Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is BG3 bad for the genre?

Lol how is that proof of anything? 40K is still very obscure for most people. If they have heard of it at all chances are they will only know its 'that one grimdark setting'. Or heck it could be a player. 1 example doesent mean everyone knows about it. 40k as a whole is not widely known.

I will concede though that since critical role rose to popularity dnd has gotten alot more popular. But to play something you have to abide by the rules (either written or unwritten) tied to it. Groups can have house rules ofcourse. But each group that plays chess, will generally be playing chess. But nowadays hobby tourists (people who play something because its currently popular. Not really because they like it but for a fear of missing out) tend to want to play chess... but their way.

Same with dnd tbh. So many people saw critical role and suddenly wanted to play. But rather then play the actual game they think method acting is dnd. Uhm... no?

The cast of critical role are professional voice actors and like to rp their character alot. But they also tend to follow the rules. Thats also not the only 'correct' way.

Some people have little to no rp at all in their game and just want to kill monsters and take loot with their friends. Others have a mix. But a group that only RP's is generally very rare. Because you can do that without dnd. You dont need to play dnd to do that. But alot of people (mostly the ones who only saw critical role) will straight up tell you youre not playing dnd because you arent doing it like Mathew Mercer and co are doing it.

These people never picked up a rulebook or dmed anything want to tell me how dnd is played because they watched popular people play it. Gtfo with this nonesense.

Im looking forward to hearing how im playing dnd wrong because I dont do it like Larian.

After having slept about it...

My actual take is that I like that Larian Studios is really doing hardcore CRPGs, without any strings attached. D:OS2 was hardcore, BG3 is hardcore, it is wonderful dark fantasy with a lot of humour I really enjoy and depth.

Thats what I want to keep, I don't want toned down, dumbed down CRPGing, I want more great, hard to master, adventures like what I have now with those two most amazing games.

Thats my greatest wish.

I am honestly just a tourist here considering BG3 is the first non Japanese RPG I've played and really enjoyed. I tried out Divinity Original Sin 2 a few years back when a friend wanted to play but it wasn't my thing at all and I ended up dropping it after about 8 hours. The companions and NPC focused stories really are the driving factor in why I love BG3 so much and already have 40 hours invested in just two weeks.

So yeah, I completely understand the fears from dedicated fans of CRPGs or DND who want games to be more combat focused (at least that's the vibe I'm getting here?), but my hope is that both types of games can coexist because BG3 is, for me, legitimately the best RPGs I've ever played and I would want to see another game like it or at least have the game go through a few years of major updates + new content.

tbh this reminds me of the outcry from old school Fire Emblem fans once the modern era 3DS games with character focused + romance available stories started to take over. What ended up happening was other developers started to fill in that space and a lot of fresh takes on the genre started popping up. Even if the original space for these games starts to shift in tone, a new team will eventually come in to take over the space and maybe even bring in some new features the dedicated crowd likes.

Do yourself a huge favour and get this game for just a fiver. Best CRPG ever made:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/Tales_of_MajEyal/

Well, its only £4.99 in the UK. I think it might be free on their website if I'm not mistaken, will check.

Oh yes, its free / open source on the games website https://te4.org

Its basically like BG2 with every class A drug mixed into it for good measure.

Your gatekeeping is tedious. More people playing D&D is a great thing. Nobody cares about how you play D&D.

Nerd culture is mainstream culture.

As an OLD school DnD and computer RPG fan I can tell you a deeper combat focus is not what makes a good RPG. A great story and fun NPC interaction can go a long way. Larian has done a solid job with BG3 and I feel have put the CRPG on solid footing.

There is a lot of hype around open world games but the truth is from an RPG point of view a real open world game is a MESS. A true open world game is MASSIVE, this means a ton of development cost and lets not get into all the work needed for the various NPCs and locations to feel alive. This means development cost and time is exponentially increased over a game like BG3. Proof of this is everywhere, go look at most open world games, they feel dead, the NPCs do not interact. Historically great RPGs that move to a more open world approach have failed, we see that especially with Mass Effect.

