[What are you Playing Now? - Right Now at the moment edition]

The Outer Worlds.

Game was decent until ca. the Groundbreaker. Now at Monarch, it's taking a dive. Hopefully it picks up thereafter, but the area is focusing on everything the game isn't particularly great at:

- combat (enemy variety, difficulty or lack thereof, the ever present bullet sponge replacing better AI on increased difficulties)
- exploration (too many reused assets for budgetary reasons -- the environment on Monarch is rather bland in general, which is a bit subjective)
- looting (extra paragraph and rant added below)

I guess I could just sneak around all those copypaste enemy mob grinds, but that'd just take longer.
 

To be fair, Emerald Vale already is in parts Monarch, just compressed and (thankfully) smaller: Settlements connected by wilds filled with enemy mobs -- and a faction quest you eventually need to fiddle with to advance. That's what somebody told me before: After the first planet you'd seen everything, and then the game was on repeat. Then I went to the independent Groundbreaker station first, and was surprised that wasn't the case. Fav location so far.

I'm actually not at all a fan of Bethesda games (wide as the ocean, deep as a toilet). But Skyrim you want to explore some (without that, there's not much of a game, as systems are shallow and combat basic). Don't get that on Monarch, as every corner looks (assets) and acts (loot, enemy mobs) the same, so focusing on these areas does more harm than any good. Additionally, Monarch does away with the one thing unique to the game, which is toying with the idea of how corporations governing people may treat them.


---

Speaking about the loot, this isn't unique to The Outer Worlds -- general rant incoming. But I wish games would stop with randomly allocating loot and/or conveniently placing a box behind every rock. Firstly, it harms the game's fiction to have money lying around literally on the streets, the same goes for weapons (unless the game portrays a universe of total anarchy perhaps). Secondly, it turns the process of looting into something rather braindead where you routinely scan every corner as you could find something (and you WILL). Even oldschool Ultima games did that better. Or Thief, for that matter: Breaking into a castle, you were guaranteed to not find jewels in the servant quarters (unless it was stolen, which a document or dialogue would hint at). So you could think and plan ahead. Actually engaging with the game world, basically, rather than randomly checking every corner, toilet and bucket for brain goodies like a zombie.

Outer Worlds is a mix: In a bar, you'll mostly find stuff to drink. But then there's randomly sitting a box containing money right on a table, and on a chair near to the bar there's lying a hacking device. Meanwhile, on a toilet, there's a gun. Reason? Unknown. It's as if there's an RNG at work tweaked to trigger pack rat instincts in players rather than a world designer working alongside to the narrative guys. It feels lazy and cheap and only put in to further stretch playing time -- e.g. wasting yours in the hopes you won't notice the "quantity over quality" approach to things.

[Trying to figure what PoE2 sold less]

It's been six years last week, by the way.

A couple of ados:

- The carribean theme being a possible factor in underperformance is depressing as hell. I mean, this is the only genre left standing where announcing a product set in the zombie postapocalypse or during WWII would be seen as a risk. Says it all, really. Even if you're barely getting sick of elves&dwarves: Everybody is getting tired of their favourite meal when that is served 24/7. Unless they're a weirdo. In which case: great genre. Bad target audience.

- Currently playing The Outer Worlds. And whilst that also was a semi-budgeted affair, it is remarkable how much more it relies on cheap tricks to stretch its playing time. Currently exploring Monarch, and that almost feels like Owlcat Games. You know: Having spaces and then bombarding them with paste&copy mobs for you to mow down over and over and over again.

I know that Josh took the criticism as to PoE1 to heart and made his designers encourage to actually think of a REASON when putting combat into their design. Like: "Okay, why do you put those enemies there?" "They are meant to introduce the fauna of this place." But still remarkable.

Mind you, these games are and always will be murder hobo sims. But killing less than 1,000 enemies over a 40-50 hours campaign is still pretty low end for this type. That's ~20 kills per hour on average.  If Owlcat Games would have stats like these, there would be an integer error and the counter would re-start at zero at some point.  



