Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is BG3 bad for the genre?

I see it the same way, generally. I'm not a big fan of randomness as core concept out of combat. In combat it is ok. However there is the possibility to make randomness out of combat bearable, by choosing appropiate numbers to achieve. Larian here in my opinion totally failed in many cases, they seemingly think it's ok to block bigger parts of quests and areas behind high numbers.

The central pillar of TTRPG's is the playing of a role. That's literally the entire purpose of them. You role play a character within a narratively driven campaign.

The character building and combat are just vehicles to help drive that narrative, by providing interaction with the narrative based on decisions made (Things like "The Rogue unlocks a door" or "The Cleric keeps someone alive by healing them" or "The Bard persuades enemies to be friends")


Simply having a narrative is not the same has having a focus on a narrative. For example, Mario games have the narrative of "Save the princess from Bowser" but that's not a focus on narrative, it's merely a passing setting..

As far as games not having a narrative... I couldn't tell you if Path of Exile had one. Similarly Grim Dawn barely has one (It starts off great with the whole "You were possessed by an Aetherial and were being hanged because of that... But during the hanging the Aetherial leaves and the hanging is thus stopped" then it's just "Bad guys ahead need killing" in various flavours), though ironically Grim Dawn has more emphasis on actually role playing than most ARPG's as you make choices within the world (They're just narratively inconsequential as they're mostly "Which faction do you side with")

There are other games that have less focus on narrative like the Disgaea series where you'll have a central story... Which progresses once every few stages. Then the remaining 70% of the game has nothing to do with it, with post-game stages, bonus stages and the item world... Honestly 100%ing the game would involve 99% of your gameplay being anything but the story (And mostly being leveling your characters to level 9999 a hundred times each)

Same with Monster Hunter games where again much of the content is post-game stuff (Not that the story is ever particularly notable and is normally "Oh noes, a more powerful monster is angery!")


The fact that they're doing a survey to try and gauge interest in IP's rather than making a decision based on what THEY want to make is indicative of being a cash grab. Since even if a "Niche" IP ends up being more popular and they make that, their decision is still being made based around what will be the most profitable rather than what they had a vision to create.

logged in just to thank you for mentioning it
cuz i realized it too a couple of weeks ago

hey people
just imagine a hacknslash that is better in world reactivity than a goty of goty of goty of goty rpg
sure, grim dawn's choices are simple and mostly are "rep faction gear + some quests" vs "another dungeon + another boss"
sure, grim dawn's choices do not change the main plot, its still "kill the tentacle thing / fleshy aetherial thing / korvaak" (same as bg3)

but then you look at bg3 choices and realize that almost all of them (or maybe literally all of them with that knockout patch?) are "you get a quest / exp / gear / another npc" vs "lol u get nufin gtfo"

I think it will be great for the genre. A massive success usually serves to inspire others to try and surpass it.

Well, I've actually done it. Un-installed WOTR for the third time since release. And still not being finished with the save. I mean, I respect those guys. They're basically an assembly line production of CRPG content, instead of cheap MOBA clones. Churning out stuff at an alarming rate. You've got to respect that some.

But the final straw this time was the demon city in about Chapter 4. And me being tasked of doing endless busywork errands all through that city. Which meant engaging over and over again with loading bars and a camera that has to be rotated so that paths through the city open up.

As much as I like the good bits of their games when I find them, I can't do this anymore. They're making content worthy of 40-50 hours campaigns and stretch them to last up to 100 hours plus. And it says quite a bit that even out of such an extraordinary place (a demon city), they milked the absolutely ordinary (errands and busywork). Plus then added tedium on top of that (the camera that needs to be rotated constantly).

Not sure where Larian are headed next (wasn't a huge fan of DOS, plus genre history shows that every RPG studio who's hit it big desperately tried to go even BIGGER at a massive cost). But Owlcat... maybe on another day if I have nothing left to play again. And way too much time on my hands (the in-game clock even in Chapter 3 of 6 showed like 70-80 hours in WOTR, and I played most of it in real-time rather than TB).

My bad, I worded that sentence badly. I should've said:
"Where RPGs have a history with TTRPGs, the design elements that game designers have seemingly used to define the RPG genre, would be character development/building and combat."


Right, with examples I can see what you mean. Odd that Monster Hunter is considered a RPG.
I was thinking that while most "Looter Shooter"/"Dungeon Crawler" ARPGs are abit weak on their story (assuming it has one), they still counted as something, even if their role playing element is very limited.

