Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General When will the marketing campaign start

I'm really glad we got a release date and the game itself is amazing. So i want bg3 to sell well for devs' hard work to pay off
And here's the question - when will the ad campaign start? trailers, interviews, gameplay demos(of 1.0 version of course) and so on. we haven't got much time really
What do you think?

I think it started at the same time as EA.

Yes, I think so too. At the latest since the Collectors Edition the whole marketing takes shape...

Well...
As far as i know, marketing usually starts about 3-6 months prior release. So ... that would be next month?

On the other hand, Hoppa have good point, main reason for marketing is to let people know about your game, i hardly doubt there is even single person interested in BG-3 that never heard about it yet. And if there is, i dont really know, what other marketing Larian would need to use, in order to let him know.

On the another other hand tho ... it dont really makes much sense to expect Larian to keep things completely quiet til August(?) ... there will be another hipe wave to start, im sure.

So ...
My gues is between end of May and start of June.

I was wondering, too! I would like to know the final details of the game such as number of companions and who they are, if the pc has full VO, and any other new features not in EA! 😊

Next month sounds good to me!

i tend to disagree. for example, games like starfield or jedi survivor have way more views if you compare their trailers and bg3's. i think that bg3 is an AAA game so it should be properly advertised to sell as it deserves to

It’s Bethesda and Star Wars game - those will reach interest of people who don’t play games on regular basis. I don’t thing BG3 stands a chance.

Speaking of which, when will Starfield’s marketing begin? We still don’t know what the game even is. (I know they are preparing a presentation in the future).

Same question, but for the new Zelda game. Lots of question marks on new releases this year.

Honestly, I don't think there was even that much marketing for Divinity Original Sin 2 either.

I remember when BG3 got shown off at the Game Awards last month, most of the general gaming community in the stream chat just laughed at how out of place it looked compared to a lot of the more traditional games shown alongside it. People were calling it a tech demo and shit.

At that point, I think Larian would want the game to rely on word of mouth and rave reviews more than anything else, same way as DOS2.

I noticed that too.

I hate to say it, but dated game genre is dated. I like this type of game, but I don't think it has significant mainstream appeal to warrant a strong reaction at a large showcase. As much as the people on this forum enjoy them, there's definitely something anachronistic about isometric RPGs in 2023. The good news is that BG3 has a TTRP community, a DOS community, and a Baldur's Gate community (caveat--over two decades old). Outside of these groups and people that like narrative-driven RPGs, I don't see how the game appeals to your average gamer™.

I don't disagree that this is title unlikely to make too many millions in sales, but I really dispise a suggestion that a cRPG would be anachronistic. Why would it be anachronistic? Because it has mechanics deeper than a cow clicker? Doesn't have a battlepass or cosmetic shop? Because it doesn't have raytracing that almost no one will turn on? That it screenshot won't look quite as nice, or "movie like"?

It is not like BG3 was the only "non-traditional" title out there. Hades2, like the first game, was announced on the conference, we also had trailer for Diablo4, Company of Heroes 3, Earthblade. Perhaps, BG3 should have gone Diablo and CoH route and show CGI trailer instead. I doubt most of the Game Awards audience cares how the game actually plays - they wouldn't gobble any of the AAA junk otherwise.

It is anachronistic because the video game world has radically shifted since the golden age of CRPGs. The main demography of players is now overwhelmed by people who play to get a dopamine hit or zone out instead of being deeply invested in complex systems. Why would you risk so much in making a game for a vanishing public instead of safely releasing something that you know will be profitable by default and is way easier to produce?

Presumably because it’s a project you care about and you believe in the game you’re producing! Thank goodness all game companies don’t just chase the easy bucks, otherwise we’d not have much choice of different sorts of games to play.

BG3 won’t make as much as Call of Duty, but it should still do well! Steam spy estimates it has already sold 2 to 5 million in EA, and EA is usually a small portion of the final sales!

