I think what isn’t being discussed enough is how many fans of games like Dragon Age Origins this game is pulling in.
What this game does is straddles the difference between classic CRPGs like the original Baldurs Gate and modern, cinematic RPGs like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, whose games began to veer into very action-oriented cinematic style as opposed to classic three-quarter-overhead-view turn-based style. It also brings the cinematic aspect to romancing companions as well, something that was also pioneered in DAO and ME. Other games had ability to romance as well, but not deeply like DAO and ME made it, with their cinematic style allusion-to-sex scenes.
This game does both and so it is grabbing the attention of people who loved classic CRPGs like Baldurs Gate, Fallout and Neverwinter Nights, but it’s also grabbing the attention of more “normie(?)” players who cut their teeth on Dragon Age Origins through Inquisition.
It’s a “best of both worlds” approach that has solidified success because it appeals to the people who loved classic CRPGs as well as the people who wanted the cinematic beauty as well as ability to cinematically romance companions. It has beautiful cinematic detail as well as a fully fleshed out CRPG system and non-linear CRPG story. It’s giving players of all types what they wanted out of an RPG.
Also, excellent console controls directly help this. Old CRPGs required a mouse and keyboard, but I can play this game split-screen with my SO who only ever played the Dragon Age games and who I struggled to get into D&D previously.
My SO fucking loves this game, and she wouldn’t have ever been opened up to such a style of game without the excellent cinematic graphics alongside the top tier classic CRPG gameplay. There is no way in hell I could get her to play a strictly top-down no-cinematics classic CRPG. This game opened her up to the genre. It’s essentially the perfect modernization of a classic CRPG.
This is it right here, at least for me personally. I’m a huge Dragon Age fan (played through DAO and DA2 before Inquisition’s release) who has always been vaguely interested in Larian’s Divinity Original Sin games but never made them a priority in my backlog. Seeing the cinematic cutscenes and the 3rd-person voice acted dialog for BG3 made me immediately interested and now I’m 10-ish hours deep into Baldur’s Gate and loving it!
Also slowly resigning myself to DA4 not even coming close to matching BG3 in quality given the circumstances of its development.
Michael Bell from Bellular Studios just did a video about it if you want something to listen to. It is pretty much all of it that was said here. How Baldur's Gate 3 Humbled AAA
I played but did not get very far into Divinity: Original Sin, mostly because I tried twice to play them co-op, and coordinating adults' schedules is hard. I love how systemic those games are, but the presentation is limited to what you'd expect from an old-school CRPG. Shortly before release, I saw that this game retains all of that creativity while upping the presentation to the level of something like a Mass Effect, which makes it much more appealing. I hear that Ralph of SkillUp had exactly the same reaction to BG3. So, deep systems + finally catching up in production value and presentation.
As I see it, it's a confluence of things which have captured the zeitgeist:
Larian D:OS games have been very well received.
Baldur's Gate and the Infinity Engine games are beloved.
Final Fantasy XVI, the big JRPG for the year, is squarely an action game and some view that as off-kilter. Baldur's Gate 3, the big CRPG for the year, is squarely an RPG.
D&D is a big property and new D&D games often gain a fair bit of attention.
People seem to appreciate having no in-game purchases.
These five things, in my opinion, have pushed Baldur's Gate 3 to the front of media outlets and, in turn, to the forefront of conversations.
This is a big part to me, in addition to your other points. D:OS2 didn’t have the same hype going into launch because (at least to me) D:OD was good, but not amazing. Given how well received D:OS2 was, I think the media was primed both to give it attention and praise.
D&D itself is close to the highest popularity it’s ever been at (I suppose with this game now it is at the peak), what with the movie having brought mainstream attention to it and Critical Role and other actual play shows bringing buckets of attention to the game/TTRPG hobby over the last 8ish years.
It’s a great game, but so was Divinity: Original Sin 2. The main difference, besides the rules swap, is the cutscenes and dialogue animations.
I think BG3 is riding on the D&D brand and marketing campaign. In my mind there isn’t a massive difference between BG3 and D:OS2 (or other titles they’ve done) from a pure gameplay perspective.
Regardless, I’m for it. Hopefully we’ll see more innovative and high budget CRPGs.
I think BG3 is riding on the D&D brand and marketing campaign
With how much they adapted 5e's rules for a video game (thankfully, 5e can be jank) I'd wager it's more to do with them riding on the Forgotten Realms setting. It's hugely popular (see: BG 1-2, dozens of books, most popular D&D setting through the last few editions) so it helps drive interest that there's a competent game that is both faithful to the lore and excels at storytelling.
