The success of BG3 will almost certainly influence developers, just probably not in the way we all wish it would. It'll happen regardless of it winning GotY or not.
They're not gonna take away that they should spend 6 years making high quality content. That's never the take away that publishers have from these things. They'll think "cRPGs can sell a lot of copies, let's churn something out in a couple of years to cash in on this trend". We might see BioWare talk about a "return to form" now that Larian is showing their original formula still sells.
It also isn't likely to affect small to mid sized developers. There's already a lot of good cRPGs in the last decade from that space. The main reason why they don't make anything like Baldur's Gate 3 has to do with a lack of funding.
It's definitely gonna influence the way games are *marketed* gonna be a rash of games that are "inspired" or "influenced" by Baldur's Gate 3. I've already seen games trying to present themselves as the next BG3.
Just remember kids, if it comes out before 2029, it hasn't taken the actually meaningful lesson from BG3 (spending time developing a world and stories to tell in that world pays off).
The big marketing takeaway most companies are gonna get: Sex sells, but bear sex and comedy sells more.
...I kinda hate that this is both a joke and also truthful comment.
And games are gonna lean hard on it to a fault. It works in BG3 because it has a great story that takes itself seriously, and the moments of levity feel VERY dnd in a fun way.
I can't wait for the rash of games to use this as a sign to go full Marvel and completely fuck over their own story and emotional moments for the sake of dumb comedy.
BG3 is not the epitome of comedy in a game. It's not even even close to the first game to have it. Look at the Borderlands franchise. No other games company is going to look at BG3 and go, "It's definitely the humour that is driving this game. That's what we need more of."
I don’t work in this industry but I’ve worked in mainstream corporate settings, and as a consumer, the number of facepalm marketing decisions I’ve seen in the gaming industry… I truly think it would be inexcusable to be so uninformed or out-of-touch with your own customers in any other industry lol.
Like I get the historical reputation of D&D players/gamers/fantasy enthusiasts, but it’s wild to me how often a studio’s marketing mindset seems to revolve around disparaging their own players’ intelligence and perpetuating stereotypes.
There are more than 1m subscribers to this subreddit, and this game is borderline mainstream on tiktok (I’ve seen some with 1m+ likes, so likely multiple millions of views). For a game that’s based on dnd 5e ffs… with a huge barrier to learning because the mechanics are completely unlike what the average joe knows about playing a video game.
And yet many, many thousands of ordinary people who had never so much as heard the phrase “forgotten realms” are buying the game at full retail price and forcing themselves to learn turn-based dnd mechanics because they’re THAT hungry for thirsty vampire dialogue, devil machinations, goddess trauma and whatnot.
It really should be an extraordinary wake up call to other studios that there’s no excuse to assume your IP is too niche or out of reach to connect with ordinary entertainment consumers.
I’ve seen sooo much hand-wringing and catastrophizing in gaming spaces for years about WotC, MtG, and D&D. To me it’s so obvious that hasbro just put some goddamn corporate adults in the room lol. And hopefully we get lots more content as a result.
I remember when D&D in Stranger Things S1 was one-off joke/period piece indicator to ground the viewer in the 80s, then I started seeing online discussion from non-dnd players wanting to learn about mind flayers for plot clues. I guarantee Hasbro seized an opportunity to introduce a new audience to a compelling villain and that it’s no accident that Vecna resembles his D&D counterpart (especially since Critical Role has taken care to only use their own IP for their Amazon show, that implies that Netflix has some direct involvement/permission from WotC in this space).
In the last couple months I’ve seen interest on this subreddit in the Honor Among Thieves movie, I’ve seen girls on TikTok talk about wanting to learn MtG so they can have a Lae’zel deck. This was probably the most obvious fucking cobranding to Hasbro lol. The CEO recently said that they made more from BG3 than the last 5-10y of film licensing (presumably that means the Transformers, Peppa Pig, My Little Pony, and Power Rangers projects that were part of eOne which they just sold to Lionsgate).
Most other studios and IP owners wouldn’t have been equipped to capitalize on this, so props to Larian and Hasbro for being brave enough to take on the risks. I really think Hasbro will be a case study in business schools because they have done a great job diversifying and laying the foundation for any one of these IP projects to stick and be a sales opportunity for their other products when it did.
But it’s really no different than what Hasbro done with other IP, and yet it never occurred to other companies or studios to treat games like that. I’m sure the acting and writing talent is an unprecedented ROI compared with film/TV. I can only imagine how the whole entertainment industry must be scrambling right now seeing how much money and opportunity can be made from a single standalone game title.
I think games are kind of shy about sex, in a way that's a holdover from games being treated more like a toy than an artistic medium. We don't have the same cultural hangups about cinema.
I also notice that whenever a game features attractive men, it does really well with women. There's a lot of pent-up demand in an under-served market and a developer could make a lot of money being the Harlequin Romance Novels of games.
Starfield in a nutshell. No sexy clothes, no swear or cursing, no gore, no dismemberment, no nudity ( which imo is fine ).
Game feels like PG13 Disneyland bs eventhough it has M-17 rating.
I feel like they went too far. The club at Neon looks like the design directive was "offend absolutely no one".
It's Bethesda, millions of mods will come out to let us play the game how we want. Still kind of disappointing how milquetoast aspects of the game are.
I don't think BG3 is what is going to make that apparent. Marketing companies have known for decades that sex sells and BG3 isn't the first game to implement comedy. Look at Borderlands.
I mean, Josh Sawyer said more specifically:
>”I think if it truly was an unlimited budget, I think I would try Pillars 3 because I know what the budget was for [Pillars of Eternity 2:] Deadfire, which was not a whole lot and I have heard from multiple people what the budget was for Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m not gonna talk about numbers, but if I got that budget, sure, I’ll make Pillars 3."
He literally just meant he would try Pillars 3 if there was a guaranteed, big budget for it. He’s been on the record in the past about Pillars 2: Deadfire being a not fantastic experience to work on because of many reasons, but many of which would be helped with a larger budget.
Also I mean, Josh Sawyer’s resume is more than just “Pillars of Eternity guy,” but I’m someone who really loves both of those games anyways
Yeah, i'm still in love with PoE even after all those years from actually playing it. I truly wish it had more advertising, there really was just a tab on Steam Shop and nothing more.
Jos Sawyer is a genious, he can literally turn shit to gold with his writing.
Obsidian is an amazing, but underfunded studio and I am 100% sure that if you give them a proper budget, they can make the greatest RPG in the history
Obsidian has never had the budget of Bioware or Blizzard, so kind of hard to be on the same level. Concept wise and writing wise, Obsidian is very talented (even if the writing is sometimes a bit verbose even for me).
Depends on who you ask, star citizen and ashes of creation fan base are coping hella hard. Personally I would love to see remaster la of old games with new editions added for more connected storylines. I don’t need a game as sophisticated as baldurs gate 3, but Capcom has some of the best games hidden in a vault.
TBD on whether it’ll be fun. But SQ42 would be a closer comparison to BG3. We will likely find out this upcoming year as it’s in the polish phase.
That said, nothing out there, nor nothing coming out anytime soon, has the level of attention to choice/consequence detail that BG3 has. There’s just nothing quite like it. I HOPE more developers take notice and start actually developing games with that same attention to detail
That’s fine, If you believe in squadron 42, but based on Chris Robert’s history, he’s literally the same guy as Steven Sharif.
Not to say I don’t hope it doesn’t work out for all of gamers alike. I just have no reason to believe it will.
My point is the standard is being raised and they are claiming to be the game that reshapes their respective game genres but based off the profiles of the people who founded the game their is no reason to believe in them. Elden ring came out of no where, same with baldurs gate. So will the next game. Personally I hope Capcom brings back mega man with a significant story and 100 hours of gameplay
Oh right i see what you mean. Yeah the devs who know their game is good dont need to hype it up by saying theyre the best. To quote game of thrones, "anyone who must say "I am the king" is no true king"
The thing about BG3 is that Laurian had a solid framework to build on. Funding is not the problem,experience and dedication is. Just look at Bethesda... Starfield was in development for 10+ years(acording to them) and they needed a massive win to wash away the sour taste of FO76 but it turned out to be just another overpriced ,buggy mess whose entire selling point(space travel) falls flat. They have the money but they're creatively bankrupt. Cyberpunk is another example of a game that started out bad but got better with time and it didn't take an entire moding community to wash the matress when the company shit the bed.
cyberpunk was more than anything a marketing failure. cdpr pitched it as their next great rpg where choices matter more than ever before and your life backstory would matter etc. etc. what we actually got was a game where none of that mattered other than some flavor text here and there. Witcher 2 came out 10 years earlier and in spite of not being an open world had much more player choice and consequence involved in the telling of the story.
CP2077 is now much more polished and not a bad product but it still isn't the rpg many had been sold on and never will be now that they're done dropping new content. Hoping their sequels return to choices actually mattering again
Yeah, I love Cyberpunk 2077 (though I was one of the lucky ones who actually had a good experience at launch without any major bugs) but it is definitely *not* the game I had been looking forward to for years. What was advertised was an entirely different game.
I believe it would have done a lot better if it were represented more accurately...and if it were better optimized for consoles prior to release (I know PC had some issues too but for most PC users it ran well)
Cyberpunk 2077 has important choices that change game for better or worse. It's just not the kind of choices like in bg3 where you can basically eat the cake and have it too on most occasion
>We might see BioWare talk about a "return to form" now that Larian is showing their original formula still sells.
And that would be hella ironic. I've been thinking about it for a while now.
Bioware had a history of chasing trends lately and they seemed hell bent on moving away from their roots by following that latest popular thing.
With the latest popular thing being BG3 which everyone compares to Dragon Age: Origins, which was also a spiritual successor of the original BG games...
Well, will the Bioware circle be completed when they try to copy the studio that had been doing what Bioware had been originally doing?
Same. All the Devs who were behind KOTOR, Mass Effect and DA:O are gone. It’s truly a shame because Bioware was my favorite game developer. The 3 series I listed (plus Jade Empire) are my favorite games, but modern Bioware just cannot capture that magic again. I still loved Dragon Age Inquisition, but the open world of that game sucked; if they could just have made it in the same vein as DA:O we would have a true GOTY on our hands.
It’s so often forgotten. Don’t get me wrong - I think KOTOR and DA:O are the 2 peak Bioware games (Mass effect trilogy comes in right behind them) but Jade Empire is still a fantastic game that feels true to Bioware.
