since release on release the highest difficulty was tactician and that seemed a good difficulty for an experienced RPG player on a first playthrough but people might want to do more than one playthrough or just want to really challenge themselves and originally boulderscape 3 did seem to be missing that very hard difficulty level that many people would expect from a game like this since release Larry and have added an extra difficulty in honor mode though as well as custom difficulty options which has solved the lack of difficulty problem but I do think it's worth exploring how they've done this because it ties into one of the biggest areas where Boulders Gate 3 and other RPGs still seem to have a way to go to reach their maximum potential onor mode adds new special abilities to boss encounters and makes a few balance tweaks but the real challenge here is that it limits players to a single save file with no manual saving or loading this means players must live with every consequence of their actions and if the player's party dies it's game over this does at a considerable amount of difficulty but having a single save file does much more than this it completely changes many parts of the experience and often for the better usually Boulders Gate 3 allows players to save scum to their heart's content with it even being possible to save midc combat just before making an attack that might miss or in the middle of dialogue just before rolling for a skill check this is obviously not something you can do in in tabletop RPGs and the more you utilize saving and reloading the more you lower combat difficulty and the more you reduce the sense of consequence and feeling of role playing outside of combat but people can play their game however they like some people might want easier combat some may want to do a more completionist playthrough where they feel like they're making all of the best choices and some people might just be curious and want to test things out be they experimental combat tactics or unhinged dialogue responses just to see what happens and I do this sometimes I get curious and I'd rather satisfy that Curiosity through a quick save and quick load than having to look something up on Google or YouTube so allowing players to save whenever they want has its advantages but so does limiting the players ability to save for one thing it introduces genuine tension to dialogue choices combat encounters and skill checks but it also makes the choices you do make more meaningful as you're always forced to live with the consequences and it leads to unexpected outcomes and seeing parts of the game you might not experience normally and it forces you to play out combat encounters that have went wrong testing your ability to steady a sinking ship or flee from danger and it makes traps and ambushes actually dangerous making the world feel Dangerous by extension and it makes the experience more varied introducing challenges and surprises in places you might not expect them and it possibly freees you from the anxiety of making the best choices or creating the best playthrough as you're now forced to accept whatever happens and are therefore free to just roll with the punches whatever they might be just like that time minara attacked me and I just made peace with this and I'm definitely not still mad about it or anything so one save only is honestly way more exciting than just playing normally and playing normally is already pretty exciting so the excitement level is in some ways multiplied this is a great way to experience the game and surely one of the best ways to replay this game so I think it's a mistake for developers to always tie this option to the concept of difficulty yes one save does make the game much more challenging and yes you can select one save through the custom difficulty option now but I think video game players have been conditioned to only think of limited saves as an additional difficulty modifier for challenge runs rather than as a different yet legitimate and possibly Superior way to experience the game the systems these games are based on are designed to be experienced this way so I wish games would try to encourage this type of play style more often for some people this would create a worst experience but for others it would be better so at the very least this deserves to be its own distinct option when starting a new campaign it would also be great to have an additional option somewhere between save any time you like even in combat and just before rolling for skill checks and one save only and if everyone dies it's game over these are two extreme ends of a spectrum and an option in the Middle where saving is limited but not impossible Say by only allowing players to save during long rests might offer a Best of Both weld option for certain players this way the temptation to save scum could be removed but players could still go back to an earlier point if they truly needed to like if on their I want to get minara play through uh minara instead attack them and they unlike me were still mad about it or something finally I don't have a problem with allowing players to Respec characters at camp this is a game that was always going to pull in lots of players new to DND and allowing respecing is much more beginner friendly I also personally love having the option to change a companion's class on subsequent playthroughs for the benefit of gameplay that said allowing respecing in honor mode is a strange choice there's nothing honorable about rrolling a party member's stats to dump all decks after finding the gloves of dexterity or rrolling to dump strength when using elixir of Hill giant strength and if you ever run out of Elixir just re-rolling back again and so on there's actually quite a lot of creative ad advantages respecing can provide some more cheesy than what I've just mentioned