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

This game is very Larian, and I’m okay with that, because Larian are trying to move the genre forward and bring the video gaming experience closer to the table top experience, which was the thesis statement of the original Baldur’s Gate game in the first place.

I’ve had other games attempt to just recreate the experience of Baldur’s Gate with Pillars of Eternity, the little I’ve played of the Owlcat games, and a few others, and I didn’t enjoy these. I found them rote and stagnant.

Was the narrative you were playing through coherent and compelling?

Yes. There was nothing exceptionally incoherent about the narrative. My only experience of incoherence was when I did two quests out of order, but the only reason I knew about the second quest (that I did first) was because I read about it online, so I give Larian a pass on that.

As for compelling, yes. I became remarkably attached to these characters and their plights. When I reached Baldur’s Gate, I thoroughly enjoyed the various parties trying to politically maneuver me to their favor, even though the entire time I knew it was a foregone conclusion that I would murder hobo them all. This is very much in the spirit of table top gaming.

And don’t even get me started on my multiplayer game. I’m playing the Dark Urge (as a necromancer) while the rest of my party doesn’t even know the DUrge is a thing. The chaos it’s creating is delicious. This has become one of my singular favorite experiences in all my decades of gaming.

Was the combat challenging but balanced for all 4 of you playing together?

No, but honestly, almost no SRPGs are ever challenging for me. I play chess at a 1450 ELO, which isn’t crazy spectacular or anything, but it’s high enough that the process of getting here means I know enough about tactics, priority, reading a battlefield, and deducing the correct course of action. I play the fuck out of Fire Emblem games too, and those games provide no challenge. I learned to enjoy the experience of them bereft of challenge. While that doesn’t accuse Larian for getting the balance wrong

How was the UI for playing in co-op?

Great. Functional and none of my friends who have no prior experience with Larian games have had any issues.

How was the stability/bugs/performance?

I’ve had almost no bugs at all. Some stability issues in act 3, but I’m expecting those will get ironed out via patches, and I don’t mind this. Nothing I can’t deal with.

Did the game explain itself well when you made characters or did you have to rely on prior knowledge/googling?

Probably not, but I’m a DM so I don’t need 5E explained to me. I imagine it would’ve be much harder for a new player.

The question is not whether or not the game is enjoyable. It certainly is.

Haha, for some people on this forum that definitely is the question. They post here ever say about how this game is terrible. That’s okay. Their decisions.

But as I pointed out in my first posts, you can enjoy the everliving fuck out of a 7/10 game because DnD with friends in videogame form is your shit, but that is giving awards based on what it is, rather than how well it's made. It's the equivalent of giving Forza 5 a 10/10 because it is definitely a racing game. If it was the first racing game on the planet, does it automatically get an advantage on review scores rather than it being a reason the reviewer recommends the game if you are a fan of Fast and Furious?

I personally think scores of 10 are inherently dumb and never rate anything on that scale. I only rate things on a scale of five:

1 - I hated it
2 - I disliked
3 - mixed or no impressions
4 - I liked it
5 - I loved it

For me, BG3 is a 5/5, and I’m not interested in trying to award it an objective score. Nobody is paying me to do that so why bother? I understand why other woolen don’t enjoy it or enjoyed it less, that’s fine. But I’m not going to feign objectivity. I don’t need to convince anybody to charge their minds about the game so their objections similarly don’t matter to me.

^agreed.

Initiating combat isn't something new, but giving reactivity to it, is.

One of my favourite thing in Wasteland 3 happens in the very beginning of the game. One of your friend held hostage, you have two options within the dialogue: a) save your friend but allowing their captor flee (who right after will set up an ambush), b) Try to kill the captor, but ensuring your friend got executed, but no ambush later ------ however there is 3rd options and the game doesn't tell you but logical mechanic within the world: You can snipe the captor from afar, making these choices moot, and you get *the best* result, or at least, the result you want.

DAO-DAI did nothing like this (one can argue DA franchise is more like a theatrical storytelling not RPG storytelling).
Infinity Engines games allows you to "initiate" the combat first (meaning you probably sneaking up to them for sneak attack, quest usually borked if you kill quest giver).

