I feel like the way Larian does EA is drastically different from the way most other devs do it. Most EAs don’t lock everyone into a carefully curated tutorial/beginning level test build with few changes for the entire EA period while developing literally everything else on a separate build. Most other EAs in comparison occasionally release content that eventually spans half the game or beyond that, so that the EA is generally more indicative of the final product.
The major disadvantage of Larian’s style is that it makes major changes extremely difficult to justify spending resources to implement, because now you have to test it across two or more separate and completely different game builds. All for the sake of being secretive to a questionable level of practical value.
Implementing stuff like proper reactions in the EA build is one thing. It’s another thing to import that into all the other secret builds encompassing the 70% or so of content kept under wraps until full release. To develop and hold an EA in this style gives off the impression that their ideas were already set in stone from the beginning, and they basically have to blast a mountain and clean up the resulting rockslide if they have to change course on anything systems related.
On another hand, this is meant to send a message that Larian doesn’t want us to trust that the EA will be any indicative of the final game, which makes sense. But the more cynical will point out that this specific execution of it combined with the utter vagueness in communication may also be interpreted as Larian not wanting to take responsibility for anything questionable and hide behind a constantly guessing community that doesn’t know any better, until said questionable decisions turn out to remain in the final game. Like DOS2’s armor system.
After a certain point, it almost looks like the EA is less about gathering feedback, and more about generating hype with a carefully curated press and a playerbase engaging in social media advertisement without realizing it. Each update of BG3 is a big show. Each update in Solasta and WotR were just business as usual with actual rationale behind what they’re doing in comparison.
It would definitely be accurate to say that most people would be justified in any thoughts about the potential final direction of the game depending on what the patch adds. And I still have some hope because all that silence has to amount to something, right?
