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.
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.