Also, whilst the main quest is a bit conflicted/meh, Deadfire to me firlmy remains the most polished of all the major crowdfunded RPGs. At release, it was much too easy, admittedly. But that's been overhauled. It also remains the only one I've completed I think thrice. One time immediately after having finished it, just to try something out. As the main quest isn't a LOTR kind of epic done on a budget (and neither stretched to be such, see second point/paragraph), that is actually viable to do.

 

Deadfire is also one I'll be getting back to the in the future. And that precisely because of its setting and atmosphere. The moment where you are finished with your starting island and get your first ship to set off to adventure land -- that's the one making the game to me. It's like Monkey Island -- except in an RPG. Dwarves&elves my ass! I can get them from 9.99 out of 10 RPGs anyway.  

Deadfire indeed was good.


 

[Random video game news... Bring me a bucket, and I'll show you a bucket!]

7 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I am not surprised. This is Arkane Austin - they have done Prey and its DLC and Redfall.

This is a bit simplified. They only really "split" by the time Dishonored 2 and Prey were being developed in tandem. But even then, people switched places (I mean, Colantonio is from France himself). Also, even Redfall lists almost two dozen people from Lyon in the credits.

Or, to let Raf Colantonio do the talking (note his huge follow-up post to this also).  

But in general, what happened in Austin is a good example of destroying studio culture. Arkane have been a very specialized company since their very inception. This naturally included what people they at all hired. And now they were tasked to do a multiplayer, open world CoOp shooter kind of game. It's akin to Hollywood encouraging Sofia Coppola to do the next Furious movie. Why? Becuz popular. In fairness, this started under ZeniMax.

I personally didn't get much Arkane vibes upons Redfall's release. And had looked up the game's credits before it became public what happened. By watching the credits as well as checking people on Linkedln, it was apparent that a lot of people were brought in from all over the open world gaming action industry. This included Anthem's OW lead designer, and numerous other people who prior worked on Mafia, Destiny, Saint's Row et all. Some of those joined as late as a year prior to Redfall's release. So Arkane lost people that were hired specifically for the type of games they were specializing in, those people quit and left. To hire new ones just for Redfall.

However, if it weren't for people working on a Marvel IP in Lyon, they may be in trouble now as well. Not sure if posted already. But  'd love if Arkane had gotten a chance at that announced Indiana Jones game rather than MachineGames. For a start, perfect fit for their type. See Thief's grave robbery missions, with fantastic in-universe maps for all your archeological needs. 

Secondly, Indy is still strong enough an IP, even if the last movie disappointed. Is it really the CORE of their very type of game that's not blockbuster worthy? Or is it rather their package? Until Baldur's Gate 3 came around, party-based tactical RPGs were seen as a niche as well. Turn-based ones even moreso. The notion was: No matter the rest of the game or what you're aiming for as an OVERALL EXPERIENCE: If you include THIS feature, you're going to go niche.

[Random video game news... Bring me a bucket, and I'll show you a bucket!]

23 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

Heh, kind of an interesting theory to think that if Obsidian struggles to make it with their own IP's, they will just end up churning out Fallout side games. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'd feel bad for Obsidian, but I would love to have more of their Fallouts too. 

Problem is they would probably lose their writing talent that separates them from the chuff. Tim Cain already seems to be semi-retired as he develops his youtube following.

 

It's also a natural evolution of kinds. Similar to how Call Of Duty has seen sequels developed by various studios since forever -- and their games released in turns. That's why they can serve the COD crowd regularly, while it's a TV series currently keeping the Fallout name alive in popular culture. Studios under the MS/Bethesda umbrella have already helped each other too, or co-developed -- id helping out Arkane on Redfall, Arkane co-developing Wolfenstein Youngblood with MachineGames. So having multiple studios working on projects of the most popular IP is one next logical step for bigger corps. Wouldn't say the only one. But it is one.

Even if tools improve and AI will offer helping hands, the development time of blockbuster games isn't going to come down. The tech is getting ever more advanced, expectations go up accordingly. People entering the blockbuster gaming industry may eventually help developing but a couple of games in their entire career. It's crazy to think that even the core team of Doom³ still consisted of ~20 people 20 years ago... and that game was seen as the most bleeding edge thing ever -- on a technical level, anyhow.
 