respecing also doesn't make narrative sense an experienced fighter shouldn't just be able to turn into an experienced wizard no matter what NPC they're talking to so respecing does bring benefits but if there was ever a time to disable it surely it would be in a new extra hard difficulty that is literally called honor mode but this is a minor point of contention as are some of the other things I've criticized Boulders gate for in this section the reality is combat in this game is fantastic and while I do wish for an RPG that does everything Boulders Gate 3 does but with the perfect rule set and balanced resting and resource management and more options for limitations on saving and fair but challenging difficulty options from launch this is more speculation on how RPGs could be improved even further than points to be held against Boulders Gate 3 I've spent hours in combat in this game and I would gladly spend more and that is not something I would say about most RPGs so presentation is good World design is good combat is good basically everything's good so far and all that's left is the [Music] story this section will contain spoilers for the main story and companion quest lines so if you don't want spoilers uh maybe go play Boulders Gate 3 yourself it's a good game and you can't tell me you're not interested in it you've just watched over an hour of a YouTuber talking about it sometimes in hypers specific detail but you can also skip to the conclusion I guess Boulders Gate 3 starts how it plans to continue with an epic if confusing mashup of high fantasy and horror that cares more about impressing the player than explaining anything to the player the opening cut scene shows you captured and being infected by a strange tadpole but then it zooms out to reveal you're actually on a massive living Dimension hopping ship that's destroying some City and is soon joined by Dimension hopping Dragon Riders who are fighting the ship and then they all hop to another dimension and it's all cold and then they hop again and it's not cold because it's literally hell and now demons are attacking and this is just the first few minutes it reminds me a lot of that old Old Spice commercial but I worry I'm reaching my limit of references my audience might not appreciate by this point uh but we can have one more look down back up where are you you're on a boat with the man your man could smell what's in your hand back at me I have it it's an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love look again the tickets are now diamonds anything is possible when your man smells like like Old Spice and not a lady I'm on a horse this opening is a lot and I feel a little sorry for anyone who plays this game with no prior experience of D and D for how many terms races people and other law Concepts they're just going to be rapidly introduced to on top of the new gameplay rules that might also be confusing them it doesn't help matters when multiple different terms can all sometimes mean the exact same thing anyway so after being captured by mind flares you're infected with an Alid tadpole and then you have to escape the gake ship this doesn't exactly solve your problems however as the tadpole that's now in your brain turns out to be a ticking Time Bomb capable of transforming you into the very creatures who did this to you and so the player has their main objective find a cure and save yourself while trying to do this the player soon finds a mysterious prism that turns out out to have the power to prevent this mind flare transformation but is also powerful enough that many powerful people either want it or want you because of it or want you to do something because you have it I do think criticizing Boulders Gate 3 story for seeming confusing and convoluted is fair but I do also like parts of this premise this is a messy situation involving multiple different groups and figures all with their own agenda and the player is then just dumped right into the middle of this mess without a clue what's really going on almost nothing is told to the player directly so you're left having to work most things out for yourself and there's something engaging about unraveling this dense web of different plot threads to finally make sense of everything after so much initial confusion and dense is an apt way to describe it because much like the world design a lot of the story content is once again packed tight and surprisingly focused where Boulders gate 2 was a game where you can go on all sorts of different far-reaching Adventures Boulders Gate 3 is instead all about this one single adventure and despite how much content in this game is technically optional a lot of side quests actually connect to the main story in One Way or Another Side characters also have a tendency to show up multiple times which is justified by the game taking place in only three different areas with most characters having the same general objective of the player in getting to the city of Boulders gate the third and final area this means there's a lot of added consequence to side content because you see many of these characters multiple times and with so many reoccurring characters and so many side quests connecting to the central plot line it means that almost none of his content ever feels like filler which is quite the accomplishment and is only really possible in a game designed this densely although this does make for a very different experience than earlier Boulders gate games still Boulders gate 3's most impressive narrative accomplishment has to be its characters and its most impressive characters are the companions while there are technically 10 joinable party members it's the first six or origin characters who still the show each one has the same brain tadpole problem as the player with this being what brings the group together you each need the same cure so