Xalavier made some great points insofar as the apply to studios that check one of the following boxes: -Small -Limited Professional Experience -Limited Budget -Limited Notoriety
And most devs retweeting that argument were in the right. But two devs retweeting that argument need to fuck right off: Obsidian and Blizzard, who have massive notoriety and IPs, comparable team sizes, capacity for large budgets and fundraising potential, and decades of experience.
Avowed shouldn’t have gone through development hell and everything Larian did to develop its brand and secure contracts could easily have been accomplished by Obsidian which was following similar trajectory. Back in the mid-2010s it was clear that Obsidian and Larian were reviving CRPGs together, but only one company had the stomach to stick with it. Don’t even get me started on Blizzard.
Not shitting on Obsidian, which has produced some AMAZING games. But for Sawyer to come out and say that consumers shouldn’t expect RPGs to take the example of BG3 is just not a good look.if a new bar is set in cinematic and reactive RPGs by high level production on a single player experience with a long early access phase, then mid to large sized developers with those capabilities can either publish or perish.
Ambition is not poison. It is risk. For those who have it, they can fly high or crash and burn. For those who don’t, they can find peace in happy mediocrity.
Edits for addition: If the reason the devs that don’t tick those boxes cannot find success is because of the standards and parameters set by their corporate or financial overlords, then I hope the financial success of BG3 (and hopefully failure of corporate operations) will force a critical reevaluation of investor-developer relations in this space. Because either the devs are incompetent in game development (unlikely) or investors are shifting priorities so much that it is breaking their products.
For example: Obsidian is responsible for multiples all time RPG classics, has a total employee count exceeding 200, has tremendous industry experience, and can raise millions overnight, as seen in the POE kickstarters. Obsidian was doing every step that Larian was doing, but had more years of success under its belt.
Yeah they need to fuck off, why couldn't Obsidian or Blizzard do this, they're much bigger studios than Larian, it seems like something they could've easily pulled off themselves but for some reason they decided to complained about it, like a bunch of pathetic losers.
Blizzard can't rven make an rpg where the only focus is combat.
After his video on the new patches balanceing i half expect Asmongold to just move to Baldur's Gate 3 lol
