ThunderingJerboa

ThunderingJerboa, rok temu

I mean James Berg did though

"I would not be surprised if this was more dev effort than the next 2 or 3 games in the genre combined. It's Rockstar-level nonsense for scope.

Only a few studio groups could even try this. I cannot wait to play, but this kind of effort likely won't be replicated this decade"

Yes the original starter of the thread Xalavier Nelson Jr. has a very fair point that this can set a standard for indie games however most people have big problems when these complaints are also coming from other AAA developers. James Berg works for bloody microsoft one of the largest companies that is absorbing huge portions of the gaming industry in a monopolistic pattern. Josh Sawyer is a Design Director for Obsidian who is a company who basically follow a very similar path as Larian, its just they sort of failed with their Pillars of Eternity series especially after Deadfire. Maybe Avowed will turn out well but their recent stuff has not found much favor at least in terms of RPGs.

BG3 is what AAA development should be if it was about making good products but at the end of the day these companies are here to make as much money as possible. I mean there is nothing wrong with making money but its clear many publishers have been pushing quite hard on consumers to paying more for less. As long as gaming budgets are this expensive we should be getting things of this quality more frequently but its not likely. I doubt we will see anything close to BG3 from Bethesda with ES6 a game they have teased for nearly 5 years now with almost nothing beyond that little teaser.

Like gamers especially RPG gamers just want a complete game. Its clear the success of BG3, DOS 1 & 2, and Owlcat's pathfinder games show there is a clear market for this. It just needs to be handled with well.

ThunderingJerboa, rok temu

I think you are confusing my term for complete with big and shallow. BG3,DOS2, Disco Elysium did well with their confines. The world felts very reactive to your decisions as a player and there is connecting sinew to most of the game with itself. Starfield and Bethesda's game are in a way glorified puddles they may be miles wide but typically underneath there is very little depth to it. Typically modders are the ones who add the depth that Bethesda didn't want to deal with. So you basically have a game where the puddle dips in an irregular fashion. This was honestly the biggest problem of CP2077. It was just a huge puddle, it had a fantastic writing for its main and side stories but almost everything else was pretty meh. I rather they just had a smaller world but pack it fuller with far more cool stuff than have vast spaces of nothingness.

ThunderingJerboa, rok temu

Those aren't criticisms of Larian or Baldur's Gate 3. They are opinions that creating games at a certain scale isn't something developers can just replicate at will. Just like Rockstar games aren't something any studio can't just go out and put together.

It's like how someone would argue that not all books/novels need to be as long and complex as the Song of Ice and Fire series. Not all books need to be like those books, just like not all games need to be like BG3 (or GTA or RDR to use the other comparison).

Except my point has very little to do with complexity or how long it is. I rather a game be short than waste your fucking time, we don't need 200+ hour games. It is one of those things I hate about modern gaming where if a game is less than 20 hours of enjoyment it is worthless to many. I want quality yet many AAA studios don't pump out the best stuff. Halo infinite ended up as a trash fire that didn't respect its players and has basically been put down because of pointless money grubbing. Every Ubisoft game follows the very same formula make a large empty world where you clear towers.

We as gamers should strive for games like BG3 because they were quality works that were made for the enjoyment of the player. They aren't meant to fuck with you and hand over your wallet. Hell one of the biggest games this summer was a fucking roblox Battlefield game. People just want to play a good game that isn't trying to always nickle and dime them. Its a plus when there is complexity but its not a requirement for it to work.

Edit: Larian is a studio that has basically been the poster child for "crowdfunding" and I personally am fine with that. This can be what happens when we support studios with an idea. There will be a ton of failure but crowdfunding has brought many top tier indie games especially in genres thought dead in modern gaming (FTL, Divinity Original sin, Shovel Knight, Wasteland 2, Superhot, Yooka-Laylee, Night in the Woods, A Hat in Time, Elite Dangerous, Ready or Not, etc.)

ThunderingJerboa, rok temu

Comes to mind also how XCom 2 insisted on turn limits,

I mean I would argue sure they were a bit too tight and I'm 100% down for increasing them but Xcom (2013) did have a problem with overwatch creep. Where people were legitimately optimizing the fun out of the game. Time limits force you to make less than optimal decisions where it works very well with the setting of Xcom 2 where you are a rebellion force, you don't have the luxury of taking things at your pace. You need to strike and get out before a larger response force come in to take you out. The only negative to the turn limits is you being forced to trigger pods early and pods waking up give them a free move action.

ThunderingJerboa, rok temu

It is a bit unfortunate there won't be any attempts for multiplayer in that new game though (at least by the devs, they likely know the modding community will do it).