Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What makes bg3 so popular? What gave bg3 this mass appeal?

I preferred Nettie. Would she followed us instead of Halsin.

There are many reason why dnd 3e is better than 5e. It changes depending on who you ask.

As for me the main reason is ECL (LA + RHD) and prestige classes.

Level adjustment and Racial Hit Die allows to play stronger races like brelani eladrin, Fey'ri, Hound Archon, Rakshasa or Gloura with keeping their unique feats and abilities.

Getting damage reduction as brelani or gloura up to level +3 weapon is awesome; you get the feeling that you are playing this all-powerful races. Choosing them was awesome but everyone of them had handicap; slower leveling; at level 20 or 40 you get easily defeated by level 20 or 40 human mostly because of level difference aka hp difference. Was it worth playing race that had those big bonuses but kinda was weak at the endgame or play as human who was weak in the beginning but would shine at endgame or should pick a race as yuan-ti pureblood or drow/githyanki to gain spell-resistance who wouldn't matter at lower level but play big role at level 40 since they gain +1 to spell resistance at every level.

Presitge classes allows for every playthrough to be unique like being as bladesinger, hellfire warlock or become a lich.
Prestige classes opened so much possibilities no only because of roleplay but also of gameplay possibilities.
That what makes 3e better then AD&D or 5e.



I wish game like kingmaker, tyranny or wrath of the righteous had similar budget like bg3.
Other RPGs also had fine characters.
People like to say sandbox are awesome but real life disproves this. Nearly all sandbox MMO had failed - only eve online is there as a shining beacon of sandbox success.
All other sandbox games failed.
Other games tried doing gimmicky things and they failed so I wouldn't count it as a sign for a game to succeed.
Despite bethesda games being named as sandbox, they are not, they are theme park games. In those games you cannot create your own cities, etc.
So you are saying that this game is combination of theme park game and sandbox? Interesting.



That definitely was a cause of its success. Not sure about motion capture but voice acting is important to bring larger audience.
I remember the amount of backlash fallout 4 received when it was discovered that protagonist will be voiced.



Yes, Bethesda got backslash for having voiced protagonist and Voiced main character was the main reason I played mass effect series.

Only blizzard managed to pull this well so far aka the formula "easy to learn, hard to master".

There are tons of 18+ games that offer sex scenes and yet, it didn't make them popular. So i really do not get why that scene caused the game to go viral.

I do not like the word simplicity; it sounds like boredom. I remember when planescape: torment pride itself for having more than 100 000 lines of dialogue.
Thing change i do not know if it is for the better.
Reading is a byproduct of low budget. Owlcat or Obsidian didn't even had the third of budget that larian had to make bg3.
Not wanting to make a big game does mean it would mostly cater to hardcore audience rather casual audience.
It is hard, i would even say impossible to cater to both hardcore and casual audiences.

WOR doesn’t have that budget because the game isn’t as fun and thus not as popular.

Larian built their success on making the games enjoyable for the players, I don’t like a lot of the Larian homebrew etc but I admit it is fun to exploit it on occasion.

DOS 2 was a lot of fun to play and BG3 is even more fun. They are committed to doing things to make the player’s enjoyment their first priority.

Give the people what they want and they will beat a path to your door.

Like I said before fun is subjective. It may not be fun for you but maybe be fun for other people.

For example, I am not into competitive play or into getting achievements but I know a lot of people enjoy gaining them. For me games main purpose is to relax and not to feel like a second job.

You must define the budget before even starting game development otherwise your funds are squandered.
Plus if I recall correctly owlcat gathered 2 millions on Kickstarter for wotr there was certainly a market for it.
Pathfinder 1e is based on 3e dnd so it is more spreadsheet than anything else. Some people enjoy it, some do not.

DOS 2 was not fun. Countless battle that drag for ages, I tried 5 times to get into that game.

But lets get back to the topic. What do you think that bg3 did exceptionally well that brought a ton of people to it?