For instance I really liked a tiny scrap of paper dealing with the Mines of Phandelver hundreds of years ago. That's a bit of flavor from the 5e Red Box. Tons of stuff like that calling back to adventures and books in the series.
My nephew whom is mainly an FPS player and said that BG3 was not for him has recently picked it up and is loving multiplayer with his friends.
As a previous player of the BG series and others like it, BG3 is a far cry from any of its predecessors. I'm not stating your opinion isn't fair, but wanted to also give another account of players that don't consider this their type of game and are surprised to like it.
I know I'm just getting downvoted by people emotionally hurt by me stating I dislike tabletop RPGs. But my opinion is also being informed by my past experience with Larian's other celebrated game, Divinity Original Sin 2. No matter how hyped it was, or how clearly polished it was, I didn't think that game was fun either.
I don't see how me playing or not playing the game would disqualify me from recognizing the phenomenon surrounding this game as "hype." It's marketing hype, it's fresh new game hype, it's whatever you want to call it. The game is out, it's popular, people are leaving glowing reviews about it everywhere. That's hype.
Just because I'm calling it "hype" doesn't mean I'm bashing the game, I'm making an observation where I give OP a concise response.
yeah, i like the game and even i can see its hyped in articles and on forums.
every time someone article has the word "polished".
it has tonnes of quest bugs, these type of games always do.
the ui is remarkably good - for this type of game, on steamdeck controller; but it's not a slick ui.
there's always tradeoffs and compromises. complexity of quests leads to bugs, complexity of player choices leads to analysis paralysis/tyranny of choice and cumbersome ui.
You nerds sure love putting words in my mouth. People need to calm their titties at best, or just shut the fuck up in general. Everyone's so programmed to just turning every single casual discussion online into a black and white argument of who is right or wrong. (That's you I'm talking about, btw)
Tell me you completely missed the point of every comment I've made in this thread without telling me you completely missed the point of every comment I've made in this thread.
I mean, the snarky side of me wants to say "tell me you completely misunderstood my comment without telling me you completely misunderstood my comment."
Though in case you are asking in good faith, I already wrote above "Just because I'm calling it "hype" doesn't mean I'm bashing the game, I'm making an observation where I give OP a concise response."
To elaborate further: it seems like people are assuming "hype" has negative connotations where I'm actually delivering some underhanded criticism of the game, or Larian, or themselves as fans of the game, or themselves as fans of the movement of a non AAA game studio experiencing runaway critical success. I am doing none of these things. OP was wondering "what is up with Baldur's Gate 3?" and I answered. It's hype.
There are other comments from people explaining the fine details of why BG3 is getting hyped up so much and those comments are rightly upvoted to the top, as they should be. However, for someone who doesn't have any skin in the game and is only passively interested in this whole thing (me, for example), this entire situation can be described as excitement, exuberance, noise, or... hype.
Holy fuck I miss the days when words actually had meaning.
It’s a combination of good timing, a perfect product and going against the direction of most AAA-studios.
Though BG2 is more than two decades old, a lot of us still considers it one of the best games ever. I think quite a few of us have been eager to return to forgotten realms. That’s one group.
Then there’s a group of Divinity fans (some overlapping the old BG group) waiting for Larians next RPG.
Those two groups would be the critical mass for creating hype. Would the game live up to the old games? Would it be as good as Divinty?
Then comes the first reviews and people get to play the beta, and though the first few months were rough, once we got close to release it was clear, that BG3 would not only live up to its expectations, it would smash through the roof.
Now you have your core fan base talking about how good this game is, how do you sell this to people who normally don’t play this type of game?
Well, talk to them in a language they understand. This game is complete from day 1. No DLC. No ingame shop. Just a complete game that you can play over and over again with new ways of completing it… oh, and you can co-op with your friends. Even on the couch in split screen.
There are simply not anything of major significance to criticize about this game. You may not like it, or the genre is not for you, but as a complete product it’s simply perfect.
As a player you get the feeling that Larian focus on the game first where others focus on money first. That may not be the whole truth, but it’s the feeling this is creating, and hopefully other studios will acknowledge that there are other ways to do things.
I feel like there might be room for an old school PC gaming community here on Lemmy. There is usually a console/arcade game focus on the retro gaming communities, but it would be great to have a place to discuss releases from that 1990-2009 or so era.
Everyone else is playing the System Shock remake while I’m just sitting here hoping for a System Shock 2 remake, because it was a spiritual predecessor to BioShock that included class-based co-operative play. The netcode in the original was/is dogshit, so my friend and I never actually completed the game before our saves were totally corrupted.
