A few weeks prior to its launch, Baldur’s Gate 3 looks like one of the most promising RPGs in recent memory. However, some devs are urging players not to rate all other games in the genre by such a high standard, appealing to Larian Studios’ unique combination of vast experience and resources.
(I posted this to another thread about the same article, but wanted to add it here for us.)
I’ve been a fan of Larian since Divinity 1 because there was a lot of quality for that little game. And they stepped it up for Divinity 2. Divinity 2 looks so good, has great story telling, great voice acters, and many different ways to do things and styles of play, i.e. choice. So I bought the EA BG3 version of the game as soon as it was available because I felt I had a relationship with Larian and could trust they would make a great game. And Larian when up many steps with the quality and dept of this game. They listen to the EA players and had many changes and improvements. It wasn’t a mechanism for microtransactions but a great game with dizzying choices. The game was made with passion and obliously a work of love. AAA developers should take note of why this company is successful. Gamers don’t want microtransactions, NFTs, small games that you have to buy the expansion to get the whole story.
Larian Studios will deserve the fame this game will bring them. Hey AAA developers, look at how it done.
That kind of is the new standard for AAA RPGs, though. Elden Ring is massive. Starfield is massive unless they’re flat out lying. Is Final Fantasy not obscenely big? But either way, after kind of a drought, we have a bunch of really big RPGs of a bunch of different styles in reasonably quick succession.
It’s the developers and publishers that set the expectations. The fans will get mad if they don’t meet those promises or vise versa. Look at No Man’s Sky for instance. They over promised and under delivered, but fans came back after the devs put in the work to bring it up to par with what they themselves promised. Sorry, but these devs in the article read like they’re jealous or afraid their overlords will ask them to make a BG3 without the proper resources.
In a way, I see their point. Larian had the trifecta of a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of institutional knowledge. Expecting every game to match that just leads to bloat and crunch. Not every movie is Ben Hur, not every book is War and Peace, and that’s OK.
I can understand the point for tiny studios or indie games.
AAA studios on the other hand are pathetic to cry about it, they have the money, the reknown and the time to make quality games and not shitstains and decide not to.
Time to be held accountable and suffer the comparison. FromSoftware was able to make a massive great game just like Larian. Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Epic Games have no excuses.
Studios, yes, but the devs who work for them aren’t the ones calling the shots. I imagine a lot of EA devs saw the trailers and could immediately picture their C-suite getting ideas.
Pretty sure nobody forces them to work for shitty AAA studios obsessed with milking as much as possible their customers.
@Matharl @Aqarius Not everyone has the privilege of choice. People have loans and families, and often companies could start as decent, but then become the “bad AAA” with the changes in publishers and management. And when you have some years in a company, it can be very hard to change things.
I watched one of the documentaries on Larian, and it was interesting how when DOS was in the dire straights, Sven could bet on it due to the employees being safe if the company would go bust due to EU laws.
I don’t have any sympathy for people working in companies like Nestlé, why would I be compassionate for people working at Ubisoft making shitty UIs who complains about Elden Ring success ?
With your point of view, nobody is ever responsible of anything including people working for dictatorships or the worse, because they also have loans and families and need to provide for them.
@Matharl Everyone have different amount of resources and power, and the responsibility they have is proportional to what they can achieve and change.
My sympathy is proportional to that as well, and I would propose to always start from blaming those at the top, but not those with limited choices, especially not those who are trying to speak up about things (I consider this situation as such — them trying to change at least _something_ by talking that _they_ do not have the same resources).
They also had a pandemic to cope with, so the thought that “so many things fell in place for them, lucky” doesn’t really convince me that it wasn’t actual effort that got them where they are now. The right game meeting the right developer, sure, but how many times did I think “what a shame, this game had so much potential” in the last ten years?
Oh, nobody’s denying the effort, it’s just that effort isn’t enough. Plenty of those “had potential” games had loads of effort, but ran short of time/money.
Larian’s track record for quality is beyond expectations. DOS and DOS2 are great examples. Larian worked hard on Baldur’s Gate 3 and it shows.
Activision Blizzard can’t make market leading games because they’re too busy getting convincing their workers to commit suicide.
I understand where some devs are coming from, but Blizzard devs commenting on that list is just odd for me. They used to be the studio that could release games “when they are done” and honestly still have all the resources Larian has. For them it’s a choice.
