Achievement data is a percentage. Since there were no giveaways, PS+, or Game Pass offerings to skew the data, there's no reason to believe that the percentage would change across other platforms or across people playing the game offline. The achievement we're using is the one for beating the game, as is the finite number of 1.3M that Larian offered in their infographic. Yes, that number does include early access purchases. Why wouldn't it? Those are still copies sold, and they're still included in achievement data.
If the top result when googling is accurate, BG3 has sold 22+ million copies.
I would not trust that number. Larian just put out an infographic only days ago saying that 1.3M people completed the game. Using achievement data, we can extrapolate that out to somewhere between 7M and 8M copies sold.
I haven't finished my first run through the game yet, but I do keep hearing about NG+. There are all of these factions to check out, some of which should be opposed to happening in the same playthrough as certain other factions, and they built a game around NG+, so why not have you commit to one faction in the course of a shorter game, and then build the opportunity to play through the other factions into NG+?
I'm not hating my time with Starfield so far, but hardly a few minutes go by while I'm playing before its obvious shortcomings annoy me. Most of them I think (and hope) I can easily attribute to their ancient tech that they probably ought to throw straight in the garbage.
You know, it's funny. My assumptions, which I think I've made clear are assumptions when I talk about them, are that Starfield is what it is largely because of technical limitations. I think, if I'm wrong, the remaining possible answers are far more disappointing. Are the side quests bad because that's what the engine allows them to feasibly build? That sucks; they should ditch their engine. Are the side quests bad because the designers don't know how to design good quests? That's worse. You can extend these kinds of assumptions to the way space travel works, the way their conversation system works, etc.
Oh, I missed this announcement. I heard about the ability to decline wi-fi matches, which is much more important, IMO, so this is good to hear. It also sounds like crossplay includes PC this time. It's pretty strange to see an American developer further behind on supporting PC than their competition, but here we are. Looks like it's time to check this game out again. Wi-fi players were unbearable.
This video is unwatchable AI-generated garbage, and it's foreshadowed from the grammar in the title. How are people upvoting this? "Larian released BALL DOORS....GATE 3."
Let's change that expectation. Baldur's Gate 3 won best multiplayer at the Game Awards, and it's not a live service. In a talk with some friends, I realized how antagonistic the relationship between players and developers always ended up as well when the developers make more money with more "engagement". Diablo IV will get fun builds nerfed into the ground; Baldur's Gate 3 will let them rock, but only in the pre-existing difficulty levels before they add in extra challenge modes for fun. That's the difference.
Meanwhile, Agent Under Fire multiplayer for the Gamecube is more fun than any live service FPS I've ever played. It certainly didn't require years of support to be that fun, and you only need one other person to play it with, but preferably 3. Very easily doable regardless of how many people are in matchmaking.
Used to be our favorite single player games came with multiplayer modes attached to them. You didn't expect them to get years of content. You just enjoyed them for a little while with some friends and then moved on. Not only is that totally fine, I'd argue it's preferable.
This game was originally going to release two years ago without Microsoft making sure it got more QA than Bethesda is known for. Microsoft or not, the game design and feature completeness likely wouldn't have moved an inch.
Hi-Fi Rush, for a counter example, was one of the best games of the year.
I can't speak for Gamescom, but PAX East has been shrinking, too. Exhibitors don't want to show up. They've been doing that thing you did in high school to pad your essays by increasing the margins on the side to make it look you wrote more than you did. Except instead of an essay, it's a show floor.
I don't even think it's that. Lots of RPGs have had "do X more to level up X", including old Bethesda games, but it's riddled with problems, which is why most games don't do it anymore. As for level scaling, at least they finally got rid of that, but the way they guide you through the galaxy in line with your level involves basically being equally far along in each faction quest line at the same time instead of having low level factions and high level factions.
It's weird that as I continue to want to play more of it, I'm annoyed by just about every design decision they made along the way. I want to get into the gun design thing even, but the perk tree system puts a roadblock in my way.
If you're looking for a shooter, co-op campaigns for those things dried up a while back, so you're mostly looking at older games. My friends and I are playing Quake and Quake II to scratch that itch, but those old shooters are also very maze-like. If you're open to suggestions beyond shooters, I'd recommend a couple of roguelikes, namely Streets of Rogue and Vagante. Both are very chaotic, sandbox-y, challenging, and scale really well for co-op.