Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
Originally Posted by Ixal
Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
The thing I've always said about the graphics and cinematic of this game is that they're playing outside their weight class. They're beneath the level of games like god of war or last of us yet are trying to achieve the same level, yet don't come close. The cinematic to me aren't even that impressive or noteworthy compared to other stuff, which to me makes them even more pointless. Right now I'm playing a game called Star Ocean: The second story R. Its a remake of an old ps2 game and I find the remade graphics gorgeous. But they're not going doe visual fidelity. They're mixing lush background art with pixel art sprites and it is another game that impresses me far more than BG3 in terms of art style and graphics. I can probably count on o e hand the number of times I was really wowed by BG3, but in games like star Ocean, wotr, PoE, I was constantly amazed by their graphics. And I think the worst thing that could happen to crpgs, genuinely, is them trying to chase the cinematic approach bg3 did. It would ruin the stuff that makes the genre actually great.

In fact I'd go a step further and say that the industry obsession with graphical fidelity is a net negative to gaming as a whole.
The industry is only obsessed with it because, sadly, dumbing down and adding graphics and sex sells more copies. BG3 is a good example of that.

I firmly disagree with this notion and I am deeply suspicious of accusations of "dumbing down" for mass appeal because I find it an inherently arrogant argument. But that part is a different discussion. The industry is o sessed with graphical fidelity because its a clear, easy thing to convey. It's hard to fully get across what playing their game is like. Especially a decade or so ago when the obsession really started to take root, conveying via easily absorbed trailers what a game's gameplay actually felt like wasn't that easy. Doable but not easy. What was easy was showing off how good the game looked. And now we are at a point where for people who aren't really invested in video games and the video game scene, graphics are conflated with quality. They're easier to market since they're a clearer storytelling tool. A trailer can't convey how elegantly a game like Joyrney reflects the hero's journey and if it did it would take something away from the experience of playing the game. Same as how a trailer can't sell people on the deep research and consideration of Greek myths that the game is built off of from bottom to top.
I stand by my words because cinematics come not for free. Not only do they eat up lots of resources, they also make it harder to improve other areas of the game. For example having more varied body types is very expensive with cinematics and also changes later are hard if not impossible which you can also see in BG3 when the voiceover does not match events in the game like when using tadpoles, decreasing the overall quality of the game.

A focus on cinematics will eventually always lead to a Cyberpunk/Witcher linear experience. Something like WotR would have been impossible to do with BG3s cinematics because of the many different creatures that would have needed animation.