Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Which one of BG3, PoE, PK the worthy successor ?

If you will, they're basically Baldur's Gate, just streamlined and given a cinematic coat of paint to appeal to a larger audience. Also, I've never said anything about RtwP or turn-based combat or anything of the sort. New Vegas for instance is plain out oldschool Fallout, just in a different engine and a different format. The line meanwhile between something like Witcher 3 which has skin-deep RPG mechanics at best and Assassin's Creed is a far finer one. Don't think we need to discuss that one much further, first world problems, aren't they?



How much people of yore are there still left anyways? Genuinelly haven't followed them in ages. Ohlen for instance has quit long ago (genuinelly more interersted in his new studio). In the end it's people making games, which is also why I am some concerned about the future of Obsidian. I've yet to play The Outer Worlds (a lot of reviews seem to paint is as a shallower New Vegas), but they're also bleeding talent a bit. Then again, even if BG3 were to crash hard, the indies will pick up the torch this time.

Kingmaker was a train-wreck for its own reasons-basically the last half of that game was minimally finished and involved constant grind fights. Felt awful. It's probably the best comparison for BG 1/2 strictly, but probably the throne of bhaal expansion-easily the weakest.

Now, BG3 itself is obviously not the same game, or even type of game. I won't deny that you could easily argue that they should have called it something else-it shares minimal story elements, gameplay elements, aesthetic elements, etc. I don't really mind, and don't think "successor" is a meaningful title. Each game is it's own thing.

PoE is probably the most aesthetically, gameplay, and even (in it's own way) storyline similar game-the problem with PoE is that the game kinduve slowed down for me by the end, and just felt...not great, really. I kinduve lost steam at the finish line and never entered into the final act. Haven't even opened POE 2 because I never finished POE 1. Maybe that's just me, but it lost draw for some reason. Maybe it was, honestly, just too complicated?

Of the more recent games-even PoE is slightly older now-I'd point to Solasta as the best example of what a turn-based successor to the old school DnD games would be. I mostly feel icewind dale in it-no companions, build your own party, but still has a storyline. I feel like Solasta is much shallower in terms of story interaction, but much tighter in terms of gameplay and rule implementation.

Personally, I feel that BG3 would be significantly better if they could fix the glaring, massive issues with the DnD 5e implementation, but it will never feel the same...Which is fine, it can still be an engaging game.

It is possible, what isn't possible is having the same people come back to do it. Now do I think it will comeback with new players? 25%.

I think the hardest things for a player base to understand is they have to go with what is popular in many ways, they have no choice. That doesn't mean it is a bad game but enough people will think it is a sell out and not what they want. EA is not going to make an old school BG Game, yhat is why you need a smaller studio coming up to fill in those gaps, like a Larian, like Obsidian and the like, they can take the risk because they don't need the huge payback potential.

I know ideally it would be nice for in game options for that, but asking would you be against loading in a mod that makes it true? That is going to happen if Larian doesn't address it.

No, but I probably won't buy future Larian products, at least not without massive sales, unless it's fixed by release to my satisfaction.

The cRPG purists liked DA:O but disliked DA:I. DA:O sold between 3 and 3.5 million. DA:I sold about 10 million. Which game was better for Bioware?

As for Larian, I think Larian is now where Bioware was about eight years ago after DA:O and looking to see where it wanted to go next. Larian's not a small indie studio anymore. It is very much a AAA studio, in the same box as Bioware and not at all in the same box as Obsidian. The question for me, then, is whether Larian is essentially following the same path as Bioware? Is Larian's sales goal for BG3 DA:O or DA:I?

Honestly had no problems with DA:I, I think that was partially a vocal minority. The problem with DA:I weren't nearly as glaring as, say, Dragon Age 2, which attempted to be what your describing and simply failed.

PoE or PK are more similar.

But Dragon Age Origin is modern take, with a lot of great new game-play mechanism, great companions with a more modern combat system, with its own world, which is pretty cool,
probably something BG3 could have been, but fell short...

Right on the sales side, for ElectArts it is a no brainer and why they never listened all that much to the DAO crowd. Luckily I liked them all, each different. But I can totally see why masses would like DAI over DAO, it is just much more approachable playing as an action RPG in a much larger world to explore. I wish DAI would have kept expanding on the NPC AI skill branching menus they gave us, I still feel DA2 was about the best I've seen in a game, they neutered it for DAI sadly, aka lost that feature changing engines.

Larian's on their way if they want to be that way, not all companies just want to get larger and larger. I really think BG3 is now crossing between DOS and DAO, will it end up in the middle? Maybe. But what about BG4? I'm of the belief that a developer like Larian will always want to add new things, so they aren't many iterations out of being Bioware.

Larian becomes a corporate AAA when they start answering to Wall Street demands, today I don't think that have that burden, games change at that point. So if they can stay outside of that clutch, great! We'll get the game the devs want. When I see Larian moving to Bioware I am talking about game design and not the business end, they were sucked in and bullied like the rest.

I love they added in the cinematics, deeper story, I'm really hoping they see the desire to open up venturing to a 3rd person POV with WASD (that's something masses like), to me you can really add more immersion from that pov, battles being iso/tb to me is fine and dandy and I feel that is what the vocal DAO crowd wanted, keep the tactics.

Solasta is the successor at this stage,

I'm not even sure how that is possible. But it goes to show how we each can look at what part we feel is most important. I take it mechanics are for you.

One could argue then POW or Pathfinder since they are RtwP.

Another can argue it needs to take place around Baldurs Gate itself.

Others will go into story and characters.

Can BioWare come back? Yes. They're going to have to ditch a lot of the PC culture stuff, including characters just to include them, but not attaching any real significance to them story wise. They dropped the ball with Krem, for example. I about lost it when I found out that Jennifer Hale voiced Krem. Yes, Krem was voiced by FemShep, and what a waste of the talent that was. Not because Krem was bad, but because Krem was really under utilized. They've always been more or less inclusive in characters they have, even if they don't assign every NPC as romanceable by the PC. Dorian was great, and I adore Sera, as much as some people do seem to hate her, she's a woman after my own heart, and I say that knowing full well that, if there was any way possible, she'd never date me, but we'd be really good friends. I sincerely believe it's better to not add something than to add something just to hit a checkbox.

Then there's all the personnel shuffling that happened with Andromeda around Anthem, and Andromeda's totally botched development cycle. Instead of sticking to their guns, they spent a lot of time trying to make the planets randomly generate, like Diablo, and when they wasted a year on that, and found they couldn't do it, and had to shuffle people off for Anthem, they got into serious development scheduling problems, and so we got the Andromeda that we got. It was a cool concept, and a good way to get all the way away from ME 3's ending, only to give us the Reapers again, in a different skin. There are so many ways that that could have gone that would have been infinitely better, but alas...

But yeah, I do think if they can get it right with the next DA game, they can recover some lost faith. But it's going to take returning to their roots, as it were, and nailing the story down first.

Oh sure. Same here. I enjoyed DA:I and have even replayed it. Does it have things about it I personally would prefer it didn't or were different? Of course. But I have learned, as I've gotten older, that you have to take the bad with the good. There's no such thing as the perfect game out there.

Yup, it's how I see it too.