However, most of those games mentioned, BG3 included, while the reactivity makes the game more immersive, it doesn't really change how your story/game plays out (Which goes against why he chose BG3).
No he didn't. Please, watch the video, not OP post, who have written things that Tim didn't even say. The exact quote is once again:
Quote
I particularly love character customisation in Baldur's Gate. You can make widly different characters, that behave widly different in the game, and again, there is a lot of choices and many reactivity to those choices
You can customise character a lot, you can make variety of characters who will behave and play differently, you can solve pretty much every problem multiple ways (there for choice) and game does roll with what you do.
Nothing he said praises branching narrative. He didn't even say reactivity is particularly outstanding. But the game does offer a wide range of tools to create the character you want, and express this character during the campaign.
Well, I did and my understanding of that quote was that he was talking about the choices you make via dialogue rather than the "immersive sim" aspect, in which case, yeah he'd be right. Even if I have certain reservations on its' implementation.
Originally Posted by Halycon Styxland
And if some quarter century old game did it "even better" then so what.
Well, him shouting out some of these older/lesser known games might encourage people to try them out. Doubly so for games that wern't successful but still tried something new or hyperfocused on one aspect, that might otherwise die in obscurity.
Like, I hadn't even heard of Arcanum until Mandalore's video on it and I've picked up PST based on everyone's acclamation of its' story.
I dropped Witcher quickly as it was apparent the devs didn't even trust in me solving their FULLY RAILROADED AND LINEAR quests themselves and any kind of choice was obviously the seldom A or B "chose your own adventure path branching" via dialogue, that's it (another forever decline brought about by Bioware, intially.) Coupled with all the handholding, this is a game that never once leaves its turorial, treating me light I was a two years old. No matter how good the writing, that's as off-putting an interactive experience as you can go (and I actually play stuff like FIrewatch or Life Is Strange -- but those don't pretend to be something they clearly aren't).
Whilst I'd love to see that explored more rather than cinematics (which are the anti-thesis and a limit of how much you can do), in BG3 my head on occasion was firing on all cylinders thinking situations through. At least in the more expansive quests. As similar to Looking Glass (RIP), BG3s development with its systems accounted for solutions that the designers themselves hadn't even much thought of.
Easily more engaging than anything scripted or written (and in fact, my main source of enjoyment in BG3). Even if some like to refer to some of that as "cheesing". Screw em. They haven't got the foggiest of a clue what they're talking about.
Still, even your character choice at the start already paves a path, completely unheard of in shallow higher budget RPG Lalaland for like 15+ years at the LEAST. That's what I also got out of Tim Cain. After all, he argues that he's massively enjoyed BG3 proving this childishly, trend driven industry know-it-alls wrong. "Going turn based combat is suicide". "D&D in itself doesn't sell." Yadda yadda yadda yadda.
Not even the bloody movie industry is that immature. See recent also Arkane, encouraged to develop OW looter shooters like Redfall, something the studio was never set up to do from the ground up. Thus developers leaving their Austin branch in droves, only to be replaced by random people from all ower the OW action industry a year prior to release. The resulting game to suck even more than the vampires it spawns in its pew-pew shooter world. And long-term studio culture being in jeopardy.
Whilst Arkane management still could have denied -- that's still akin to Hollywood approaching Sofia Coppola+associates with the request to do the next Furious installment. Why? BECUZ POPULAR ATM.
We were talking about reactivity. I am seriously at a loss when trying to find a AAA game with ANY reactivity in the past 10 years. The Witcher 3 has a tiny bit of it. Can Kingdom Comes be considered a AAA game?
No, we're talking about the video about games to learn from and how in the 'reactivity' column, there are better examples to pick from. That you have narrowed the subject down to AAA games from 10 years kind of shows the weaknesses of this approach.
I don't see where my approach is "weak", let's just not compare compare apples with pears. Of course there are smaller and older games with better reactivity, just like there are independent movies with better plots than blockbusters or indie songs with more intricate composition than top of the charts. However looking at each feature in a vacuum is ultimately meaningless in the grand scope of things and you have to consider the current context. I am just comparing games that can be compared and you just have moved the goalpost. So I repeat, where can I find a game like BG3 with as much production value and reactivity?
BG3 didnt just do story variability, it also did all kinds of other stuff. It looks great, it has a decent enough story, it has tons of sidequests, it has tons of hidden secrets, it has tons of great characters and side characters.
And if some quarter century old game did it "even better" then so what. Doesnt mean BG3 did it poorly or that the other game is near as good overall or actually a success. Which to my knowledge it wasnt.
And Taylor Swift is the greatest musician of all time.
Haha, it's like we have the same mind! This is exactly the comparison I make to BG3 too. Similarly, the Barbie movie must be the greatest film ever made. LOL
Very telling, I think, that the only thing he could think of to say for that first question was environmental reactivity, which is the minimum positivity one can attribute to BG3. Also, jumping and flying are things Larian took from Solasta, which had them first. So TA gets that credit, not Larian.
And, per the background in this video, seems like Project Wisconsin may also be a new undertaking at Obsidian, alongside Project Michigan.
Very telling, I think, that the only thing he could think of to say for that first question was environmental reactivity, which is the minimum positivity one can attribute to BG3. Also, jumping and flying are things Larian took from Solasta, which had them first. So TA gets that credit, not Larian.