you might as well help each other to find it this shared set of circumstances helps the story avoid a more generic Chosen One premise and narratively you're no more the main character of this story than any of the others the one who first finds the mysterious and alsoo important artifact isn't actually the player and while the player does soon start receiving help from a figure who visits you in your dream you're told that you're all receiving these dreams and presumably also the same guidance despite this there can be a main character in this story you just probably didn't play as them but if you do want to be the chosen one just select the dark urge origin in character creation this introduces most of the chosen one tropes the story otherwise avoids like Amnesia the player having a special connection to the main villains the player having special powers and the need to fight against your destiny sln nature presumably the story of the dark urge was once going to be part of the main story for every player character and the decision was made at some point in development to separate this background into its own specific origin to allow for more freedom in role playing still regardless of why or how this decision was made it was a great call because the main story has so much going on already but it doesn't need the extra Chosen One editions and this leades the dark urge as a great option for repeat playthroughs where you can experience the same story but different still outside of the dark urge there is no main character meaning all six origin characters get to share the spotlight companions in party-based RPGs sometimes have a problem of feeling like cheerleaders people just there to support you and believe in you and share all their interesting backstory with you whenever's most convenient for you of course while always staying by your side even when they don't agree with your actions this is a problem of agency and how little agency NPCs usually have within a story when compared to the player character even when they're meant to be somewhat of an equal occasionally this can be acknowledged and cleverly incorporated into the plot but generally it's a limitation that makes characters feel less believable and makes the players's relationship to them less meaningful one game that partly avoided this though was Boulders gate 2 where companions interject and argue with the player and each other often on their own time and even going so far as to leave the group or become hostile when unhappy Boulders gate 2 did this better than many of the games it seemed to directly lead to so it's great to see that its long- awaited sequel is even more successful here this isn't just the result of companions being allowed to turn against you or the addition of an approval system that reflects companions personalities or the extensive reactivity companion showed your actions in general it's also a core part of how they're written each companion has their own objective as important if not more so than helping the player meaning they're here because your goals align not because they lack goals or care more about your goals and the way they act reflects this these characters start off distrusting of one another they act cold and skeptical this can make them all seem like dicks which was a bit surprising usually a companion is introduced as cool competent and immediately likable in an attempt to make the player immediately like them but by contrast let's look at the boulders gate boys and girls laelle does help you but she is rude and aggressive and then she gets captured like an idiot and is even Rudder and more aggressive after you help her Shadow Heart is also rude but in a colder way and it's soon revealed that she's keeping important secrets to do with a certain mysterious artifact while also being part of an evil cult Gail is smug and arrogant yet his first appearance is him messing up his magic portal and needing a hand from the player he is also keeping a rather important secret from you that could accidentally turn him into a magical nuclear bomb liable to kill everyone aaran is introduced by ordering you to kill an intellect Devourer for him and then he threatens to cut your throat if you don't act eager enough he is also rude and is also keeping a dangerous secret involving an addiction to drinking blood maybe your blood and no he won't ask for permission first will is not rude actually but he does seem like a bland self- congratulating hero of the people who might be a little too in love with being seen as the hero he also calls himself the blade of Frontiers that's not cool will you're supposed to let other people refer to you by your badass nickname while you act like you don't like it because you're too modest or serious or something you're not meant to literally introduce yourself that way to everyone you meet oh and he also has a secret that brings into question his defining trait of heroism and finally there is carlac who is maybe the only possible exception although she does seem very two-dimensional and overly defined by being an angry fiery Barbarian type she also goes into a childlike Rage of Smashing everything in sight after completing her introductory quest which I thought was not a good look I am quite convinced these characters are meant to seem unlikable at first there is no way this is all a coincidence hell one character Gail even has a mechanical representation for starting off annoying in that he begins the game by needing to regularly consume your magical items and no he won't explain further and yes he will keep bugging you about it if you don't feed him quickly enough what what do you want now baby's hungry again but thanks to actually good writing that Champions play a choice you're not forced to like any of these characters and you certainly don't have to play Kate or agree with