I think someone else really gave the reason. It's not that BG3 did any one thing exceptionally well. Success in these kinds of things are alchemy, not science. There's no set of ingredients that you can put in that will guarantee results. There's just some tried and true aspects mixed in with luck, creativity and even more luck. If you ask me, I don't think there's any part of what BG3 did that a different game hasn't done better. But maybe it's just that they did enough things good enough.


Simplicity and boredom are two entirely different things. Simplicity means that things are easy to wrap your head around and you can launch into it straight away. It means there's minimal extaneous elements to worry about. Simple can be boring, but so can complexity. Just look at any board game with a huge booklet of rules that are super complex and intricate and lead to people just zoning out or getting frustrated. there's a sweet spot of simplicity vs complexity, which is different for everyone and also varies depending on what you're trying to do. As I said, making games is a process of alchemy.

It's a game in a genre that always had a certain appeal and a very dedicated fanbase, and this is one of the titles in the entire genre that ranks the highest in terms of overall budget/production value, so it caught out outside of its usual "niche".

It's not a big mystery, I would argue.

I do not. If they had a higher budget they would need to be "more accessible" and "streamlined" to sell enough to turn a profit which would destroy everything that made them far superior to BG3.

Thats why nowadays actual innovation and masterpieces are created in the indy sector while AAA gaming are bland and souless sequels to existing IPs, spiced up with a combination of engineered "awesome" moments, pop culture references and sex.

And Larian has joined the AAA club, the video game version of fast food chains.

I thought we already did this discussion in another thread some time ago?

My views on this are quite well known, I think. I do need to add, though, that I haven't seen any evidence that the game was able to "bring in non-rpg gamers." That's a notion that's bandied about but I haven't seen any hard evidence to support such a claim. For me it is more that the rpg gamers group is in itself quite large. But it is an internally divided group, consisting of cRPG, ARPG, JRPG, MMORPG, and other such subgroups, who don't necessarily like games from their respective out-groups. But BG3 had appeal across all the subgroups within the RPG fans group.

Anyway, here's what I see as the things BG3 brought that made the game attractive to people outside of the hardcorre, old-school cRPG group:

SEX (specifically, interractive sex with lots of permutaions, variations, and options)

Some 170+ hours of cinematics

Full voice acting

Couch co-op

Story and characters that resonate with and appeal to today's young people (Gen Y and Gen Z) (I won't give my specifics on this because that will surely upset/anger some people; suffice it to say I have a lot of negatives toward the character, personality, and attitudes of today's younger generations, obviously with exceptions granted)

I doubt adding full voice-over would make wotr or kingmaker "soulless".
You can clearly so improvement between kingmaker and Wotr, mostly because owlcat had more people are budget. So doubt bigger budget always means soulless games.


Theoretically, it doesn't, but practically it does; At least it is my experience.

Blizzard has been pruning people abilities for years in wow, same goes with wizard of the coast when it comes to the difference between 3e and 5e, Bethesda does it with every version of their game - they removed some features when going from daggerfall to Morrowind, same goes from morrrowind to oblivion, wasteland 3 removed it fallout like feats system which was the main reason I stopped playing the game.

I had to say I enjoyed "complexity" of Morrowind when it comes to leveling skills to advance within guilds that you joined. I love sitting 2 hours in front of wotr character creation to choose the best class to fit my tastes.
From my point of view, nearly every time a feature is removed cause of streamline or so called "boredom" is rather a detriment to a game rather than a bonus.
Despite skyrim is better looking game than oblivion I couldn't give it the same amount of love I gave oblivion despite oblivion is worse game overall. I remember constant crashes in oblivion that drove me nuts but despite all this I got immersed into oblivion and didn't into skyrim.

So you answer why bg3 was a success is caused by several factors that wouldn't meant success if other game did what larian did.
I was rather looking for more "scientific" approach like you put it.
If you toogle boxes of a, b, c it will translate to a success in form of d.
Sometimes it feels like karazhan paradox in wow. People love that raid but no one at blizzard managed to duplicate karazhan success.
Same goes with witcher 3, I have no clue why witcher 3 was a big success on western markets and witcher 1/2 didn't achieve the same success despite witcher 1 had better dialogue from my point of view.

