Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Starfield is lame - Bg3 is going to win GOTY - Taking bets.

It’s perfectly valid to compare and contrast BG3/Starfield and Larian/Bethesda here, and I’d say that’s a more suitable activity for a thread on Larian’s forums than just critiquing (or plain criticising) Starfield. But at the same time, there are a huge number of threads critiquing elements of BG3 on these forums so let’s try to stick to discussing BG3 specifically in comparison to Starfield here rather than duplicating those.

And let’s keep it friendly. I’m sure we should be able to chat about our different tastes in games without it getting fraught!

It's been out since September 1st - that's 12 days.

Have you even played Starfield?

Not according to google? Unless you're counting the people who had the 5-day early access from premium purchases or whatever it was. But the general release was on the 6th.
And no, I haven't played Starfield, what's more I don't PLAN on playing Starfield, at least anytime soon (no suitable system to play it on at the moment unfortunately), but that doesn't stop me from being highly skeptical of someone declaring that Starfield "is a massive failure" 3 days after it launched and when all the actual hard numbers I can find about sales actually seem pretty good. For the same reason, actually, that I was extremely skeptical about the hype BG3 had on release. The people who tend to dominate the conversation very early after the release of a game are the people who have a predetermined outcome they want to advocate for (People who WANT BG3 to be game-changingly good, or WANT Starfield to be a failure). You get a more accurate picture of how the game was ACTUALLY received over time, when more normal people have the time to play it.

My point still stands. Be it "no IP" or "new IP", the marketing will be pretty much the same for both, because developers have nothing to piggyback on. Larian, on their other hand, has a veritable 4 of a kind called Baldur's Gate.
Comparing their marketing strategies, or outcomes of their marketing campaigns makes zero sense.

No, this is not new content. These are changes in game's mechanics. And I'm pretty sure there are people who would consider many original implementations as bugs. Just as an example, if some modder will change the behaviour of CC spells so that saves won't be made both at the start and end of turn, that would be a bugfix. I'm not watching the BG3 modding scene now, maybe someone has already done this, or something similar.
Actually, after re-reading your original statement:
I don't see how the latter contradicts the former. They are completely unrelated. The first sentence is about Bethesda, yet the second is not about Larian, but rather about modders (which Larian doesn't control directly, afaik). Not sure what you were trying to say here. Looks like a rhetorical sleight of hand to me.

My point was that I don't see any signs that Larian has a horizontal structure. It's too big, and some design decisions look pretty voluntaristic to me.
Not sure why you think it has.

So how many people here have actually played it?

I wasn’t following the buildup much at all, but decided to give it a shot, play a fair amount now and I’m having a blast.

Sure the style is very similar to their other titles, but I think it works pretty well for the setting. They might a have a big deal about all the procedural generation stuff, but honestly that’s best left ignored. I have no interest in landing randomly on a planet and finding some raider base to clear out so I can just not do that and stick to storied faction quests, side quests, corporate missions, etc. Copy paste bandit/raider camps in previous titles were harder to avoid because you’d always blunder onto them on the way to anything. Not to mention all the roving enemies to deal with.

In Starfield, I only sometimes get jumped on by pirate ships and having upgraded my ship a bit, I can usually deal with them in less than a minute. Leaving me free to do the interesting missions, and there really is a lot of them. I’ve spent much more time talking to characters than I have shooting people (almost as much as managing my inventory, LOL), and that’s how it should be in an RPG.

As with their previous games, you don’t often get meaningful choices about how quests play out. They’ve never really done this. Instead they give you an absolute tonne of options and the role playing part is about doing the things and siding with the groups that suit you. Which is fine really, it’s what I expected.

The ship building thing is actually very decent. Finally they’ve come up with something worth sinking all your cash into. Money might as well never have been a thing in Skyrim or Fallout games. Settlement building in FO4 was a pain and took a load of crafting for not much reward other than to build a home for yourself and your followers. With ship design, you can create nice little accommodations with a load of storage space for you loot, but it has to be functional, survive combat and ideally look absolutely badass. There’s no crafting bollocks behind it, just cash and ideally a few skill points for the better modules.

