Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Could BG3'S ambition kill the RPG as we know it

Judging from Act 2 alone, BG3 gives you a lot of freedom to approach stuff and have consequences. I would love it, If that kind of storytelling would be more wide spread. I don't necessarily expect all the cinematics and stuff, but the freedom of choice and having the story unfold differntly is just nice.

I also love FromSoft are direction and lore. It’s a shame Dark Souls ain’t my cup of tea. But a sometimes brutally challenging turn based tactical rpg by them would probably be amazing.

If anybody could turn Japanese style SRPGs main stream it would probably be them.

Its fantastic to finally have a developer at the height of their powers with the financial means & technical ability to do this. D&D is massive & that ability to present so much choice in a universe where players are generally only limited by the scope of their imagination & the odd ruleset is next to impossible to implement. I dont think this will set a new standard I think this game will stand apart from all others in relation to D&D in a video game form, heck if the games as good as I believe it will be I wont need anyone else to try to eclipse this for another 20 years ....Im hoping Wizards of the coast & Larian are tied into ongoing contractual agreement for Larian to back up with more content and I'll be happy for years to come.

I want Larian to make a game in the Planescape setting. That would be wild.

Perhaps I'm just not reading it correctly, but while I think the basic point that other (smaller) RPG developers shouldn't try to make BG3 on a tighter budget is right, I don't think it's all that interesting. I don't think studios like Owlcat or Tactical Adventures, or even Obsidian (though they might get some more Microsoft money if BG3 does well) are going to make that mistake. And I think there will continue to be a demand for more independent RPGs and gamers will set their expectation for such games appropriately.

The studio I most hope will be re-evaluating their life choices should BG3 turn out to be the success is BioWare, for whom I think BG3 gives a kind of alternative vision that shows you don't need to abandon interesting and complex party-based combat and a high degree of customisation of your player character just in order to make enough money to tell an immersive story with high quality animation and voice acting. Of course, I take people's points that BioWare's position in the EA stable is restrictive, and both they and EA would also understandably concerned that there's a unique combination of factors that mean that even a BG3-clone couldn't be pulled off by someone else, but I hope they're at least considering whether they might have some lessons to learn from Larian.

The problem with that is that BioWare of today is not even remotely what it was back then or even they created Dragon Age: Origins.

Seriously? If proper work, community involvement, listening to feedback and good quality on the part of Larian are a threat to other studios, then the problem lies with those very studios.
BG3 took a long time to develop (is that even long? I'm not good at estimating that in game development), but from everything I've seen for myself so far, it's been worth it.
If other studios just want to make a quick buck but not deliver a good product, they eventually deserve to go broke.

It's a shame. I remember playing Dragon Age: Origins and thinking it would drastically change the way video games approach RPGs in regards to backgrounds for player characters. Then no one ever followed up on it.

Lmao, is this Obsidian coping and seething again?

Larian started doing their part of the "CRPG renaissance" by Original Sin 1, a game with almost no voice acting, a barebones story and limited graphics.
It came out at a time when the successors of "mainstream CRPGs" brought out Dragon Age Inquisition. A game with full voice acting, tripple A graphics for its time, renowed voice actors and a big name studio behind it.
That game crashed and burned while Original Sin 1 set the stage for 2 and now brought Larian into a simmilar ballpark as Dragon Age Inquistion was.

Saying Baldurs Gate 3 sets the expectations for RPGs too high is RIDICULOUS.
You start small, make a smaller game. Games like Solasta exist, of course they wont sell as well as Baldurs Gate 3, but theyll sell enaugh to warrant a sequal wehre you can expand the scope. Exactly like Larian did.
Not all games need to be blockbusters. At this point they are bareley in competition with one another, cheaper games get picked up too becuase they arent as big as an investment.

This is all a weird ass cope for other games doing badly (becuase they are bad)

I doubt it. I think this will set the bar, certainly.

So did Baldur's Gate.
So did Baldur's Gate 2
So did Knight of the Old Republic
So did Dragon Age Origins.
So did Skyrim
So did Witcher 3

And so will Baldur's Gate 3.

I just hope people wont be shitting all over Rogue Trader because it doesn't have as much fanfare and budget as BG3 does.

Its a non shovelware 40k game, itll do fine

I surely won't, technically I own it already xD
Only problem that's very likely? Bugs. Tons and tons of bugs, because Owlcat doesn't seem to care much about those for release.

I mean, I played their first Pathfinder Game and had to abort until a few months later. WotR was fine, though still very buggy - but at least it was playable for me.
Time will tell how Rogue Trader will be.

It's not a BG3. That was clear from the beginning though, so I have lower expectations and will be perfectly fine if THOSE are met.

From what I saw I think RT will be a great game. WOTR already to me is extremely good and the stuff Owlcat in the end managed to do on their budget and this being their SECOND game I think they did something very special. Will there be bugs? Yes. Obviously. But will there be some fantastic things? I really think so. I just hope people wont overlook those great things just because the game is not as technically impressive as BG3.

I'm honestly looking forward to RT more than BG3. I certainly expect to enjoy it more, though not as much as I've enjoyed WOTR.

For me, the bar that was set is the involvement of the community, the customers of a companies product instead of listening to some finance guys, which Larian did. As well as the reaction to feedback.

When Owlcat does this, I don't care about technical finesse that much. I want to good game, that's all. And I'm far from the only one that thinks so, I'm sure of that.

Agree! Larian did such an amazing job with BG3! I would love if it would inspire other AAA studios to make great narrative-focused rpgs like this!

Hopefully it helps kill the modern RPG as we know it and sets a much higher bar. What I mean by that is not even with visuals, graphics, cinematics, etc. But with gameplay systems, story and expectations in choice/consequence.

Not every game has to be a sprawling 200+ hour epic. But if you have an AAA budget and a big team, then you should be able to at least make your game have some depth. I'm not sure anyone is expecting AA titles or indy titles to be anything like BG3.

I also hope it assists in showing that not every RPG needs to be a massive open world. While I like open world games, I find the marketing of some of the new ones (See: Starfield having 234970917104601634 planets in which like 99% of the surface area on them will be mostly devoid of meaningful content) to be a bit ridiculous. Giant maps full of shallow content sucks. Being able to "go anywhere and do anything" when everything you can do is mediocre content sucks. I'd rather have smaller map sizes with more significance to them or something a little more linear like Larian presents than the massive, but mostly empty world approach.

Well ...
If "as we know it" means that we are promised during marketing that our choices will matter, and there will be tons and tons possible outcomes, and that we will get several options to reach our goal, and that it will be important who our character is.

And in the end what we get is game, where our character is shoved into generic railroaded story (looking at you Dragon Age: Origins), our choices will be negated in sequels bcs developers need big names (looking at you SW:ToR), outcomes will differ only in collor of final firework (looking at you Mass Effect 3), and options to reach our goal will be either Sneak around, or try anything else and find out you need to sneak around (looking at you VtM:Bloodlines) ...

Then i f**king hope so!