Story and characters are secondary to gameplay and mechanics. It's a videogame, not a novel (or even a movie).
That being said, I don't think Larian are the best story tellers.
Now I understand why I nearly always disagree with you^^
I'm not looking for an explosive gameplay with special effetcs everywhere, fire and blood, jumping characters and shove etc... when I'm playing a BG game.
I am looking for a story to follow but also to write... A story that feels like the stories in the books that took place in the FR.
Not saying gameplay isn't important but you'll never find so many surfaces effetcs and jump and arcady fast travel and rest and...... in a consistent story.
Larian's gameplay is great and they already created a good game with it.
I hope they'll change their mind a little bit more about BG3 to improve the consistency and the immersion of their stories. Combats should also be a part of the story instead of being only gameplay elements.
A videogame is a vastly inferior medium for storytelling. No videogame I have ever played even sniffed at the story of a decent novel. Tell me what you think is the best story ever told through a videogame that you think is the equal of Lord of the Rings (or any highly regarded novel/series).
Well, this is certainly subjective.
Context: I read LotR about 20 times, including The Hobbit. The full set is currently on my headboard, in case I decide to pick it up again.
With that out of the way, I found the story in BG/BG 2 extremely compelling. The overarching theme of the Dragon Age series is also very compelling, to the point where I am, in fact, looking forward to the next installment. Mass Effect was a very compelling story, given some snafu at the end. Are they going to be literary classics? In some circles, Baldur's Gate already is considered such. Dragon Age is hit and miss, and other than the ending, people are feeling the same way about Mass Effect, to the point where the next planned release, a remaster of the original trilogy, is all the buzz. Gameplay is significantly different in all three ME games, and yet, it's still extremely popular. What is it, then, that made it popular? The story, and the characters.
When BioWare is hitting on all cylinders, they can tell a story. KotoR is still being praised, despite the clunky, now, gameplay and graphics. The mistake you make, in so far as I can tell, is assuming that a game doesn't have at least a novella of content behind it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was working on a story based module for NWN, and in laying out the backstory for the region, and the plot, I ended up with something that would have required very little editing to turn into a decent novel. It would have been a lot of work, but the basic format was already there. Despite what you seem to think, it's not just plotting map points between encounters. While there are lots of people that look at every video game they play with a "HULK SMASH" attitude, there are others that take the time to investigate the characters they're teamed up with, or just meet, in the world in question, and the good games have stories for them that make them compelling, or make us hate them, or divide a community, Alistair in DA O comes to mind; some people flat out loved him, and others, myself included, despised him as a person. My perspective on that was I hated him as a person, but loved him as a character, because he could get that animosity from me.
I don't go back to games thinking "I miss that fight". I go back to games because "I miss those characters", or "that character" sometimes. Or, because I want to relive a story, maybe in a different way than the last time. I reread books for the same reason. So that narrative perspective is there, no matter the medium the story is told in. A good story is a good story, and it doesn't have to be in a book to be a good story, and even being in a book doesn't guarantee a good story, I'm sure we've all read some questionable novels, or tried to. So no, a video game is not a vastly inferior medium for story telling. It's no worse than novels, or movies, to accomplish the goal. They, like any other medium, can be bad, but it's not the medium that's at fault for that, because there are some really good games out there, and that's not based on mechanics alone.
