Originally Posted by Taril
This is neither new, nor complex though. This has been a standard of modern RPG's for decades.
To a smaller extend, yes.

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Originally Posted by Wormerine
A lot of companion content happens dynamically, rather than in predefined, linear, set in stone progression gates.

Did we play the same game? EVERY companion content happens after predefined, linear, set in stone progression gates...
By gate I mean a mandatory cut off point that acts as transition between one piece of content and another. Baldurs Gate 3 has very few of those. Yes, Larian created camp and I would guess it’s precise point is to limit circumstances - but there are a lot, a lot of contextual interactions in the wild - and those do sometimes play when they shouldn’t. More ambitious than any other cRPG that I can think of.

I am not claiming that Larian’s implementation isn’t flawed, but that’s it’s more complex (and therefore more prone to breaking) than competition.

In case it wasn’t clear: complex doesn’t necessarily equal better.


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Which is also not new nor complex. It's been a staple of Bethesda games since FO3.
Yes, but as I mentioned Bethesda games are very lacking in other aspects (and also buggy - more so than BG3 In
would say, but I also didn’t spend that time with Bethesda titles, so maybe I have just been unlucky). BG3 does a lot of things (sometimes quite conflicting things - systems vs handcrafted cinematic storytelling, single player vs coop). You seemed to argue that Individual title do some things better you might argues, but point me to a game who does just as much in a single release - aka, of the same complexity.


Originally Posted by Wormerine
Permutations and potential interactions are so numerous that testing this game must be a nightmare.

They're not THAT numerous. There's still only very limited ways to interact with things. It's not like you can start a fire in the grove and burn down all the houses because fire interacts with objects in a complex way, it's not like you can use Create Water to flood an area and wash away objects. It's not like NPC's will react to you doing these things in a somewhat realistic manner.
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You are referring to narrative outcomes, which is not the same as interacting with these outcomes in multiple states. Stealing an idol in itself is a convoluted puzzle box of systems and scripting. Compare Goblin grove, to let’s say a Pillars of Eternity dungeon like Fort Deadlight, Roderick’s Hold or the monastery from White March - do you really think those offer as many possible interactions and systems as BG3?


Anyway, you clearly played enough RPGs to confidently made up your own mind, so I won’t try to convince you further.