Another thing occured to me, and that is the divide between cinematics and gameplay, which sometimes feel greater in BG3 than in anything cinematic wholesale.
Playing the game exclusively from behind the shoulder cam may remove this feeling some, but it's as if BG3 exists in two distinct modes: Actual gameplay (exploration and combat) vs cinematics (most else). There's even often quite of a break when you approach a key scene, your character suddenly stops moving and you realize, yupp, the game is going into cinematics mode now. And then the cinematic starts.
Of course, this is nothing new. Cinematics in their very concept are fundamentally opposed to gameplay, which is interactive, whereas cinematics are computer graphics cinema. Dialogue choices are here of course, but as long as there's a cinematic, gameplay basically comes to a halt. As argued, really really curious how people are going to view cinematic games in 30, 40, 50 years from now.
I think that if they aren't seen similar to very early movies, then games by then haven't realized their near full potential yet. That doesn't mean games would need to remove dialogue etc. or anything wholesale, but by then should come up with solutions better suited and wholly unique to games -- as interactive experience going places where no movie could ever go. You see promising glimpses of that in old Origin/Looking Glass games for sure (alongside to Arkane, their modern-day "heir"), but nobody's much evolved beyond that yet and completely ran with it. As going cinematic is also quite unrisky (people LOVE cinema), and costs are still rising, this might take another plenty years.
Last edited by Sven_; 28/11/23 08:00 AM.
