Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What games are you playing while waiting for BG3?/No Politics version.

Oh man, I have stray gods on my wishlist, I don't think I realized it was coming out this year. Yeah I'm definitely looking forward to that, if nothing else the music should be pretty good. Thanks for reminding me about it.

Yup. Same with me. Surely a ton of big games coming out this year, but none except for Starfield are of interest to me. I readily admit my gaming interests are very niche, and I'd much rather replay a game I like and have played several times already than play a new game that is 'so so' to me.

I would love to say that i am eagerly waiting for Starfield but Bethesda has shown very little, and their most recent work includes Fallout 76.

I’m actually very similar. Over the past few years I’ve played Red Dead Redemption 2’s story from start to finish 6 times, put well over 300 hours into Final Fantasy 7 Remake, at least double that into XCom 2. On the other hand, I’ve never even tried lots of the major, acclaimed games that come out, because I know my tastes and what kinds of experiences I’m looking for. I’d rather just replay something I know I love.

Not having gamer FOMO (or any FOMO, really) is nice.

Stray Gods looks like a telltale game, definitely not my thing. I get annoyed at the dialogue options because none of them ever fit what I really want to say and get pulled out of the game very quickly. And if all the game is is dialogue options, well, you get the point. I'd much rather watch a movie/read a book than play visual novels.

That said, it does look very nice and I can tell a lot of work went into it.

The way I tend to enjoy Telltale games and other games of that nature like The Witcher (or indeed BG3) is to accept that I'm not playing my own character, I'm just playing a version of a character predetermined by the story and devs, so my choices will be limited to what those characters are capable of. Still, they're not for everyone. I don't like most visual novels myself, and the only Telltale games I've played are Wolf Among Us and the Batman ones.

Wow, I spent the last 3 weeks going down an Elden Ring hole - I played the game for 600 hrs when it released through Ng+3 and I wanted to revisit after all the recent patches to see what had changed and to try out new builds.

I just can't love this game anymore than I already do. Maybe I sound like a fanatic but this is the best game I have ever played in my entire life. I've always felt that games should challenge you in ways that improve you as a person in some fundamental way and I feel like Elden Ring tests a person in every way that matters.*

It's also a work of Art in every sense of the word, and now it just recently won the Nebula Award for best game writing for 2022.

I have a fascination with what one of my Lit professors termed "Low Art" - that is Graphic Novels and Video games that transcend (or elevate) their medium to be considered a work of Art (capital A). There are a handful of games (and tons of graphic novels) that have achieved this and Elden Ring is 100% in that category.

So the game I am most excited about (besides BG3) is Shadow of the Erdtree - the announced DLC for Elden Ring.

I am curious what other people think in regards to games that have elevated themselves to the level of Art?

In my opinion individual games don't elevate themselves to being Art and really the idea of capital A art is an inherently elitist one. Games, graphic novels, comic books, etc are all art the same way paintings and music are art. The only question is if it's good art or bad art. Some art elevates itself to being something truly special, but games don't need to justify themselves as to whether they're art or not, in my opinion.

I am honestly not sure where I stand on “games as art” debate. I was very optimistic when indie movement flourished in 2010s, but I felt it quickly turned into trend chasing. In general I don’t think we live in environment favourable to art. Even so I feel we will need to wait quite some time (probably beyond our lifespans) to really see how any game will hold up. What is current big thing doesn’t necessarily stand a test of time.

I do think though, FromSoftware works have a decent chance of making it - they had a major impact, and a very distinctive voice and identity. Though I do think Dark Souls is the one to focus on. Elden Ring is definitely great (and the newest, biggest, hottest one out) but really it is great mostly because Dark Souls was phenomenal. It might have had the widest reach, but it doesn’t meant it will be recognised as the best one in the future Especially storytelling feels like retreading a lot of what FromSoft did before. I don’t mean it as a accusation against Elden Ring. Narrative should work together with gameplay, and as Elden Rings gameplay is more or less the same as Dark Souls it also follows the same patterns and themes. I don’t know, it might be “better” than Dark Souls but for me some magic is lost when do the same thing for the 4th or 5th time.

At the same time I am not trying to claim that Dark Souls IS better than Elden Ring. I remember it having cohesion and intent that later games felt lacking, but I also didn’t replay DS for a long time. It might be just me getting accustomed to the formula.

Capital A Art is the attempted creative expression of an idea, principle, emotion, value or something else transcendental to human experience.

Low art is first and foremost a product. Both can be commercialized, and both can be either good or bad, but the latter is primarily a good to be sold.

Not the same at all.

