I think the framing here is a bit rhetorical, since that's what happens when a declarative statement is presented as a question, but since these are discussion boards... Is Baldur's Gate 3 bad for the genre?
I don't think so, but I also enjoy what I suppose we'd call low brow fantasy? I feel like that is somewhat in the spirit of the original. I just kinda enjoy when it goes all extra bawdy and libertine. I mean of course I like when it taps into some whimsy and romanticism too, but that's not really the first thing that comes to mind for me when recalling Baldur's Gate.
Mostly the criticism levelled against Larian is that they are too irreverent, but to me that's one of their strengths here. I think a team that was more precious with the source material would have really struggled to pull this off.
Basically we're getting Beneath the Planet of the Apes more than Planet of the Apes, if that makes sense. (Although honestly I still find the original Planet of the Apes to be the funnier film personally, so maybe its more that one hehe.) BG3 is basically an epic B flick.
It should probably be called a triple B game (BBB) rather than AAA, or AA with a AAA budget, or other shorthands I've heard.
Stuff like that is always gonna be a bit take it or leave it, and it's super hard to replicate or copy.
Origin and Genre are related terms, they share the same root, and to me, we can read a lot into how Origin means something rather different in DAO compared to BG3. Irony fell out of fashion from overuse in the aughts, but I think it's ironic that BG3 landed where it did. Somehow I accidentally ceremorphed from a hater to a booster, somewhere between the EA and the Full Release, but this is probably because I expected hardcore disappointment when instead I found myself quite enjoying it. But I don't think I could universalize or generalize why exactly.
ps. The Deadfire video is fascinating. He's very candid! Sawyer doing the mea culpa thing and falling on his sword for some of that stuff. It makes me like him all the more for just leaving it all on the field and being willing to air it out that way in the aftermath. Like what they learned from it all. To me the most interesting part is a few minutes later when he discusses the challenges of the early backer/early access phenomenon. I would love so much one day to hear something like that about how the BG3 EA felt from the other side, like on the receiving end of all this feedback and criticism.
Also not to dismiss the prompt, just that it primed me first to think of all the ways BG3 might be bad for the genre, but then I had to stop myself cause that would take a very long time to unpack and I'm not sure it'd really be on Larian so much as like the genre itself. That q activates my future construction disability/ability and dials it way up, inclines me to take stuff pretty far off the deep end. Then I had to pause and think for a good long spell about what BG3 reminded me of. And I just couldn't help hearing Dr. Zaius or the whole tribunal scene, which is the funniest thing ever filmed in my book. I think I like the laughs, but only when they're self depricating and self inflicted. Otherwise it seems sort of cruel. But I feel similarly about all the jokes and joking around. Where it's directed makes a big difference. When it seems like BG3 is poking fun at itself, or just faceplants like slapstick, that lands for me. When I feel like they're making fun of my nostalgia for the OG, not so much.
How I felt about the difference in their treatment of Jaheira compared to
their treatment of Viconia
maybe? That would be a good inflection point to tease out for me. Since I love the way they handled the one, but felt totally burnt by the other. I think I'm a bit of a sucker for a redemption arch, which may be a big factor there for me. Again though, not sure what to make of it on that larger front. I guess I got one foot in the river here and the other still on the banks.
