BG3 is certainly trying to be a CRPG in the big RPG box. Whether Larian will succeed or not remains to be seen, but the high sales in Early Access is quite promising.
This is it exactly. But where you see promise, I don't.
I don't see BG3 putting up numbers anywhere near TW3 or Skyrim or CP2077. Even matching DA:I numbers (about 10 million), which are on the low end of RPG sales, will be tough. I only see BG3 being the big (biggest?) fish in the small cRPG pond, and not a big (like TW3/Skyrim/CP2077) fish in the big RPG pond.
Being even the biggest fish in the small cRPG pond does not at all impress me the way being a big fish in the big RPG pond impresses me. Even an RPG like Skyrim, which I personally do not like, still impresses the heck out of me as video games go. And CP2077? The projections are for 21 million in sales in just its first month!! Now *that* is impressive (if it pans out). I used to be an exclusively small cRPG pond fan myself for a long time. But then, a couple of years ago, in the face of a dearth of good small cRPG pond games to play, I very reluctantly decided to give TW3 a try. Best gaming decision I ever made. TW3 is a fantastic RPG. So now I find myself firmly in the big RPG pond because I do not in the future want to miss out on a fantastic game like TW3 by limiting myself to the small cRPG pond anymore.
Yeah, there is virtually no way that BG3 moves anywhere close to Skyrim of Witcher 3 numbers. But, most CRPGs measure their sales in the hundreds of thousands, so if BG3 sells a few million copies, which is quite probably, especially with PS5/XboxSX releases somewhere down the lime, I would say that they have stepped at least one foot out of the small CRPG pond.
Anyway, I’ve lost track of what the point of this conversation was. đŸ˜‚
Originally Posted by Sozz
I think where Assassin's Creed is concerned, and games like it, there's a interesting debate to be made on when a game stops merely having RPG elements (i.e. stats) and starts becoming an RPG, I don't know the answer myself but I'm disinclined to include Assassin's Creed in there yet.
As for what is and isn't mainstream, I consider something mainstream when even third-parties have a frame of reference where it's involved. Everyone can recognize a reference to Star Wars, or when it's tropes are being used or parodied, whether or not they've seen the movies but when THAC0 or Armor Class is used in a joke in a show like Futurama, at the time it was a inside joke to nerd-culture, now I'm not so sure, I think it's still borderline. But who am I?
It’s also interesting because RPGs are to video games sort of what like metal is to music, in so far as that you have these singular origin points which spawned countless idiosyncratic sub-genres that are each so diverse that they seem to have nothing to do with each other, despite being interactions of a common theme. And then just like you can say AC/DC is not a metal band, but a hard rock band with some metal sensibilities, Assassin’s Creed is an action adventure with some RPG elements.
Anyway, I just included that one on the list because it’s a great example of how mainstream RPGs have become that Ubisoft decided to include a lot of RPG elements in their flagship series.