8 hours ago, Wormerine said:

It did, but it was also caught in „screw Bethesda” train after Fallout76. I am not quite sure how much interest there will still be in Outer Worlds2. 

Similar to the first Pillars Of Eternity, relative for their type of game, The Outer Worlds was also a rather modest budgeted game with modest expectations behind. The sequel, just like Deadfire, seems to ramp it up quite a notch. I think expectations are much higher on TOW2 than 1.

[Random video game news... Games are Randomly News Worthy]

2 hours ago, HoonDing said:

You have to be realistic about these things.

I'll bite. 

Avowed underperforming = realistic.
The Outer Worlds 2 doing the same = realistic.

Obsidian being turned into Bethsoft junior / Fallout game factory liners = a possibilty. At least they'd be working on an IP they like, hey. 

In particular considering how freakishly long it takes to churn out these games these days -- and that delivering BIG IP blockbuster product corporations care about becomes slower and slower a process. Who was Football World Champion back when the last Dragon Age released? On which console did the last GTA game first release? When did the last Elder Scrolls main game come out, discounting re-releases? Does anybody even remember the last Mass Effect, for that matter?  If you can positively answer these, chances are, you're a pretty old fart.   

[Random video game news... Games are Randomly News Worthy]

If Obsidian eventually gets shut down too at some point, I'm hoping for somebody to mod the **** out of The Outer Worlds. 

We've shut down the best. Now try the rest.
At Microsoft, we cut corners so you don't have to.
Who, who, whoa, it's Spencer's!

[Random video game news... Games are Randomly News Worthy]

MS going to close down Tango Softworks and Arkane Austin TX.

WolfEye have set up their first ever offices in Austin TX just last year. That's the new studio by Arkane's founder Raf Colantonio, which already has quite an illustrious roster for people familiar. Any bets accepted there's more ex-Arkanes going to pop up in there? Every ending is a new beginning.

Also, before anybody speculates: The dichotomy between Austin and Lyon has never existed like that. Arkane have never been a company of two studios. Rather a studio of two locations, with people moving between them as well (see Harvey Smith moving over to Lyon to direct Dishonored 2 and then going back). That's firstly a misconception that Colantonio himself has corrected multiple times. 

 Secondly, if Lyon weren't working on a rather popular IP as we speak (Blade), I could imagine MS pulling the plug on them too. If Blade is gonna bomb... edit: Dang, @mkreku beat me to it. 

[Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part VII]

On 2/1/2024 at 12:51 PM, majestic said:

Wrath of the Righteous sets the gold standard for terrible puzzles, even for Owlcat.

Tbh, a lot of their content feels like there's barely any iteration or polish done in general. Stuff that sounds good on paper (rotating the camera in the demon city) seems locked early. Even if all the fed ex /errand job quests there eventually have you traversing that city, witness repeat loading bars and get you to rotating the camera over and over. (That was also the point where I finally called it quits. Bought the game upon release, took THREE timeouts to return to the save and continue. 80+ hours overall. But the grind didn't seem worth it anymore).

It's a "more is more" approach all over the shop. Including the same, same combat, of which there's a ton of it -- I always like to joke that if Owlcat had made Baldur's Gate, the empty wilderness would be no more. Instead, you couldn't walk five feet before walking into a nother copypaste mob to murderhobo. As much as I like the better parts of their (Pathfinder) games: To me they're like the CRPG factory line producers: Churning out huge ass campaigns longer than any Baldur's Gates combined, DLC and Enhanced at an unheard of rate likely for reason. Maybe it's part of their business model though: keep on pumping, or go bust.

I swear if they ever went with a "less is more approach", they'd be in for a masterpiece. And it makes me squirm that games said to err on the "shorter" side are immediately flagged for "sale candidate" by some, whereas devs going with the bloat approach never get any flak for it.

 

[Random Sales again]

I just bougth The Outer Worlds on a sale (Classic, no Shiny New Thing Edition). More specifically, on Green Man Gaming (13 bucks). The Outer Worlds | PC - Steam | Game Keys (greenmangaming.com)

My hope for this year, Broken Roads, apparently has a few problems. Another Owlcat Game stretched to LOTR proportions with copypaste combat, walls of text and filler I'm not in the mood for (Rogue Trader). There's not much else going on in terms of "bigger" RPG releases.