It’s far from perfect- a lot of systems aren’t explained at all, standard Bethesda jank is in full effect, you get railroaded into joining a group of goodie two shoes at the beginning (including all the major companions), I can fit more loot into a lunchbox on the ground than in my spaceship with cargo canisters the size of trucks bolted onto the side, etc. Bit I can deal with all that, ignore the main quest and just go on my space adventures.

I like it more than FO4, which just left me a bit cold.

I dont think the game has a demo so I can't try it.

I'm not shelling out another £70 just to in fact find out that I'll be just be playing Oblivion in space.

I can already just load up and TES game between 3-5 and install 200+ mods and get the perfect experience.

Like with all prior Bethesda games, this one will only be worth playing after the community has fixed everything, and its on at least a 66% off sale.

I mean a million + people had access to it since Sept 1st, including myself. The point is I HAVE played Starfield - for 66 hours. I read other people's reviews, am on the subreddit - where I dare not voice the slightest criticism lest I be immediately downvoted or shadowbanned - and I watch Youtube videos on other people's experience with it - both good and bad.

The consensus is that for a large number of gamers Starfield is not a fun experience. There are a myriad reasons for that - but one of them is that the bar HAS gone up and Larian is partially responsible for that. The vast majority of gamers are becoming more vocal about this sort of thing - and less tolerant of the mediocrity that Starfield represents - ESPECIALLY given the MASSIVE budget that game had.

BG3 on the other hand has been showered with Universal acclaim from people who have been walking through the desert of gaming dying of thirst. There is a groundswell of excitement for how cool this game is, how great the storytelling is, how strange the characters are, and how talented the voice actors and writers have been. There are people refusing to sleep because they want to get just "one more quest done" - and rave about how much joy the combat brings them.

Listen, put your ear to the ground. The community is in a fervor about Bg3. People are having amazing experiences. Bg3 is on the path to cult status.

Starfield will whittle down to a core player base that wants to fuck around with 100+ mods and then get sold a ton of useless DLC and then 4 "updated" versions that don't change much of anything. It's like F76 - those people are just "whales" trapped in the whale farm - moo goes the whale.

I mean a million + people had access to it since Sept 1st, including myself. The point is I HAVE played Starfield - for 66 hours. I read other people's reviews, am on the subreddit - where I dare not voice the slightest criticism lest I be immediately downvoted or shadowbanned - and I watch Youtube videos on other people's experience with it - both good and bad.

The consensus is that for a large number of gamers Starfield is not a fun experience. There are a myriad reasons for that - but one of them is that the bar HAS gone up and Larian is partially responsible for that. The vast majority of gamers are becoming more vocal about this sort of thing - and less tolerant of the mediocrity that Starfield represents - ESPECIALLY given the MASSIVE budget that game had.

BG3 on the other hand has been showered with Universal acclaim from people who have been walking through the desert of gaming dying of thirst. There is a groundswell of excitement for how cool this game is, how great the storytelling is, how strange the characters are, and how talented the voice actors and writers have been. There are people refusing to sleep because they want to get just "one more quest done" - and rave about how much joy the combat brings them.

Listen, put your ear to the ground. The community is in a fervor about Bg3. People are having amazing experiences. Bg3 is on the path to cult status.

Starfield will whittle down to a core player base that wants to fuck around with 100+ mods and then get sold a ton of useless DLC and then 4 "updated" versions that don't change much of anything. It's like F76 - those people are just "whales" trapped in the whale farm - moo goes the whale.

No, I don't think so. "A large number of gamers" complain about pretty much everything. I can also find "A large number of gamers" having a blast with Starfield. I think we need to wait and see to see how the general reception is taken.