It would have been far better had you refrained from saying anything of the sort. It's totally out of order to take a swipe at anyone, much less such a wide group. And this is coming from, based on things you've said elsewhere, someone who is older than you are. Please no more of such unpleasant comments.

I do think it's brought in non-RPG gamers to some extent. The sales numbers reflect that. They became interested due to the hype and news surrounding it. Whether they stayed interested or not is a different issue. I think a game like this attracts a different audience compared to the Final Fantasy type games.

It very much depends on how it's implemented.

Think of games like osu! or Geometry Dash. They are "Simple" in that they only use 1-2 inputs. But they're far from boring because what you do with small number of input options are very much interesting.

While in games like WoW, FFXIV and basically every MMO, they reduce the number of abilities you use... But don't' do anything special with them so you're just playing a less interesting character.

Just like there's the flip side where complexity doesn't necessarily equate to more enjoyment.

Having ability bloat so you're swimming in lots of actions that don't do anything unique is not interesting, it's simply a waste of time.

Having systems that are so complex you need a PhD in theoretical physics just to understand what's going on does not make them more engaging.

"Simplifying" a game can be just about removing redundancies that serve little tangible purpose.

For example, what was being gained from needing to get Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot feats just to be able to use ranged attacks against a target that is next to an ally without a huge -4 attack roll modifier?

What was gained from having Cantrips being utterly useless because they were just 1d3 damage spells necessitating every caster to run around with a crossbow?

These sorts of things don't add anything but unecessary "Complexity" to the game. They're not creating any meaningful decision making.


If we look at other games that managed to be more successful than their typical niche;

Witcher 3 had a smoother combat system compared to 1/2. This made it more enjoyable to actually play (I personally couldn't stomach the jank combat of W1 and W2)

Mass Effect 2 had a more streamlined, action orientated combat system which lead to less time spent faffing around in menus and more time shooting aliens and wooing sexy companions.

Dragon Age: Origins only notable things were the shift away from the "Classic" CRPG style of game (Isometric view, low res character models, PNG portraits) into the more detailed character models from a closer viewpoint (Enabling sexy character designs)

Elden Ring became more accessible. Since its open world freedom (And powerful mechanics like OP Ash summons, OP status effects and OP spells/weapon arts) enabled people to simply go elsewhere if they found content difficult which was a change of pace from their prior titles more linear paths (Also, this lack of linearity also meant less traps. Less ambushes from around corners/behind barrels, no mimics etc. Since these things don't work with freeform paths. Without traps, there's less frustration for unfamiliar players who'd get surprised and die, losing all their Souls/Runes)

So we can look at BG3 for what things it seems to do:

- It also uses the more "Modern RPG" style of character design and camerawork, enabling sexy characters just like DAO (And unlike Owlcat's offerings which still rely the classic style. Even Pillars 2 is closer to the CRPG style than the more modern style)
- It has a smoother and more accessible combat. Between the usage of 5e and Larian homebrew, it's more straightforward to do combat than many other titles, there's no unnecessary bloat of required feats and building a character is as simple as slapping in some stats and picking a class that sounds fun (While hardcore RPG fans can sink their teeth into multiclassing and min/maxing for ultra powerful builds)
- It gained a massive boost in popularity since it piggybacked off a well regarded IP. Not only hardcore RPG fans like the Baldur's Gate name, but many casuals likely have nostalgic memories about playing BG1 or BG2 when they were young.

I completely agree, DOS2’s popularity and BG3’s validate the argument that Larian knows what it is doing when it comes to making games that large numbers of people find fun. Increasing success leads to bigger budgets for the next project.

The game is very theatrical. I think by hiring all those theater peeps and leaning way into it, they were able to tap into something that I haven't really seen before in video gaming, like where the whole ensemble just elevated the material. Just about every bit player nailed it, hitting all their marks, so when even the rando NPCs are coming like it's their big breakout role, that makes the entire production just feel pretty next level. Pitstop did a lot of heavy lifting I think. I mean I fell for this game based mostly on the Strength of Lae'zel hehe, but they're all pretty great! Then you add into that mix the vibe of EA, which was sorta like checking out the band at a smaller venue, before they go launch off into the stratosphere with stadium shows in later days. I don't know, but it feels vaguely like that, or what I imagine that to be like.

