If the rumors are true and they rushed an incomplete game out the door (knowing full well how much of a mess act 3 is + companions don't even have any ending at all) just to get in front of Starfield, that's just laughable, shortsighted, and reeks of incompetent leadership.
Or, conversely, Larian's leadership is extremely smart because they are able to "see the big picture" for AAA games, atleast in regards to releasing the game before Starfield takes the spotlight.
(An extreme amount of luck also helps too, which Larian seems to have in spades)
What I mean is statements like "no microtransactions" gets gamers extremely excited for the bare minimum and Larian generally gives off "We are for the Gamers" vibes too, like CDPR before Cyberpunk.
Then you have the whole discussion of how "this game shouldn't set the standard", that has been misconstrued to death now and will probably never recover from what it was actually about.
And then you the strongest part of the game being Act 1, which makes people think it'll hold up until the end, which would take most people 80ish hours to reach Act 3.
Which is further also exacerbated by journalists giving the game 10/10s across the board while not mentioning the performance issues of Act 3 and other elements like the rather average story, companions fall apart in Act 3, etc (Things that can be found all over this forum).
Now this could've been because of Larian's smart decision to release the review copies 5/6 days before release, which other developers have done to mitigate/hide the unfinished aspects of their game.
And given that DOS and DOS2 where also given extremely high reviews by journalists, which also had massive issues in the 2nd half, made this seem like a safe bet.
Meanwhile, other reviewers that give it less than the stellar 10/10, now get attacked by certain gamers, as seen from Eurogamer and countless other releases.
Then on top of all that, you slap in some popular internet sterotypes for characters/romances and then bam, here we are.
A game held up as a "shining beacon in AAA space, all alone in the night" when in reality it just follows the trend of release now, fix later. It's also hilarous, and disappointing, seeing people say that all future AAA games should follow BG3's standard.
The only way I can see that gets a fire lit under Larian, is if there is enough negative sentiment that journalists decide to start reporting on these issues, just like Diablo or Overwatch.
And as seen, all the news around the game's bug fixes are seen as very positive, wheras, people should be thinking "why was this game released with over 3500+ bugs and getting worse by the patch" . I don't think even Skyrim had that many.
Maybe some roadmap might come out early next year, but afaik, they didn't have anything like that during EA, so ¯\_(?)_/¯.
Also, just to add:
Uh, no? That's not what people asked for even back in Early Access.
I mean Halsin's romance was a community requested feature (maybe not what people wanted out of it tho...) along with a more friendly Shadowheart.
I really think everyone who's calling this game "best game of the year / decade / lifetime / I wish I could marry this game / etc..." haven't played through to the end. Otherwise they wouldn't say that.
The game has a 16% completion rate (for Steam) and there are some critics that must have and are still giving it 10/10s.
It's why I find this game such an anomaly, it's so weird considering such a "masterpiece" has so many issues.
By all means, that's a valid complaint, but what would that even achieve when the game is already released?
I guess it's just people trying to hold AAA games, and/or just RPGs, to a higher standard and as such, it's a vain attempt to convince other people this game isn't some sort of masterpiece and/or shouldn't be used as a "standard" for AAA games.
That and probably just venting in general.
but you decided to buy the game without checking the proper reviews first so that's also on you.
Ahem...
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=920230#Post920230