Your tastes may vary. Case in point, the more I play BG3 the more I don't think it has actually raised the bar at all. I can't help but compare it to its predecessors. In some ways, BG3 outshines BG2 in SOME spots. (Low level combat is much better than the original BG series.) But romances? BG3's feel really half-assed compared to BG2. Plot? BG2's is much more coherent. And then I compare it to Dragon Age: Origins...I don't know, man. I think Larian built some beautiful BONES of a game. I think if other people had access to the developmental tools Larian made to MAKE this game, they could make some amazing games. I do not think Larian themselves actually built all that good of a game with what they had. At low levels there are some great moments. I particularly loved the hag sidequest. But one well-done area is not an entire game. Imo, things begin to fall off in act 2 (where overleveling, itemiation and Larian's homebrew start to make battles extremely easy and gameplay starts to fall apart) and they totally crash in act 3, where both gameplay and narrative become totally unsatisfying messes.

All this "A bunch of people are disappointed with Starfield! The community is in a fervor about BG3!" is really noisy signal, you know that right? Both games have just barely been released. I think a lot of people will be much less in "in a fervor" about BG3 once they get through act 3 and do more playthroughs. Time will tell how they are actually received, and frankly I don't think BG3 will stand the test of time unless something drastic changes. I think it will in general be remembered as the game with a fun first act that fell apart towards the end and which has limited replay value without modders. The very WORST thing one can do, when evaluating a game's quality, is do something vague like "Keep your ear to the ground! Feel the pulse of the community!" in the first weeks after the release. It is exactly that time when you will be getting the most emotional, unbalanced reactions. Only time reveals how a game is actually remembered. Even I might be being unnecessarily harsh on BG3 right now, because it fails in exactly the way I worried that it would fail and it has made me angry because I am so *tired* of watching Larian make the same mistakes over and over. With time, I might reevaluate it and judge it less harshly, once I'm over my disappointment and anger.

Ok, it's clear you don't have a legal background. IP stands for intellectual Property, I will assume you know that at least. The only IP they could claim is the title. Everything else is derivative.

You also don't understand how Larian marketed the game versus how Bethesda marketed.


You are moving goalposts, the point was the mod community isn't fixing bugs for BG3. The Mod community is fixing bugs for Starfield.




Again, A horizontal structure is determined how little management is between the employees and the CEO. A vertical structure incorporates multiple layers.

It's pretty clear you didn't actually look at the management structures of both companies - but I did. You can do some basic google searches and it will show you that Larian has VERY little management and Bethesda has a ton of it.

I want to invite you to stop. I keep bringing facts and you keep bringing opinions and you are making poor arguments. I've proven the point that these are VASTLY different companies with massive differences in process which partially explains why Bg3 is such a goddamn brilliant success and why Starfield is THE most aggressively mediocre game I have ever experienced and that Bethesda should be ashamed of themselves.

Haven't played Starfield, and not gonna.

If I am in space, I wanna fly to that planet over there. I want to customize my ship with more powerful engines to make it go faster. If I don't wanna fly, I need to be able to set the course and speed up the time. Or fast travel.

What I don't wanna do, is bump into invisible walls in space and look at a loading screen whenever I want to move from one room to another, LOL.

Starfield is an absolute scam, there is no space in a game about space and stars, game about "exploration". BTW, did you know that 99% of planets have no content? You can scan them, though wow. Next gen experience!

It's like playing a first person shooter and having a (re)loading screen every time you reload a gun.

What a joke. Hodd Toward strikes again.

I can't speak much to the CRPG genre, I don't play them that much. Too difficult aldough I am enjoying BG3 but am far from the end. Middle of act 2 and in no hurry to rush to the end. So, I am more familiar with Bethesda, Bioware and Ubi RPG's. I think many gamers complain due to the familiarity of those games together with craving that familiarity simultaniously. I have played Starfield for about 40 hours and not much new under the sun. It feels like skyrim in space but more downgraded then their privious games. In hindsight, for me personally its not worth the current price. Its max a 30€ game with the knowledge you can mod it like crazy in future. Personally, I would like the old Bioware back, but that is never going to happen. Bioware is history.

