Compete in terms of value, not price. The series S gets you Xbox’s current gen game library and a selection of 360 games, and if you’re willing to use dev mode a powerful emulation suite. Deck gets a huge percentage of Steam’s 20-year catalog as one-click installs, most other PC games that don’t use anticheat as slightly more involved installs, every PC game if you want to install windows, and also a powerful emulation suite. Plus it’s a dockable handheld instead of something that needs a monitor and controller.
The series S has better media apps and can be woken up from the couch, though.
The S is a stellar emulation box that doesn’t need to be jailbroken. It’s a hell of a lot easier to configure than a custom Linux distro like RetroPie and the hardware packs a punch. I don’t own one, but I’d be more likely to buy a series S than a PS5 or series X.
But when a game like BG3 comes out, with all the stuff no indie studio can afford to do and it has this level of passion without sticking its hand in your pocket, it absolutely reminds us that AAA doesn’t have to be like it is.
As good as indie RPGs are, Disco Elysium was only able to afford voice acting after being a giant commercial success. No small budget team is going to be able to have mocap work on the level of BG3. These things cost a lot of money and involve paying a lot of workers. BG3’s Kickstarter got to be carried by the name recognition of Baldur’s Gate and Dungeons & Dragons in general, following a huge popularity surge for the latter thanks to the rise of real-play podcasts and such.
Do games need hundreds of voice actors and incredible mocap to be good? No. But it’s something that only AAA studios have the ability to add, and it’s a shame that it’s all going into the next fifa/COD/whatever other money pit GAAS the industry is shitting out.
The standard argument here is that you’re not supposed to look in every container for loot. However yep everyone I’ve seen play this game including myself is an absolute loot goblin. What if this rotten fruit basket has a +2 greatsword or boots of elvenkind!
I think there’s a mod that adds a button you can click to “loot the room” - characters make perception rolls and “find” anything of value and put the items into their inventories. Haven’t tried it but might be your jam.
BG3 has plenty of bugs, some of them game breaking. Look at the litany of fixes they delivered in each patch. It’s not about that. It’s about releasing a game that isn’t a “service”, and just a purely high quality game - tactical combat that works well, characters with good writing, a solid plot hook, a distinct graphical style, phenomenal voice acting and mocap (which matter more for this genre than they would in, say, a third person shooter).
I’ve been watching a friend play and absolutely noticed that the romance stuff is a lot slower. everyone wanted to jump my wizard bones about 18 hours in, though it’s very easy to just not flirt with them. Meanwhile she’s 28 hours in and Shadowheart (who was trying to get me in bed with her in the first 10 hours of my play through) still hasn’t propositioned her.