If Skyrim didn't come out in 2011, the same year that Game of Thrones dropped on HBO, who knows right? If BG3 didn't materialize during a world ending plague, things could have wound up rather differently too. Being successful or well received as a game such that it's able to achieve that critical mass for broader appeal has gotta be at least as much down to those sorts of externalities. I mean at least as much as anything inherent to the gameplay or the game per se. Peeps also tend to reserve special derision for anything that achieves pop status, regardless of how it gets there, like even if it's earnest or on the sly, so this all complicates the scenario and the overall takeaway for me.
Trying to figure out the genealogy of a game doesn't become all that interesting I think until a few years out, when I can see what sort of stuff has been spawned in its wake. So if someone sees sex and sex sells and that's all it is, perhaps, but also these are more repressive times we're living through than many would probably countenance, so if it starts to take on an added dimension there that people are particularly responding too, I could see that. Probably something in the rearview mirror already though. I don't know, seems to me they met the moment. It gave me enough of what I need from a BG game that if it were a pass/fail of course it's going to pass - with flying colors. For my part I want more to gush over. Everything just listed as superfluous - the graphics, the cinematics, the voice, the sex. All that ribald nonsense like up to the hilts. I'm so down. It could have been twice as libertine and I'd show out.
This game is memorable. I remember all the characters names. Like even the rando bit players. Usually I can name names on a small handful of characters from any given game. Even the greatest cRPGs I can think of, I'll still only have a few names pop into my mind immediately, but how often do I feel that way for an entire ensemble? I can't remember the last time (unless we could count Baldur's Gate games, in which case I recall them all) but I just think it's pretty wild. Not like I haven't been here the whole time watching it variously take off or crash and catch fire on the launchpad several times. Frankly if you'd asked me in 2021 whether I thought this game would be rad or "suck Gnolls" and be a blight on the BG legacy, I'd have had only pensive answers and the dread fear at the time. But it sucked way less on delivery, and they didn't even do half the things they could have done, like blow out the Char customization and such which I thought they'd be holding in reserve.
I mean they legit gave me all the same heads as in EA pretty much, even after all those multi-colored screens at every angle lol. Now it's comical to me how many times I gotta see Aradin and Zevlor duke it out with different haircuts, still swinging in every chapter. This is the B flick element, and also that love it garners from me, the absurdism there. Nothing could be more sketch comedy theatrical than a wig and wardrobe change, but still I enjoyed it heartily. I think they could do the same again with 240 more heads and voices, maybe a whole new gang, maybe some returning favs. All I really want is for BG3 to inspire the creation of a BG4 within the same framework. Continuing Adventures style. Then shore up the cam controls, but that's just going to always be what I have to say there. Fix the camera first, everything else can follow heheh