Larian has "rediscovered" the style that made such classics as Eye of the Beholder, Neverwinters Nights and many more. They have taken that formula, tweaked it, modernized it and we have BG3.

This approach also lends itself to episodic material. Imagine once or twice a year a "DLC" that is a new campaign. (Full level 1 to 12 again) This is POSSIBLE with the model we see with BG3. No new engine just create the content. They could break it down even further with an "Act" every 3 or 4 months until a new campaign is done and then move to the next.

That is not to say BG3 is perfect, it needs work. The game has a rushed feel to it with the way it ends and the whole "worm" system feels forced with no consequences for using it and no real reward for resisting it. (BTW by LORE for the Forgotten Realms this is how it would play out) Also the focus on Lore is a bit haphazard with them being willing to tweak the 5E system for computer play but not make the typical tweaks you would expect to make it fit easily into the existing game world lore.

In the end, yes I think BG3 is good for the genre. It shows there is a real demand for the old school CRPG solo play style (with some light coop). Hopefully this means we will see the CRPG game options just get better from here.

I never said more people playing is a bad thing. Id love it even. But theres the issue. If people say they play dnd I want them to be playing dnd. And not method acting and calling it dnd. If the fact that I want the thing that I love to remain the thing that I love makes me a gatekeeper; then im a proud gatekeeper.

Keep repeating your 'nerd culture is mainstream culture' mantra. Im sure it will be true some day.

BG3 is great for the genre! I hope its success means there will be more games like it in the future and that companies such as Bioware can pull it together to start making great rpgs again!

But this is quite subjective, though, isn't it? I too am very much old school, and am literally old(er), and what I value most of all in a cRPG is story and character development and world building. And it is in *precisely* these areas that I consider BG3 to be extremely weak/bad, even a disaster. For me, BG3 is a game heavy on pretty graphics and cinematics, gimmicky and/or cheesy gameplay, one-dimensional hipster companion characters leaning to the dark side, too much boring combat, and, yes, pointless excessive sex (which is not even in the slightest the same thing as romance). Now, I could hold my nose and tolerate all these things if I were also getting awesome story-telling, characters, and characters development, but since that's not in the cards in this game, the game is a 6/10 to me.

(Not speaking as a mod here. Just interested in culture)

Re: The Nerd Culture Meta

I don't think Nerd Culture is one thing. There are people who like all sorts of different things, and "nerd" encompasses so many different interests, approaches, and behaviors. Is a computer programmer who only cares about statistical min-maxing in games not a nerd? Is a method acting roleplayer not a nerd? Is someone who wants to sit around a table with the same friends for decades and roll dice to kill monsters not a nerd? Is someone who makes costumes of their favorite indie video game characters not a nerd? Is someone with a singular obsession for a particular anime not a nerd? Is someone who plays competitive online strategy games for hours not a nerd?

"Nerd Culture" is experiencing the same post-internet transformation as music culture. It used to be that you had set groups who had set interests and these groups socially congregated together around specific activities. Hip hop fans didn't mingle with rock fans who didn't mingle with country fans who didn't mingle with the indie scene. Nerds were ostracized and bullied incessantly for years for their perceived lesser interests. Now, people, especially young people, just do what they find fun. They add to their playlists or game time whatever they find enjoyable. Some of it is nerdy, some of it isn't. The old paradigm of Nerd-Normal is breaking down, though, and it's being replaced by more specific interests and ways to relate to things.

I'm not even sure what "Mainstream Culture" is anymore. In the 1960s-1990s, there was a clear culture defined by a set of (controlled) mass media companies, a unified sociopolitical narrative, and local communities conversing with each other. Against this mainstream culture emerged the counterculture. In 1960s America, this was marked by the Beats like Kerouac and Ginsberg, hippies, and the early formal LGBTQ community. In the Soviet sphere, you had Czes?aw Mi?osz's concept of "Ketman" and double discourse, by which citizens under the authoritarian system would have one set of outward behaviors in favor of the mainstream culture, and another set of inward beliefs and behaviors which were directly against it. Now, mainstream narratives are optional. Don't like one news channel? Turn it off and go to another. Don't like any news channels? Choose to believe podcast hosts or forum posters. Don't like those either? Social media connects you with like-minded people. The day-to-day culture of young people is dominated by algorithms which reinforce preexisting interests rather than unifying local narratives. Want to roll dice to kill monsters? There's a group for that. Want to roleplay characters with a ruleset? There's a group for that. Want to discuss the intricacies of lore of fantastical worlds? There's a group for that.