Frankly, also wouldn’t mind a remake of the original Deus Ex either. Warren Spector was heavily involved in the development of System Shock and Deus Ex, while Ken Levine was instrumental in System Shock 2 and BioShock.
Same. And I grew up on Champions of Krynn and Eye of the Beholder and Pools of Radiance, so Baldur’s Gate was mind blowing when it came out. BG2 was even better!
I haven’t played a CRPG in a while. Never got into DoS series, etc. But there’s no way I was missing BG3 after the rave reviews it was getting, considering my history with the series.
I don’t think anyone at Larian thinks that they have created the perfect product. It’s pretty buggy still, and lacks depth in areas, but its intentions are pure and that buys a lot of credibility in and of itself.
All of nonDD people, love the studio who made a great game without any of the bullshit we get fucked over in other genres... it shows it can be done, it can be great, and it can respect the player...
People throwing money at Dev as fuck you to EAs, Bethesdas etc
it fills a lot of inches to the point where it’s unique but also approachable. reminds me a lot of dungeon and dragons mixed with dragon age/mass effect mixed with fire emblem
Still, casual gamers did think Linux couldn’t game. It’s changing this opinion in the best way possible and that’s really important since Linux is the best OS. I personally think we still live in medieval PC times as long as Windows is the main OS used.
Still, casual gamers did think Linux couldn’t game.
The parent comment is right. Most people don't think about Linux. Ask a 'casual' Swtich owner what OS the Switch uses, and their answer is probably going to be pretty close to the answer that a similar Deck user would give.
Even so it made it significantly harder for people to make the dated throwaway comment that you’ll lose access to a majority of your games by switching to Linux.
With that I feel like people will see it’s just as usable as MacOS and Windows in a majority of circumstances.
But that’s because it was a decade ago, and I was way too lazy to figure out why wine wouldn’t work, tho I don’t really pc game anyway and these were mostly older games, even then. Small loss.
I know there’s a lot of stuff either native dev or ported/cracked for Linux, just never really spent the time to look into it.
The only thing that’s going to cause problems for me now is idk how Linux handles vr. I assume not terribly well, since none (almost none?) of it is native dev. I’m looking to move away from consoles now that they are moving away from physical media (no point collecting if there’s nothing to collect), so Linux being more robust is great! But vr maybe my stick point. Depends how well developed it gets I guess.
VR headsets and games with anti-cheat software still have issues. I haven’t been able to get Oculus Rift S to work for example.
I think some headsets like the ones made by Valve and HTC work better though. I’m not sure if there’s currently the same degree of rapid advancements for VR Linux gaming as there are for gaming in general on Linux. I know OpenHMD exists but I haven’t tried it out myself.
I don’t really have a vr setup right now (have a psvr, the tracking sucks but I want to like it) but I was thinking maybe an index at some point…
Tho tbh if I need to keep a windows pc for that to work… I can… I won’t be thrilled for it, but my laptop is touchscreen and running 11… idk how Linux does with touchscreen so I haven’t changed it out yet, probs could upgrade the hardware to game off it.
Not yet, but I looked into it before I bought it and I’ve seen that it can be done as sort of a viewing unit? If I understand correctly that’s all it would be, which is still probably a powerful tool, but I just got the vr like a month ago and then immediately got two surprise kittens so I have not had time to play at all, much less do anything fancy with it.
However if you want to tell me all about it, I am more than happy to learn from a person rather than an impersonal article. Really.
I would have linked an article. I haven’t experimented with it myself but it seems like there’s one paid project available through Steam that aims to support the PSVR
It’s a thing I’ll probably do at some point. Just for kicks. I’m a big fan of playing around with hardware to save money 😁 but it’ll probably be a while before I get to it. I have some self hosting and automation to learn to do first (not super knowledgeable presently, but omfg is the fediverse helpful with tech stuff 💜)
Me too. Messing around with hardware is something that’s always stuck with me from when I was a teenager. If you give the PSVR thing a test mind messaging me or commenting so I can hear how it goes?
I was also messing with hardware/software starting in teens. Grew up during the brief period in which home computers were fairly common though still quite expensive, but pc repair shops weren’t really around.
I will try to remember, but it might not be for a while. :)
I was going to say I slightly disagree, but then I thought about it some more and realized they probably just see it as SteamOS in the same way Android doesn’t make people think about Linux either.
No, this is incorrect, OP thought steam deck is ok because the games are exclusively only in steam. OP never try to consider her mother-in-law. Giving someone linux and just assuming they understand is not going to help make them like the game or machine.
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