Although, like Disgaea, I guess most J/ARPGs tend to focus on providing post-game content over providing a story.
However, there are a bunch of RPGs that are completely focused on their story until they switch to post-game and its' narrative is still relevant for that post-game content. Two I can think of are FF14 and Dragons Dogma. Warframe as well as the Diablo and the Borderlands games might count too even with their non-existant role playing.

And there are those ARPGs that do completely focus on their story from beginning to end such as Nier Automata or any CDPR games.
(Dunno much about JRPG's tho)



Eh, idk; Them including more niche IPs wouldn't make much sense given that even if it's popular within their community, chances is that it wouldn't be that popular outside (assuming something like that was even chosen).
They did change how they did DLC after a community survey and the two that have been released so far wouldn't be considered Cash grabs.

In saying that however, it's pretty much speculation until after their next game as to whatever that survey was for.

I take it you haven't played Owlcat's Warhammer 40k: Loading Bars - Err, I mean Rogue Trader then.

Ridiculous amounts of looading screens for simple things... For no reason. Like, I can go from the ship to any location in a city... But getting back to the ship? No, I have to go through each district (With a Loading Screen) to get to the docks to then go to the single "Return to ship" and ensuing Loading Screen.

Heck, even when exploring a planet, you might get enough Profit Factor to be able to buy something you want... But to do so you run back to the start of the planet for the "Return to ship" transition > Loading Screen > Now you're on the Galaxy Map so you have to press the "Go to Bridge" button > Loading Screen > Now you're on your ship and you can go trade stuff and access your stash (Stash is locked behind another Loading Screen) okay back to the planet that means access the navigation > Loading Screen > Back to the Galaxy Map so reselect the planet > Loading Screen > Finally you can run back to where you were before you wanted to do a minor task...

All the time, these Loading Screens aren't insignificant. Even on an SSD they're lasting like 30-40 seconds for whatever reason... I swear it feels like I spend more time in Loading Screens than actually playing the game.

Though what gets me about Rogue Trader is the god awful balance. Melee is super gimped because it takes so many stats and is still garbage. While you have obscenely OP things like Operative with Tactical Knowledge that gives them +flat damage and gives the entire party +armour that stacks infinitely. Literally in one of the early "Hidden boss" during Act 1 I ended up having my Operative's gun that normally does 3-5 damage per shot dealing 120-130 damage per shot (And can burst fire for 8 shots as a standard action compared to a melee character who can hit once for 7-14 damage at this point...) with my entire party having over 100% damage reduction from armour...


All that means is that they're resigning themselves to their existing playerbase rather than doing a BG3/Elden Ring and targeting a wider audience.

Which at this point, is probably what they expect given how WotR/Rogue Trader performed with them being targeted at existing fans.

It's still coming down to they're looking at what is popular rather than doing what they want which is literally the cash grab mindset.

A comparison would be Classic Blizzard vs modern Bli$$ard;

Classic Blizzard made games that THEY wanted to play. So we got amazing titles like Warcraft 1-3, Diablo 1&2 and Starcraft 1&2.

Modern Bli$$ard makes games based on what is popular so we got Overwatch 2, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 4, Diablo Immortal... Bunches of cash grab games designed to hit what is popular at the time earn a quick buck.

I'm gonna speak up to say that I think Owlcat games' stuff is great. Do they have flaws? Sure they do, what game doesn't? But I think the whole is better than the sum of their parts, and those parts in general are overall pretty good. Wrath of the Righteous is my favorite game, I think it's fantastic. I'm also currently in the middle of my second playthrough of Rogue Trader in a row. I'd been playing through Kingmaker again and the only reason I didn't finish it was because Rogue Trader came along. The games are massive and they make real swings when it comes to systems. You may not like the systems they add to their games (I actually really do) but they're trying to add something to mix up the genre and I think the games would be lesser for their absence. I also think their writing is excellent. They have a style of storytelling that I absolutely love, that puts the focus on the player in a way I think highlights some of the best aspects of the genre. Saying they're just out to produce cash grabs ignores the amount of work that goes into them. Could their games use more time in the oven? Yeah, definitely- I'm not a fan of the loading screens but they don't annoy me all that much personally - but that's a problem that seems to just be all over the PC gaming landscape nowadays, I don't think they're any more or less guilty of that than some other studios. Hell, look how long it's taking BG3 to get things together.