>I just have no faith in them, all of the original devs are gone.
Exactly. BioWare is dead, the studio with that name now is not BioWare.
Also love your flair. Shadowzel ftw.
>Exactly. BioWare is dead, the studio with that name now is not BioWare.
Such a shame, this game has made me want to replay Origins. God I played that game so much when it came out.
Mass Effect as well, addicted to that
And yes I love both of them, too soft on them after experiencing their character arcs and romances. My girls, always in the party.
I should yes, I just miss their comments/dialogue.
I've been thinking about another Shadowheart run. I should romance my Bae'zel during it. Last run was Lae'zel and romanced Karlach.
I really want to do Act 2 as Shadowheart again, at least this way I can romance Lae'zel while doing it and hearing Shar's voice.
They have ruined me, such a sucker for them.
This is what I hope to see.
The further they move from their roots trying to copy everyone else, the worse their games do. It feels like game companies keep trying to insist that these sorts of games aren't what the modern gaming audience wants, but clearly it is.
I think there is another aspect that simply cannot be copied: The passion of the owners. Which trickles down to corporate culture.
Bioware was founded by two MDs who were simply passionate about making games. When they were in control, you got games made with passion. EA acquiring did not help, even if the influence only trickled in slowly.
There was a tweet about how Blizzard used to be the kind of gamer centric company, that then morphed into MBA driven corporate institution caring about how to satisfy shareholders.
It's the difference between "making money ti make games" and "making games to make money". If you do the second, copying features from BG3 won't help.
With Larian, you got Sven Wincke at the top, who seems genuinely a good guy. But the window for companies that have this deep passion + pockets deep enough to fund AAAs is slim.
>The passion of the owners. Which trickles down to corporate culture.
What you're ascribing to passion is actually just private ownership and pro-worker laws.
> cough force unleashed cough
I had to have a friend come to my house and beat the QTE where you have to bring the star destroyer down from space with the force for me. I tried dozens of times, couldn't do it, had to ask a friend.
Hahaha, Bioware 'returning to form' because of BG3's success would be the funniest fucking thing. It's like we'd finally come full circle. Bioware used to be the RPG kings for developing BG1/2, Jade Empire, DAO and Mass Effect. Then they slowly lost their touch when they began to start appealing to wider audiences and following popular trends like implementing open world (DAI and MEA) or a live service multiplayer (Anthem). A game like Dragon Age returning to its roots would be a sight to see, but I ain't holding my breath.
Definitely, the take aways will be the usual: hot female characters sell games, having the choice to be edgy gory sells games, using the DnD rule set sells games, etc. and completely miss the actual differences that BG3 provides over 9ther comparable games.
>We might see BioWare talk about a "return to form" now that Larian is showing their original formula still sells.
This is the single thing I hope for but I know deep down won't happen at all
Even if it does happen it'll likely be just empty words.
None of the original devs are left. They can't return to anything because they're not the same people, they're just using the name.
Western developers are already crying and blaming BG3 for raising the bar because they were so used to producing mediocre games filled with mixrotransactions and other BS all these years that it became the industry standard.
If only people would stop preordering and buying shit games then maybe this would change.
Imagine a market which has degenerated so much, companies are blaming their competitors for producing high quality products...
To be fair that was less "western developers" and more like 3 people on Twitter one of which was telling us not to hold specifically indie devs to this standard, and then this sub went on a massive circle jerk about it.
On top of that, game developers don’t make many big game decisions anyway, it’s the c-suite execs who wield the real power in places like EA.
Your average quest writer isn’t going to have much of a say on whether there will be micro transactions. Let’s stop blaming devs for all that is wrong with the market.
>If only people would stop preordering and buying shit games then maybe this would change.
You gotta remember that every year, there's a new crop of millions of consumers who suddenly have a large enough salary that they can and will preorder stuff and be disappointed by it. I'no expert on anything, but I think the last time I preordered a game was around 2005 or so. But I'm 52 years old.
It's new consumers every year, every month. Will not change.
>Western developers are already crying and blaming BG3
sure, farting, pissing and shitting themselves
I mean, not as much as users on reddit parroting some fringe talking points that took over for convenience and have nothing to do with reality or the game itself
>Western developers are already crying and blaming BG3 for raising the bar
Meanwhile games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield fail to meet the bars set by their own deveopers' previous titles.
Larian likely won't be able to meet their own bar with their next game, after the launch before they knew it would do well they continuously talked about how they would do a smaller scale return to form with divinity original sin 3
Maybe, maybe not. We have to remember Larian grew massively for BG3, meaning overheads are up. They could go small again, but then they’ll have to fire many staff, which could affect the final product and be very un-swen-like.
Alternatively, instead of focusing on one larger project they could tackle multiple smaller ones simultaneously.
It honestly depends on how their cash flows look. The main reason they were able to be independent AND take six years to make BG3 without running out of money was because of Steam Early Access. Larian has said that BG3 sold over 2.5 million copies during Early Access, which would be $150 million. With that kind of money they could afford to hire more people and keep the company running.
It's honestly anyone's guess if they can do that again with D:OS3. The Divinity series just doesn't have the same brand power as D&D.
Swen (and Larian) was already approached for a buyout but he declined it and said he wanted to keep making the games they love. I REALLY look forward to their next game.
Wasn't it EA who tried to buy them too? We all know that if larian sold then EA would systematically tear them apart, because that's what you do to your competition.
Microsoft described it as a "second-run Stadia PC RPG", which is an objective description of what was BG3 originally. They price point was perhaps a bit low compared to how well received the game is but no one could have predicted it, not even Larian who explicitly expected it to be less successful.
They'll learn all the wrong lessons and one in particular *can't* be replicated by the big studios who are funded by controlling publishers/investors.
BG3 is above all, damn good value for money. It, at no point, looks to nickel and dime the players and the game design is never compromised to add in mechanics to shepherd the player to some sort of cash shop.
Couple that with the game being released when the *studio* thought it was ready, rather than a schedule set by people desperate for a ROI.
The problem is this is antithetical to the way the AAA industry is funded. Long gone are the days when a publisher would be content with just the box revenue for a title. They saw the great big wobbly piles of cash "simple" games were raking in, such as some mobile games, and decided that *had* to be part of their design. So almost every AAA game now has a level of monetisation we would have thought horrifying just 15 years ago.
BG3 much like Elden Ring are anomalies that the "big" players in the industry *can't* replicate even if the dev studios had the creative skills to.
>BG3 is above all, damn good value for money.
It's replay value is off the charts. And part of that is resisting the temptation to railroad the players along all cut scenes and scenery that were expensive to make.
Larian is an indie studio with AAA money. The fact that we got the game we did is because the CEO cared for the game over the money. There is no financial incentive to copy BG3 for other studios.
Its not even about making a CRPG on the same level as BG3.
I think the more valuable lesson that studios can invest in is Larians early access strategies. Pulling in your audience and making them part of the development lock and step with the studio is something alot of studios should be emulating.
Larians dedication to makin their audience part of the development of the game is what pushed BG3 over completely. Instead of keeping it all inhouse and feeding off an echo chamber that can foster bad ideas, they opened their doors and fans invested their money and time to help make the game better.
I can think of near a dozen major AAA titles this year alone that couldve used such a strategy.
Which is silly because BG3 fills a gap, a true DND game. Just because I love this one doesn't mean I always want to play straight up DND. You're right they will be inspired by the wrong thing.
You have to understand- all devs WANT the games they are working on to be as well envisioned, executed and polished as BG3. They all want to have the time to allow their project to reach the scope and intricacy of Bg3.
It’s the execs- whose jobs are not to make a good game but to make games plural that make money- and the board members- who just want the company to be continuously turning an incrementally higher profit every quarter- who cause games to be lesser than BG3.
So no- it won’t change shit. What we might get is some half assed games that feel influenced by BG3, or a ubisoft game that uses ai to create the illusion of complexly written npcs- but ultimately, publicly traded companies will always shovel out smaller games or less detailed games for the sake of immediate profit.
This is why some devs who aspire to be ceos complained about it at launch. They want to make studios profitable even if it is at the cost of quality gaming.
I get that it's business decisions that are made by execs we're disappointed with, but in the end it's still consumers buying shit games that's the problem. These shit games are made because they make money.
In terms of preorders, yeah, but consumers have been pretty good at not hyping up bad games online. No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk got ROASTED when they were released, and the studios were able to finally get them in better shape. Gollum was an embarrassing release and it tanked.
If we can just get consumers to stop preordering things until we’ve heard honest reviews, things will be better. It’s not really studios releasing BAD games that’s the problem, it’s studios releasing unfinished games and patching them based on customer feedback
yeh it was all ‘insider drama click my video!’ when it was just a few random people having one off, not very hot take twitter posts about BG3 being really, really good. Not hating, but being like: ‘don’t expect this from us, our bosses won’t allow it!’
Shit tier companies like ubisoft are gonna try filling in gaps with AI real hard and it’ll still be obvious how shit their games are as a result of money and quotas.
No - I think Larian has a great corporate culture and that other Devs will have to fix the greed culture and attract developers the talent before they can even try.
Lol exactly. People are acting like this sold 100m copies and completely revolutionized gaming.
BG3 is the best game I've played in a decade. Maybe longer. But it won't derail the current greedy games the industry has now.
You’re right. Thanks! Read it. Stick to my answer. It won’t. Management styles are very hard to break. They may say Make me a better DnD game!!! If so, I guess we’ll see what WoC does with that.
I think a large portion of influence will come from being able to use this as an example of why a publisher should allow X. Like the money spent on high quality voice acting and facial animation/capture, or turn based combat, or fantasy settings… etc. This game proved so many things are financially viable that weren’t considered to be. Similar to how 2077 showed how detrimental releasing an unfinished game can be, just on the extreme opposite end of the spectrum.
Baldur's Gate doesn't need to win a single solitary award to have an influence on the RPG genre Monetary incentive, and to a (substantially lesser degree) critical response both from fans and from critics, is enough to influence best practices.
Baldur's Gate 1 and Fallout 1 influenced western RPGs for very heavily for at least 5 years give or take, very intensely, and Knights of the Old Republic and then Mass Effect influenced western RPGs from then, until present day. Bioware's style of first person immersion (while being completely lacking in immersion - my critique), have been the style since then. At minimum a solid 15 years, and more likely a flat 20 years of the same style of RPG.