Don't expect too much. Most of the more indepth genre channels have shown this to be a pretty "streamlined" (industry euphemism speech) version of New Vegas. Except with smaller hub worlds. Which apparently still need lots of handholding and guidance, even if quest givers and quest objectives apparently are but 50 feet apart on the occasion. (I swear, one day this will have RL consequences: People won't be able to find a way out of their toilet without a GPS).  That's why I've never played this so far, even though I bought all PoE, Tyranny and Pentiment immediately upon release.

Still hoping for some decent entertainment, some good quests with multiple solutions -- and Tim Cain's last hoorah before his semi-retirement and only doing consulting. Also, the Whodunnit DLC always sounded interesting. If anybody has a few hints how to make the game less handhold-ey, I'm all for it.  

[Random video game news... Games are the most elevated form of investigation]

I still don't get it. Why did these guys ever leave Bioware when they continue making Bioware games? 

[BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!]

Double post. 

[BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!]

Yeah, it's a bit weird. You can't actually plan for that. Sometimes stuff happens. Sure, D&D is comparably big itself now (still didn't keep the movie from underperforming). I still don't understand for instance why the first Dishonored was such a surprise (semi-) hit back then -- and then nothing much for Arkane but underperformances. I guess the animated first trailer helped, which really sold the pillars of the game (even though the visual style in the final game is a bit different).  But still...   (Arkane seem no different).
 

Quote

When a game is successful, it's a miracle.

It's the perfect wave, the release window included. I think there's stuff to learn though. They didn't actually sell the game hugely prominently as CRPG as such, which carries the "weight" of being associated with fairly complex and complicated games (wether actually true or not). They took D&Ds promise of being able to do and play (almost) anything you wanted and ran with that as their tagline for everything. Naturally, every product needs something to sell it on rather than being "another RPG/shooter/Game." There's competition. And it's fierce.

 

But their communication seemed focused on that..... even that bear stuff going kinda viral wasn't just that bear. It was like: "You can do even this?" "Um, yeah." Being able to do almost anything is pretty big a promise, and an emotional one, for a game. And they had stuff to show off that suggested this wasn't just another typical sales ploy, but for realz. Naturally, by the time the ball was rolling,  awards included, everybody and their mom was interested to find out what this "Baulders Gates" fuss is about anyways.

I think that's also in parts where Obsidian went wrong with Pillars, at least when expecting a much bigger audience for Deadfire. Project Eternity was pitched largely on the promise of nostalgia. A new isometric party-based game by the makers from..... that's a strong emotional pitch. But how long can it last? Eventually, people may be saturated. Another game just bigger and better is just that. I'm not suggesting that the game needed to be completely changed but what's the hook? What should get me emotionally invested, considering that big, good games are plenty? Larian never pitched DOS purely on nostalgia. It pitched co-Op, it pitched world interactivity not hugely seen in the isometric RPG space since Ultima and turn-based combat was also something "fresh" again when nobody this side of XCom had much dared to touch it since Temple Of Elemental Evil. And with BG3 they never went purely nostalgia bait either.

Owlcat meanwhile were doing the very first Pathfinder adaptations, based on popular Adventure paths too. Not sure how Rogue Trader is doing since, but here too, the very prospect of the first Warhammer 40K RPG proper is already a pitch that goes beyond.

[BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!]

Baldur's Gate got released just 25 years ago today. Completing a hat-trick of PC releases unheard of until today: Grim Fandango, Thief, Baldur's Gate. Man, the end of 1998 was the gift that kept on giving.

And yet, this almost never happened. Bioware originally intended to do more typical Bioware things: chasing market trends, rather than saving dying genres. It was Obsidian Entertainment's now CEO who pushed for a deal with history. It's easy to imagine a parallel universe in which Feargus Urquhart slipped in the shower, broke his ankle, called in sick. One in which people never got a taste of BG to begin with.

What are they playing instead of BG3 these days over there?