Eh, a lot of projecting. He wasn’t asked to review the game. The question was about “cool stuff in BG3 that would be great to see in PoE3”. The answer to this question can be only things that PoEs didn’t do. And according to Josh other standard features were “really well executed” in BG3.
And interactivity IS Larian’s biggest innovation. And I do like how character builds affect all aspects of the experience, while in let’s say PoEs combat, exploration, dialogues become mostly seperate systems.
And no, Larian didn’t borrow from Solasta. Before BG3 they did D:OS1&2 and those were games that pioneered this design. Flight in D:OS2 is very similar to BG3 and jump presumably was implemented the way it was to allow non-caster classes for D:OS-like mobility that they would otherwise lack.
It’s worth noting, that JS already tried to do more interactivity in PoE2 - occasional use of barrels, using fire spells in exploration to blow up hidden walls: a the time seemed like an attempt to spice up exploration, the way D:OS it, albeit in much, much more limited way due to games uninteractive 2d nature.
What I would like a future Obsidian PoE or fantasy rpg to take from BG3 is pacing, quest design, cinematic dialogue, and handcrafted combat encounters. Things such as flying, jumping, and environmental reactivity are great but are not the core of a game for me. I started but didn’t finish PoE2. I felt it was really lacking in pacing, story, and quest design. BG3 did a great job at these things!
What I would like a future Obsidian PoE or fantasy rpg to take from BG3 is pacing, quest design, cinematic dialogue, and handcrafted combat encounters. Things such as flying, jumping, and environmental reactivity are great but are not the core of a game for me. I started but didn’t finish PoE2. I felt it was really lacking in pacing, story, and quest design. BG3 did a great job at these things!
I'm really curious what you mean by quest design? I can understand why someone would have an issue with the pacing of the game (I personally loved it but I think it just scratched a particular itch for me) and I can sort of agree on the handcrafted encounters (PoE2 technically did that in so far as there aren't really random encounters I don't think, but there was room to improve) but I'm not sure what BG3 did with its quest design that was radically different from PoE.
On the question of handcrafted combat encounters, I wonder if maybe those sorts of encounters are just easier to do in turn-based systems? Because Solasta I think did pretty well at that too. I think BG3 goes a bit far at times making what should be straight forward encounters more gimmicky than they need to be, but in general encounter design isn't something I have an issue with overall.
I'm really curious what you mean by quest design? I can understand why someone would have an issue with the pacing of the game (I personally loved it but I think it just scratched a particular itch for me) and I can sort of agree on the handcrafted encounters (PoE2 technically did that in so far as there aren't really random encounters I don't think, but there was room to improve) but I'm not sure what BG3 did with its quest design that was radically different from PoE.
On the question of handcrafted combat encounters, I wonder if maybe those sorts of encounters are just easier to do in turn-based systems? Because Solasta I think did pretty well at that too. I think BG3 goes a bit far at times making what should be straight forward encounters more gimmicky than they need to be, but in general encounter design isn't something I have an issue with overall.
For me doing quests is really fun in BG3 but not in PoE2. The way they designed the quests and maps in BG3 means there is always something fun to do! For PoE2 it might be because I didn’t like the focus on factions, or the way they did factions, in PoE2 combined with the PoE2 main story pacing issues.
Yes, for combat it might be just that I like turnbased much better than RTwP. I also think it is much more fun to play a magic user in BG3 than PoE2. I do prefer the PoE2 system of per encounter spells, though, instead of having to rest!
For me doing quests is really fun in BG3 but not in PoE2. The way they designed the quests and maps in BG3 means there is always something fun to do! For PoE2 it might be because I didn’t like the focus on factions, or the way they did factions, in PoE2 combined with the PoE2 main story pacing issues.
Yes, for combat it might be just that I like turnbased much better than RTwP. I also think it is much more fun to play a magic user in BG3 than PoE2. I do prefer the PoE2 system of per encounter spells, though, instead of having to rest!
Yeah, that makes sense. I don't have much issue with the map design in BG3, but Deadfire does try to go for more naturalistic maps, and the zones tend to be more focused, which I think I personally enjoy more, butthere's nothing wrong with BG3s approach. As for the factions, if you don't like them or how they were done, then I can see why you wouldn't enjoy that aspect of the quest desing. Though I personally quite enjoy them and I appreciate how siding with different factions can see you going to the same area to fulfill different, often conflicting quest goals. As for the story pacing, I've made my feelings on BG3s story quite clear, but I'd be lying if I said Deadfire didn't have issues with communicating how the faction aspect tied into the main plot. They would even agree with that considering they literally patched in a plot device to better explain that aspect of things. I think it's one of those cases where the devs were in it for so long that they took for granted that the connection was obvious, and didn't get enough outside eyes on that aspect of things to realize the problem. At some point the faction content just sort of becomes the main story without ever quite justifying itself when comparedto the walking god striding across the ocean.
As for combat, I agree about turn-based, I had way more fun with PoE2 in turnbased mode and regarding being a spellcaster, I remember in PoE1 I got a pretty serious thrill from killing wizards and adding their spellbooks to mine. I missed that in PoE2, but beyond that I don't quite recall which experience I liked better between PoE2 and BG3. Though I love the Chanter class, that was awesome.
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/xW3WPJq.png)