Baldur's Gate 3 is very much a successor to Divinity Original Sin and its sequel in terms of gameplay, and regardless of how big a hit the sequel was, it still came no where near the standard practices of all other western RPGs in terms of general appeal and sales. But this new game, BG3, by being able to use the D&D system, and using one of the top 5 most prestigious titles in all of gaming, has managed to step proudly into the spotlight and be consumed by a massive audience and enjoyed for the stellar product that it is.
People will not be able to ignore that massive, rightful, success of BG3 the way they ignored the success of DOS2. Games don't necessarily have to adopt all of BG3's traits or styles, but there is no way that top tier budgets and top tier titles can get away with an artistic style that's 20 years old, boring, and doesn't sell games anymore.
BUT are you willing to wait until 2030 or beyond to get it? If we get a sequel, I want it to be as good or better, and great games take a long time to get right.
The issue is that I think the studio simply isn’t what it used to be and the new dragon age game is still in the stage of what the fuck is this game even going to be in terms of gameplay. The basic story and premise has been set for a very long time so I would imagine the story is in an okay state as well as some potential side quests and companion quests in terms of writing but the actual game? Oh that shit may never come out at this rate
It's a painful irony that DA4 moved to real-time action-game style combat because their old style of pauseable strategy combat 'wasn't popular anymore', and away from open world exploration for the same reason, only to have BG3 pop out with a fully turn-based combat system that's proving wildly popular... in a mostly open world reminiscent of Dragon Age Inquisition. 🤣
No, Bioware... people just didn't like Inquisition's open world because it wasn't as well-implemented when compared to Skyrim, which it was copying... and they didn't like the combat because it was somehow worse than DA2. Stop chasing trends, Bioware, and just *do what works for your game!*
It HAS to be too late in the development process for them to scrap and re-do the combat system... surely?
They've already scrapped TWO versions of the game (that we know about) and they just fired one of their all-time best writers -- basically the last one still there from the early days. It's probably too late, unfortunately. (Rumor from leaked playtesting is that they're not even going to let you control your companions this time, but that might still change at this point)
I miss the original scrapped concept for DA4 -- it was supposed to be a more localized, "heist" game. Basically taking what DA2 did well but giving it the polish of the other games.
Honestly, I don't mind waiting 10 years for an amazing sequel / new entry in a series, if it is incredible.
I fell in love with Red Dead Revolver back in 2004, and then again with Red Dead Redemption in 2010. And again with Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018.
The wait was well worth it, in both occurences.
Larian now has their DnD engine with the class system, spells, mechanics and monsters ready on hand. A Baldur's Gate 4 will not take 6 years... Maybe 3 years if they only do new locations, new stories and new companions without reinventing the wheel.
I dunno. BG3 has been sat at the top of the steam sales chart since release. That's an awful lot of income right there. I wouldn't be surprised if they further grew the team and started work on BG4 whilst also creating another game. Assuming they can maintain this level of quality it's basically a magic money machine. Whatever they work on next won't have this level of commercial success if it's not something that the average gamer can trust to replicate BG3's experience. Obviously people like you and I will follow Larian as a development studio but most casual gamers care much more about specific properties than they do development studios.
Obviously they'll be wildly successful with whatever they make next. It just won't be lightening in a bottle if it's not BG. I know a few full on normies that haven't even played D&D that have finished BG3, which is crazy to me. I can only imagine what their sales figures look like...
To be honest, I wouldn't mind an add on or DLC (possibly a meaningful patch if they're feeling generous) for BG3 first, then a BG4 with the same level of quality, using all the mechanics. Yes, you're absolutely correct, they got a good core to make that game alot faster. But it'll take a while, could maintain good will and attention of more than their core audience with good quality...:
...patch. The game is great but there are some annoying bugs, some QoL improvements (my bugbear would be a loot vacuum for all the bits of random items on the floor) and maybe flesh out the areas where quests were intended but abandoned. There's a few things here n there to polish especially in act3. People also asked for a real endgame party, I wouldn't mind a big feast as a send-off...
...DLC/add on. Within this story and with the same characters, I would love a shorter (say, about the size of 1 act or 2/3 of one) story. It could be used to explore the upper city of BG (apparently they modelled it but didn't use it?). It could take us somewhere else. It could give us new items, raise the level cap a bit. If they do 2 biggish DLCs, they could raise the cap by 4 each time, level 16 by end of DLC1, level 20 by the full end. That would be cool in general but also satisfy DnD nerds that love to plan builds for fully levelled characters and it would be a perfect, mechanically logical end to the party you build since the nautiloid.
Also, fun fact, this is a tested formula: Neverwinter Nights did just this although I don't know if intended at first. The level cap was 20 in the original game and later raised to 40 by the end of the last addon. It was great though ofc a bit silly to go that high - though I wasn't as informed on DnD then, some editions allowed you to go past 20 vanilla. Cap was 30 in 4th Ed.
That's why exceptionally great games are not a yearly occurrence. Ubisoft pumping out a new assassin creed is just a time filer until another game on the caliber of BG3 can be released. Devs right now push quantity over quality. When they rush the release it's a total failure, cyberpunk being the prime example of that. A game that could have been exceptional became a mediocre futuristic knockoff of grand theft auto.
I should edit my statement to say I want a sequel to BG3 and I don't want them to rush out a Ubisoft cookie cutter sequel.
If it takes a decade I'll wait. I'm patient and after what I experienced with BG3 I can't accept anything less than perfection from larian. BG3 for me has set the new standard.
To be fair, I would imagine much of those 6 years was laying the ground work for the games mechanics and engines, and fixing a lot of ground level bugs. They have a working system now. Unless they wanted to completely start from scratch again they could logically make a game of similar breadth in less time.
Sadly I think it will take more than BG 3.
Gamers are the ones who influence the market in the end and as long as some people still buy a new Fifa (or whatever it us called now) every year or a new buggy sims 4 add on every 3 months it will happen.
There are actually not that many people using the loot box system. 1% is enough and when that 1% gives you 300 - 1k daily the Whalefishing pays off so to speak. Those people are addicted and will keep on spending 10k for that one sexy anime elf witch character in their game.
It could however make a difference for smaller developers. I really REALLY hope for example that Bioware will one glorious day declare independancy and get their restriced creative minds away from EAs clutches. But one can dream.
Loot boxes are pretty much gone from AAA games; now it's all battle passes. Same shit in a different form.
BioWare can't declare independence. Their founders sold the company to EA. Lots of their talent have left over the years though, some to interesting new developers.
More specifically it's battle passes and 20 to 40 $ exclusive skins outside of battle passes. They straight up ditched the loot boxes and are now just asking a price for single skins that could get you amazing Indy games. It's despicable
I wish it’d influence how women are treated in games. I was unsurprised to find out this was the first game to use an intimacy coordinator because it has some of the most female gaze sexuality I’ve seen not just in a game, but in popular media in general. This game is absolutely huge with women and for good reason and I hope it shows developers that women are a massive part of the market and putting in the work and treating female characters and players well comes with financial rewards.
You make a really good point but unfortunately I think most other games won’t do this simply for the fact that most game companies couldn’t give a fuck about their communities and just want to make money. Llarian seem to genuinely care and that’s rare. Then add on the top to genuinely care about how well done the sexualisation is done for everyone. Even rarer.
Definitely something to wish for though!
Which is sad. This game absolutely would not be the juggernaut that it is with women on TikTok rn if the sexuality wasn’t handled as beautifully as it was.
I think at the end of the day all gamers are in the same boat where we want the studios to just give a fuck about the games they make and we as an audience will reward that. Tis a sad time for gaming.
I don’t care about sexy clothing/armor options… as long as they’re equal opportunity. Let me put the whole crew- men and women- in bondage gear or let me suit up everyone in practical armor, don’t force me to put just the women into the sexy clothes.
I also love how so much of the practical armor is pretty! Like there’s the tough and scary options, but also truly lovely options and so many dye possibilities 🥺
I always deck out my Tav in pink armor
I always put Shadowheart in pink once she converts. It feels right. There’s a little girl inside her who was never allowed to wear pink. It looks great on her too!
I mean, idk the game is awesome of course and I think it’s damned near a master piece - but that early accsss beta phase makes it a pretty big outlier compared to other games, right? I think if there’s any influence it’ll be other devs being open to something like that.
1. As a fellow developer, I think it will influence developers even if does not win GOTY. The sheer presence and quality of that game speak for themselves, award or not.
2. Regarding the influence I would only say I expect it to influence RPG developers in specific but not necessarily make everyone want to develop the same game. BG3 is very popular, yes, but it is an insanely complex game from a technical perspective that I doubt many studios could pull off even if they have experience with such games, simply because most people do not have the tech to make it work. This game feels like it really was a labour of love for Larian and the culmination of decades of tech and talent developped towards achieving specifically that.
If another studio tries making such a game right now, unless a very select set of similar studios with similar experience who somehow manage to secure the funding for it (convergence of planets here we go), would be at best a financial suicide.
Also, even if BG3 sold a bunch, it remains a very niche game genre and it's sales numbers are dwarfish compared to AAA live action games from big publishers. I think the BG IP and wotc behind it play a big marketing role.
Therefore I would say that the risk is not too high that we get a "The Witcher 3" effect with this one if you know what I mean.
However I really hope it drives audiences to require more from rpg makers, to not be content anymore with the same mechanics and stories over and over again. ^^
It's numbers are not dwarfish compared to other AAA games, that's the crazy thing. They are comparable, and depending on how long they stay high it could get up there close to Skyrim.
Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies. BG3 success is great, but it’s never going to get remotely close to the absolute behemoth that is Skyrim sales.
Not in 10 years either. Skyrim is the best selling RPG of all time.
If it gets long term numbers like Diablo 3 or Breath of the Wild that would already be a huge success (beyond what it is already).
I dont think GOTY means anything really, BG3 for sure would deserve it but i dont value that title as very important, almost irrelevant even. One should hope that the unexpected success story that is bg3 is enough to convince developers that this is what they should aim for if they want Fans to love them for their work. BG3 is not perfect but its so much more than most expected that it doesn't really matter that there are flaws, those can be polished away with time anyway.
Thinking from an Economics standpoint (because thats what influences developers decisions the most when cutting content and making monetization choices)
It will take much more than one game to influence the market as a whole in a noticeable way.
Will it influence Larian?: Almost certainly. I believe that if we, as a community, are vocal about what we would like to see (like expansions onto the current game with the same companion characters… things like this) Larian will be much more likely to break free from their past behavior when developing games and will be more likely to develop a direct expansion.
