Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General More BG3 praise, this time from Timothy Cain

Timothy Cain is a relatively famous developer, who was for example involved in Fallout, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, Pillars of Eternity, and The Outer Worlds.

He recently also became a Youtuber, where he talks about game programming and development, and he just made a video about the five most influental roleplaying games of the 21th century:



The list is:


I find this list quite interesting.

I have played VtMB and BG3 and both games are very much at the top of my favorite games of all times list.

I dont really see myself ever playing any of these other games though, for various reasons.

"different characters get wildly different stories"
Lol? Every RPG with a at least basic evil path does that better than BG3. WotR has its mythic paths, some which have a bigger impact on the story, Fallout 4 had different factions you had to join and Witcher 2 changed its entire 2nd act based on your choice in act 1.


Seems he was grasping straws to say something positive about BG3 as he had to include it because of the hype.

Sadly after watching the video I am left feeling like your right. Saying a plus for character customization when it is very limited compared to MANY other RPGs just feels like he is pandering to an audience.

Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas are games I often go back to. BG3 is still a bit too new to say for sure whether I'll still be interested in it in 2, 5, 10 years. But it should be said a big reason for the longevity of Bethesda titles (I know NV isn't really Bethesda besides the engine) is modding - people are always coming up with something to make them a new experience (for example I've recently replayed Fallout 4 with the Sim Settlements 2 mod and its quite fun, if crash prone).

Same reason why I keep replaying VtMB actually. Wesp5 has always made the game a bit better, a bit different.

Compared to the experience it was at release, the current fanpatched VtMB is just far, far, far better.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines is for me still the best crpg out there - story and characters are unmatched imo. Yes, teh game was flawed, but thanks to an active modding community, it has gooten a big patch, that is still ongoing.

Because that's not what TC has said.

All of this is true. Especially systemic interactivity it beyond anything that we have seen in an RPG before.

As Tim stated at the beginning of the video, those are not necessarily his favourate RPGs (he made that lists, containing older titles that were dear to him), but ones worth paying attention, and learning from. Each of the titles excel in different aspects. I wish he would talk more about BG3 and what he liked about it. As a programmer and designer, he might have spotted and appreciated things that I underappreciated in my playthroughs.

Its not though.
Arcanum had way more reactivity than BG3 in general. And in Witcher 1 your choices in Act 1 modified quests in Act 4.
In Fallout 2 low intelligence characters had their own dialogue with often different effects. Same goes for the vampire clan with mental issues in Bloodlines. And there choosing the monsterous looking clan also lead to having to play quite differently than other characters.

And that is before you consider that reactivity takes a nosedive in Act 3 and that most reactivity in BG3 is just replacing a skill check in a dialogue with 1 race/class based sentence before the generic dialogue resumes. But your choices at character creation does not affect the general gameplay at all. You do not have to (or can) play a drow different from a human because especially in act 3 it does not matter. The same way it doesn't matter if you are a local or an extraplanar invader.

So whats praiseworthy on BG3 here? That you can make choices at all?

I am not sure what you mean by systemic interactivity, but I've found reactivity in BG3 to be hit & miss, and sometimes very shallow. My Tav was a githyanki, and they are an example of this. You get a lot of [gith] options in dialogue, some very funny, but at the same time the githyanki quest doesn't really acknowledge you as one. This is because it was written with Lae'zel as the protagonist in mind. NPCs like Voss address Lae'zel as one of theirs, while my gith Tav was practically a third wheel in these conversations. Even though there was no story reason for Voss (or Orpheus) to ignore a githyanki character who was the actual party leader.

On a side note, by the time you arrive in the city, no one reacts to a githyanki anymore, so even that reactivity is limited to act one mostly.

Arcanum is a 24 y/o game.
VtM:B is a 20 y/o game.
Witcher 1 is a 17 y/o game.
Fallout 2 a 26 y/o game.
Game of that age didn't have the same scope as modern productions. In a modern AAA game, you can't just add a basic text answer, a low poly model with generic animations and call it a day. You need good voice acting, good mocap and good 3D models. Recent games have shied away from choice because costs have exponentially ballooned with production value. For a game company, committing to a feature that only a part of the player base will experience is basically losing tons of time and money for a small pay off. What is praiseworthy in BG3 is that it bring the old standard to the modern age, allowing a whole new generation of players to enjoy it.
Do CRPG need a big production value to begin with? No, but they definitely need it if you want more than a small niche to play your game in the year 2024.

This isn't an AAA game though. Larian are an independent studio, and the budget, while high, is nowhere near the AAA levels.

And for all the "production value" you can still count edges on your characters' shoulders and have extremely janky animations that weren't adapted for different bodies (the hip sway in the Us introduction scene was there from day 1!), and the game's character creator is downright pathetic in terms of options.

If the games needed to be all cinematic and graphically top-notch to be popular, than things like Dwarf Fortress, Risk of Rain, Terraria, etc. (not to mention perhaps the most obvious example ever) wouldn't have a gigantic fanbase. Hell, look at Undertale, even if I, personally, loathe that thing.