them constantly if someone is rude to you you can be rude back and there are plenty of opportunities to challenge or mock them or just tell them to [ __ ] off for betraying your trust hey set your boundaries they do it and that's okay except for you not that I'm still mad about it or anything this is how an RPG should handle unlikable characters by giving the player as much Choice as possible in how to respond to them and just because they start off as unlikable doesn't mean they'll stay that way as the game continues these characters show growth they are challenged and they reveal depth lazel and shadowart are defined by their devotion and both have their faith tested Lael is betrayed and abandoned both by her people the GIF yanii and their strict belief system something that had previously guided all parts of her life while shadowart is pushed further and further to follow a religion that gives nothing and takes much even her memories of the past meanwhile estaran and carlac are defined by trauma and tragedy with carac using Revenge as a coping mechanism for dealing with a terminal condition that will either kill her or condemn her back to hell and aarian needing Revenge to finally be free of the dark shadow cast by his abuser and having to wrestle with his own desire for power a power that would mean no one could ever abuse him again but could also ensure the cycle will continue at others expense and as for Gail and will they are defined by their mistakes Gail had it all being not just a talented Mage but one so talented it brought the attention of the goddess of magic herself who became Gail's Lover he had everything and he [ __ ] all of it up by wanting more by searching for forbidden knowledge knowledge he found that would cost him his lover and maybe his life as for will he wanted to help people so bad it led him to making a deal with the Devil who is Now intent on making sure Will's debt is paid meaning will and Gail both have to struggle with the consequences of their own actions consequences they can't avoid there is plenty going on with each of these characters and despite how abrasive they might initially seem they each have a side that is deeply sympathetic and in time you will probably warm up to them just like how they start to warm up to you because if you do place your trust in them sooner or later they will trust you back and by the end of this long journey you walk together it's hard not to feel a sense of Friendship with them so much to my own surprise I think all six are very well done this does mean that the four remaining characters seem a bit like second class citizens though with the high quality of the first six contrasting and highlighting their relative weakness at least this applies to housein jira and Minsk who aren't as interesting and don't receive as much attention as the origin characters I can't actually speak for minara because she [ __ ] attacked me not that I'm still mad about it or anything six great companions is still more than most games manage but I do wonder if this two- tiered approach is ever actually worth it the characters returning from the previous Boulders gate games also feel quite poorly handled jira is about the only exception as her personality is largely intact and she probably was the best candidate to bring back from the original cast being someone who was both popular and well written Minsk on the other hand might have once been a fan favorite but that was mostly the result of his meme quality dialogue and high strength stat Minsk was always a two-dimensional character who was defined almost entirely by their all bronze no brains personality by the end of Boulders gate 2 it already felt a bit like his stick was starting to overstay its welcome so there wasn't much he could bring to Boulders Gate 3 other than just repeating the same memes of old and he doesn't even have his legendary high strength anymore even explaining how this human is still alive so many years later requires a lot of contrivance so thanan favorite or not his inclusion still feels like a mistake when you consider that it came at the cost of resources that could have could have been spent on other existing characters or even another new character viconia is even worse and although her role is small it still feels a little insulting to see her brought back just to be so cheaply killed off this was a character that was popular in large part for their nuance and character growth and for potentially being the bow spawns lover and some stories are better left open and untouched saravo isn't nearly as bad and it's not the first time he's reappeared but it still felt a little too fanservicey to me and didn't feel needed as for pre-existing DND characters like Volo and elminster they're fine do with them whatever you want but I will say I was glad dritz wasn't also shoehorned in this time as he always used to be in D and D games but when it comes to the original characters standards are generally High across the board thanks to consistently strong writing and this also applies to the villains Boulders Gate 3 does lack that strong central villain who can carry a story single-handedly a John irenicus type if you like with it instead opting for a more ensemble cast of antagonists the clear standout of these is Raphael the devil you know who appears early to offer his assistance and instantly instills a sense of tension that only builds as the story progresses other antagonists feel more limited by having to share the spotlight with so many other characters and events although I do appreciate boulderscape 3's ability to make even very minor villains feel memorable so overall characters are the story's strongest point which is good because the narrative ends up quite character driven your search for a cure leads you to working with the other infected survivors and chasing multiple