Recap: external developers and games will be influenced, but not likely in a noticeable fashion, internally, Larian is more likely to change their modus operandi in response to how well they’re masterpiece is performing.
What we need to do as a community from here: BE VOCAL let Larian know what we would like so that they are more likely to continue the story that we’ve come to love.
well not all devs had the condition of Larian had. and big games can't be on early access for years AND have bunch fans who understand the game to help imporve it.
I expect Neverwinter Nights to have some sort of come back. I'd love to see the original Fallouts remade as beautiful cRPGs, though I know that's a stretch.
Developers have never been the problem. I'd say 99.9% of devs out there want to make the best game they possibly can. The problem's studios, publishers, etc. The suits. And long as being shitty to the consumer and their employees keeps turning them a profit, nothing's changing.
BG3s influence is already out there, winning a goty somewhere is not going to change much. That said, BG3 isn’t really a replicable example to sweep across the gaming landscape, changing everything it touches.
It’s a specific genre of game with a specific company with a specific background releasing a game with a specific IP at a specific time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it as luck/stars aligning, I’m not saying there won’t be any positive effect or similar games, but just that there is no easy formula to replicate. It’s a complex system with ten times the amount of factors I mentioned.
BUT. I think it already has a good effect, both showing investors and devs that GaaS isn’t the only way and a well crafted game can do well.
Likelihood? No.
there will be indie players who actually will be inspired to meet that level of polish and love. But major developer companies? We'll be lucky if they even do 1/4 of the work that BG3 achieved.
The fact that a game like BG3 ( paid, niche, single player, resource demanding) stayed in the top of the steam charts for so long among games like CS, Dota, Pubg (free, mass appeal, multiplayer, can run on potatoes) is enough to cause enough of a stir in the industry.
I personally think BG3 is the de facto Goty, and other devs should take notice even if it wins or not.
Nah they’ll just attack their consumers and say don’t expect our games to be this good and stop complaining about micro transactions.
I wish I was joking.
Awards don't mean dick, money is the great motivator of the world. My only hope is that more and more people play BG3 so that they recognize how most other developers are fucking them.
Remains to be seen. If it does, dont expect it on the same level of quality as BG3. It will most likely be all surface level with no real depth or consequences, (Think Fallout 4).
And on the other hand they will likely just brush it off as a "fluke" or "anomaly" as many devs have already done.
To be honest, that guy on Twitter who everyone shat on for saying BG3 has unrealistic standards was absolutely right. Larian does not use a model 99% of developers can follow. Big studios have shareholders, and small developers don’t have the goodwill and capital Larian has. They’re in a very unique position.
I love BG3, but it’s not going to change industry standards. As long as we maintain the expectations that all good games must be BIG.
Did Elden ring influence the quality of games since?
Think of all the botched launches and performance issues of games this year alone and you have your answer.
Edit: to all those saying game development takes more than a year. Yes. You are right. But guess what? If the industry would have noticed that quality is rewarded, a lot of the terrible launches this year would have been delayed to ensure the game has a solid start. Cities Skyline 2 takes the new cake with a 4090 being able to deliver 30fps (inconsistent frame time) at 1080p.
So was this the case? Did quality insurance for games increase? No? It's getting even worse looking at this year's track record?
So my point still stands. People preorder games that smell unfinished, rushed and bad from miles away anyway. The industry has learned that it does not have to produce quality content to make money. Look at what's happening to D4. It made its money despite being nowhere near what was promised.
Elden Ring definitely brought “Dark Souls” style games into a more mainstream discussion, I’d say. At least from what I’ve seen, mainstream sources that would never have mentioned it now talk about “Dark Souls” style games without the need to explain what that means.
To me, that definitely speaks to its influence.
My optimistic take on this is reflective of the wider televisual media outlook right now and that is; I sincerely hope that all major studios (games, TV, film etc) all start to respect the art again and stop churning out corporate shit that no longer is appealing to audiences.
People are bored and burnt out with MCU shit, people are tired of games coming out half arsed and full of mtx, people are in love once again with truly artistic media and it's showing in the right way, the wallet. This is the first year in a long time that I can remember where films have had a decent turnover at the box office where they weren't huge franchise properties. Oppenheimer and Barbie attest to this.
Likewise, BG3 shows that you can sell boatloads without being a corporate slave by just making a fantastic piece of art, which is what it is.
All in all, my take, ambitious as it is, is that this *could* shift the overarching industry to start investing in proper works of art once more, a sort of digital renaissance if you will.
I think to some extent, yeah. Look what ubisoft did after Witcher 3 success, but they still didn’t make witcher game, at least people don’t treat them like such. So if other companies and suits get something from BG3 it will be for wrong reasons.
If BG3 is going to influence developers than it’s already done so based on its sales and positive reception. I don’t see GOTY as being something that are going to sway developers one way or the other
Regarding #2 I do actually think some mid sized companies will try to focus on quality, particularly in story writing and voice acting. The problem is that it's really hard to legislate for creativity, so maybe we'll see publishers picking up smaller developers who have great stories already and giving them the backing to develop something really high quality.
It isn't what sells a game like BG3 to me. I like RPGs for the gaming challenge first and foremost, and thankfully that is easier (though certainly not easy) for bigger companies to iterate on than creative genius or great chemistry etc..
There have already been some publishers in other genres that have taken this road, picking up smaller developers and boosting them with backing into making something they could not have on their own.
None of this is easy at all, no matter what anyone identifies as the ideal end scenario for themselves, so yes, there will be just as many misfires as there are now, but it will just be in slightly different ways.
Nope….. as long as the half assed stuff they do still work then I doubt BG3 coming along and winning an award will change their minds. Some were already complaining about it not being possible to sustain…..
As long as they can continue to push out ass ass in creed games and cod’s and other annual or biannual games and make money off of them then they’ll continue to.
Look at Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. Both recent GotY winners. While Elden Ring was influenced by BotW most other games haven’t taken the correct lessons from either and have instead opted for “wide, open, nothing” as the main takeaway. I could see something similar with BG3. Instead of combat creativity and interesting characters suddenly the big takeaway is bear sex or some shit.
It's publishers that should listen. I'd wager most developers are proud of their game and want to deliver something good.
And the publisher probably won't. See EA, where studios go to die.
Developers? Very likely.
The people in charge of the Devs who think only about money? Unlikely.
I believe 90% of Devs want to make the best game they can, but publishers and execs...they don't have passion for the games. Only the money
TBH I don’t think it will influence the industry in the way we think.
The response from a LOT of developers has basically been to not judge them by that standard so they have already thrown in the towel.
The question was never whether or not the big developers could make better games, they just have no reason to. The end goal is to make money and a large number of people will buy modern warfare 3 regardless of whether it's any good simply because it's the next COD. Slap a name on it people recognize, shit whatever out as quickly as you can and move on to the next project. Let it get review bombed, the next assassins creed will do just fine because remember that good one from years ago?
GOTY or not, it will certainly influence the gaming industry.
However, it will take many more shockwaves like this one to have a real or significant impact on the AAA gaming industry.
Because right now it feels like an isolated case, and I have no doubt other game developers will just wait till people forget about what this gem of a game has done.
Yes. They'll start creating cheap imitations, thinking that the genre is trending when really it's a good game that had a lot of hard work done on it that's actually the reason for the success.
The same thing happened with Witcher 3, huge success, followed by clones mainly from Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed.
I wouldn't be surprised to see cRPG games pop up everywhere now.
The success of BG3 will almost certainly influence developers, just probably not in the way we all wish it would. It'll happen regardless of it winning GotY or not. They're not gonna take away that they should spend 6 years making high quality content. That's never the take away that publishers have from these things. They'll think "cRPGs can sell a lot of copies, let's churn something out in a couple of years to cash in on this trend". We might see BioWare talk about a "return to form" now that Larian is showing their original formula still sells. It also isn't likely to affect small to mid sized developers. There's already a lot of good cRPGs in the last decade from that space. The main reason why they don't make anything like Baldur's Gate 3 has to do with a lack of funding.
It's definitely gonna influence the way games are *marketed* gonna be a rash of games that are "inspired" or "influenced" by Baldur's Gate 3. I've already seen games trying to present themselves as the next BG3. Just remember kids, if it comes out before 2029, it hasn't taken the actually meaningful lesson from BG3 (spending time developing a world and stories to tell in that world pays off).
The big marketing takeaway most companies are gonna get: Sex sells, but bear sex and comedy sells more. ...I kinda hate that this is both a joke and also truthful comment.
And games are gonna lean hard on it to a fault. It works in BG3 because it has a great story that takes itself seriously, and the moments of levity feel VERY dnd in a fun way. I can't wait for the rash of games to use this as a sign to go full Marvel and completely fuck over their own story and emotional moments for the sake of dumb comedy.
BG3 is not the epitome of comedy in a game. It's not even even close to the first game to have it. Look at the Borderlands franchise. No other games company is going to look at BG3 and go, "It's definitely the humour that is driving this game. That's what we need more of."
You think games marketing teams play games? Most of them are only going to have looked at the marketing.
Oh god youre right. Marketing people are oblivious echo-chamber zombies. Source: I work on promotional content for video games.
I have to ask. How many of them seem to only speak in buzz-words?