 

Muzyka, Zeschuk, and Yip sent an early version of the demo to Feargus Urquhart at Interplay. Urquhart had risen even higher to the helm of Interplay’s RPG division, Black Isle Studios. Urquhart had trouble grasping Battleground Infinity because he wasn’t sure what BioWare intended it to be. Did they think they could deliver on a game the scale of a proper MMORPG? Because to Urquhart, it was more like a real-time strategy game: top-down, isometric view; numerous characters running amok on a battlefield.

[...]“Something went off in my head,” Urquhart recalled. “I took this party-based [concept] and called them up and said, ‘What if we made this a D&D game?’ They said, ‘That would be really cool.’”

Urquhart went to his boss at the time and showed him Battleground Infinity. The manager gave him a get-outta-town look. The manager ended his meeting with Urquhart with the ultimate dismissal: Battleground Infinity was stupid. Urquhart dug his feet in. "It was one of those times when I said, ‘That's not good enough. No. It's not stupid.’

[...], Urquhart and Chris Parker, the producer Urquhart assigned to the project, were two of the only developers within Interplay who believed in BioWare’s chances. Interplay’s UK division didn’t even bother forecasting sales. Anything connected to Dungeons & Dragons was doomed to fail.

Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs | Shacknews

On 12/16/2023 at 10:29 PM, Wormerine said:

Just the other day I got a message from a coleague of mine about cRPG recommendions as he is wrapping up BG3. It's not exactly new to him - he owns quite a few of the classics, including original BGs, and just bounced of each of them rather hard. We even tried D:OS2 in coop, and he got fairly quickly bored of it. So BG3 did something right

 

Oh yeah. In the context of its time, BG1 was pretty easy on the eye too. The first major promotional material focused on all that for reason.  As to cinematics: For as long as they aren't seen like the first movies, I think games haven't reached their full storytelling potential yet. Movies too initially borrowed from what was already there (stage play, theatre...), and look fairly dated and stilted now because of it. The crucial bit is: Movies are static mediums that borrowed from static mediums. Games are interactive and when going fully-on cinematic are borrowing from something static...
 

[BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!]

Close to the end, but I'm actually considering whether downloading a  30GB just for the epilogue is worth it (you need a whopping 150GB or so of free SSD space also). 

Fun game, but seeing as it's got a reception as if it were a contender for THE greatest game of all time (regardless of platform, era or genre), I also think it's a bit oversold. You know why? Because mainstream audiences haven't actually gotten a taste in some case ever of a truly RPG. If you're coming from semi-interactive Hollywood action movies a la the Witcher with barely any choice (dialogue, character) and super linear quests that literally solve themselves (witcher senses...) -- this is an altogether new world opening up for you. I mean, the big studios in like the past two decades have tried anything to aggressively hide they're actually in the business of making RPGs either way.

"Hi we're id Soft and from now on we're not in the business of making these boring shooters anymore. We're attempting something more modern for the modern sophisticated gaming audience, try it!"

Absolutely ridiculous. There's an astonishing amount of work put into cinematics not breaking, and also a lot of interactivity -- as an example, I once disguised my char via a spell and got a completely different dialogue and quest progression when doing so... they also naturally needed to cover that players would finish the game entirelly solo and still cinematics still working out. Speaking of which, I actually this is a bit of a dead end, but more on that in the spoiler tag.


Still, this doesn't feel like THE BIG RPG TO RULE THEM ALL. It actually feels like a game that picks up from the early 2000s had they never happened. Rather than the the crap that's actually happened (until crowdfunding, digital distrubtion et all) saved the day, that is. At least on the lower budget front. The only excuse I make for bigger studios is that they saw almost the entire RPG industry collapsing before: Origin, SSI, New World Computing, Sir-Tech, Troika, Interplay, Looking Glass, Bethesda pior to Morrowind almost too... Still with Bioware I'm wondering whether they would actually have made anything much RPG by their own choice, considering that it was Interplay to sign them for their engine -- and encouraging them to do a D&D game with it, being the license holder then. Considering that they did a Mech game before, later MDK 2 and by all accounts something more RTS-/MMORPG-like until Interplay came along, I can easily see a parallel universe where they never did anything remotedly resembling Ultima/GoldBox era games etc. at all. In other words: Chasing market trends from day 1, rather than being credited for revitalizing a struggling genre.