For that you’ll want something like Elite Dangerous, which does the awesome scale of space very well. Unfortunately there’s no one to meet and no interesting missions to do. Really just grinding credits to upgrade your ship. They completely fluffed the bit about making a game fun, which is a shame because they had a fantastic base to build on.

Starfield isn’t a space sim or trading game. It’s a Bethesda RPG with a bit of relatively simple space combat thrown in. Designing your ship is pretty cool though.

This entirely. You are judging the game through filter of your own disappointment. You didn't get things you wanted. I didn't get things I wanted either. No DM mode, the mod tools are not in place that we were expecting, no real way to build additional modules, content missing from Act 3, Act 3 in general incomplete, the multiclass system is broken and very exploitable, and overall not enough good multiplayer tools to help manage games long term.

However, just in the last month Larian has made major improvements to the game and is addressing concerns. It also doesn't change the fact that overall the game is insanely ambitious, with great writing, VA, and has started important conversations in the game community.

Long term I do NOT expect to get everything I want. Still the best game CRPG I have played in a long time, and certainly the most technologically advanced I have ever played.

For BG3 I'm still waiting to visit the upper city more seeing as how it was promoted in the Panel from Hell and in a magazine interview.

For Starfield I'm enjoying it but maybe because I have tempered expectations.

Just recently got starfield, only been a few days of play. But hands down so far character customization blows bg3 away. But trait or talent system kinda sucks.

Looks like they went back to a oblivion-ish style for persuasion which was pretty interesting.

Thats about it so far, still messing around with stuff.

tbh I feel like you care about this a tad too much, Blackheifer. Everyone already knows how things are.

From the vibe I sense from the general gaming communities, I don't even think Starfield is even considered a serious GOTY contender anymore. It and FFXVI have let down too many people, when way earlier in the year everyone thought they'd be duking it out with Zelda, and BG3 as a cRPG would be too niche to be considered.

I was a bit concerned with what other people had been saying about act 3 in BG3 since I finally got that far this morning, but I haven't run into any issues on my end, probably because it's been about a month and a half of patching and/or my computer is strong enough to withstand everything that's going on. Unless people are talking about an area even further into Act 3.

Very disappointed by Starfield, I was expecting to spend more time in space on my ship with my crew.
Truth is you just go from planet A to planet B by opening a map.
No exploration, got a point of interest on your scan? Go there > scan > small text explanation > end of the story !
No crew's plot so far.
No pet.
I've chosen to have a bounty on my head since the beginning, but I've only been tracked in space.

Get to a point where you have to protect some artifacts.
On the highest difficulty, there are very few repair parts for your ship; therefore, I chose to protect them by building an outpost.
I spent an hour and a half trying to find a good spot only to find out that I cannot build this dreamed-of high mountain outpost!
Flat surface only with store container as wall > game crashed even on Microsoft cloud : I gave up.

It is not a bad game, just a classical RPG in space, and for sure not GOTY.

I enjoyed BG3 more than Starfield, and I don't play Zelda simply because I have no Nintendo Switch.
I wanted to get back to BG3 on Nvidia's Geforce cloud, but unfortunately, it is for Steam only, no GOG !
Chaotic path will have to wait. Time for Lies of P !

Starfield is the LEAST immersive space game I have ever played.

Its a click/confirm/loading click/confirm/loading click/confirm/loading fast travel simulator.
You enter your ship. Click confirm load.
You enter a space station. Click confirm load.
You travel to a planet. Click confirm load.
You use the city tramways. Click confirm load.
etc...

Its like if in BG3 you only kept the battle areas, removed everything in between and added way-points everywhere to fast travel with your map.
1993's Frontier : Elite 2 is more immersive and fun. And can technically do stuff Starfield can't. Like fly down to planets realtime.

In a BG3 forum people seem to prefer BG3 to Starfield. Who could have possibly predicted that?