What golden age exactly? Bunch of RPG classics have been commercial flops and under the radar smaller productions. I don’t think RPGs in general have ever been selling blockbuster. Maybe Larian will be the company to achieve it - maybe they won’t. But so far, for an RPG centric studio they have been doing very well. All they need to do is continue making profit.

Rag was right about one thing though...

Hard to be interested in something you've never heard about :P

I'm not happy about saying this because I like cRPGs, but they are anachronistic. That's why they had to have a whole renaissance with PoE and DOS. Things which are consistently thriving with the times do not need to have a renaissance (literally Rebirth). Something which is alive and well does not need to be reborn. The people that made the first two games which preceded this game were already shifting to over-the-shoulder perspective, 3D environments, reduced party-management, and more real-time-without-pause action. Bioware went from BG2 to Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, Mass Effect Trilogy, and Dragon Age Games. Gradually more open world, more cinematic, more single-character-control focused. Other cRPG makers just died as companies only to be revived with kickstarters a decade later. RPGs ARE popular, just not cRPGs. Major games are increasingly open world, quest-oriented, single-character-created-and-controlled, over-the-shoulder or first-person, with 3D environments and cinematics. That's been the path for A LOT of AAA singleplayer experiences. Isometric RPGs do not fall into that category of game which is popularly made, profitable, and mainstream. They do not attract the same amount of interest or money as the other kind of RPG. They do not get the same notoriety that they used to. That's what makes them anachronistic. Not bad, just a man out of time. If you played DOS2, kinda like Fane.

Not that I'm at all invested in this particular debate, but your argument only seems to support the conclusion that games like BG3 aren't fashionable, or as fashionable as their gaming ancestors were at one time or as other types of game currently are. That's not the same as being anachronistic, which would seem to imply that they are necessarily old-fashioned and creating them must be harking back to a previous golden age rather than looking to the future. But the mere fact that the trend these days is towards open world, real time, single-character focussed gameplay doesn't in any way entail that a party-driven, top-down, turn-based game can't be up-to-date and relevant today. I'm sure you're right that such a game probably wouldn't have as much mainstream appeal, but mainstream is most definitely not the same as cutting edge and forward looking! And there is nothing essentially anachronistic in taking inspiration from the past, as long as a new twist is put on it and modern context is recognised, which I think BG3 is so far promising to do very well.

And I also don't think a landscape in which all big games played in much the same way would be a healthy one for the future of the video game industry. Variety is needed for evolution. I hope that it continues to be the case that all sorts of different games can find enough of an audience to keep the companies that want to make them afloat.

Maybe you've played more contemporary isometric RPGs than me. What aspect of the genre is forward looking? I'm happy for someone to show me that isometric RPGs are not rooted in appealing to old mechanics in a slightly modernized way.

I'll use BG3 as an example:
It uses a ruleset released over a decade ago, is based on and a sequel to a game series released almost a quarter century ago, uses exploration mechanics that have been in games for over a decade and a half, is marketed with appeals to nostalgic characters from the previous game, doesn't even have all the features of its predecessors (D/N cycle?), uses a style of game that reached its market relevance peak almost a quarter of a century ago, has film-like cinematics which were introduced to RPGs over a decade and a half ago, has graphics that are just barely up-to-par with current games, and has the same level of world-and-item-interactivity as games a decade ago (in the case of DOS1, a little under). All I see on this forum is people wanting the game to be more like BG1+2, wanting the game to be more like 5e, wanting the game to be more like this RPG or that RPG.

I see only one place where this game is actually pushing gaming forward: permutations. There is genuine innovation in how Larian is trying to merge roleplay-narrative and the free-form immersive sim.

But isometric RPGs are definitely old-school to me, at least.

Variety is needed for evolution. But a new coat of paint on an old genre isn't evolution. Now, I haven't played Disco Elysium, which apparently is a gamechanger, but I can say that the Pathfinder: Kingmaker and PoE1 were very much backward looking rather than forward looking.

Edit: To clarify, this isn't really a debate I'd be upset to lose. I'd love to be told that there is a way that contemporary isometric RPGs are transcending their nostalgic origins and are moving on as a genre in their own right. I just don't see it?