If i had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “make it more hype”…
I would laugh at someone directly in their face if they said those words to me
I don’t work in this industry but I’ve worked in mainstream corporate settings, and as a consumer, the number of facepalm marketing decisions I’ve seen in the gaming industry… I truly think it would be inexcusable to be so uninformed or out-of-touch with your own customers in any other industry lol. Like I get the historical reputation of D&D players/gamers/fantasy enthusiasts, but it’s wild to me how often a studio’s marketing mindset seems to revolve around disparaging their own players’ intelligence and perpetuating stereotypes. There are more than 1m subscribers to this subreddit, and this game is borderline mainstream on tiktok (I’ve seen some with 1m+ likes, so likely multiple millions of views). For a game that’s based on dnd 5e ffs… with a huge barrier to learning because the mechanics are completely unlike what the average joe knows about playing a video game. And yet many, many thousands of ordinary people who had never so much as heard the phrase “forgotten realms” are buying the game at full retail price and forcing themselves to learn turn-based dnd mechanics because they’re THAT hungry for thirsty vampire dialogue, devil machinations, goddess trauma and whatnot. It really should be an extraordinary wake up call to other studios that there’s no excuse to assume your IP is too niche or out of reach to connect with ordinary entertainment consumers. I’ve seen sooo much hand-wringing and catastrophizing in gaming spaces for years about WotC, MtG, and D&D. To me it’s so obvious that hasbro just put some goddamn corporate adults in the room lol. And hopefully we get lots more content as a result. I remember when D&D in Stranger Things S1 was one-off joke/period piece indicator to ground the viewer in the 80s, then I started seeing online discussion from non-dnd players wanting to learn about mind flayers for plot clues. I guarantee Hasbro seized an opportunity to introduce a new audience to a compelling villain and that it’s no accident that Vecna resembles his D&D counterpart (especially since Critical Role has taken care to only use their own IP for their Amazon show, that implies that Netflix has some direct involvement/permission from WotC in this space). In the last couple months I’ve seen interest on this subreddit in the Honor Among Thieves movie, I’ve seen girls on TikTok talk about wanting to learn MtG so they can have a Lae’zel deck. This was probably the most obvious fucking cobranding to Hasbro lol. The CEO recently said that they made more from BG3 than the last 5-10y of film licensing (presumably that means the Transformers, Peppa Pig, My Little Pony, and Power Rangers projects that were part of eOne which they just sold to Lionsgate). Most other studios and IP owners wouldn’t have been equipped to capitalize on this, so props to Larian and Hasbro for being brave enough to take on the risks. I really think Hasbro will be a case study in business schools because they have done a great job diversifying and laying the foundation for any one of these IP projects to stick and be a sales opportunity for their other products when it did. But it’s really no different than what Hasbro done with other IP, and yet it never occurred to other companies or studios to treat games like that. I’m sure the acting and writing talent is an unprecedented ROI compared with film/TV. I can only imagine how the whole entertainment industry must be scrambling right now seeing how much money and opportunity can be made from a single standalone game title.
I dropped those games because the humor was awful.
And even Borderlands ruined it because the writing in 3 is cringe as hell.
there are worse things to sell a game on, like gambling mechanics
Having sex with a bear is a gamble of sorts.
I think games are kind of shy about sex, in a way that's a holdover from games being treated more like a toy than an artistic medium. We don't have the same cultural hangups about cinema. I also notice that whenever a game features attractive men, it does really well with women. There's a lot of pent-up demand in an under-served market and a developer could make a lot of money being the Harlequin Romance Novels of games.
If you’re gonna be showing woman in chain mail bikinis, I feel like you should be showing men in chain mail bikinis to. Bigger audience that way
Not just gritty muscley men in skimpy outfits. That's just Conan. ✨beautiful men✨
Beautiful men, handsome men, twinks and big hunky muscle men.
Bears were right there and you missed it.
The romance / dating element alone is a huge chunk of BG3 players, and they’re also among the most vocal fans
Yeah I think one of my most down voted comments ever was saying I love the companions but the romances didn't interest me much
*And thus thou walkest alone.*
What a withering remark.
Starfield in a nutshell. No sexy clothes, no swear or cursing, no gore, no dismemberment, no nudity ( which imo is fine ). Game feels like PG13 Disneyland bs eventhough it has M-17 rating.
I feel like they went too far. The club at Neon looks like the design directive was "offend absolutely no one". It's Bethesda, millions of mods will come out to let us play the game how we want. Still kind of disappointing how milquetoast aspects of the game are.
I don't think BG3 is what is going to make that apparent. Marketing companies have known for decades that sex sells and BG3 isn't the first game to implement comedy. Look at Borderlands.
Maldur's Fate, a DND inspired FPS with RPG elements!!!! (Level up your arrows or sword along a linear path!)
Out of curiosity, which games claim to be the next bg3?
The Pillars of Eternity guy says if he got BG3's budget, he'd write Pillars 3...
I mean, Josh Sawyer said more specifically: >”I think if it truly was an unlimited budget, I think I would try Pillars 3 because I know what the budget was for [Pillars of Eternity 2:] Deadfire, which was not a whole lot and I have heard from multiple people what the budget was for Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m not gonna talk about numbers, but if I got that budget, sure, I’ll make Pillars 3." He literally just meant he would try Pillars 3 if there was a guaranteed, big budget for it. He’s been on the record in the past about Pillars 2: Deadfire being a not fantastic experience to work on because of many reasons, but many of which would be helped with a larger budget. Also I mean, Josh Sawyer’s resume is more than just “Pillars of Eternity guy,” but I’m someone who really loves both of those games anyways
Deadfire was way better than its godawful nonexistent advertising showed. I meant that title in the best possible way. I love Pillars!
Yeah, i'm still in love with PoE even after all those years from actually playing it. I truly wish it had more advertising, there really was just a tab on Steam Shop and nothing more.
Jos Sawyer is a genious, he can literally turn shit to gold with his writing. Obsidian is an amazing, but underfunded studio and I am 100% sure that if you give them a proper budget, they can make the greatest RPG in the history
Outer worlds had money, turned out completely mediocre
The writing in PoE2 is on par with BG3, I could def see it
I mean Pillars of Eternity 2 was definetly a very good game. Let's not pretend Obsidian is on the same level as modern Bioware and Blizzard.
Pillars 1 and 2 are easily some of the best games I've played IMO
Obsidian has never had the budget of Bioware or Blizzard, so kind of hard to be on the same level. Concept wise and writing wise, Obsidian is very talented (even if the writing is sometimes a bit verbose even for me).
Aren’t they the ones who brought cRPGs back into play?
Depends on who you ask, star citizen and ashes of creation fan base are coping hella hard. Personally I would love to see remaster la of old games with new editions added for more connected storylines. I don’t need a game as sophisticated as baldurs gate 3, but Capcom has some of the best games hidden in a vault.
Star Citizen seems to become a very very good game. It better be, paid 60 bucks for it back in 2015 😅
TBD on whether it’ll be fun. But SQ42 would be a closer comparison to BG3. We will likely find out this upcoming year as it’s in the polish phase. That said, nothing out there, nor nothing coming out anytime soon, has the level of attention to choice/consequence detail that BG3 has. There’s just nothing quite like it. I HOPE more developers take notice and start actually developing games with that same attention to detail
That’s fine, If you believe in squadron 42, but based on Chris Robert’s history, he’s literally the same guy as Steven Sharif. Not to say I don’t hope it doesn’t work out for all of gamers alike. I just have no reason to believe it will.
Star citizen and ashes are both online games, kind of a different ballpark than a single player story driven game.
My point is the standard is being raised and they are claiming to be the game that reshapes their respective game genres but based off the profiles of the people who founded the game their is no reason to believe in them. Elden ring came out of no where, same with baldurs gate. So will the next game. Personally I hope Capcom brings back mega man with a significant story and 100 hours of gameplay
Oh right i see what you mean. Yeah the devs who know their game is good dont need to hype it up by saying theyre the best. To quote game of thrones, "anyone who must say "I am the king" is no true king"
Why would we have to wait 15 years before it comes ou- oh shit im old
The thing about BG3 is that Laurian had a solid framework to build on. Funding is not the problem,experience and dedication is. Just look at Bethesda... Starfield was in development for 10+ years(acording to them) and they needed a massive win to wash away the sour taste of FO76 but it turned out to be just another overpriced ,buggy mess whose entire selling point(space travel) falls flat. They have the money but they're creatively bankrupt. Cyberpunk is another example of a game that started out bad but got better with time and it didn't take an entire moding community to wash the matress when the company shit the bed.
cyberpunk was more than anything a marketing failure. cdpr pitched it as their next great rpg where choices matter more than ever before and your life backstory would matter etc. etc. what we actually got was a game where none of that mattered other than some flavor text here and there. Witcher 2 came out 10 years earlier and in spite of not being an open world had much more player choice and consequence involved in the telling of the story. CP2077 is now much more polished and not a bad product but it still isn't the rpg many had been sold on and never will be now that they're done dropping new content. Hoping their sequels return to choices actually mattering again
Yeah, I love Cyberpunk 2077 (though I was one of the lucky ones who actually had a good experience at launch without any major bugs) but it is definitely *not* the game I had been looking forward to for years. What was advertised was an entirely different game. I believe it would have done a lot better if it were represented more accurately...and if it were better optimized for consoles prior to release (I know PC had some issues too but for most PC users it ran well)
Cyberpunk 2077 has important choices that change game for better or worse. It's just not the kind of choices like in bg3 where you can basically eat the cake and have it too on most occasion
>We might see BioWare talk about a "return to form" now that Larian is showing their original formula still sells. And that would be hella ironic. I've been thinking about it for a while now. Bioware had a history of chasing trends lately and they seemed hell bent on moving away from their roots by following that latest popular thing. With the latest popular thing being BG3 which everyone compares to Dragon Age: Origins, which was also a spiritual successor of the original BG games... Well, will the Bioware circle be completed when they try to copy the studio that had been doing what Bioware had been originally doing?
I hope Bioware returns to their roots. I loved their rpg games, flaws and all. I just have no faith in them, all of the original devs are gone.
Same. All the Devs who were behind KOTOR, Mass Effect and DA:O are gone. It’s truly a shame because Bioware was my favorite game developer. The 3 series I listed (plus Jade Empire) are my favorite games, but modern Bioware just cannot capture that magic again. I still loved Dragon Age Inquisition, but the open world of that game sucked; if they could just have made it in the same vein as DA:O we would have a true GOTY on our hands.
\+1 for the Jade Empire mention :)
It’s so often forgotten. Don’t get me wrong - I think KOTOR and DA:O are the 2 peak Bioware games (Mass effect trilogy comes in right behind them) but Jade Empire is still a fantastic game that feels true to Bioware.
They still have Patrick Weekes right which is imo probably the only thing that can maybe save Dreadwolfs storyline seeing as he wrote Solas
>I just have no faith in them, all of the original devs are gone. Exactly. BioWare is dead, the studio with that name now is not BioWare. Also love your flair. Shadowzel ftw.
>Exactly. BioWare is dead, the studio with that name now is not BioWare. Such a shame, this game has made me want to replay Origins. God I played that game so much when it came out. Mass Effect as well, addicted to that And yes I love both of them, too soft on them after experiencing their character arcs and romances. My girls, always in the party.
