Okay, but then we have to ask how skewed BG3's scores were. They had less cash, but not WAY less, so they could "buy" reviews if they wanted (though I doubt 'buying' reviews is what's going on here.) And BG3 has received a lot of glowing reviews that we have to, by now, assume were not completely honest, or were based off totally incomplete information - nobody can go through BG3's final act, especially the way it was on release, and honestly claim the game deserves a perfect score. Do I think they *paid* for reviews, and that's why these reviewers handed out undeserved perfect scores? No, but I think there's a lot of hype that's skewing BG3's score way higher than it fairly ought to be. And some of that is down to outright bullshit marketing, too. (Remember the '17000 endings' claim?)
I think you just like to say things to say things :P
1) Larian had 1/4 the budget of Starfield
2) The only way you "buy" user scores is by making a game people like. Bg3 had Excellent User and Official review scores. Starfield has ok review Scores and REALLY bad User scores.
I can't defend the unfinished state of Act 3 - but I also think you are reacting to incomplete information and you are misdirecting your anger. I think, given what I have seen and know, that Larian chose the best of a series of bad options. You want to think about the relationships that Larian has and how that affects decisions they had to make.
So not to put too fine a point on it, I don't blame Larian, I blame WOTC/Hasbro.
Every commercial enterprise Hasbro has engaged in over the last 3 years has failed - except this one. The D&D movie may have broken even, investor calls indicate that it didn't bring in the increased player base they hoped. The other D&D game hasbro did was a total buggy mess and flopped (Dark Alliance).
Since then, Hasbro/WOTC has cancelled 5 planned video games. FIVE. They realized that making a successful video game is not an easy thing to do. You can't just hire a random studio to make a successful game in a market this big.
Up to this point Hasbro had been suffering from the problem of not being able to get out of their own way. However, they seem to finally be waking up to how valuable Larian studios is and that they need to do whatever they can to keep Larian engaged with them - just based on recent comments they have made.
Anyway, Larian should have more leverage now and we should see that pay dividends.
Wouldn't Starfield having only OK review scores go against your "they bought reviews" point, then? If they were buying reviews, why would they buy merely 'ok' ones? And you absolutely CAN 'buy' and manipulate user review scores (in fact, it's probably quite a bit easier to do that than it is to manipulate 'official' review scores by critics.)
The thing is, there is no reason to believe this is WOTC/Hasbro's fault. This is exactly the way Larian's other games have been when WOTC/Hasbro have not been involved. Far more likely than WoTC/Hasbro forcing them into anything is the simple, repeated, demonstrable fact that Larian simply *does not make well-finished games.* And really, the double-standard on this point, and others, is truly absurd. It's not merely that act 3 has game-breaking bugs, combat degenerates, and the story totally unravels. There are some pretty fundamental bugs in other parts of the game as well - including bugs on consoles that make *basic functionality* difficult. Never in a *thousand years* would Bethesda be forgiven for this sort of thing, and yet here you are trying to say that it's not really Larian's fault.
I'm sorry, but this game is absolutely overhyped, and it's overhyped because people *want* it to mean something, they want it to be a symbol they can rally around opposed to the tactics of larger, corporate game publishers. If you want it to be that, fine, but you need to be honest about what the game actually is.
Take, for example, the praise BG3 is getting for not having microtransactions. Sure, that's nice.
But remember how BG3 was in early access for *years*? Full-price early access? How they had people paying *full price* for a game that would not come out for years so they could use them to debug their product? This was, at one time, considered as toxic and outrageous a practice as microtransactions are; a fact that seems to be conveniently forgotten now. Made even more outrageous by the fact that the moment you *leave* the area covered by EA, it's not long before quality begins to decline. Is this *really* the model you want games in general to follow? Is this *really* what you want to rally around?
Because I can't help but think that such full-priced, massive, successful EAs...actually rely a lot on *name recognition.* I doubt Larian's EA would have been nearly as successful if it did not have the "Baldur's Gate" name on it. But if such a funding mechanism is so reliant on the name recognition of established franchises, isn't that *just as conservative, if not more so*, than companies funding projects internally? The factor that many people lament as being behind creative stagnation in large corporations?
I don't actually expect that games where Larian gets "greater leverage" will actually be any different from BG3, or DOS2, or DOS1. I think they'll follow the same pattern Larian games have followed regardless of the creative environment: Fun first half, hard dropoff in second half. Larian deserves praise for what it did well in BG3, but *scathing* criticism for what it did poorly - especially because it's a failure mode that they've fallen into *multiple times at this point.* I think some of the rhetoric surrounding the game's accomplishments is truly obnoxious. I have no doubt that employees at Larian were "passionate", but I also have no doubt that employees at Bethesda were "passionate." The problem is that "passion" alone cannot make a "great" game. And as far as I'm concerned, BG3 is *not* a "great" game. It's very fun in spots. But it clearly needs some real polish, polish that I am unsure it will ever get, and even if it gets it I am unsure it will elevate it so much that it would deserve to be called a "great" game. If people *really* think BG3 is so grand that something about it is worth emulating, they need to figure out exactly what that is.