I also did not think when I took the survey that they were actually looking at those IPS to make games of. I took it more as them just wanting a broader sense of what their fanbase is interested in, not a direct "what's our next game going to be?" question. I mean, I love them but do you really think there's any chance they get their hands on the license for Lord of the rings or Mistborn?

Wait wait wait, hang on, at the beginning of this mini-discussion, you were complaining that Owlcat was trying to make a cash grab by going after another popular IP to, presumably, expand their existing playerbase and now your saying the opposite, that they have resigned themselves to make whatever their community wants for a cash grab?

And your saying it's okay and not a cash grab for Larian to pivot to a popular IP (DnD) using the name of a already fairly well known series of games because they wanted to expand their playerbase (which, mind you, is exactly what Larian's CEO has said in an past interview) but it is a cash grab because Owlcat sent out a survey...?
(And it's debatable if Larian even cares for the DnD Ruleset)


I guess I am kinda hoping they did it for a new game, if only for the tiniest amount of hope they make something Babylon 5 related.

And I wouldn't hate it if they did something with the cosmere. Now I think about it, there IS a mistborn ttrpg, and a stormlight one is getting crowdfunded this year, so it's not AS farfetched maybe, I just don't think it's likely. Pathfinder it seems like there's some decent relationship there with Paizo. Plus they're a smaller games company so it was in their interest to get their name out there more with a video game. And Games Workshop seemingly lets everyone and their mother make a game based on their IP. But a lot of those other IPs there seem pretty unlikely. Was Wheel of Time on there? I'm pretty sure it was and I don't think the Jordan estate is going to be looking to expand in that direction.

They definitely put more stock into releasing content in a timely fashion than making the best product possible.

Which is more "Cash-grabby" than many other studios.


You mean like they have a casual interest in what platforms you play games on, how often you buy games, whether you buy games at full price or wait for sales?

The entire survey was nothing but a gauge for their releases. That it went over your head doesn't mean it's not there (I personally have experienced enough of these sorts of surveys to be able to see behind the facade of general curiosity about playerbases).

As far as getting licences for LotR? I mean did you see the last LotR licenced game? Gollum? Contender for "Worst game ever"?

Star Wars might be trickier but even then Disney has been running that IP into the ground as of late so some rando company making a SW game isn't too far fetched.


I never said anything about expanding their playerbase. Using metrics to target IP's that their community find popular is still looking at trying to maximize profits even without "Expanding existing playerbases"


When did I ever say it wasn't a cash grab on Larian's part?

HOW MUCH of one is something I wonder. As I don't know if they were offered the DnD IP and took advantage of it (Despite not liking DnD ruleset as they've mentioned it had restricted them and we can see from all the homebrewing they've done) or if they actively sought out the IP purposefully because it would lead to profits.

Yeah this is the worst thing of all about BG3. They talk a good talk about being a game of choices and consequences, but it is complete BS. Sure, it has a ton of choices, but all of them are entirely superficial and meaningless, where they give people the feeling, the *illusion*, of a choice even though nothing meaningfully happens or changes in the world or the story or the quest. BG3 is the most railroady RPG of all time.

This is exactly opposite of my experience with BG3. I played it twice (good sorcerer and evil Dark Urge) and made completely different choices and I felt like playing different games. You may have a different view on this, sure, but it doesn't mean it's a reality.

There are things I don't like in how the story goes or things that feels unfinished or cut, but the feeling of meaningful choice is on of stronger points of BG3.

I don't want to say simple "please, play the game first", because I formed opinion on games I haven't played myself too, and there is nothing wrong with that, but it's... really not how you described with BG3, at least to me. In fact, playing BG3 made me put more attention of lack of meaningful choices in each crpg I played after BG3.

Like, Rogue Trader is a game with truly stellar writing (really, something I haven't seen since Disco Elysium), but the choices mainly comes down to following one of three paths (dogmatic, heretical or iconoplast). There is no sense of "role playing" your character the way you can do in BG3.

I agree, I found many of my choices produced very different outcomes. I've played the game several times and during EA, I must have played Act I at least several dozen times. I'm still coming across new things and different outcomes.

My experience with BG3 was that in playing it, the only time the game feels different is if you try and play different alignments. To mere hallmark of good roleplay in a game is how wll you can play the same morality and sill feel like a different character. I have started several runs of BG3 and my characters quickly feel the same, and I feel like I lack a lot of choices I'd want my character to say. I have not felt like that at any point jn my two rogue trader playhroughs. I feel in BG3 like if I want to play a good character I'm gonna see pretty much the same things. But even as I was playing he heretic path in rogue trader I could see other interesting ways I could roleplay a heretic. Honestly I found BG3 very disappointing as a roleplay experience, and I've felt that way since early access.