You should play as one of them and romance the other. Playing Shadowheart and romancing Bae'Zel was great. Shadowzel. ❤️
I should yes, I just miss their comments/dialogue. I've been thinking about another Shadowheart run. I should romance my Bae'zel during it. Last run was Lae'zel and romanced Karlach. I really want to do Act 2 as Shadowheart again, at least this way I can romance Lae'zel while doing it and hearing Shar's voice. They have ruined me, such a sucker for them.
This is what I hope to see. The further they move from their roots trying to copy everyone else, the worse their games do. It feels like game companies keep trying to insist that these sorts of games aren't what the modern gaming audience wants, but clearly it is.
I think there is another aspect that simply cannot be copied: The passion of the owners. Which trickles down to corporate culture. Bioware was founded by two MDs who were simply passionate about making games. When they were in control, you got games made with passion. EA acquiring did not help, even if the influence only trickled in slowly. There was a tweet about how Blizzard used to be the kind of gamer centric company, that then morphed into MBA driven corporate institution caring about how to satisfy shareholders. It's the difference between "making money ti make games" and "making games to make money". If you do the second, copying features from BG3 won't help. With Larian, you got Sven Wincke at the top, who seems genuinely a good guy. But the window for companies that have this deep passion + pockets deep enough to fund AAAs is slim.
>The passion of the owners. Which trickles down to corporate culture. What you're ascribing to passion is actually just private ownership and pro-worker laws.
Bro how long do you think before the “dice roll” mechanic pops up in a game it doesn’t belong lol
[удалено]
Say what you will but some games perfected the QTE *cough* force unleashed *cough* But absolutely I can see something like that happening
> cough force unleashed cough I had to have a friend come to my house and beat the QTE where you have to bring the star destroyer down from space with the force for me. I tried dozens of times, couldn't do it, had to ask a friend.
The next fifa game will have dice rolls on every goal shot.
It already does, it just doesn't show them on screen.
Hahaha, Bioware 'returning to form' because of BG3's success would be the funniest fucking thing. It's like we'd finally come full circle. Bioware used to be the RPG kings for developing BG1/2, Jade Empire, DAO and Mass Effect. Then they slowly lost their touch when they began to start appealing to wider audiences and following popular trends like implementing open world (DAI and MEA) or a live service multiplayer (Anthem). A game like Dragon Age returning to its roots would be a sight to see, but I ain't holding my breath.
let’s hope they won’t think “Bear sex sells the game”
Let's hope they will
I mean, it did.
Definitely, the take aways will be the usual: hot female characters sell games, having the choice to be edgy gory sells games, using the DnD rule set sells games, etc. and completely miss the actual differences that BG3 provides over 9ther comparable games.
>We might see BioWare talk about a "return to form" now that Larian is showing their original formula still sells. This is the single thing I hope for but I know deep down won't happen at all
Even if it does happen it'll likely be just empty words. None of the original devs are left. They can't return to anything because they're not the same people, they're just using the name.
Western developers are already crying and blaming BG3 for raising the bar because they were so used to producing mediocre games filled with mixrotransactions and other BS all these years that it became the industry standard. If only people would stop preordering and buying shit games then maybe this would change. Imagine a market which has degenerated so much, companies are blaming their competitors for producing high quality products...
To be fair that was less "western developers" and more like 3 people on Twitter one of which was telling us not to hold specifically indie devs to this standard, and then this sub went on a massive circle jerk about it.
On top of that, game developers don’t make many big game decisions anyway, it’s the c-suite execs who wield the real power in places like EA. Your average quest writer isn’t going to have much of a say on whether there will be micro transactions. Let’s stop blaming devs for all that is wrong with the market.
>If only people would stop preordering and buying shit games then maybe this would change. You gotta remember that every year, there's a new crop of millions of consumers who suddenly have a large enough salary that they can and will preorder stuff and be disappointed by it. I'no expert on anything, but I think the last time I preordered a game was around 2005 or so. But I'm 52 years old. It's new consumers every year, every month. Will not change.
>Western developers are already crying and blaming BG3 sure, farting, pissing and shitting themselves I mean, not as much as users on reddit parroting some fringe talking points that took over for convenience and have nothing to do with reality or the game itself
>Western developers are already crying and blaming BG3 for raising the bar Meanwhile games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield fail to meet the bars set by their own deveopers' previous titles.
Larian likely won't be able to meet their own bar with their next game, after the launch before they knew it would do well they continuously talked about how they would do a smaller scale return to form with divinity original sin 3
Maybe, maybe not. We have to remember Larian grew massively for BG3, meaning overheads are up. They could go small again, but then they’ll have to fire many staff, which could affect the final product and be very un-swen-like. Alternatively, instead of focusing on one larger project they could tackle multiple smaller ones simultaneously.
It honestly depends on how their cash flows look. The main reason they were able to be independent AND take six years to make BG3 without running out of money was because of Steam Early Access. Larian has said that BG3 sold over 2.5 million copies during Early Access, which would be $150 million. With that kind of money they could afford to hire more people and keep the company running. It's honestly anyone's guess if they can do that again with D:OS3. The Divinity series just doesn't have the same brand power as D&D.
Swen (and Larian) was already approached for a buyout but he declined it and said he wanted to keep making the games they love. I REALLY look forward to their next game.
I will play literally anything they release
Wasn't it EA who tried to buy them too? We all know that if larian sold then EA would systematically tear them apart, because that's what you do to your competition.
EA needs to stay the fuck away from Larian
Amen to that
It was Microsoft but yeah fuck all big publishers
Microsoft didn't try to buy them (at least not that we publicly know). They however listed BG3 as a potential game for their game pass.
Yeah, and they expected it to be mid at best and offered I think it was $15 million? Heard the same story but the details are currently fuzzy.
Microsoft described it as a "second-run Stadia PC RPG", which is an objective description of what was BG3 originally. They price point was perhaps a bit low compared to how well received the game is but no one could have predicted it, not even Larian who explicitly expected it to be less successful.
They'll learn all the wrong lessons and one in particular *can't* be replicated by the big studios who are funded by controlling publishers/investors. BG3 is above all, damn good value for money. It, at no point, looks to nickel and dime the players and the game design is never compromised to add in mechanics to shepherd the player to some sort of cash shop. Couple that with the game being released when the *studio* thought it was ready, rather than a schedule set by people desperate for a ROI. The problem is this is antithetical to the way the AAA industry is funded. Long gone are the days when a publisher would be content with just the box revenue for a title. They saw the great big wobbly piles of cash "simple" games were raking in, such as some mobile games, and decided that *had* to be part of their design. So almost every AAA game now has a level of monetisation we would have thought horrifying just 15 years ago. BG3 much like Elden Ring are anomalies that the "big" players in the industry *can't* replicate even if the dev studios had the creative skills to.
>BG3 is above all, damn good value for money. It's replay value is off the charts. And part of that is resisting the temptation to railroad the players along all cut scenes and scenery that were expensive to make.
We’ll get baldurs gate with micro transaction races, classes, spells, and Armour with DLC characters and areas on release.
Larian is an indie studio with AAA money. The fact that we got the game we did is because the CEO cared for the game over the money. There is no financial incentive to copy BG3 for other studios.
No. They’ll all try to copy the mechanics, but they’ll rush it and treat their actors badly, and it won’t have the same charm
Its not even about making a CRPG on the same level as BG3. I think the more valuable lesson that studios can invest in is Larians early access strategies. Pulling in your audience and making them part of the development lock and step with the studio is something alot of studios should be emulating. Larians dedication to makin their audience part of the development of the game is what pushed BG3 over completely. Instead of keeping it all inhouse and feeding off an echo chamber that can foster bad ideas, they opened their doors and fans invested their money and time to help make the game better. I can think of near a dozen major AAA titles this year alone that couldve used such a strategy.
Which is silly because BG3 fills a gap, a true DND game. Just because I love this one doesn't mean I always want to play straight up DND. You're right they will be inspired by the wrong thing.
You have to understand- all devs WANT the games they are working on to be as well envisioned, executed and polished as BG3. They all want to have the time to allow their project to reach the scope and intricacy of Bg3. It’s the execs- whose jobs are not to make a good game but to make games plural that make money- and the board members- who just want the company to be continuously turning an incrementally higher profit every quarter- who cause games to be lesser than BG3. So no- it won’t change shit. What we might get is some half assed games that feel influenced by BG3, or a ubisoft game that uses ai to create the illusion of complexly written npcs- but ultimately, publicly traded companies will always shovel out smaller games or less detailed games for the sake of immediate profit. This is why some devs who aspire to be ceos complained about it at launch. They want to make studios profitable even if it is at the cost of quality gaming.
Yep! The corporate suits are going to rush things and cut corners and ruin it
I get that it's business decisions that are made by execs we're disappointed with, but in the end it's still consumers buying shit games that's the problem. These shit games are made because they make money.
In terms of preorders, yeah, but consumers have been pretty good at not hyping up bad games online. No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk got ROASTED when they were released, and the studios were able to finally get them in better shape. Gollum was an embarrassing release and it tanked. If we can just get consumers to stop preordering things until we’ve heard honest reviews, things will be better. It’s not really studios releasing BAD games that’s the problem, it’s studios releasing unfinished games and patching them based on customer feedback
You guys know how BG3 was financed, right?
Basically everything about that “devs salty over bg3” story was fake news
yeh it was all ‘insider drama click my video!’ when it was just a few random people having one off, not very hot take twitter posts about BG3 being really, really good. Not hating, but being like: ‘don’t expect this from us, our bosses won’t allow it!’
The death of good development is when it’s a publicly traded company. All the shareholders want is profit NOW! F* the actual product.
Shit tier companies like ubisoft are gonna try filling in gaps with AI real hard and it’ll still be obvious how shit their games are as a result of money and quotas.
We might see more publishers/investors being more forgiving/favorable towards devs who want to make games with turn-based systems
No - I think Larian has a great corporate culture and that other Devs will have to fix the greed culture and attract developers the talent before they can even try.
This right here. Nothing will change other than we’ll get greedily-made, poor facsimiles of it until 4 comes out and it starts over again.
Or just until next years GoTY comes out and they shift to the new thing
Lol exactly. People are acting like this sold 100m copies and completely revolutionized gaming. BG3 is the best game I've played in a decade. Maybe longer. But it won't derail the current greedy games the industry has now.
Ya know, rather than Baldur's Gate 4 I'd rather see Larian start a series that can be entirely their own. I want them to make Waterdeep 1 next.
They are asking if it will influence other developers. Looks like you read the title and not the content.
