Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
Even looking at another rpg, The Witcher 3, I think if they tried to make it more like BG3 it would have ended up being a worse game because the kind of rpg it was trying to be was, at its core, a different beast in terms of rpgs.

The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games ever made, definitely in my top 2 or 3. It is the prime example of how a game can influence the gaming industry in a big way. There have been tons of attempts to try to make games like it and pretty much all of them have fallen flat. I think this is because studios start to look at games as formulas rather than focusing on the overall experience. They are like... we need to make a Witcher 3 game and say...

1. The world needs to be big? Check. But then they fill it with mediocre, repetitive or bad content.
2. We need TEH SEX and HAWT CHARACTERS! Check. But none of them are actually memorable or interesting.
3. We need a bad ass main character! Check. Only they aren't really bad ass... or well written... or interesting.
4. We need really good graphics! Check!!! Only good graphics alone can't make a game good.
5. We need an incredibly long main story with twists and turns! Check! Only the story they came up with is like 80% filler and just causes the game to drag on, since not many writers can come up with a 80+ hour epic that keeps you engaged.

That being said Witcher 3 clones will probably keep coming because they are very safe. I thought those Horizon games were dreadful and they seemingly still sold well. Ubisoft seems to somehow keep selling games that use a similar formula to the above. People like those big sprawling worlds full of empty content and mediocre characters/story.

CRPGs on the other hand? Those seem extremely risky for studios to sink a ton of money into. I think a lot of smaller devs jump on the CRPG bandwagon and try to do what DOS2 did in order to pull in the fanbase that BG3 will create. But I don't think any of the major AAA studios get pulled in and try to do what Larian has done. I think they just stick to the formula already in place and proven to sell.