*an increase in the number of people interested in CRPGs, which is f***** great, *an increase in developer interest to make such games, in spite of all the fearmongering, which is also great, *maybe an increase in the number of people interested in tabletop roleplaying, which is also great, and *an increase in the number of people interested specifically in D&D, both for tabletop games and videogames, which is not so great.
It's all "great" so long as other major RPG studios don't decide to turn their games into BG3 clones. But the good news for me is that I have supreme confidence none of them will do so.
Here's the bottom line. The very tiny group of you here in this forum who love Larian's games as the greatest ever made and who love to hate on certain other big RPG studios and their games are not even close to being representative of the millions of self-identifying RPG fans out there. There are literally millions of people who LOVE the RPGs made by such studios as CDPR, Bethesda, and even Bioware <gasp>. Games like Starfield, TES6, Witcher 4, and Dragon Age 4 will not just sell millions, but tens of millions. And those games will have very high player satisfaction ratings and will also earn good reviews and awards. Those studios (to include even smaller studios like Obsidian and inXile) are not going to change their game formulas to mirror BG3 just because of a few people's momentary BG3 craze. And thank God for that because I, just like those many millions of other gamers, am so looking forward to games like Starfield, Witcher 4, and yes even very much DA4.
If that "you" was meant to include me, you're very much mistaken. I love all those games (obviously, only those that already exist from your list) and in general, I'm not a big fan of the way Larian does things, except for location design. I like variety and I certainly won't limit myself to games from one or two studios. I just don't think that D&D specifically is a good rule system for a roleplaying game. Tons of people start with it, and so did I, but it is among the systems I like least.
Edit: I don't think that DA4 will break the 10 million mark, and I doubt it will be good enough to deserve it. I would love to be proven wrong, but I doubt it. Bioware appears to be, rather sadly for this old fan from the time when they made BG2, DAO or ME1, long beyond their time. They survive on old glory, and from the tweets of their staff it appears they don't even know any more what made their old games so successful. We're more likely to get politically loaded non-statements out of them these days.
You are correct, in that on hindsight I should not have included your post as a quote in my post. My post was a response to the thread overall, and not specifically to your post. Apologies for that.