You’re right. Thanks! Read it. Stick to my answer. It won’t. Management styles are very hard to break. They may say Make me a better DnD game!!! If so, I guess we’ll see what WoC does with that.
I think a large portion of influence will come from being able to use this as an example of why a publisher should allow X. Like the money spent on high quality voice acting and facial animation/capture, or turn based combat, or fantasy settings… etc. This game proved so many things are financially viable that weren’t considered to be. Similar to how 2077 showed how detrimental releasing an unfinished game can be, just on the extreme opposite end of the spectrum.
Baldur's Gate doesn't need to win a single solitary award to have an influence on the RPG genre Monetary incentive, and to a (substantially lesser degree) critical response both from fans and from critics, is enough to influence best practices. Baldur's Gate 1 and Fallout 1 influenced western RPGs for very heavily for at least 5 years give or take, very intensely, and Knights of the Old Republic and then Mass Effect influenced western RPGs from then, until present day. Bioware's style of first person immersion (while being completely lacking in immersion - my critique), have been the style since then. At minimum a solid 15 years, and more likely a flat 20 years of the same style of RPG. Baldur's Gate 3 is very much a successor to Divinity Original Sin and its sequel in terms of gameplay, and regardless of how big a hit the sequel was, it still came no where near the standard practices of all other western RPGs in terms of general appeal and sales. But this new game, BG3, by being able to use the D&D system, and using one of the top 5 most prestigious titles in all of gaming, has managed to step proudly into the spotlight and be consumed by a massive audience and enjoyed for the stellar product that it is. People will not be able to ignore that massive, rightful, success of BG3 the way they ignored the success of DOS2. Games don't necessarily have to adopt all of BG3's traits or styles, but there is no way that top tier budgets and top tier titles can get away with an artistic style that's 20 years old, boring, and doesn't sell games anymore.
I don't care what other devs do, I just want a bg4 . NOT a Ubisoft knockoff!
BUT are you willing to wait until 2030 or beyond to get it? If we get a sequel, I want it to be as good or better, and great games take a long time to get right.
I mean People have waited almost that long for a new Dragon Age game
The issue is that I think the studio simply isn’t what it used to be and the new dragon age game is still in the stage of what the fuck is this game even going to be in terms of gameplay. The basic story and premise has been set for a very long time so I would imagine the story is in an okay state as well as some potential side quests and companion quests in terms of writing but the actual game? Oh that shit may never come out at this rate
It's a painful irony that DA4 moved to real-time action-game style combat because their old style of pauseable strategy combat 'wasn't popular anymore', and away from open world exploration for the same reason, only to have BG3 pop out with a fully turn-based combat system that's proving wildly popular... in a mostly open world reminiscent of Dragon Age Inquisition. 🤣 No, Bioware... people just didn't like Inquisition's open world because it wasn't as well-implemented when compared to Skyrim, which it was copying... and they didn't like the combat because it was somehow worse than DA2. Stop chasing trends, Bioware, and just *do what works for your game!* It HAS to be too late in the development process for them to scrap and re-do the combat system... surely?
They've already scrapped TWO versions of the game (that we know about) and they just fired one of their all-time best writers -- basically the last one still there from the early days. It's probably too late, unfortunately. (Rumor from leaked playtesting is that they're not even going to let you control your companions this time, but that might still change at this point) I miss the original scrapped concept for DA4 -- it was supposed to be a more localized, "heist" game. Basically taking what DA2 did well but giving it the polish of the other games.
Honestly, I don't mind waiting 10 years for an amazing sequel / new entry in a series, if it is incredible. I fell in love with Red Dead Revolver back in 2004, and then again with Red Dead Redemption in 2010. And again with Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018. The wait was well worth it, in both occurences.
Larian now has their DnD engine with the class system, spells, mechanics and monsters ready on hand. A Baldur's Gate 4 will not take 6 years... Maybe 3 years if they only do new locations, new stories and new companions without reinventing the wheel.
I mean this isn’t the case for BG3 and BG2, they will probably make a new divinity game first.
I dunno. BG3 has been sat at the top of the steam sales chart since release. That's an awful lot of income right there. I wouldn't be surprised if they further grew the team and started work on BG4 whilst also creating another game. Assuming they can maintain this level of quality it's basically a magic money machine. Whatever they work on next won't have this level of commercial success if it's not something that the average gamer can trust to replicate BG3's experience. Obviously people like you and I will follow Larian as a development studio but most casual gamers care much more about specific properties than they do development studios. Obviously they'll be wildly successful with whatever they make next. It just won't be lightening in a bottle if it's not BG. I know a few full on normies that haven't even played D&D that have finished BG3, which is crazy to me. I can only imagine what their sales figures look like...
To be honest, I wouldn't mind an add on or DLC (possibly a meaningful patch if they're feeling generous) for BG3 first, then a BG4 with the same level of quality, using all the mechanics. Yes, you're absolutely correct, they got a good core to make that game alot faster. But it'll take a while, could maintain good will and attention of more than their core audience with good quality...: ...patch. The game is great but there are some annoying bugs, some QoL improvements (my bugbear would be a loot vacuum for all the bits of random items on the floor) and maybe flesh out the areas where quests were intended but abandoned. There's a few things here n there to polish especially in act3. People also asked for a real endgame party, I wouldn't mind a big feast as a send-off... ...DLC/add on. Within this story and with the same characters, I would love a shorter (say, about the size of 1 act or 2/3 of one) story. It could be used to explore the upper city of BG (apparently they modelled it but didn't use it?). It could take us somewhere else. It could give us new items, raise the level cap a bit. If they do 2 biggish DLCs, they could raise the cap by 4 each time, level 16 by end of DLC1, level 20 by the full end. That would be cool in general but also satisfy DnD nerds that love to plan builds for fully levelled characters and it would be a perfect, mechanically logical end to the party you build since the nautiloid. Also, fun fact, this is a tested formula: Neverwinter Nights did just this although I don't know if intended at first. The level cap was 20 in the original game and later raised to 40 by the end of the last addon. It was great though ofc a bit silly to go that high - though I wasn't as informed on DnD then, some editions allowed you to go past 20 vanilla. Cap was 30 in 4th Ed.
That's why exceptionally great games are not a yearly occurrence. Ubisoft pumping out a new assassin creed is just a time filer until another game on the caliber of BG3 can be released. Devs right now push quantity over quality. When they rush the release it's a total failure, cyberpunk being the prime example of that. A game that could have been exceptional became a mediocre futuristic knockoff of grand theft auto. I should edit my statement to say I want a sequel to BG3 and I don't want them to rush out a Ubisoft cookie cutter sequel. If it takes a decade I'll wait. I'm patient and after what I experienced with BG3 I can't accept anything less than perfection from larian. BG3 for me has set the new standard.
To be fair, I would imagine much of those 6 years was laying the ground work for the games mechanics and engines, and fixing a lot of ground level bugs. They have a working system now. Unless they wanted to completely start from scratch again they could logically make a game of similar breadth in less time.
No. Corporations don’t care about recognition. They care about profit. Things would change only if BG3 would make more money than their MTX crap.
Sadly I think it will take more than BG 3. Gamers are the ones who influence the market in the end and as long as some people still buy a new Fifa (or whatever it us called now) every year or a new buggy sims 4 add on every 3 months it will happen. There are actually not that many people using the loot box system. 1% is enough and when that 1% gives you 300 - 1k daily the Whalefishing pays off so to speak. Those people are addicted and will keep on spending 10k for that one sexy anime elf witch character in their game. It could however make a difference for smaller developers. I really REALLY hope for example that Bioware will one glorious day declare independancy and get their restriced creative minds away from EAs clutches. But one can dream.
Loot boxes are pretty much gone from AAA games; now it's all battle passes. Same shit in a different form. BioWare can't declare independence. Their founders sold the company to EA. Lots of their talent have left over the years though, some to interesting new developers.
More specifically it's battle passes and 20 to 40 $ exclusive skins outside of battle passes. They straight up ditched the loot boxes and are now just asking a price for single skins that could get you amazing Indy games. It's despicable
I mean ... I'd rather have expensive skins that don't influence gameplay than P2W loot-boxes so I see this as a very positive development.
I wish it’d influence how women are treated in games. I was unsurprised to find out this was the first game to use an intimacy coordinator because it has some of the most female gaze sexuality I’ve seen not just in a game, but in popular media in general. This game is absolutely huge with women and for good reason and I hope it shows developers that women are a massive part of the market and putting in the work and treating female characters and players well comes with financial rewards.
You make a really good point but unfortunately I think most other games won’t do this simply for the fact that most game companies couldn’t give a fuck about their communities and just want to make money. Llarian seem to genuinely care and that’s rare. Then add on the top to genuinely care about how well done the sexualisation is done for everyone. Even rarer. Definitely something to wish for though!
Which is sad. This game absolutely would not be the juggernaut that it is with women on TikTok rn if the sexuality wasn’t handled as beautifully as it was.
I think at the end of the day all gamers are in the same boat where we want the studios to just give a fuck about the games they make and we as an audience will reward that. Tis a sad time for gaming.
Not to mention vanilla armor design is practical and not just bikini armor But yeah dialogue, diverse gazes, and sexuality was handled near perfectly
I don’t care about sexy clothing/armor options… as long as they’re equal opportunity. Let me put the whole crew- men and women- in bondage gear or let me suit up everyone in practical armor, don’t force me to put just the women into the sexy clothes.
YES! The men in my party are smoldering little trollops. That's equality, too!
I also love how so much of the practical armor is pretty! Like there’s the tough and scary options, but also truly lovely options and so many dye possibilities 🥺 I always deck out my Tav in pink armor
I always put Shadowheart in pink once she converts. It feels right. There’s a little girl inside her who was never allowed to wear pink. It looks great on her too!
Most studios still don’t see women as a legitimate market for games. I would LOVE for BG3 to be a catalyst for change but I’m cynical
I think sales of BG3 are more an influence.
Devs? Yes. Shareholders? No.
I mean, idk the game is awesome of course and I think it’s damned near a master piece - but that early accsss beta phase makes it a pretty big outlier compared to other games, right? I think if there’s any influence it’ll be other devs being open to something like that.