There's no excuses from now on either way, as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I'm kinda grumpy, sorry.  Not expecting anybody to do a wave of isometric D&D-likes or anything. But at least something resembling a RPG, rather than aggressively trying to hide it. Also not going into semantics. But there's fully reason contemporary audiences consider games such as Assassin's Creed or Red Dead Redemption as RPGs. At this pace, Doom 2043 is gonna belong to the family just as well. And nobody's gonna object to it, except the chosen few getting tired of big budget games playing increasingly alike. 

So, about cinematics being a dead end.

 

There's obviously a few systems placed in the game in an attempt to emulate the moment to moment improvisation of the table-top. Lines Of Sight. Physics. Light. Dark. AI. Spells. Etctera. But eventually, you can't make a cinematic for every possible action the player takes.

The final release doesn't let you do this anymore, but I "broke" one of their early cutscenes in EA. It's in the crypt at the starting area. There's a bunch of undead that rise when you push a lever. I picked up those undead and threw them into a fireball trap nearby. THEN I pulled the lever... This worked insofar as that the undead were toasted when they rose. In the movie.mpg aka staged cutscene beforehand however, they were clearly shown rising in their usual place. Naturally so. It's a movie somebody had staged beforehand. I could have thrown those undead someplace else. Anywhere else. The movie would have always shown them rising in the place I picked them up from. Larian's solution to this was to limit your agency. You cannot touch these guys anymore without the cutscene being triggered and them rising immediately. This is a simple example. But one that shows the dilemma.

There's absolutely a reason why fully cinematic games are ususually far less open and oft have a fixed protagonist to begin with.

[warhammer 40k: rogue trader]

Crazy studio by the way. At this pace, in 48 months from now they're gonna be finished with Starfinder 2 and Ravenloft 3 (heh, I wish).

2018 Kingmaker
2021 Wrath
2023 Rogue Trader
Plus multiple DLC, Enhanceds and of course fixes in between.

In that same time, Electronic Arts have held two major emergency meetings. Topic: What should we be doing with EA RPG (aka Bioware) next exactly.  
 

[warhammer 40k: rogue trader]

Gonna get this anyway, but: What's the encounter design like? 

Combat in BG3 appears on the easy side at the time of me writing. But the prospect of fighting Owlcat mobs seems a bit daunting after a game that is this wasteful, it has many types of enemy appearing just for one fight. And then never again. Even Solasta on a modest budget tried to go with a quality over quantity approach, which so far hasn't been Owlcat's forte, to put it that way.

What could be more daunting than fighting the same mob for the second and third and fourth time on a map? Fighting the same mob for the second and third and fourth time in turn-based combat (and that's nothing against TB combat, mind).

So?

[Random video game news... Games are the most elevated form of investigation]

Re: Blade (Arkane)

In some ways, this is even more of a departure for Arkane than Redfall was. 3rd person, Martial Arts, likely also pretty cinematic action... (anything cinematic being the counter thesis to Immersive Simisms, which tries to create a Virtual Reality Space, not a Cinematic Game Space). Plus, it still clearly looks like a project that had never happened had Arkane's money men not been so unsure after the performance of Prey and Dishonored 2.

But with Dana Nightingale in a key position, could turn out to be interesting. She's the (co-) founder of the Looking Glass community at ttlg.com, former Thief fan mission designer extraordinaire and now arguably best level designer in the entire business wholesale. 


Re: Exodus (Archetype)

 

Imagine Baldur's Gate's lead designer leaving Bioware-- only to form a new studio doing what appears pretty much the exact same thing Bioware's been doing since. And inevitably also directly competing with it to boot...

Despite BG hardly being a super hardcore RPG to begin with, there's been conflict at Bioware even way back, of course. About whether D&D and D&D-like systems would be too complex for a mass audience. Whether any kind of form of tactical combat would be too crunchy. Where table-top-style storytelling would still fit into this. After all, DA Origins was initially pitched as a "back to the roots" project... barely half a decade after the first copies of BG1 had been sold FFS. But yeah. Still, this this looks like Mass Effect 2.0 so far.

Swen Vincke likes this.

[BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!]

14 hours ago, ShadySands said:

I'm trying to get into it again but it's just not crunchy enough to keep me engaged.