different leads but none give you what you need this results in you clashing with and possibly infiltrating The Cult of the absolute a group led by three figures chosen by the deceased gods of death Bal Bane and Merkel these chosen have succeeded in capturing and enslaving an elder brain which is the most powerful form of Mind flare by using an artifact called the crown of carus they are then using the Elder brain to infect more people with tadpoles who they can then control and who will eventually turn into mind flares creating a devastatingly powerful Army all subservient to the captured Elder brain that's subservient to them this is also what would happen to the players party if it wasn't for the mysterious prism carried by shadowart that negates the Elder brain's effects the prism turns out to be a little more than that however as it's revealed to be a pocket Dimension that contains a friendly human turned mind flare named the emperor who's the one who initially appears in your dreams the emperor has escaped the Elder brain's control thanks to the prism and is helping the party in the hopes that they will in turn help him the emperor isn't the only inhabitant however as the prism also contains an imprisoned gifan named orus who is the son of the original gifan founder in fact this is the real purpose of the prism to act as orus is prison and it is orpheus's immense power that is causing the prism to negate the effects of the Elder bra this means the gifan queen vakif wants the prison because it threatens her Rule and Shadow heart's goddess sha also wants the prison because of the threat of the growing Cult of the absolute meanwhile aspiring Ark devil Raphael instead wants the crown of cus to use that for his own ends in ruling hell and Gail's ex-lover and goddess of magic mistra also wants the crown of carus so that its danger can be contained mean while the emperor wants to destroy the cult and Elder brain to be free of their influence albeit at the cost of orpheus's life orus though also wants to kill the Elder brain uh possibly also at the cost of his own life if necessary but probably not by helping the emperor and then the Elder brain itself might not be quite as captured as it seems and wants to escape and do mind flare things something known as The Grand Design which is basically just a nice name for lots and lots of slavery but slavery for everyone at least this is the mess I was referring to earlier that the player has to unravel and this is a summary that still Skips a lot of other minor but still important events and figures hence why I also said the criticism of this story for being confusing or convoluted seems fair what I don't think is fair however is saying that this story lacks any sort of thematic depth or but it has no point that it's just epic things happening to be epic and none of it really means anything this criticism has been made and I do disagree stories in RPGs are often about player choice and for many years the main category of choice RPGs have tried to provide is that of morality RPGs ask players what is the right thing to do in this situation and that's an okay question to ask but Boulders Gate 3 seems to have a different question question driving it instead of what is right this game asks players who should you trust and this question ultimately ties all of these characters and events together this story starts by throwing players into a nightmare situation where you're surrounded by danger and desperately need help to remove the tadpole and so you have no choice but to put your trust in someone but which leads do you follow what advice do you believe which procedure do you undertake there are five main options in Act One the Druid Goblin GIF yanky hag and M flare and none of these work yet interestingly the only actually trustworthy option is amam the Mind flare the one it might make the least sense would help you the Druid NTI is just trying to work out if you can be trusted to kill yourself before the transformation is complete and she becomes hostile if you tell her you won't the goblin Priestess gut drugs and imprisons you for later experiments the GIF yanii become hostile after their device fails and that device might permanently lower your stats by the way and Auntie eel the hag takes your eye and gives nothing in return but a debuff saying that you paid the price four bad outcomes so be careful who you trust in Desperate Times trust is Central to your companions conflicts as well as each of their stories involves betrayal LEL is betrayed by vakif and her people after failing to go obvious shadowart was betrayed by Sha who imprisoned her parents converted her from rival goddess saluna and stole her memories aarian was betrayed by his cruel vampire sire kazador leading to years of abuse KAC was betrayed by her former Master gash who Who Sold her to a devil dooming her for eternity Gail betrayed mistress trust and was betrayed in turn by her when she abandoned him when he needed her the most and Will was exiled by his father after he made a deal with a devil that included not being able to tell anyone about the deal's original circumstances all six characters were betrayed by the most important person in their lives all but Gail were manipulated into believing lies as part of this and Albert Lael carry permanent reminders of this on their bodies everywhere they go be it a painful mark on the hand an enduring thirst for blood an infernal engine in place of their heart or something even more noticeable but trust and betrayal isn't just Central to your companions it's also the main thing which Dooms each villain the chosen of the dead three each plan to turn on one another when they might have been able to stop if they just put their Ambitions aside and work together vakif built her throne on lies that are revealed by the existence of orus causing Vos