In Larian games? It's standard procedure. We are so used to it we demand more options atop of already wide selection of options which most games doesn't even give you.

But wide options making it less focused, story can easily feel incoherent, some feels like disjointed.

I believe Larian can make more narrative/storytelling focus game, akin to DAO, but it requires to sacrifice the RPG aspect of the game, it's an exchange, I personally wouldn't want them to take.

I've never cared much about being able to do this in games since I value the narrative and such more that mechanically being able to do stuff but I do feel like Larian could get the story to be a bit more narratively focused and satisfying if they made a few minor changes. Hell, I could see them diverging in a couple different ways to reach that goal.

For one thing, tailoring the story more to their strengths would help a great deal. The level of choice and shenanigans and randomn nonsense they want to put into their games would be better suited to a game that's definitely more personal and honed in on the story of the player. With BG3 they tried to tell this epic story that necessitates a lot of twists and factions and conflicts going on around us that drive plot and Larian really wasn't willing to commit to all of that in the way they needed to. If they narrowed the nature of the story more, hey probably wouldn't have as many problems on the narrative front. I think this would be where I would want them to go for their future games, it's a direction I suspect they would really flourish in since it plays to the strength of their character writing as well, which I think of consistently quite good. It's when that writing intersects with a plot that tries to be more grandiose than they seem capable of that things go wrong.

The second approach they could take, and would have improved BG3s story a great deal, is committing to letting players screw their story. I've made a whole thread about how the lack of story-essential side characters is a big part of why I think the game story doesn't ever come together well, and falls apart in act 3. I think if Larian were willing to give us those plot vital npcs to allow for the fleshed out story they need to be trying to tell, then they would be better off. And relating to that, I think those plot important npcs should still be killable, and killing them should majorly impact things. Yes, you should entirely miss out on questlines, yes, there should be situations where if you kill an important NPC then you get a game over. I think this would have let them integrate some side plots that really should not have been side plots and instead parts of the main plot.

As to the question at the heart of this thread, I think the answer is: absolutely not. I think the game has a lot of fundamental problems and it's massively overpraised, but bad for crpgs as a whole? Nah. People have made some fair observations as to why it might be, but I think there's a bit too much doomsaying and hand wringing going on. Maybe it will lead to an increase in rpgs that are more streamlined, more tilted towards mass appeal, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. We've been in a golden age of crpgs for a while now, and I don't see that niche going away. There's still an obvious hunger for the old style of these games and people will keep making them alongside the shinnier, newer variety for people who enjoy those.

And just to give my 2 cents about the romance and sex aspect of this discussion, I think that too is wildly overblown. It's there, yes. It's always been there, at least as far back as I can recall, which is admittedly only around Dragon Age Origins. There has always been a contingent I'd fantom for these games that has a lot of enthusiasm for the romances. I see it as an extension of enthusiasm for the characters, since romance is a way to get a deeper view of a character, which will only help someone enjoy them. Further, people like romance, and people like sex scenes. I don't for a moment think it's actually meaningfully more prevalent in this game than any other crpg in the past several years.

I'm in Act 3 and all the "romance" I had was drinking some wine with Shadowheart and a bloody fist fight with Laezel.

Where sex ?

Oh right. Of course! BG3 cheerleading is legit. But BG3 criticism is gatekeeping.

Well let me proudly engage in some "gatekeeping" by declaring that all claims to BG3 being a cRPG are bullshit. BG3 is the worst form of AAA game, a game carried entirely by cinematics and sex and a big fat zero on everything that makes an RPG meaningful.

I don't know. Some of this stuff is fun, sure. But some of it seems very immersion-breaking to me. It's fun to stack explosive barrels all around the goblin camp and set them off in a chain explosion. But...really, some of the people in that camp should be asking you "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I'm all for creative solutions, but I like when they make sense (like distracting and poisoning the goblins.) Building a giant box ladder to drop an owlbear on an enemy might be fun, but honestly it just highlights the fact that these are AI creatures with limited interactivity.

