A combination of systems driven gameplay and narrative, where you character build gives you tremendous room for creativity and self-expression with how you choose to tack challenges, overcome obstacles or just move around the map.
Think about the approach to Aunt Ethel’s cavern. There is a multi-tiered descent covered with poison gas. How many different ways are there to bypass that? How many different spells or abilities can get you past it? It’s a simple puzzle that illustrates the strength of Larian’s system driven approach.
BioWare and Obsidian never gave players that much freedom in gameplay. Bethesda did, but at a significant cost to narrative and presentation. Their world’s are reactive but only in a shallow way.
You don’t think BG3 is innovative? I’ve never played a game quite like this before. DOS2 is obviously very similar, but this is pushing the idea much further (a bigger budget tends to do that).
The only 'innovation' I see with BG3 is making it a highly cinematic game. Critics of traditional cRPGs often claim they don't like those games because: "if I wanted to read a novel, I'd go do that." Well, for me with BG3: If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd go do that. BG3 is a long and tedious movie where I am given the false feeling that my interractions with the movie matter, even though they're rather superficial, trite, and often also silly. Everything else about BG3 can be found in plenty of other RPGs, and often done better. But, for a great many people in today's social-mdia-driven society where superficiality dominates in every aspect of life, a hyper-cinematic video game is surely going to be "awesome."
