And now, the next pulse-pounding chapter in the thrilling ancient saga of me playing Baldur’s Gate 3.
So get your spine ready to tingle!
I am confident that I currently can run the game without it crashing. I just have to :
- Use the Vulkan renderer. More on that in a bit.
- Close down ye olde browser. (Chrome, if you’re curious)
- Bypass the entirely superfluous loader by running the Vulkan executable directly from my HD
- Not linger too long on the Level Up screen
Only the last one is what I would describe as a functional issue. For some of the characters, there’s a lot of options to choose from when you level up. Like my dude,. the White Dragonborn Storm Sorcerer, has to pick spells and skills and such, and that involves me reading a lot of descriptions.
Or it would if I didn’t have to hurry. And I had hurrying. I especially dislike having to make complex decisions in a hurry.
The only other issue is that this Vulkan thingy does not work well with my graphics card. Nvidia, the people who make the chip on the card, are very clear that if you are using their hardware, you should be using the other renderer, DirectX 11.
As a result, graphics performance is, quite honestly, pretty crappy. I suspect that using the wrong renderer forces the game to emulate the right one and that is bound to cause a huge issue with performance.
So thinks blink in an out briefly sometimes, and the character animations don’t click in right away when you move meaning the characters just scoot forward like wax dummies on wheels at first, and textures look a bit off.
Because of this, I have decided that I am going to try playing under DirectX 11 again one last time. After all, I don’t know which of the measures listed above is “the one” that stopped the crashing and it could be that switching to Vulkan was not it.
I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot.
It could even conceivably be that the reason it doesn’t crash under Vulkan is that when it’s using Vulkan, it isn’t using my fancy schmancy graphics card at all.
That would certainly explain the poor performance.
Technical SNAFUs aside, I am enjoying the game. But I don’t know if I am getting out of it what all the orgasmic reviewers are getting out of it.
It’s good but it’s not like, paint the ceiling good.
Part of the problem with me has nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with the game I played before it, Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous.
In case you’d forgotten.
The two games are just too much alike. Turn based isometric-ish RPGs with open worlds and deep plots with plenty of side quests.
And that’s my jam, dawg. I love those kinds of games.
But I plated Pathfinder for months and was honestly starting to get pretty sick of it when BG3 came along, and was similar enough to Pathfinder that it really feels like the same old thing sometimes.
Boy, does the universe work hard to come up with inventive ways to screw me over.
I am honestly beginning to regret blowing $80 on the latest hotness now. I mean, the game is good, but it’s not $80 good, and I miss having that nest egg of $60 sitting on my Steam account enabling me to look over the offerings on Steam with the confidence that comes from knowing you CAN has that if you want it.
But it’s far too late for me to return it. So I will keep on playin’.
More after the break.
The inevitable sequel
Well, I tried the DirectX 11 thing and it ran even worse.
So much for that idea. Under DirectX 11, it ran so slow that I repeatedly had to use the Windows key to pop out of the game long enough to verify that my computer was indeed still running and it was just the game that was frozen.
Eventually I gave up and exited the game impolitely (via Task Manager) and then tried to load it again under Vulkan but it crashed.
I’m hoping that’s not a permanent thing.
This makes me so happy.
It’s so #relatable!
Now on to the bummer stuff.
This is your wakeup call.
That song is definitely the unofficial theme song of all us “failure to launch” types.
The thing is, there is no starting gun. Once you’re an adult and out of school, everything is up to you. If you want something in life, it’s up to you to do what it takes to get it. If you have dreams and plans and ambitions, you’re the only one that can make them come true. You are now the one in charge.
All that borrowed structure and momentum from school is gone. And despite the bullshit they spew at you in Guidance class, school didn’t do jack shit to prepare you for life because it made all or almost all of your choices for you.
All you had to do was show up and do what you’re told.
Life ain’t like that.
At minimum, you will have to get a job, a place to live, and something to fill the time between getting home from work and going to sleep.
And those are all up to you. At best, your college education gave you the ability to qualify for the low end of the career you studied for but it is still up to you to find those jobs and apply for them.
And I think all kids should be told this. High school seems like the right time to do it. Tell them the truth : that once they graduate it will all be up to them and them alone.
That doesn’t mean you have to do it alone. You can recruit whatever kind of help you need. But that part is up to you, too. You see?
And I think us failure to launch (FTL?) victims owe our condition in part to not knowing this vitally important truth.
Or we know it but refuse to accept it, and just keep backing away from the reality of growing up because. deep down, we don’t think we can take it.
We’re the baby birdies most likely to plummet to our doom when kicked out of the nest and we know it. To us, growing up seems like dying. We are terrified of it.
Perhaps we are trapped by a fixed sense of self. Turning into a butterfly must look like death to an intelligence caterpillar, after all.
But why do we have this lack of faith in our own survival potential? Why does a certain percentage of the population reach the threshold of adulthood and instead of crossing it and continuing life’s journey, we shrink back and hide?
Is intelligence a factor? Does it take a certain level of IQ to see that you have a choice in these matters and you can choose not to participate? Are there failure to launch types of average IQ out there?
Mental illness is definitely the most salient factor to me. I have never known any other FTL types who do not qualify for a mental health diagnosis, most likely something on the depression/anxiety axis.
Is it a spiritual malaise? Could faith and/or inspiration help? A feeling that something or someone is guiding you to a better life? That you are not alone in this world?
Certainly something is eating away at us and taking away our fundamental self-confidence and making it nearly impossible for us to transition into adulthood.
There is no force that will ever come to live your life for you. And if your response to that is, “Well then I’m screwed because I can’t do it myself”, you’re right.
You are definitely screwed. You are doomed to live your current life until the day you die because you are literally incapable of doing anything to help yourself.
So yup. You’re fucked. Get used to it.
Now if you somehow, by some miracle, suddenly gained the ability to take charge of yur own life and make changes to improve it, that would be different.
But as long as you are literally unable to help yourself, you’re fucked.
Hope your parents have a very nice basement.,
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.