and laelle to turn against her with the epilog suggesting they succeed sha likely loses shadowart and the Night song and her entire Boulders gate sect all because Shadow heart's trust in her runs out asarian gets his revenge on kazador Auntie U has manipulated many but it's a group of survivors who will tell you how to finally kill her Raphael's plans are undone by his servant hope a dwarf who was always optimistic that Raphael kept alive just to torture and is the one who ends up providing vital help to the party in Raphael's the main and the emperor is manipulating you from the start that's why you create their appearance during character creation so they can appear in the form that appeals most to you to better manipulate you this is also why they respond to the things you say the way they do because they are always trying to get you on their side and it's why they tell you orus will kill you if freed even though orus does not do this there's even a theory that the emperor is the Mind Flare from the opening cutscene who originally infects you and while this theory is not conclusive it does have plenty of evidence to support it I'll put a link below if you want to read more and in the end the emperor fails because you see through his manipulative ways assuming you did see through the manipulation if you didn't don't feel too bad about it it's hard to know who to trust in a world so rought with danger and Desperation where betrayal and manipulation are everywhere around you but bodis Gate 3 does have an answer you trust your friends not the people who are nice to you but the people who will stick by you no matter how dangerous or desperate the situation gets there is an old proverb that says A friend in need is a friend indeed meaning that it's only when you need help that you discover who is a true friend and in Boulders Gate 3 you do need a lot of help and over the course of the game those true friends are revealed to you and I think that is the point of Boulders Gate 3 story trust and betrayal is the major theme that connects all these many events and the bond between the party is what allows them to ultimately succeed while so many other powerful foes fail the power of friendship is nothing new and its role might be overly sentimental to some but this is a game about recreating the feeling of a D and D campaign where the companions share the role of main character and where these companions each struggle with betrayals of their past and so there is something fitting about your bonds with each other playing such an important role in your eventual Victory and when a game is this successful at creating an emotional bond between the player and these characters it can lead to strong emotional payoff there are some great moments in this story like when you free the Night song a well done scene in its own right built around shadowart choice to stay loyal to her God and kill the Night song or to finally break free of Sha's control by breaking the Night song free and you can persuade shadowart to do the right thing and that's nice but you can also not do that you can choose to say nothing not knowing what the outcome of this scene will be and let shadowart make this decision by herself you can trust her and then watch her do the right thing all on her own the night song is no more [Music] I am [Music] resplendant or what about Asian's final confrontation with kazador and his sheer outpour of emotion where we see him go from happy to rage to just sitting on the floor crying his eyes out that it's finally over [Music] [Music] and then there's kac's Revenge the thing she longed for above all else that she gets only to find out it means nothing because she's still going to die what was the point I'm still dying I'm dying I'm going to die that's my reward for everything I suffered that's why I survived 10 years of Torment the fighting the claing the loneliness the [ __ ] loneliness all of it so I could rot because the person I trusted the most gave me away to the devil it isn't fair I don't want it like this or if these don't mean that much to you you know if you too have a carlac like problem of not having a heart what about the confrontation with Raphael after a whole game veiled threats and Rising tension when you finally hear the Boss music kick in no more deals it's over the Final Act your doom no more Grace it's over this house of home [Music] there are great moments in this story and I'm sure there are other examples I could point to as well moments from romances endings and epilogues moments players might never see that still mean a lot to those who do I don't think this story has a ton of depth but it does know what it wants to be and sometimes when the characters are good and the game is able to make the player care about them then a story doesn't need a ton of depth for it to feel deep that said it is a bit confusing and convoluted originally I had some nitpicks I was going to list off for things that ither felt undere explained or overly contrived like how did Shadow heart even get the prism to begin with OR why do Orin and gash just leave like overconfident idiots at the end of act two or why does the emperor do so little to stop you freeing orus when he's in your mind but I think these are less out andout problems in their own right and more symptoms of a story with so much going on and so many important figures involved hence the confusing and convoluted criticism that I think is the real problem there is one final part of the game that does need to be discussed though and that's it's choices and where they might disappoint on my first playthrough the confrontation with vff in the GIF yane crash and the subsequent confrontation with the guardian Emperor inside the prism felt mindblowing I decided I had to go along with what black if wanted given the dangerous circumstances which meant to