How in the world could anyone consider RDD2 less narrative than BG3? Have you even played RDD2? Or any Rockstar game for that matter?
Having a lot of narrative is not the same as being narrative-focused. Rockstar games such as GTA & RDR are generally focused on the experience of "being in the world", and the story is a vehicle for experiencing what that world has to offer. Contrast this with The Witcher 3, where the world is mainly a vehicle for experiencing the story being told about Geralt
Wait WHAT?? Cosmetic?! In BG2 ?!! My god so many people are ignorant regarding the previous BG games. Why in hell do you thing its one of the greatest games ever??!!
In BG2 day/night cycles where FAR from cosmetic. Some quests/events could only be started during the night! Some creatures changed during the night! Some vendors/NPCs also only appeared during the night. One quick example, THE GRAVEYARD DISTRICT. Also Vampires would show up etc etc...
If that's what you'd describe as "meaningful" then I would argue you're rather easily impressed.
A game I've played with a day/night cycle that mattered was Dying Light. The day/night cycle wasn't about having to wait for an NPC to spawn or for a shop door to unlock. The day/night cycle was something you had to constantly keep in mind and the change from day to night fundamentally changed the gameplay (basically, you would try to do everything you needed to do in the limited amount of daylight because it gets really dangerous at night).
Metal Gear Solid 5 also almost had an interesting day/night cycle, but in that game the daytime just made it a lot harder to do any stealth stuff. It was okay for a bit of extra challenge, I guess.
Anyway, I just want to also point out that it's not enough for the day/night system to matter. It also needs to be actually making the game better.
Man this forum... Did NO ONE even bothered to play and finish BG2 before testing BG3 EA?! (including Larian employees...).
Day/night cycles including PASSAGE OF TIME should of been on the devs to do list from day one. But I guess multi-million dollar cinematic dialogues and sex scenes is a lot more important to <rpg gamers> now.
Why shouldn't they be?
I can understand your struggle if you are a JRPG fan. But cosmetic or not, it adds to immersion and is pretty standard for virtually any CRPG. It is no surprise that many non-rpg games (and JRPGs) have nowadays. The way it is now, there are no night quests and it seems ridiculous that a D&D campaign will have minimal night quests.
My gosh. The gatekeeping in this thread. lol.
I don't care if Baldur's Gate 3 meets anyone's arbitrary definition of what an RPG is allowed to be. I'm just here for a good time with a fun game. Call it whatever you want.
I assume there could be an issue in that by insisting on using costly cinematics for pretty much every interaction (whether every interaction needs such cinematics is for another discussion), it makes implementing a day/night cycle very difficult because they need to be relit for evening scenes. I can only assume that is resource heavy.
I think you're misunderstanding the problem here. The problem isn't relighting the scene. That's easy. Most of the time the natural lighting that's already built into the game should be sufficient. If you need specific mood lighting though then you just make sure the event occurs at a specific time of day -- usually by forcing the PC to wait around for 10 hours or whatever. (You can have a daytime 8 hour nap or something.)
Waiting is very immersive!
Anyway, the hard part is when you try to take on grysqrl's suggestions:
I want a day/night cycle as part of a system that coherently represents the passage of time.
Right now, it becomes night whenever you feel like taking a long rest, which could be two minutes or 50 hours after you've woken up. You are able to sleep away the majority of the day or stay awake for days on end with no repercussions. There's no verisimilitude there. It would be nice if resting made some sense - "as much as you want, whenever you want" is lazy design and boring (not to mention unbalancing).
I just want to point out how silly this comment is. A day/night cycle of what -- two hours would be immersive? I don't know how long the days are where
you live, but here sunlight lasts 12 hours on average. If you're able to play BG3 for over 12 hours straight without any long rests then congratulations.
If you're unhappy about being able to skip time... I mean... If you want to watch your party sleep for 8 hours straight, I guess we could ask Larian to implement that feature.
Right now, the world freezes when you aren't looking at it. Let's have those goblins find the grove on their own some number of days after you first arrive. If you don't move fast enough, you're either too late to win favor with Minthara or you aren't in a position to help defend. If you prioritize rescuing Halsin, you can be better prepared to defend the grove (or assassinate the goblin leaders), but it means you're not focusing on finding the gith for Lae'zel and maybe they're gone (or reinforced?) by the time you get to the bridge. Maybe that chest needs to get to the Zhent hideout in three days or the buyer will have moved on.
So you want timed quests. Or rather, you want most of everything to be timed?
I'll pass on that one.
And night vs. day doesn't have to be a cosmetic thing at all. How about having the behavior of NPCs and other creatures change over the course of the day? Want to rob a shop? Go for the brash smash 'n grab in full daylight or try to sneak your way in when people go to sleep at night. Looking for a trophy from some rare animal? Fight it when it's alert and hunting at night or try to sneak into its lair while it sleeps through the day. Ambush the goblins late at night, when most of them have passed out from drinking, but knowing that your humans without darkvision won't be able to see as well.
So yeah. It's not enough for Larian to simply design a goblin encounter, they have to set up multiple versions of the encounter (you've identified 2 versions). At what time of the day are they having their drinking party? How do these scenes all transition? What if you walk in while they're in the middle of the party? What about breakfast?
To say that this is a lot of added work is an understatement.