"Nerd" Culture has become decidedly iridescent. Everyone is coming at it from different angles now, and are drawn to it for completely different reasons, seeing completely different definitions based on their angle of observation. Its "unity" borders on nonexistence. Further, as life becomes increasingly sedentary, isolated, and digital, peoples who would not have been nerds 30 years ago are born nerds now. Outside of religion, writing, and academia, there were hardly "nerds" several centuries ago. Nerd culture was a transient product of a post-industrial society that had ample leisure time, mass literacy, a sedentary lifestyle, and mass-produced leisure materials. The Internet and changes in human connectivity/connective behaviors has simply changed the calculus.

You are correct that nerd cultire has evolved quite abit over the years. And it helps if we all use words that we understand have the same meaning.

A quik google shows me this. Mainstream: what's viewed by most people in a society as "normal". And its also how I know the term to be used.

And pardon me, but no dnd is nog evem remotely widely known enough to be mainstream. It is popular, yes. But not so popular that the majority of the population is a fan or plays it.

Let me reitterate what my (potential) problem is with bg 3 beeing a huge succes. Anything thats very popular tends to draw a large number of new fans.

Game of thrones is a very easy example of this. Prior to the series beeing aired it was about as niche as it gets. But once it came on television and became popular suddenly everyone was a fan. (Probably because of the large amounts of violence and nudity, but why it became popular is irrrlevant)

And that in itself is fine. More fans for something isent bad. But the old fans tend to want the television adaptation to stay true to the books. The stories written as they are were the reasons why they were fans in the first place. The new fans dont give a shit about the books because most havent even read them (and alot never will). They will however shut down arguments of people asking for the series to stay true to the books. For whatever reason.

And one of the results of it suddenly brcoming so popular is the dreaded season 8. Now everylne ive ever talked to hated it. But it derailed so heavily because it got so popular and the series caught up to writer and they decided to wing it, not wanting to slow down given its popularity.

And over time the new fans also tend to push out the older fans with stories of 'its not made for you' or 'we like it more this way' or 'find your own series' dispite the older fan beeing a fan before they were.

And I see that in more hobbies that I have by the day. I see tourist invading my hobby space, ruining it before moving on to the next thing like a swarm of locusts.

And dnd already has that thanks to critical role. But il explain it differently, maybe that way people understand my point.

You are a fan of football. And come across a group of people who also say they like football. They invite you to come join them. Great! You go there and everyone picks up the ball. Dribbles with the ball and dunks the ball in a net. 'Hey hold on! This isent football!' You say. Because it isent. This is basketball. 'Well some guy on youtube says this is football and we are fans. If you play football differently YOU are doing it wrong!' And those people than harass you for playing football like you are meant to while telling everyone how football needs to change to their vision of it.

Hyperbole ofcourse. But point is simply that dnd has rules involved with it. And while some things are open to interpretation (how much roleplay, what is the main focus of the campaign, etc) alot of the rules arent. Dm's can houserule things but houserules are still exceptions to the rule. They still base that exception on the rules of dnd.

Once people say they play dnd but the rules they use bare so little resembling the rules of dnd theyre effectively playing something else and calling it dnd.

My fear is that bg3 will draw in a massive group of new people. Who then come into contact with the older playerbase. They discover dnd isent what they saw in bg3 in alot of cases and will start to make a push to change dnd to their needs so it resembles bg3 more then it does dnd.

More people playing dnd is great. But if they say they want to play dnd, they should play dnd. And not turn dnd into something else.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that BG3 is bad for RPGs.