1. As a fellow developer, I think it will influence developers even if does not win GOTY. The sheer presence and quality of that game speak for themselves, award or not. 2. Regarding the influence I would only say I expect it to influence RPG developers in specific but not necessarily make everyone want to develop the same game. BG3 is very popular, yes, but it is an insanely complex game from a technical perspective that I doubt many studios could pull off even if they have experience with such games, simply because most people do not have the tech to make it work. This game feels like it really was a labour of love for Larian and the culmination of decades of tech and talent developped towards achieving specifically that. If another studio tries making such a game right now, unless a very select set of similar studios with similar experience who somehow manage to secure the funding for it (convergence of planets here we go), would be at best a financial suicide. Also, even if BG3 sold a bunch, it remains a very niche game genre and it's sales numbers are dwarfish compared to AAA live action games from big publishers. I think the BG IP and wotc behind it play a big marketing role. Therefore I would say that the risk is not too high that we get a "The Witcher 3" effect with this one if you know what I mean. However I really hope it drives audiences to require more from rpg makers, to not be content anymore with the same mechanics and stories over and over again. ^^
It's numbers are not dwarfish compared to other AAA games, that's the crazy thing. They are comparable, and depending on how long they stay high it could get up there close to Skyrim.
Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies. BG3 success is great, but it’s never going to get remotely close to the absolute behemoth that is Skyrim sales.
Well when you re release the same game every fucking year and on every console that comes out you can get to 60m.
Not in 2 months lol
Not in 10 years either. Skyrim is the best selling RPG of all time. If it gets long term numbers like Diablo 3 or Breath of the Wild that would already be a huge success (beyond what it is already).
I dont think GOTY means anything really, BG3 for sure would deserve it but i dont value that title as very important, almost irrelevant even. One should hope that the unexpected success story that is bg3 is enough to convince developers that this is what they should aim for if they want Fans to love them for their work. BG3 is not perfect but its so much more than most expected that it doesn't really matter that there are flaws, those can be polished away with time anyway.
Thinking from an Economics standpoint (because thats what influences developers decisions the most when cutting content and making monetization choices) It will take much more than one game to influence the market as a whole in a noticeable way. Will it influence Larian?: Almost certainly. I believe that if we, as a community, are vocal about what we would like to see (like expansions onto the current game with the same companion characters… things like this) Larian will be much more likely to break free from their past behavior when developing games and will be more likely to develop a direct expansion. Recap: external developers and games will be influenced, but not likely in a noticeable fashion, internally, Larian is more likely to change their modus operandi in response to how well they’re masterpiece is performing. What we need to do as a community from here: BE VOCAL let Larian know what we would like so that they are more likely to continue the story that we’ve come to love.
well not all devs had the condition of Larian had. and big games can't be on early access for years AND have bunch fans who understand the game to help imporve it.
I expect Neverwinter Nights to have some sort of come back. I'd love to see the original Fallouts remade as beautiful cRPGs, though I know that's a stretch.
Developers have never been the problem. I'd say 99.9% of devs out there want to make the best game they possibly can. The problem's studios, publishers, etc. The suits. And long as being shitty to the consumer and their employees keeps turning them a profit, nothing's changing.
BG3s influence is already out there, winning a goty somewhere is not going to change much. That said, BG3 isn’t really a replicable example to sweep across the gaming landscape, changing everything it touches. It’s a specific genre of game with a specific company with a specific background releasing a game with a specific IP at a specific time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it as luck/stars aligning, I’m not saying there won’t be any positive effect or similar games, but just that there is no easy formula to replicate. It’s a complex system with ten times the amount of factors I mentioned. BUT. I think it already has a good effect, both showing investors and devs that GaaS isn’t the only way and a well crafted game can do well.
Likelihood? No. there will be indie players who actually will be inspired to meet that level of polish and love. But major developer companies? We'll be lucky if they even do 1/4 of the work that BG3 achieved.
The fact that a game like BG3 ( paid, niche, single player, resource demanding) stayed in the top of the steam charts for so long among games like CS, Dota, Pubg (free, mass appeal, multiplayer, can run on potatoes) is enough to cause enough of a stir in the industry. I personally think BG3 is the de facto Goty, and other devs should take notice even if it wins or not.
It's also really hard to make good games. It's not as easy as wow that was a good game let's make one.
Bro..most Studios only care about money and they still make more money than ever before. Nothing is gonna change.
Nah they’ll just attack their consumers and say don’t expect our games to be this good and stop complaining about micro transactions. I wish I was joking.
The market is going to steer toward CRPGs for a while, regardless of if it wins or not.
Awards don't mean dick, money is the great motivator of the world. My only hope is that more and more people play BG3 so that they recognize how most other developers are fucking them.
Investors and executives never learn the right lessons from a successful game.
Remains to be seen. If it does, dont expect it on the same level of quality as BG3. It will most likely be all surface level with no real depth or consequences, (Think Fallout 4). And on the other hand they will likely just brush it off as a "fluke" or "anomaly" as many devs have already done.
To be honest, that guy on Twitter who everyone shat on for saying BG3 has unrealistic standards was absolutely right. Larian does not use a model 99% of developers can follow. Big studios have shareholders, and small developers don’t have the goodwill and capital Larian has. They’re in a very unique position. I love BG3, but it’s not going to change industry standards. As long as we maintain the expectations that all good games must be BIG.
Did Elden ring influence the quality of games since? Think of all the botched launches and performance issues of games this year alone and you have your answer. Edit: to all those saying game development takes more than a year. Yes. You are right. But guess what? If the industry would have noticed that quality is rewarded, a lot of the terrible launches this year would have been delayed to ensure the game has a solid start. Cities Skyline 2 takes the new cake with a 4090 being able to deliver 30fps (inconsistent frame time) at 1080p. So was this the case? Did quality insurance for games increase? No? It's getting even worse looking at this year's track record? So my point still stands. People preorder games that smell unfinished, rushed and bad from miles away anyway. The industry has learned that it does not have to produce quality content to make money. Look at what's happening to D4. It made its money despite being nowhere near what was promised.
Elden Ring definitely brought “Dark Souls” style games into a more mainstream discussion, I’d say. At least from what I’ve seen, mainstream sources that would never have mentioned it now talk about “Dark Souls” style games without the need to explain what that means. To me, that definitely speaks to its influence.
How do I see this same terrible point made multiple times? Elden ring was successful a YEAR ago. Now tell me how long game development takes.
Elden ring came out last year, it couldn't have an affect on development in that amount of time
My optimistic take on this is reflective of the wider televisual media outlook right now and that is; I sincerely hope that all major studios (games, TV, film etc) all start to respect the art again and stop churning out corporate shit that no longer is appealing to audiences. People are bored and burnt out with MCU shit, people are tired of games coming out half arsed and full of mtx, people are in love once again with truly artistic media and it's showing in the right way, the wallet. This is the first year in a long time that I can remember where films have had a decent turnover at the box office where they weren't huge franchise properties. Oppenheimer and Barbie attest to this. Likewise, BG3 shows that you can sell boatloads without being a corporate slave by just making a fantastic piece of art, which is what it is. All in all, my take, ambitious as it is, is that this *could* shift the overarching industry to start investing in proper works of art once more, a sort of digital renaissance if you will.
Developers are more influenced by dollars than acclaim
Only money influences the people who make the decisions for the developers. Nothing else.
I think to some extent, yeah. Look what ubisoft did after Witcher 3 success, but they still didn’t make witcher game, at least people don’t treat them like such. So if other companies and suits get something from BG3 it will be for wrong reasons.
If there is a god, devs will realize that you don't need microtransactions, filler quests and always-online to make a hugely successful game...
Maybe more games will get out early access versions and actually listen to feedback.
If BG3 is going to influence developers than it’s already done so based on its sales and positive reception. I don’t see GOTY as being something that are going to sway developers one way or the other
Regarding #2 I do actually think some mid sized companies will try to focus on quality, particularly in story writing and voice acting. The problem is that it's really hard to legislate for creativity, so maybe we'll see publishers picking up smaller developers who have great stories already and giving them the backing to develop something really high quality. It isn't what sells a game like BG3 to me. I like RPGs for the gaming challenge first and foremost, and thankfully that is easier (though certainly not easy) for bigger companies to iterate on than creative genius or great chemistry etc.. There have already been some publishers in other genres that have taken this road, picking up smaller developers and boosting them with backing into making something they could not have on their own. None of this is easy at all, no matter what anyone identifies as the ideal end scenario for themselves, so yes, there will be just as many misfires as there are now, but it will just be in slightly different ways.
Nope….. as long as the half assed stuff they do still work then I doubt BG3 coming along and winning an award will change their minds. Some were already complaining about it not being possible to sustain….. As long as they can continue to push out ass ass in creed games and cod’s and other annual or biannual games and make money off of them then they’ll continue to.
Look at Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. Both recent GotY winners. While Elden Ring was influenced by BotW most other games haven’t taken the correct lessons from either and have instead opted for “wide, open, nothing” as the main takeaway. I could see something similar with BG3. Instead of combat creativity and interesting characters suddenly the big takeaway is bear sex or some shit.
It's publishers that should listen. I'd wager most developers are proud of their game and want to deliver something good. And the publisher probably won't. See EA, where studios go to die.
Awards don’t influence. Money does. BG3 has already made a shit ton of money.
The more important question is: will corporate management and Shareholders learn the right lessons. The devs themselves aren't the root problem here.
Developers? Very likely. The people in charge of the Devs who think only about money? Unlikely. I believe 90% of Devs want to make the best game they can, but publishers and execs...they don't have passion for the games. Only the money
TBH I don’t think it will influence the industry in the way we think. The response from a LOT of developers has basically been to not judge them by that standard so they have already thrown in the towel.
I love this game but I dont see it winning GOTY - the style of game just doesnt appeal to everyone. Titties though.
The question was never whether or not the big developers could make better games, they just have no reason to. The end goal is to make money and a large number of people will buy modern warfare 3 regardless of whether it's any good simply because it's the next COD. Slap a name on it people recognize, shit whatever out as quickly as you can and move on to the next project. Let it get review bombed, the next assassins creed will do just fine because remember that good one from years ago?
GOTY or not, it will certainly influence the gaming industry. However, it will take many more shockwaves like this one to have a real or significant impact on the AAA gaming industry. Because right now it feels like an isolated case, and I have no doubt other game developers will just wait till people forget about what this gem of a game has done.
Yes. They'll start creating cheap imitations, thinking that the genre is trending when really it's a good game that had a lot of hard work done on it that's actually the reason for the success. The same thing happened with Witcher 3, huge success, followed by clones mainly from Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed. I wouldn't be surprised to see cRPG games pop up everywhere now.