I had a somewhat similar impression. I have 10 Durges going right now, one for each dragonborn/draconic sorcery lineage and each Alignment more or less. They are effectively all the same character, one Din with 10 variants, just to see how different I could make it feel for each out. A tetractys-Din or something along those lines hehe. I've been using pretty much the same visualization which is a riff on my favorite dragonborn head - this one...

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OGdZJw

They all got the same patina for the scales, black in the look though that's just cosmetic. I change the eye colors too, which to me would be something like a new age-y aura or whatever - subject to change - and of course there's the option for that 11/1 split on the lvl spread to mix things up along the way. I tried to keep it simple, cause many Durges die with honours on the road to Baldur's Gate, and then they have to try again for the endless Groundhog's day. My char creation process is streamlined, and my dream guardian is always the same - the default.

Jah Din and Nah Din have both crossed the finish line. Bah Din is pretty far along and about to make a run for the Netherbrain. Xah Din keeps dying cause he's a Poison Dragon Sorcerer (poison spray has gotta be the best cantrip since True Strike lol). You get the idea. The idea was to make it about the choices more than the mechanics, though I left some wiggle room to not get too bored, with flavor coming from the lineage or the 1 lvl dip. For the most part I followed the lore, in that the metallic dragons trend towards good and such, but not always.

I find that more than anything else, what makes each run feel distinct is party comp and the choice of companions in the active party, more than say the choice to play it good/evil or lawful/chaotic. Frequently the dialog options will give the same results. Or if they are clearly going to give different results this comes mostly from the meta, and the whole character is a meta character. The RP in this case is to reconcile the meta with what is happening, stuck in a time loop. I wouldn't go down this road, except that it sorta works for my BG sensibility, as like a DARK comedy. Anyway, the choices and different feels, those tend to come down to who's along for the ride, as I can then key off that for the little stuff. I think to capture the spirit of roleplay I'm after what is required would be way more during character creation, and early branching.

I keep guessing that maybe my initial responses to those early dialogue options might have further reaching consequences, you know like whether I curse whoever did this to me, or try to remember my name, whatever happens with Us, how I respond to the first corpse, the choices made vis a vis Alfira/Quill. Whether Minthara gets to come along, or things of that sort. Most of my special dialogue prompts coming from Class don't seem to have an impact, other than which lines get read immediately afterwards. Sometimes the Medicine check coming from the Haunted One background will open up a new dialog branch, but it doesn't really do what I was hoping, which would be to change the direction of the quest or open up new questlines, and things of that sort. It's iterative sure, but not quite in the way I thought it might be. Once I strip away all the cosmetic features on the surface and just get right down into it. I also feel like the cosmetic options just aren't all that different really, but I've been hung up on that for a long ass time. I think the zots need to go into char creation stuff, starting equipment, entering fields that have meaningful impacts on what sort of story then gets delivered. A little matrix of things that happen near the start, which then define what's going to happen later.

I think this is why I liked Durge more than Tav or the Origins, because Durge wasn't a totally pre-established companion Character in the way that the Origins were handled (Durge has a default visualization the same way Tav has Generica the High Elf Tav Barbarian, but it's not set and the portrait display in the initial menu shows the mysterious anybody figure.) This is the sort of thing I want from a Custom character in a BG style game. Like clearly they're never going to give me what I really want with all the bells and whistles to make every PC feel completely unique (What I'd want from D&D) but there's enough there to keep me interested. Although I've done it now like almost a dozen times, and there's only so much there that gives a real branch. If that makes sense.

In the moment though, I do find the approach to the encounters is pretty variable, even with all the meta and trying to choose the road not taken, and I think that is what I find appealing, even if this sometimes requires a suboptimal path or a break with RP where I have to headcanon something to make it work to my satisfaction. I think they could also do more on this front with early itemization or perhaps things like one off companions/familiars, the sort of stuff that becomes character defining rather than switched out when you meet the next thing. I think the place to set up the big branches should all be in the first Act, and the stuff that happens in Acts II and III should diverge more widely based on whatever went down earlier at the start of the game, or even in Char creation.

ps. Oh and one other thing, which is more QoL, but I had to give all my Dins a different prefix for their names, because it's really difficult to determine who's who from the loadgame files if I don't do this. It would be so much more convenient if I could pull up a character sheet to see what's going on in that save instead of just a screenshot.