kill the one inside the prison but then when I got there I let the guardian talk me out of this and decided to put my trust in him but this whole sequence had me on the edge of my seat not knowing what I was meant to do what the right thing might be and what could happen as a result of my actions even when the scene had ended my mind was Ablaze with what ifs what if I had refused black if what if I did Kill the guardian and side with black if what if I never even came here what happens then this entire area is technically optional what are all the DraStic consequences these various choices might have on the rest of Story the answer to these questions is not much because it doesn't really matter what you do here refuse V if and the conversation just forces you to go along with it anyway unless you're really outspokenly stubborn in which case v if kills you for an instant game over and if you do try to kill the guardian he just vanishes and says he's a bit disappointed you try to do that and then everything continues the same so you can't can't actually side with v if and she always turns on you when you return no matter what meaning the same main result there are choices here and there can be some important consequences to them but this scene is clearly designed to give an illusion of far greater choice and consequence than really exists and that illusion is exciting until you see through it this is smoke and mirrors and there's a lot of this stuff in video games in fact fact you could even say that the main story choice in Boulders gate 2 whether to site with the shadow thieves or bod to get to spell hold is somewhat similar it seems like it will have a drastic effect on the narrative and the first time you play you might look forward to seeing just how much will change if you go the other route but in reality it just changes a few minor quests and then everything is exactly the same arguably whether to trust seon havarian has a bigger impact but the point is RPGs have always been using this kind kind of Illusion of choice to go alongside all their real choices to try to make themselves more impressive and give players a more enjoyable experience this even happens in dialogue sometimes different dialogue choices lead to the exact same response and many times the only thing that changes is the first line of the response RPGs use the illusion of choice a lot and so does Boulders Gate 3 which isn't a bad thing on its own the test I think is whether a game has enough room real choice and consequence that it still feels reactive and impressive after the illusion wears off and boulders Gate 3 does in my opinion it has some of the most frequent and far-reaching consequences of any big budget RPG but it's not perfect and there are some specific areas it does feel lacking like using Aid powers and consuming tadpoles this feels like a major Choice the player is being asked to make and as such surely it should have a major consequence but while there is a reward for using this Powers there isn't any real downside to them nor is there a reward for not using them and even worse this is barely even acknowledged in the narrative there are good reasons why players wouldn't use these Powers one tadpole in the brain is bad so maybe consuming more of the bad tadpoles would also be bad also your companions are nearly all staunchly against the idea and players May trust them more than the person trying to get you to do this so many players likely do make a deliberate choice to not use these powers and this should be acknowledged in a game that wants the champion player choice similarly sometimes games need to Railroad players into doing certain things regardless of whether players actually want to or not but it's still disappointing that you're forced to sign with the emperor at the end of Act 2 this is where it's revealed that they are in fact a mind flare and that orus is imprisoned inside the prism and it makes sense here that players might want to side with the not really doing anything wrong GIF yanky over the kind of manipulative seeming mind flare who we now know has been lying to us but doing this just leads to a game over which is explained as the emperor being the one to protect you from mind flare transformation by using orus is power still if we side with orus early why couldn't orus just protect us himself this game over isn't for logical reasons it's because the developers didn't want to account for this major change to the story and that's a shame because this really does seem like a choice worth accounting for this would be more work to implement but no one said act three needs so many side quests and they kind of make this act seem fled and unfocused so I'm not saying the developers should have worked more but rather that something like this should have been made a priority over less important content finally there is the problem of being evil playing RPGs as an evil character is a fascinating Topic in its own right mostly because RPGs have done a terrible job at allowing players to be evil since forever really and very few people even choose to play this way and yet players still keep keep expecting it and developers keep attempting it if I made short concise single topic video essays I'd totally make a video on this exact topic but instead I make this so I guess I'll just have to stay on topic and stick to Boulders Gate 3 still it's worth noting that this problem is almost Universal in RPGs with many games accidentally punishing evil players for being evil just like Boulders Gate 1 and 2 did through the reputation system and less companion options and less quests and just like Boulders Gate 3 does through less Companions and less quests and less XP and less item rewards and less NPC vendors and less content in general really there's very little benefit to being evil other than the warm feeling