To justify the game's shortcomings as a result of its HIGHER budget/scope and LACK of publisher meaning lack of time constraints is counter-intuitive.

Doesn't change that BG3 is still far behind when it comes to reactivity and customization (which has an actual effect on the game) as many other RPGs.

As for choice, in Witcher 2 the entire 2nd act was different based in your choice. WotR had many mutually exclusive mythic paths with sometimes very different story developments. RT has 3 different alignments/paths to follow

BG3 lacks even that. It doesn't even have a real evil playthrough. Instead its just a good playthrough with less quests.

So? The purpose of his video was to show off 5 (or 8) 21st Century games that he thinks all new RPG designers should look at and learn from what they do best.
Given that Arcanum (and maybe some other RPGs) does race, class and skill reactivity better than BG3 plus how Solasta is also a better D&D rendition kinda makes his inclusion of BG3 abit questionable.

Although, the entire list does seem like his list of popular/well known games he's played over the years, but he's a busy man who says he's not well versed with indies and it's his list, so ¯\_(?)_/¯.


And what would these "old standards" be exactly?


Eh, it's pretty much is in the bracket for AAA, even if at the low end (Plus 450 people working on the game too); Witcher 3 was made with $81 million and it's considered AAA.

What you are talking is narrative reactivity/branching paths. That's what Tim talked about when discussing New Vegas, and yes, I don't think BG3 is particularly great in it. Witchers offer little player agency - you follow a pre-designed quest and choose option A or B in branching dialogue. THIS IS NOT A CRITICISM! W's are very well written, and narrative reactivity is well done, but those are not games that give players agency over their actions or choices. Arcanum would be probably my Yes, Arcanum pick as 2nd closest, and I do think it is interactivity and reactivity to be more effective game overall, but Larian's games ARE more interactive and offer more player agency than competition. I can't think of a game where you could use your clothing as weapon, or modify enviroment, burn webs from underneath the spider, stealing key items during cinematics, creating shortcut by stacking boxes on top of each other etc. etc. I am not BG3 defender here - but as far as options available to player at any given time, it is very impressive. Whenever the game can handle this amount of choice, when it comes to balance or narrative is another matter entirely.

You CAN come up with variety of characters, and you have tools to play as those characters, and game to go on pretty much no matter what you do. I think narrative side has problems, and combat is unbalanced to the point of not being fun for me, but it doesn't mean the game doesn't have some stong points.

We were talking about reactivity. I am seriously at a loss when trying to find a AAA game with ANY reactivity in the past 10 years. The Witcher 3 has a tiny bit of it. Can Kingdom Comes be considered a AAA game?

No, we're talking about the video about games to learn from and how in the 'reactivity' column, there are better examples to pick from. That you have narrowed the subject down to AAA games from 10 years kind of shows the weaknesses of this approach.

Well, if were only talking about AAA RPGs, then yes, there is more reactivity to race and such then those.
IIRC, DAI had some reactions to your race and Starfield has a bit too for skills/backgrounds.

But also considering indies and older titles, which he himself includes with Vampire Survivors and HL2 (and neither of these are "Modern" productions), can usually be better for learning from, given they have to be more creative/innovative to make up the difference vs AAA, who run by what works.

And so for these indie games, like the POE series and DOS2, the "old standard" never went away, they just never got widespread appeal and given that BG3 is probably the highest sold CRPG ever, I think it's more accurate to say that BG3 just showed a ton of people "standards" that have been around for the last decade, if not since the 1990s.

However, most of those games mentioned, BG3 included, while the reactivity makes the game more immersive, it doesn't really change how your story/game plays out (Which goes against why he chose BG3). Your not locked out of any content and no skill check/pathway requires a specific race/class; You might get a bonus to the roll or outright skip it, but thats about it.

The only game(s) (that I know of) where your race (and sometimes Gender) can actually affect your character's story by locking you out of certain factions/areas or opening up others, is in Kenshi.
(Tho, I guess DOS2s' Undead race (Assuming you go helmet-less) counts as well and I believe Arcanum does this with other elements of your character, but I admittedly havn't played it)

I'd include Wrath of the Righteous tbh. It's Pathfinder 1e, so it has DnD 3.5's extensive background/traits/subtype etc that would be beyond tedious to react to, so they shoved it into the Mythic Path system. Which can change story beats rather drastically and player choices effect those by locking you out of the Path entirely, cutting your current Path short or opening up others. It's not freeform 'I'm an elf so get to do elf things' but I'd say it definitely upholds the spirit of it if not the letter.

Man this thread got silly quickly.

BG3 didnt just do story variability, it also did all kinds of other stuff. It looks great, it has a decent enough story, it has tons of sidequests, it has tons of hidden secrets, it has tons of great characters and side characters.

And if some quarter century old game did it "even better" then so what. Doesnt mean BG3 did it poorly or that the other game is near as good overall or actually a success. Which to my knowledge it wasnt.

And Taylor Swift is the greatest musician of all time.