Do you know what BG3 reminds me of? The chain stores from the movie Idiocracy which because of the ever lower average IQ started to sexualize their names more and more to attract customers.
Carl’s Jr. Extra Big-Ass Fries
Starbucks Exotic Coffee for Men

Thats basically what BG3 is, living from hype, graphics and sexual wish fulfillment, the Twilight of video games.
Its story is pretty bland, not better and imo worse than the ones in other Rpgs, its mechanics are not well thought out like exchanging companions or handling of quest items.
And I even go so far and say that the companions are some of the blandes and most boring rpg companions in recent times.
That is, if you look at them from a RPG point of view. But compare them to the usual cast of harem visual novels and you will see a lot of similarities.
The primary design factor for the companions in BG3 seems to have been to cover all the usual romantic and sexual fantasies a harem cast does. The shy girl, the Tsundere, the vulnerable (twilight vampire) you can fix, the romantic, ect. Larian even added bestiality to cover more ground.

Imo Laruan was fully aware and counting on that their main target group are people who not necessarily conform to the age rating of the game and whos first action is to remove all camp clothes because "Hehe, tiddies"

And the amount of success they had is very bad, both from a general philosophical point of view about the sorry state of human nature and because this will now be the template other RPGs will follow. Dumb it down and add more sex.

I am very happy for you.

Unfortunately the truth of it is, if everyone had your experience, the large patches with bug fixes would not be necessary. The eurogamer reviewer's Act 3 literally fell apart including a save file corruption breaking her game that she had to reach out to Larian for to fix. I also ran into that bug. She understandably gave the game a 4/5 and was attacked for it.

I have seen no one praise the actual technical aspects of the game. Such as the UI, camera, pathfinding, system implementation like stealth/stealing being well done or that tying camp events to long rests worked well and didn't mean different playstyles could miss more or less things. How interesting the companions are is subjective. How they are implemented to have limited platonic interactions, the 'spokes on a wheel' approach where they are hyper focused on the player and the game will just assume relationships with others without showing it or how interactions dead end are not subjective. The story is a mess. Choice and consequence were marketing hyperboles.

It is indeed possible for a game to be very loveable while also having major flaws. This is not a case of a game that just does everything well instead of innovating either, because it does quite a few things poorly, a lot is mediocre and nearly everything it does do well at the start degrades in quality the further along you get. Either by phasing it out to the bare minimum, or by what feels a lot like just ticking a box to say it's there. We are left with VA, presentation and environment interactivity as the highlights.

Those are some grim highlights for a game that supposedly is genre defining.

There are games on the list of 'greatest/highest rated of all time' that you did not or will not enjoy. If you don't like hack and slash ARPGS, Diablo 2 is just not your thing no matter what. Just like there are 6/10, 7/10 or 8/10 games that you love to death for what it does or tries to accomplish. Every Gothic/Risen fan knows about that one. That does not mean the scores should be the other way around.

What I am seeing is the community telling the industry that as long as you are perceived to be the underdog, gamers don't actually care about the overall quality of your product. Most won't even finish the game, but they'll defend the first sweet lie on your plate viciously and if you pick a niche genre, most won't know any better and aren't interested in knowing any better too.

BG3 is an experience. It is also a very weak CRPG.

I think we've well-established various complaints about sex and target audiences in the game based on how many times we've gone around in circles on the same points. There must be other points to make, surely. Otherwise, this is starting to look like little more than a venting thread.

I did not mention either.

Story and characters aren ‘that great’?

What games this guy playing?

I do agree that the story and character are at best mediocre.
In current times, the stories and character are superb, but over the history of RPG games in general? I would say again -- mediocre.
I grew up on Mass Effect and Dragon Age, so I may be looking through nostalgia, but the story, characters, and relationships of those series felt deeper and had such lasting impact.
One such relationship mechanic I loved was the "tempering" or "hardening". Like DA's Alistair.

