Oh, please.
A lot of what Larian did with BG3 was calculated up to the misleading marketing. They are not shining knights of artistic expression. The only difference is that they targeted a new demographic formerly ignored by game studios.
Your statement effectively reduces to zero the work of a large number of people and their right to free creative expression. My position was not about idealizing the creators or rejecting criticism, but about expressing support for authors who produce meaningful and valuable content — guided by their own artistic vision, something that has become increasingly rare today.
I disagree with the claim that the team is supposedly targeting a “new” audience. They create their work for anyone who is willing to engage with an authorial statement without preconceived labels and without reducing the discussion to moral judgments. At the same time, the team does listen to audience feedback, but deliberately retains the right to its own creative vision and sets clear boundaries regarding which ideas can or cannot be implemented. This is not closed-mindedness, but a normal practice of any mature creative process.
This is not about dividing an audience, but about a mutual choice: the authors make their games in the way they believe is right, and players decide for themselves whether they are willing to accept that approach.
And yet you are idealizing them.
Larian quite deliberately targeted a specific demographic and modeled their game to cater to them, not different than what for example Bethesda or EA does. The difference between them and Larian is that Larian was the first studio to target the demographic that also caused the Romfantasy genre to boom, which is also why romfantasy books and BG3 have so much in common. Fanfiction level plot mixed in with steamy romance and a touch of sex.
And Larian, like all businesses, was very aware about what customers wanted which is why their marketing was so deceptive like warning for grave consequences of overusing the tadpole a few days before release so that they also got the role players to buy the game.
And like any other business, sales were a lot more important than artistic vision. We have several examples of that.
1. Rewrite of companions because they were not liked enough.
2. Change of the tadpoles from threat to harmless powerups because people did not use them (at least thats the official reason for why it was changed).
3. Adding Halsin as companion, thereby throwing away the whole Sorrow story and the end result being of very low quality compared to other companions.
4. Altering Astarion's kiss, and therefor the entire conclusion of his character arc because their target demographic wanted it.
Larian is no different than any other bigger developer for whom money comes first.
So now as Larian cornered the Romfantasy video game genre, what do you think their next game will be?