The Art direction was also very solid. They gave me a lot to hold onto there. I mean there are scenes in the second act of the game that just threw me right back to stuff like this that I grew up on...



It had that vibe for sure. But I think it also worked in part because, rather than trying to be whatever a D&D thing typically is, or was, it instead drew from the things that D&D always draws from to come at it obliquely. Like a pastiche on the swords and sorcery or film fantasy genre with the broader strokes. It's more like a pop riff on the D&D cultural touchstone, blended with like netflix and chill, the inside jokes and all that, which is what BG did too, except that then it would have been more like night at the movies, or sitcom/saturday morning cartoon callbacks. BG just had a different angle than some of the other entries I can recall, which preceded it in my mind, in that it was already tapping into the recyclotron thing that would come to define the spirit of the age at the turn of the millennium. Like what if we took the B plot from Highlander 2, but with doppelgangers? Also, Newhart somehow, and then just ran with it across the board? Every random Hobgoblin barking like the best of og warcraft hehe. The new one came especially clutch with the Goblins doing something pretty similar. I also thought they did a nice job with the Gith and Tieflings, which for a novelty still in FR player species, felt pretty well executed.

The game feels simultaneously solipsistic and communal somehow. Like Arcade Game accessible, aimed at all comers, but also a total black box that's really hard to unlock or climb inside solo. It has a similar sort of paradox to it that I can remember from old arcade fighting games when those first dropped, necessarily more social, cause like you have to learn the moves by watching other people play right? Or maybe your friends tell you how to throw a blue fireball or handcuff or whatever, and then apply that on your own time and your own dime/quarter/token. BG3 takes random ass stuff from D&D mechanics/lore and applies that same sort of Street Fighter 2 special move or super combo concept to FR, which is very sticky. Like it's just sticks a different way when games take that approach, where it's a communal discovery and you feel like an insider while playing. Like 'hey maybe I'm the first to actually see this play out exactly this way? crazy!' even if some of that is funhouse mirrors. I don't know it's like if you were in the parking lot before a Dead show, waiting on a miracle, and then bam, suddenly you're in the front row. You want to share the experience, or share in it, and then the game sorta leans into that by making it fun to be pedantic about D&D stuff and teach the game while playing the game.

I don't think this one achieves anywhere near the popularity it did without D&D. People have suggested that, and Larian moving on would seem to suggest the D&D/BG legacy isn't really the special sauce here, but I still think it is. I'm only here because Larian made a Baldur's Gate game. I'd have no clue who these people were, were it not for that. Game could have been called DoS 3 like some said it should have been, or was masquerading, but I'd have slept on that for sure when it came out. I wouldn't have put in hundreds of hours on the upswing, or swooped a thing on spec just hoping it might hit the high notes. There was an expectation that, because it was Baldur's Gate, that it would have to kick ass, or die trying, and anything less would have been a real letdown.

For the Bear stuff, to me that signaled that the game would be sex positive and just generally more self aware of it's moment in time, like in the comedic way that I appreciate when the humor is timely and self deprecating and all the things. It's a send up, clearly, and a way to say something like 'See, we're not uptight. We can throw an alright party. See! Every Bear gets laid!' Whatever, it worked. The actual game isn't really like that, it's much more saccharine and way less tawdry. Like even in that very scene, to watch it vs hearing a recounting of it, pretty different takeaways. I don't think the game was particularly high octane sex driven, like is that what makes it cool? Cause I'm more into the Squirrels, and all the little 'awwww, isn't that adorable' moments with the Dog and such. They made it just sweet enough to play at being a fairy tale, while also being a psych horror slasher flick at the same time. Way to thread the needle there lol.

Hard to say though why it worked or caught on. They'll probably be trying to figure that one out for a while. Like years maybe

Pretty wild

My intent was exactly to avoid unpleasantness even while expressing my personal point of view. If that is not how it came across, then I surely apologize.