I don’t know if I’d place any games as Art. Definitely not Elden Ring. Maybe Shadow of the Colossus, but I’m not even confident in that.

déjà vu? I feel like we recently had a "what consitutes art" discussion on the forum.

Games are art, top to bottom, they might not be good art but they're still art.

I feel like I've witnessed some variations of this argument for the last 40 years... And it completely failed to grab my interest for at least the last 15 or so.

I'm playing Divinity Original Sin EE / 2 because i'm training with turned base mode (generally i prefer RTWP... like Poe and Poe II).

You know I was going to say that the Nebula award was an acknowledgement of Elden Ring being considered Art but then I saw a lot of the past winners were just some BS novels that were written by pseudo-game companies just to qualify for the award. I think only God of War, Stray and Elden Ring were actual games. So that is a credibility issue there.

However, for the game Planescape: Torment the NYT wrote an article about how it considered the game literature - so that could be considered elevation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/27/...verse-where-ideas-can-trump-actions.html


I still think that Elden Ring is the best game I have played in my entire life, but that is just my opinion and not everyone feels that way. It is at least objectively - culturally important as a game though.

Just started up a new EA BG3 run... i been looking at the alternatives, and eveything ells beside BG just feels so bland... and im realy enjoying this re run, its been a few months, and good time to just go slow and enjoy the ride...

As much as I absolutely love Planescape, I’m still not sure if I’d call it Art. Probably depends on my mood during any given day.

If I take something like Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, van Gogh’s Starry Night, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, or, to cite something more recent, Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave, I have difficulty reconciling these as fulfilling the same criteria and objectives as any of my favorite games, with again, the possible exception of SotC.

And there is nothing wrong with “low-art” or pop art or any of that. As silly as it is, Cloud Strife means just as much to me as a fictional character can. Even so, I do differentiate between him and Meursault (the main character from Albert Camus’s L'Étranger).

And now that I’m done alienating myself with stuffy pretense, I’m gonna go run around as Link and see if I can launch a Korok into space. Cheers.

As someone who doesn't play any games on console and cannot handle realtime action combat very well (combat in Witcher 3 was very difficult and frustrating for me, for example), I never even considered Elden Ring as a game I might want to try. Could you please give me some of your thoughts on what is so great about it? I'm truly curious.

It builds up on the basic systems defined during the Dark Souls trilogy, which was already up there as one of the best action combats available on the market.

On top of that, both the trilogy and its "derivative" Elden Ring deliver great mood and atmosphere, an intriguing (if cryptic) narrative and one of the best cases of "sense of wonder/adventure" exploring everything they have to offer.

Of course, if someone absolutely hates the entire genre they are part of and has something like malfunctioning wrists, making him physically unable to play any action game, there may be no redemption arc at the end of the story.

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Back to the topic, I spent the last month playing a freaking lot of Age of Wonders 4, then diving into Tears of the Kingdom (which is indeed good and with some great moment, but not something I'm so crazily in love with, like the rest of the world seems to be) and for good measure I also had a quick re-run with Metroid Dread, which weirdly enough I wasn't the biggest fan of, at first, but I seem to like a bit more every time I go back to it.

Last two played on PC with an emulator, because fuck dealing with the Switch hardware limitations, honestly.

Well, a game that delivers mood and atmosphere, and a great story and narrative, is certainly my thing. But when it comes to the combat in action games, I guess I'm not coordinated enough to where I can actually hit my targets worth a damn. I just end up mashing the mouse button, and even if I "win" it is at the cost of serious damage to my character.

Dark Souls games and their successors are very demanding on your attention. The fundamental gameplay involves memorizing enemy telegraphs and then practicing your responses until they’re set in your muscle memory. Until you do, the game punishes you quite thoroughly. Elden Ring less so than the others, but if this ain’t your particular bag of tea then it likely going to be unpleasantly scalding.

I also wouldn’t call the game’s story great. Or even good. As a long time Armored Core player, I’m well acquainted with FromSoftware’s style of developing a lot of background lore and then never directly sharing any of it with the player, leaving it up to them to investigate and infer what is going on. But at least in AC, I knew who I was and what I was doing. I’m a mercenary giant robot combat pilot working for warring corporations in a post apocalyptic hellscape. Easy to grasp.

Elden Ring just tells you that you are Tarnished and want to become an Elden Lord? To which I reply: I’m
a what? I want to do what now? Why? If the gameplay is something you enjoy, the mystery of it all and the truly fantastic art direction are probably enough to drive you forward, but I personally need a more digestible premise to get emotionally involved in such an opaque narrative.