And yet you are idealizing them.
I genuinely didn’t want to turn my congratulations and words of appreciation for the developers into a public argument. I wrote them out of sincere respect for their work, and it’s from that place that I want to clarify my perspective.
The PEGI rating system in Europe exists for a reason: it clearly informs players in advance about the presence of adult content, including themes of sex, violence, and alcohol use. Baldur’s Gate 3 carries a PEGI 18 rating, and one of the early trailers — featuring a fairly explicit transformation into a mind flayer — set expectations early on for the tone and level of maturity of the story.
I understand that the narrative evolved over the course of early access, and players were able to observe that process firsthand. For me personally, this always felt like a living creative search rather than an attempt to please everyone or to mislead expectations. We could share our feedback — and some of it was taken into account, while some wasn’t. Certain ideas found their place, others were set aside, and I see that as a natural part of preserving the coherence of an authorial vision.
It genuinely hurts to see what has happened over time to projects that once meant a lot to me — Dragon Age, or the endless re-packaging of Skyrim. Against that backdrop, Larian stand out to me as a rare example of a studio that still makes games not out of fear of losing something, but out of a desire to tell their story the way they see it.
I’m not trying to convince anyone or to “win” an argument. I simply want to explain why this approach to game development resonates with me, and why I find it valuable.