Then why are you wasting your precious time to talk about it? Seriously, I don't want to spark another argument, but this is beyond me. And you haven't even played the damn game. The fact it's the worst AAA game is profoundly misleading. It may be the worst AAA game to *you*, but not to millions of others. I passionately hate From Software games, seriously, even more that you hate BG3, but I would never dare to call any of their games the worst game of all. I simply don't like this art and narrative style.

What does exceptionally incoherent mean? The main narrative has a lot of plot holes and with all due respect, this is a video game that marketed itself as a sequel to Baldur's Gate. I should hope Larian with years and multiple writers does better than your DM that has five minutes to come up with a new plotline after the players got (un)lucky exploding the goblin camp. You can handwave it, but just so you are aware that you are excusing something subpar.

You can still enjoy it and that's honestly great for you, unfortunately the thread is about the critical reception, including scoring and how it might affect the genre moving forward. I am certainly not going to tell anyone they can't like BG3 or that they are wrong for liking it. Where I draw the line is 'Game of the Decade' or it being 'deserving of GOTY' because of a 'message' to the industry or it being 'genre defining' or what have you as it usually comes in three flavors: Praising BG3 for what it actually isn't, general ignorance of CRPGs or shitting on other games to prop it up. My examples include some very toxic positivity and the wrong lessons readily available for learning.

No, criticism is perfectly fine. Better than fine, it’s necessary. But saying when something is made for mainstream audiences with mass appeal in mind (including sex in the game) is inherently bad is tedious gatekeeping.

There is literally only one other AAA CRPG series in existence, and it’s horny as fuck. Dragon Age was doing sex way before BG3, so suggesting that all of the sudden BG3 is now ruining the genre by encouraging the inclusion of sex is utter nonsense.

And yeah, this is the official BG3 forum, there are going to be cheerleaders. Those are called fans, and we will naturally congregate here, and we are going to get tired of the same people talking about how much they hate the game in almost ever single thread. I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about the OP of this thread and a small handful of others.

There are a literal crapton of rpgmaker rpgs on steam, for anybody who likes rpgs but doesn't obsess over graphics (ie. me). BG3 will have absolutely no effect on that market. Unity shenanigans might, but the success of BG3 won't harm the indy market for rpg at all. It might even help a bit, since there will possibly be some new fans willing to tentatively fork over dollars for turn based rpg after they play BG3.

I'm sure BG3 will cause changes in the AAA space, but that's because all the AAA producers try to copy anything that succeeds. 95% of everything is crap, so most of the AAA "copies" will be crap, but maybe there will be a good one two.

In any case, it looks like some AAA games are doing themselves in without help from BG3. For instance... what the hell happened with Diablo 4?

I will absolutely concede it’s immersion breaking. It’s utterly nonsensical, but since the game never actively encourages it and it’s only up to the player to pursue, I can’t really be up in arms about it. The people who enjoy it can do so, and those who don’t want to break their immersion never need to deal with it.

You don’t get to tell me what is subpar. I think Dragon Age and Mass Effect are complete garbage, but that’s just my subjective opinion, and the millions of fans of those series aren’t wrong because I think those games are subpar.

And toxic positivity? This forum has been a swamp of people shitting on the game since the forum went live. Toxic positivity is not this place’s issue.

Also, you might want to read the OP, because this:

is about the critical reception, including scoring and how it might affect the genre moving forward.

Is not what the thread is made about.

I do, actually, because subjectivity of 'Do I like this' is different from objective quality and I specifically pointed out why it was subpar, eg plotholes and not whether or not I find the stakes silly or don't like the characters or didn't find it personally compelling. Those are subjective reasons. Whether or not the story contradicts itself is not subjective. Millions of people enjoy McDonald's food. They are not wrong for enjoying it. Enjoying it does not make it fine dining. There will be dishes of 'fine dining' that you will not like. That doesn't retroactively degrade the quality of the ingredients.

I also included my example of toxic positivity. The Eurogamer reviewer. I was not talking about these forums in specific and it is not my issue if you are not keeping my posts in context with my other posts.

