Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Playing BG3 should feel like reading an epic fantasy novel

I have read most of his books, albeit, a very long time ago. I did not think they were very well written and felt exceptionally gamified, having a very strong "I cast fireball" feeling to them. The same goes for most of the books set in the Forgotten Realms (FR).

I am not sure what you are trying to prove here. Firstly, that is a subjective list which doesn't even give its criteria for which it decided what counts as best. Secondly, fantasy is not defined by the FR, in terms of fantasy writing, the FR has barely any influence. Terry Pratchett has sold 85m books, other authors like CS Lewis, Suzanne Colins, etc have also sold a ton. D&D is a hugely influential tabletop game, but it is - not - something which is hugely influential in terms of the fantasy genre as a whole and it is especially not particularly influential when it comes to writing. People do not buy into the FR for the writing, its not the selling point of the FR and that is ok. People buy into the FR for a fun collaborative experience which can be had at a table over a couple of drinks.


As I have said before, I don't actually care for the writing in the FR at all, compared to other fantasy writing it is just not very good. It doesn't have the depth of characterization of authors like Robin Hobb, or the world building of Sanderson/Robert Jordan. When I am talking about fantasy writing, I am not talking about just the FR, because the FR does not define fantasy as a whole, it is just a small (and quite frankly, not very important) part of it. Trying to define fantasy by only using the FR is setting the bar for writing so low that even an earthworm could crawl over it, because even if you ignore the books written in it, the setting itself just doesn't make much sense and isn't built well at all.

In terms of narrative realism, the setting has so many flaws, for example, pretty much every nation should be ruled over by some form of magical organization, whether they are wizards, warlocks, priests or druids. Tyranny should be the natural state of order, because in a setting with dramatically different levels of power, this is the logical consequence. Furthermore, there are other damn well gaping issues, like how society has been more or less in a technological stasis for 1000's of years. I could go on and on about the (quite frankly) glaring problems the FR has as a setting, but you get the point.


I am not sure what Harry Potter has got to do with anything.

The OP of this thread said, "the game should feel like a book." I pointed out that there are books which have a similar feel to the DOS games in terms of brevity. I also pointed out that, its probably not a good thing for a game to, "feel like a book" in the first place. Games are an interactive medium, an excellent game is a game that leans into this and takes advantage of the fact that there is some back and forth between the player and isn't just a one way channel where the player reads what is told to them. A bad example of a game, "reading like a book," is the pillars of eternity games, where there was plenty of verbose dialogue used to give character descriptions which you could completely cut out and replaced with a picture of the character next to the dialogue box which would convey the same information and cut down the dialogue by, I would guess, about 70%. Things like character emotions could also be shown through animated characters and actions, rather than through text and this is better taking advantage of the medium as a whole. Gameplay mechanics that mesh and integrate well into the story are also an example of a game taking advantage of its medium, its too bad not many games do things like this though.