you get inside when you kick an innocent srel into a tree you sick [ __ ] but other than this being evil never pays and that feels a little unrealistic because being completely selfish and manipulative actually seems quite profitable in real life as long as you're the lawful evil type anyway but being lawful evil in Boulders gape 3 just ends up with you siding with the villains only to be promptly betrayed in all three acts while still losing out on loads of content it does make sense that acting evil would push certain companions away and close off certain quests from all the NPCs you get killed but the problem isn't that being evil makes some things harder and takes some things away it's that it makes some things harder without making anything easier and takes many things away without giving anything in return well almost anything an evil Choice does at least lead to the possibility of recruiting minara but she still attacked me and messed that up so thanks one and only reward for being evil oh what sorry minara was I being a little too evil when I tried to look into your mind for the record one of the other options was snap your neck and I didn't pick that one does that count for nothing these days do you think I liked killing the tlinks they didn't even have weapons most of the time and I still killed them and do you think I liked seeing all the dead children because I didn't I actually thought that bit was quite sad but I still went along with it because that's what you wanted I did all this for you and all I wanted was to maybe get to know you better maybe be friends maybe have you in my party for this one and only playthrough and what did you do you [ __ ] me literally and quite graphically but also metaphorically not that I'm still mad actually believe it or not and I know what I'm about to say must be quite hard to believe but I think I might still be a little bit mad about it huh maybe I still need closure I guess the only logical thing I can do is restart from the very beginning doing everything all over again exactly the same just to get back to this one single moment so I can finally put this wrong to right by making the correct choice this time you draw her closer with all the Vim of a Lover's first embrace worth it not that I was still mad about it or [Music] anything it's rare for a game to achieve the universal success of Boulders Gate 3 and I think its success is deserved if there is one serious flaw in its claim of greatness it's that it was a bit unfinished at release with bugs in act 3 being common and sometimes severe this is a problem that's plagued the genre for years and it doesn't seem to matter whether games are big or small or independently financed or made through the world's most hated Publishers it's still the same almost all RPGs release in buggy and unfinished States and they have done for years a lot of classic RPGs actually had day one patches long before games of other genres did a lot of cult classic RPGs were Infamous for how bad their bugs were at release and this isn't exactly the first time laran have released a buggy RPG still this problem has got even worse over time to the point where I now think waiting at least 6 months to play any new RPG is important advice that all people should try to follow and it's sad that it's got to this point because if there's one thing fans will never do it's have enough self-control to wait to buy things meaning this problem likely won't go away anytime soon which is a shame because a game this good deserves to be experienced at its best and I do think Boulders Gate 3 is that good there are other RPGs for do individual things better there are differences to the older Boulders gate games that might put off older fans and any time something achieves this level of universal Acclaim there is a risk of exaggeration and people getting carried away but I still think this is one of the best RPGs ever made as a complete package it has so much to offer there is a staggering amount of content the presentation is consistently high quality the world begs to be explored and actually rewards players for doing so combat is engaging throughout despite the mamama runtime choices are impactful and plentiful characters show genuine growth and feel deeply likable in short there are few games that do this many things this well and then there's what this game represents Boulders Gate 3 embodies RPGs of the past without simply trying to replicate them and in doing so it feels like it's made one of the truest steps forward for the genre in years it's proven that AAA RPGs can be successful without streamlining it showcased the importance of player choice and agency in both narrative and World design and it's exposed how lacking in excitement modern game design often is thanks to an overly safe sterile and formulaic approach that dominates so much of mainstream gaming so I hope Boulders Gate 3 will be influential because I want to play more games influenced by its design I want more of this and I'm not sure anything more needs to be said thank you for watching and thank you to everyone who supports me on patreon for allowing me to wait 6 months after release to play new RPGs that's how I know I've made it in life and if you want to help continue to fund my RPG playing habit or you just want to support me in general that's fine too I I guess then feel free to do so on patreon where you get monthly updates that you don't really need as well as some unique videos that you can probably watch somewhere else already uh I'm not sure I'm selling the patreon very well right now but that's okay because I'm basically just speaking to give the credits time to finish but hey they are patreon credits at least so that shows something good right and this could be you that I Mumble over well that sounds like a good patreon promotion to me uh see you next video