I concur with those saying it’s very largely about the characters. The companions especially, but other compelling characters too.

Getting it exactly right, enough to create a fandom around them is probably a bit of a black art. You need interesting characters, good performances, a balance between serious and emotional moments and some lighthearted humour. Basically making characters people actually care about.

For widespread appeal, it’s probably necessary to make them fully voiced and animated and for that to be done well.

Of the games mentioned, KOTOR probably had it, Mass Effect had it (and lost it with Andromeda), Dragon Age had it and it remains to be seen if they still have it. I think the Witcher 3 had it. BG3 has it too, and they’ve done it when YouTube and social media are so prominent.

It’s not the only factor of course. It still needs to be a good game that people enjoy playing.

Uuuuuuh ...

1. Karlach is the best, but she's still not a too complex person.
2. Wyll is also great, but he's clearly also stupid, the way he became Warlock.
3. Gale is intelligent, sure. But he is also super creepy. The way he talks about being in love with Mystra and then he suddenly hits on the protagonist. What a collossal jackass.
4. I am willing to tolerate a lot in the case of Astarion, after all he was tortured for 200 years straight. Still he's just utterly evil and beyond redemption.
5. Laezel is a murderer and boasts about it and talks about killing "teethlings" just because they are "weak".
6. Shadowheart literally follows a deity that wants to destroy the world.

These choices SUCK.

So where are my Imoen, Aerie and Keldorn ? I just cant find them here.

Frankly BG2 had quite a bit better companions than BG3. Also much better, much less creepy romances.

In BG3 I literally start a romance with Karlach ASAP just so everybody else leaves me alone. If there was a "no romances" switch, I would switch it on.

The reason I like BG3 is other factors. The way I can finally play Bard and enjoy it. The enormous complexity of the game. The good dramatic storytelling. Companions and romances ? Tolerable, but not great.

To be honest, I quite like the BG3 companions. I have some beef with some of Biowares companions, but that would derail too much.
About Wyll: he was 17, when he made the pact and he had to decide on the spot. Lae'zel comes from a culture that sees killing as a necesseity, which kind of makes sense, since they are fighting a pretty powerful foe. SHe learns throughout her journey though and can become a bitter person. Shadowheart was brainwashed and you can help her get out of it. SHe is the classical cult victim. Astarion is an evil companion for an evil playthrough mostly, same as Edwin or Viconia in the old games.
And I don't get, why Gale is creepy. He had an affair with Mystra (who btw is a relatively new incarnation), that ended a long while ago and his romance really starts in act 2 - and only, if you showed interest, otehrwise, he will never hit on you (that he did that after release was a big).

But this is what's a huge problem for me. Everyone's a "victim" (emphasis on the quotation marks). And personally I am super-tired of people playing the "victim" card.

I don't think everyone is a victim or even when they were they don't need to let that define them. True that Shadowheart and Astarion in different ways were shaped by what was done to them. But Wyll made a difficult choice at a young age, and still stands by it now and actually seems glad that it gave him the opportunity to save the city that he wouldn't have had otherwise: I wouldn't see him as a victim for that particular choice. Lae'zel is a product of her upbringing and believes in Vlaakith, but I don't think that makes her a "victim" unless someone is going out of their way to cast everything in that light in a way that yes would start robbing the concept of some of its power. As would calling Gale a victim of his ambition and insecurity (or of Mystra), rather than just seeing these as character traits that can cause him problems or that he can rise above. But for me it's one hallmark of a decent RPG character that we can interpret them in different ways and it's feasible that they can develop in different directions. And personally, I do think the BG3 companions stand up very well against BG2 ones. Like fylimar I have issues with some of the latter, and much as I love the game don't particularly rate most of the new companions introduced for BG2, but I agree that's really taking us off topic.

What feels most relevant here is not what I or you or any individual thinks of the characters - of course opinions will differ - but that some or all of them resonated with a lot of people and helped make them fans of the game, which I think is pretty undeniable.

Though I agree with folk who have said it's not any one thing that has made BG3 so popular (and, in my view, so good) but an alchemical mix of different factors.