Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate 4

Couldn't agree more on the animations and bear sex part.

But I hard disagree that owlcat games have superior story and writing. Their writing is graphomania bordering graphorrhea. The story - part of it is Pathfinder canon lore, and it's good, but what owlcats slapped on it - cringe. I was face palming all they way through - I did like Daeran and Regill tho.

Pillars of Eternity is an example of better writing and story than BG3, not owlcat's flops.

I quite liked the additional Lantern King content in Kingmaker.
No idea what Owlcat added to WotR. Yes, Blackwater but that was to my knowledge added by a kickstarter backer, so Owlcat had no real choice than to follow through with whatever stupid idea he came up with. Same with the cringe pirate in Kingmaker.

And while there are some low points in the Pathfinder games like the gold dragon mythic, even the low points are imo compareable with average BG3 content while Owlcats high points are much higher.
Its enough that the Pathfinder games do not flip flop on the main plot like BG3 does with how removing the tadpoles go from the central theme to no issue. Or that Owlcat games do not shoot themself into the foot by pretending there is time pressure but make you miss story events by not resting.

Same with companions I doubt any BG3 companion will become as iconic as the Pathfinder ones, including Astarion whos claim to fame is 90% thirst and nothing else.
Regil or Daeran are far more interesting than anything Larian made and even characters like Harrim or Camilla are easily equal to Astarion or Shadowheart.

Once again - I care little about what the company does or doesn't do, until it becomes actual criminal stuff or disgusting. I care about the games they make; and while it's a rule of thumb to play their games after a half year or so of patches and bug fixes, at the end of the day, they still craft excellent stories and characters. I know I sure do play WotR more than I have or will play BG3, considering the latter falls apart under even a little bit of scrutiny or with a timeline written out for it.

Kingmaker was a bit rough, but they definitely learned from it, and I happen to look forward to their upcoming WH40K game - despite not having any familiarity with the setting or game whatsoever. But they've shown that even if their games start out rough, they care enough to keep working on it after the fact - and care enough about the settings or ttrpgs they're adapting to at least know how to create a compelling narrative with at least a good amount of deep characters, without having to make everything into a movie-type spectacle or sell their games off of the romances alone.

So while you are entitled to your own opinion on the company, I don't entirely think throwing what amounts to an overdramatized rant at me is the best way to discuss it. Especially when I'm speaking purely from a position of "do they make good narrative-focused games?". And the answer to that is yes, they do. And that's all I care about - not whatever beef Russians have with them.


I don't know if they bought it, or were approached by WotC after the success of DOS2. Either way, it definitely is obvious that while there may be some enjoyment of D&D at a base level, they most certainly aren't super fond of 5e. I think a lot of system improvements to the adaptation of it only happened due to EA feedback, at that, so... take that as you will.

People have pointed out often on the story forum that it feels as if they took all negative consequences from using the tadpole powers away, simply because they wanted people to use them more, seemingly due to a distaste for 5e by itself? Whatever the reason, it certainly didn't help matters in the story department, considering the mess of rewrites and the absolutely insane timeline of the game's events.


That's WotC for you. They're a genuinely awful company, so the approach they take to official games vs. games made in the spirit of D&D doesn't surprise me at all.

The ironic thing is they'd make a killing from working with devs like Owlcat or Tactical Adventures, but apparently just... don't want to? Maybe WotC wants "bigger" names behind their games, who knows.


While I disagree that BG3's companions are unmemorable... I do agree that some are just sort of there.

I'll remember Astarion and Lae'zel, as I feel they overall have some of the best writing. Shart was also good, but the during the course of her story ended up ruining her entire character for me. While I love Gale/Wyll/Karlach, they're very... mundane? In terms of character writing. I may recall them here and there, but I doubt I'll look back and fondly remember their dialogue and character growth the way I do with Daeran, Regill, or Ember (or Aloth and Eder, in Pillars, just to name a few).

In terms of antagonists, though, yeah... BG3 mostly makes them memorable via character design more than anything. Gortash, much as I like him, feels more like a JRPG villain who got awkwardly shoved into a cRPG, lmao.

Err ... the pathfinder companions are unmemorable simply by virtue of me not seeing much of a reason to play those games.

In principle Knights of the Republic 2 had extremely memorable companions. But the game was totally unfinished so you had these cool looking creations that did hardly anything, storywise.

The far more "boring" original Knights of the Republic characters are thus far more memorable.

So cool companions is nice, but fleshed out companions is better. And we get to see some truely awesome arcs with BG3 companions.

As for Larian's next projects, it's unlikely that they go down the route of action-RPG again, at least not as conveyed as in any of the original Divinitys, in particular part II. Which for Swen apparently was a product of its time -- and market demand. (To me personally, the mid 2000s to mid 2010s were a pretty dark time as far as RPGs are concerned as well).



https://web.archive.org/web/20120606200910/http://www.lar.net/2012/05/17/the-grand-idea-behind-project-e/


Maybe they'll just open their full pockets now and buy the Ultima license, who knows. By the way, the original two Gothics are kinda like Ultima (7) as well quite a bit... but for different reasons than pretty much anything in Original Sin or BG3. Arguably, Gothic was the first perfectly decent Ultima game in 3d, even if it wasn't actually Ultima. (Gothic developer Piranha Bytes too have lost the plot since then, trying to make ever bigger worlds just like the big dogs, and in turn not only losing what made Gothic special -- but stretching their limited personell and budget thin as well.)