For me, I actually don't mind at all if different dialogue options lead to the same outcome. So log as there are still a couple different outcomes I actually prefer that. It means I can make my character varied in the reasoning and responses to different events, it makes me feel like my character has an internal life, like they have complexity of their own. In my first run I enjoyed being able to play a prideful, openly dismissive heretic and then changing tack and playing more lip service to the Imperium for the sake of hiding my plans. I felt as though I was able to make and play a character who was actually complex and a character in their own right, while after a while I felt disconnected to my Tav and now I feel that Tavs are just a vehicle for messing around with the story rather than actually a character able to express any sort of internality.

That's where the roleplay in BG3 falls flat for me. To me being able to have lots of varied reactions voicing my character's thoughts is more important than gameplay stuff. I like being able to give my characters unique arcs and development even hour I generally go down he same story paths.

I can't recall, all I remember was The Expanse and Discworld. Although, I did read that WoT's game license was sold to another company but I can't tell who owns it now.


Well yeah, they're obviously asking for feedback on how they can maximise how they spend money on marketing and trying to improve their "market impact" (for lack of a better word), which I don't see as a negative thing for them to do.


Even so, going after Major IPs would obviously make Owlcat more known and bring in more people to play their games, which is what you seemed to imply they were doing.


Well, you didn't seem to consider it to be a cash grab when you put BG3 with Elden Ring (Unless you consider ER to be one too) as only attempting to capture a wider audience without pure profit in mind.
And given that ER was an evolution of Fromsoft's rules and an original IP, it wouldn't be in the same boat as BG3.

Also, they did purposefully seek out BG3, given they had to pay for it. (They originally wanted the DnD license after Dos1, but WOTC said no)
Here is the full quote too: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=660739#Post660739

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For the recent discussion, Act 3 feels the worst for this kind of stuff.

Nothing you do or have done in the previous Acts really change much here; Play good and everything feels samey, play evil and you get less stuff.
And in general, Act 3 feels like a "roller coaster" of sorts, going from one random situation or side quest to the next.
Atleast Durge makes Act 3 feel abit more involved with the main story.

On its own, sure it's a normal thing to do.

But when you combine it with their tendency to rush out games, it comes across as more like the average AAA studio where it's all about making quick money not good products.


Then I must be more concise with my words.

*Ahem*

Given that the survey will only be seen by those that have an active interest in the company, either through being fans of their games, the genre or having an heard about them from such people, the survey is directed towards current consumers. When looking at popularity of things via the survey, this is indicative of looking for what is popular among their existing playerbase. So what they are looking to do, is capitalize on whatever is the most popular IP among their current playerbase to maximize their profits by ensuring that existing customers are inticed into purchasing their newest title, with the idea that they wish to simply use a popular IP to sell their next title as opposed to making something stand alone good enough to please their playerbase.

Whether or not such an IP has popularity outside of their existing playerbase is irrelevant as such interest will not be reflected in the survey because of the aforementioned reasoning that people who are not existing customers will not see the survey in the first place.


Would you mind showing me where I stated that?

You're inventing implications from things not stated.

All I said about BG3 and ER is that they were explicitly taking on changes to attract a wider audience. I said nothing about not considering them cash grabs.

If you really must know my thoughts on these games:

BG3 comes across as a cash grab. The devs clearly don't have a vested interest in the D&D ruleset and their actual use of the setting leaves a lot to be desired (Especially when it comes to Balduran himself...) they seemingly only wanted to use the wider popularity of the BG IP to hit it big.

ER is somewhat different. Since a lot of its appeal to a wider audience comes from the natural evolution of the series. The move from linear dungeons to open world allowed them to create an experience that more people find enjoyable without necessarily alienating existing fans of the punishing gameplay. It sort of feels more like they capitalized on the evolution of the game as an opportunity to attract a wider audience than them specifically making the game for the purpose of hitting a wider audience.

I remember Larian talking about it. Their goal wasn't to make a tree root-like structure which would have been unthinkable for a game with such scale a production value, it is to give choices in the context of an act and wrap it up for the next act. Does that mean that BG3 choice is just an illusion? Absolutely not, there are clear cases where acts choices bleed into each other : tiefling refugees, the hag and Mayrina, Scratch, Minthara, many companion decisions, the nightsong and the list goes on. Sure it pales in comparison of some games (Pathfinder comes to mind) but you are being disingenuous by saying that it is an "illusion", and flat out wrong with your last statement.