BG3 has quite a lot of plot issues. And save for ShadowHeart and LaeZel (and even still, it's mediocre at best), character development is quite abysmal.
One glaring example I cannot stand is:

Also, I don't fully agree that this gaming is all about sex -- but sex sells. It certainly doesn't hinder it being the now highest grossing crpg of all time, correct me if I'm wrong.
Alas, any day would I take fully realized relationships (both platonic and romantic) over nudity and sex scenes.

This one.
I think this is a case of needing to play more games? Current times still includes other CRPGs like Disco Elysium. If not masterpieces, even normal RPGs like Fallen Order, God of War 1, A Plague Tale have competent stories. So even in comparison to 'current times' it's still very mid as it actively contradicts itself with ass pulls constantly and doesn't stick the landing at all.

Regarding the whole softcore fantasy porn aspect - it'd be one thing were it done well, but it's extremely... tame and half-assed?

Bodies devoid of physics (genitals frozen in stasis, breasts that defy gravity...) with models that warp in ugly ways during certain animations, scenes that seem cut short (Lae'zel's, Minthara's alternate one from EA which is removed entirely) are either non-existent (while implied) or pointlessly "artsy" (like the drow twins), characters sharing the same body type (Gale/Wyll/Astarion, Minthara/Shadowheart)... To bank on it so heavily during advertisement and fall behind not just Witcher/Cyberpunk, but Andromeda of all things is a hell of an, erm, achievement - and this is coming from someone who's gotten fed up with romances in games thanks to Bioware and whose interest in the subject is mostly morbid curiosity as to how far they were willing to push the envelope (apparently, you can run around naked which nobody react to is how far. Yay).

Speaking of Bioware, I am replaying NWN 1 now, and, honestly, Larian aren't even all that new regarding the intensity of your character being hit on. Playing as a high charisma male/female character results in women/men offering one-night stands (which don't happen for plot reasons, but the... mood is still there). Meanwhile BG1 had a sireen who could murder-kiss you (regardless of gender), and BG2 had that one drow lady during the Underdark chapter. So they are treading the well-walked roads here but are doing it worse, making the game disappoint in ways one wouldn't think it could.

And as for the game itself - while I was genuinely impressed by the area design and the exploration, I would argue that the rest is a step backwards from Larian's previous two titles. Combat, despite the supposedly huge array of spells and powers, feels very limiting, the writing is hit or miss and this time it doesn't have the benefit of being in a non-serious setting (not to mention all the plot holes and the narrator being a nuisance more than a needed storytelling tool), and it feels like there is very little to do save for the main story unless it's companion content, which I have gated myself out of the most of by refusing to have anyone past the 4-man party limit around (due to how awkward it feels to swap people and how nonsensical the interactions and comments become).

All the 10/10s are most certainly unwarranted, especially with the currently blatantly unfinished state that the game is in. I know the game journalists are basically the epitome of incompetence, but the degree to which they'll praise something with obvious glaring issues without so much of an ounce of objective criticism is baffling, honestly. It's definitely not a bland show of mediocrity that Starfield is, far from it, and has the potential of becoming Larian's finest title, but definitely not in this state. The foundation is there, but the woodwork is shoddy. And given gow AAA/AA RPGs are a genre that's dead for almost a decade now, I don't think it'd really affect much. More hardcore players are turned off by the lack of difficulty and how choices can be meaningless, the more casual ones complain the game's too hard, the more close-minded fans of the originals are long gone by now, and the less close-minded ones are upset by what the game could have been but ended up not being.

I guess all who remain are indeed the bothered redditors and the like, who'll probably switch over to Dreadwolf when it comes out some day if it turns out to have more "desirable" romance options. Unfortunate.

Quite fair and also very possible! I've only gotten back into gaming after RL taking me out of it for the past years, so God of War has been sitting in my library for some time. Though admittedly, I'm very picky when it comes to games. In fact, I purely stick to BG3-type RPGs. Which is perhaps why I haven't played it and Star Wars yet. But if what you've said is true, then indeed BG3 is meh even now (and I need to play Disco!).

Ah, it's really killing the vibe of my third playthrough. I should take a break and try those out honestly.