I think, with 700k concurrent players, we need to recognize cRPGs may not be as niche as we previously thought. However, your point stands: this isn’t going to hurt anyone’s revenue from MTX.
So far, every article I’ve seen about Baldur’s Gate 3’s effect on the gaming industry has been horse shit. Other studios and publishers are not “panicking,” they’re not going to rethink microtransactions, and they’re not going to be daunted by this release; some devs have said as much already along the lines of “Yeah don’t expect this breadth and scope from us going forward, because it doesn’t work for our games.”
This game is not the industry-spanning “gotcha” these writers have been trying to make it out to be. AAA devs or publishers are going to continue their nonsense because people will continue to buy their shit anyway, and they know it.
All that said, BG3 is the best game I’ve played in a number of years and hands-down the best cRPG I’ve ever played. It smokes Divinity, Icewind Dale, the previous BG games, NWN, etc. So if any studios do happen to have a positive takeaway from this, maybe we’ll see at least some of that polish in games down the line.
No, you’re right, it’s all of them. Ubisoft is one of the worst perpetrators of this shit actually. Far Cry games having an online shop is so unnecessary.
Edit: In fact, they’re so bad they attempted to implement NFTs in Ghost Recon. Like… what?
That didn’t last though.
The beauty of Bethesda’s flagship titles (namely Fallout and TES) is even if they end up as buggy messes upon release, or have empty maps, the modding community corrects those flaws relatively quickly.
It’s one of the reasons that I, a long-time veteran of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., am not worried if GSC Game World fucks up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. Today, the best part of the first titles is the mods that fix, improve, and add content to the games. It’ll be the same with this one, and I’m excited to see what people do with A-Life 2.0.
Real talk. I don’t game on console anymore, but Metal Gear Solid is the crowning jewel of console game plots.
Ever tried explaining the series to someone unfamiliar with it? You end up sounding like a fuckin meth head coming off a binge, and to me that makes it a narrative worth diving in to.
Not even close. I’m playing it right now, well into act 2, and while it is THE ultimate example of what a cRPG should be, that doesn’t necessarily mean the breadth and scope would work in other genres. You’re WAY overestimating the impact this is having on the gaming industry, and that’s evidenced by how other developers are responding to it.
Also. I’ve played through all the Mass Effects (even Andromeda, which I actually enjoyed more) and to say that it was industry-defining is a fanboy take. Full stop. From where I’m sitting ME1 did not introduce anything groundbreaking that hadn’t been done already by that point, and to be honest the early Fallout games had way more gravity when it came to choices and decision-making. I’d say of games in that era, the original Borderlands was more ground-breaking given it kind of kickstarted the looter-shooter genre, and that’s a stretch.
I usually despise cRPGs (turn-based, party-based tactical, can’t grind to be OP, decisions matter TOO much) but love JRPGs. But I cannot put this game down. It’s just too well-made and there’s too much flexibility and interactivity not to be intrigued at every turn.
And while MGS is the best series I’ve played on console, the story has still always been a convoluted mess. Try explaining that plot to a layman, and you’ll sound like a homeless meth head in the throes of a binge.
Death Stranding wasn’t any more coherent either, and that’s why I think the next game is going to be highly entertaining.
It’s the primary reason I put down Breath of the Wild. Hit an enemy three times with a basic weapon and it breaks? Nah, I’m good.
I think if I had any sort of fandom towards Legend of Zelda as a series, I may have stuck with it, but that’s just not a series I could get into when it was coming up (Link To The Past, Ocarina, etc.)
Weapon durability in, say, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is handled way better. Gun starts to slowly become inaccurate and more unreliable (more frequent jamming, which means you have to reload mid-firefight to clear the jam. I actually like that).
I know a lot of people that played WoW back then, and their experiences were largely the same. I didn’t get much into MMOs beyond Guild Wars 1 at that time. Final Fantasy XIV was good for a time, but Elder Scrolls Online blew me away after they basically redid the game. That was obviously much later in life, though, and that’s a very different framework of MMORPG than classic WoW and its early expansions.
All the old MechWarrior games, starting with MechWarrior 2. That was my childhood. PGI didn’t have what it takes to recapture that with MechWarrior Online or MechWarrior 5.
Shout out to Half-Life 1 and Team Fortress Classic (1.5). THAT was my teenage years. I played an insurmountable amount of TFC, adminned a couple servers, and took zero interest in TF2, because it just wasn’t the same without concs, throwable frag nades, etc.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was a gamechanger though. That released when I was in college. Fell in love with the hopeless atmosphere, good gunplay, and the eurojank. I still play the various S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods to this day and am eagerly awaiting the release of number 2 (slated for December, but we will see. Devs have been through a lot).