I agree, but this is only true for Dragon Age: Origins. Granted, I haven't played DA2, but I did play Inquisition, just before BG3 and the only romance I've got was the chivalrous kind, without nudity or kinky scenes. It's like Bioware was afraid to go too far with sex scenes.

My experience with BG3 sex scenes is that... what the hell is this all fuzz about? I'm romancing Shadowheart and there was just one sex scene so far (I'm way past the middle of act 3) and it was really romantic. Apart from that I have triggered sex scene with Karlach (because those romance triggers were bugged in previous builds, so everyone was suddenly horny in my camp) and honestly it wasn't more hardcore than anything I saw in DAO all those years ago. I've also seen a sex scene with Mizora and if anything, it was unique, not kinky. So yeah, I totally don't agree this game is all about sex. Nothing like that at all.

Hmm, I don't really think this is true. These forums have attracted both people praising the game and people complaining about the game. And there's nothing wrong with liking a game that has some subpar elements. I'm a huge fan of BG1, for example, but *Good god* it could be obtuse, brutally so, for someone just starting out the game. BG2 also had its criticisms, even of the *story*, which many agree is one of its strengths (I remember a common one at the time was that it became significantly more edgy than the first game, which to be fair, the way the game starts out? Kind of true.) Spell organization was absurd (God forbid you would try to quickly select spells to use as a cleric/mage.) Even *great* games deserve criticism for the areas in which they fall short.

My memory is hazy about the DA series. (Loved DAO, hated the genre change in 2 but eventually came to like the background lore the game introduced, and DAI really just fell completely flat for me.) But I thought DAI had some pretty racy sex scenes? Maybe it was 2 that they were absent from? I don't know.

But yeah, none of the sex scenes I've seen in BG3 have seemed all that shocking (granted I've only seen Lae'Zel and SH) and, like...this was done a long time ago. I think maybe what people are annoyed at, more than the sex scenes, is how everyone (well, ALMOST everyone) is playersexual and, because the game is actually narratively pretty short, they start their flirting ASAP - which can lead to feeling bombarded by flirtatious comments for a while, until you reject everyone and settle on someone.

Yeah, I think this was a bug. Ever since Larian patched it, this kind of behaviour stopped for me. I would need to see in the new game to be sure, though, because it's possible, that I simply closed all the angles for other companions to flirting. But this horny companion behaviour was so unnatural, that I had a feeling this was a bug all along.

DAI was a bad game from a gameplay, UI and camera point of view, but it still had this Bioware magic when it comes to storytelling and companions. And of course lore, they really know how to introduce lore to the game (unlike Obsidian in PoE).

I actually think the PoE lore is great, but the problem is that there's quite a bit of depth to it and you really are thrust right into the world right from the get go. I didn't find it too bad, but I can see how some people would feel confused (actually, it's the feeling I get when I play a lot of JRPGs and they throw you right into a really weird world.) I think in Deadfire they had a good band-aid for this, in the form of dialogue links for lots of things that would come up with a small pop-up window and a brief description of what the person was talking about. But too bad Deadfire didn't do so well.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with liking a game with subpar elements, but the considerations for what is subpar is subjective. The original games are a good example of this. I love those games, but I think AD&D 2nd Ed is a dumpster fire of a rules system.

But some people love 2nd Ed, not in spite of what I consider convoluted jank, but because of it. The truth that there is disagreement on this point is demonstrative that this is a subjective impression, so I can’t go around telling people that they praising an objectively flawed system. That’s not my place to say.

And of course great games deserve criticism. I have a laundry list of items I would change about BG3, but I would still say it’s genre defining in the same way that the original games defined (and along with Fallout saved) the CRPG genre.

Oh, I agree the lore in PoE is very detailed and well thought, the problem is that I don't want to read a damn encyclopedia to learn some things about the lore. Dragon Age does introduce lore right, a perfect mix of learning through dialogues or game events with additional background from codex entries. PoE just floods you with long encyclopedia entries that has no emotional value. The Elder Scrolls games are somewhere in the middle, the problem there is mediocre main stories that are not engaging at all, but most of the side content does a pretty good job of introducing the lore.