Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New Larian interview (PC Gamer, March 2022)

Bethesda seem to disagree (actually, them neglecting the trend of "games as movies" is the one thing I still give them credit for). New Vegas also sold a couple millions, and that game's only cinematics were a bunch of intro videos. I would also cite Arkane, but their last few games kinda tanked sadly, so....

Even with limited computing power and AI, there's still a dozen things I'd rather much see that money spend, in particular for RPGs. Even stuff such as open-ended quest design takes a whole lot of ressources and time (which is why smaller projects such as Pillars Of Eternity typically have only a few truly branching questlines, e.g. Raedric's hold in PoE 1 https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10231 ).

But this isn't my world, so there. This approach has clearly proven successful for others also, e.g. Bioware, CD Projekt et all who clearly see games as sort of movies themselves. In fact the one hope I have for BG3 is that it bridges the massive gap that's been opened up since, also in between audiences. It has the style of presentation of all those "blockbuster games" in that every tiny dialogue must be a movie sequence -- but unlike The Witcher 3, say, it doesn't blatantly play or witcher sense itself outside of the inevitable combat, still favoring player agency, imagination and even systems driven gameplay which far better suits a truly table-top gaming translation.