Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Better without the Baldur's Gate name?

Sorry, but you can't use this as one of your points. The original BG games were not open world games either. I love them both myself, but if you consider either of those open world games, then you've obviously never played an open world game to know the difference.

The map was segmented for performance reasons, but if you actually paid attention you'd know that they were all precisely interconnected at every edge. You could go anywhere at any time, except for the city of Baldur's Gate itself. But even once you reached Baldur's Gate, you could still go back to anywhere you wanted.

This is what open world RPG means. The freedom to go where you want when you want.

Locking content to acts is the antithesis of this. The game is practically on rails. The term for this is arena based design. Each of the acts is a single arena that is non-contiguous with the rest.

The imposition of DOS 2 structural design into BG3 is becoming embarrassing at this point:

- No open world (major flaw since many games nowadays are open-world and even BG2 was semi-open with free exploration)
- No D/N cycle (major flaw; common even in non-RPG games)
- Combat (major flaw since many RPGs transitioned from TB to action elements, including conservative JRPGs).
- Generic artstyle
- Narrator
- Party of 4
- Party members story arcs with deals with devil/magic/vampire.
- Speaking to the dead and animals
- Party members enrollment deadline at Act1

Nostalgia is an ugly thing. Almost every series will evolve over time, and the fact that we're not getting a reskin of Baldur's Gate 2 with better graphics isn't a bad thing. The expectations that people have can and never will be reached, because most people aren't game developers with decades of experience under their belts.

I don't think that it *is* a fair criticism that the mood and feel are different. It's been 20 years. The landscape has changed. Marketing a clunky UI, dated systems, and esoteric invisible mechanics is silly.

And as with every large gap between sequels and releases, there's always going to be the "game hipsters" that will invariably write something off because what's being produced isn't identical to their rose-colored memories. The people complaining about it will buy it, and even if they enjoy it, they're still going to huff and puff in the public eye about how it's too different in order to validate their status as a long-time fan of the series in some weak attempt at impressing people with their dedication to the Baldur's Gate name.

And can we just be really honest here and say that the fact that Baldur's Gate 3 even exists as a concept is because of Larian's excellent efforts and successes at reviving *an entire genre*?

As a long-time fan, I think they're doing great, and I'm happy that they've taken this new direction with the series and have set the industry standard for what RPG storytelling is supposed to look like.

Screw action.

LOL, that's why Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder introduced TB to their game because apparently it was missing.

Guys, TB/RT conversation is over here, so please take it over there. Thanks.

Not specifically turn-based / RT as such (really not interested in all of that), but what prompted my response was that surely every other RPG going "action" and twitch combat in some form in particular early to mid 2000s was driven mostly by marketing decisions rather than anything else, so cannot possibly be a plus as such. In particular considering how narrow the choice in combat had become at that point. For many devs (including Larian), it was either some form of action, be it a Diablo clone in early Divinity or else... That there are viable choices apart of action again should be celebrated as a good thing, plus you don't ever set trends if you simply follow them.

If the argument had just been that the combat was not like the originals, fine.

Which is fine, as long as it stays away from "that" discussion (by way of an explanation, for a time it was at risk of becoming the TB/RT forum as the debate was going on in many different topics at the same time, to the exclusion of the actual discussion).

In terms of "generic action and twitch combat" I think can see the point. Where e.g. Mass Effect could be viewed as an "action RPG" in a literal sense, I think they took it too far with Mass Effect 2 which felt way too much like a shooter for too much of the time, which IMHO was not really conducive to the gameplay. Which is of course subjective and many people very vocally preferred it to the original; and while I didn't hate the game overall, I don't think their move in that direction enhanced gameplay, which I preferred to be more methodical and less, well, shooty.

man the fucking cope in this thread.

Yeah the non generic artstyle of baldurs gate.
Lmao

It is not about changing, but evolving. CP2077 has many amazing concepts that is not just copying RPGs from the past.

TB was the first model back in the 80s, so it is even more nostalgic, I am sure you can introduce many action elements in the spectrum and continue to be tactical.

You know 1st person shooters are also really old too? Same with first person RPGs. CP2077 is not like the 1st person games from the 80s just like BG3 isn’t like a turn based game from the 80s.

Could Larian make an action-RPG BG3? Sure, but why would they want to? DOS2 was more popular than PoE2 or Kingmaker, and the XCOM reboot and games like Fire Emblem are doing great as well, so there is definitely an audience for turn based tactical games.

Except for that you have ZERO evidence that it was the TB aspect of D:OS2 that made it "more popular" than those other games. It could've been so many other factors.

Hmmm, you could say that about most games. I have zero evidence that the first person aspects of Call of Duty or Halo is what makes those games sell well and that they wouldn’t sell better if designed to be third person. That doesn’t change the apparent fact that there is an audience for FPS games.

Plus, there is evidence- DOS1 and 2 received a lot of praise for their combat.

In the RPG genre, TB (even 1st person TB Wizardry-like) was the foundation and was the predominant system for many years.

DOS2 was more popular because it is a better game overall. The "fair" comparison would be Dragon Age Series.

I wouldn’t say DA is a fair comparison. DAI is a AAA game developed by the elder god studio of the RtWP genre with a huge marketing budget. DOS2 is a AA Kickstarter developed by a relatively unknown but rising independent studio with comparatively no marketing.

DOS2 had a lot of post-market exposition, because of its scores. But the point made is that is not the combat that makes DOS2 attractive.

DOS2 received universal acclaim from critics and very high scores from players, and while every part of the game was praised, the combat was pretty much always applauded. There is no evidence that all of these people liked it in spite of the turn based combat, and plenty of evidence that lots of people genuinely enjoyed it.

So back to my original point: Larian could make BG3 in a different genre, but why would they? They made a thing, millions of people bought the thing, and the overwhelming preponderance of the feedback that they got was that people liked the thing.

They have no reason to change something that isn’t broken.

Guys, as just discussed, don't bring the TB/RTwP debate here, please. If you want to continue with that discussion, please take it to the appropriate place. Further comments about the subject outside of its own topic are likely to be deleted.

Yes ma’am.