Neither were the originals. At least, not much. Sitting next to likes of Mass Effect, BG may be considered a hardcore RPG. Compared to Darklands or Realms Of Arkania meanwhile, not so much. The doctors back then too tried to "hide" as much of the crunchiness as they could (and the super intuitive control scheme ripped straight out of RTS / Warcraft as well as quite action-ish combat by then genre standards contributed to that). BG was always meant to be an accessible game.

With that said, is BG3 really this grand as Gamings Truly Last Action Hero, Arkane Studio's founder Raf Colantonio suggests? Or is it simply that after decades of further "streamlining" at all cost, we're gettingn a glimpse of how the genre, big budget too, could have evolved had it not done what it did?  At least in terms of big budget RPGs, there's just no contest. And Colantonio is spot on with his suggested "many years of drought". We're living in an era in which the posts have been moved so far after constant "streamlining" even the likes of Horizon Forbidden West are being considered RPG-ish by the general public to begin with FFS.

[BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!]

JUst as a note, as it sticks out so much also in comparison to other games (RE: Combat). 

In like 40 hours or so, I've encountered multiple enemies that are just for that one encounter, and that encounter only. I've never seen them again. Like

 

the harpies and their "Luring Song" action

. This is so wasteful, they even blend the music in and out seamlessly whenever one of them starts , actually, singing -- yes, they actually recorded a singer singing for this. And yet, it's just that one encounter, never to be seen again.

This fits the entire "quality over quantity" approach that is attempted, and I wish more developers would run with it. I mean, this isn't Broken Roads (fingers crossed that it will be good) -- but it is also highly unusual that even a barbarian semi-regularly has options to just intimidate foes to drop their weapons.  On much lower budgets, Tactical Adventures tried similar with Solasta, though mostly in their encounter design/density.

If you really think about it, most areas in BG2 are dungeon crawls in disguise, with enemies everywhere. And ToB is just trash mob after trash mob either way, outside of the bosses to kill, which is the entire main quest of the game anyway (man, what a disappointment that was, no less as Icewind Dale did this all so much better years before).

Generally, combat feels too easy though (still playing on normal mind). And a few of that can be attributed to their home-brewn stuff, such as shove and the like being a bonus action, rather than an action. However, my warlocks upgraded Eldritch Blast acts as a "shove" anyway upon hitting, so  if an enemy, boss included, stands on a ledge into a chasm: GG.

[BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!]

On 11/4/2023 at 3:05 PM, kanisatha said:

The summary of this analysis to me is: bear sex = awesome game (which is rather pathetic)

Yeah, like Bioware aka "The Romance Company" didn't market and showcase their games on their "mature" love scenes, companions, blood and boobies. What do you think Average Joe was more likely to pick Origins up for? The "heavy" duty of having to pick in between as many as three classes for his character or gushing over Morrigan's cleavage and heads a rollin'? Bioware had their own answer to that one. I mean, this is the most cringest trailer of all time, hilariously misplaced choice in music included. Obey and learn from the masters, Larian. Hey, the game IS a sequel to a Bioware game, after all.   
  

On that note: I've only recently really started playing this after playing around with the Early Access three years ago (the fun and creepy start into Act 2 currently reminds me in a painful way how it's been TWO decades since Bloodlines -- the last major gothic/horror RPG since, which is INSANE, but that's another matter). However, I was expecting and prepared for far more in that regard. There's only been one character that was hitting on me so far -- and apparently I didn't need to level her up nor provide her gifts to score with her, true and PROPER Bioware-style. Maybe something to do with playing a drow, though, who knows. Also, I don't have access to the actual numbers. 

My biggest gripes so far are typically Larian things. Controlling a group stuff, camera stuff, inventory stuff. Difficulty on normal seems also rather low. Oh and some patronizing handholding. There's a quest that asked me to find somebody BEING LOST IN THE UNDERDARK -- only for the in-game GPS aka mini-map guiding me right there immediately upon accepting that quest. So much for that guy being "lost". I mean, Larian-style maps are heavily compressed affairs anyway, it's not like they're huge sprawling landscapes all booted up at once. And Mazes they aren't either. If you don't find yer stuff, the stuff is gonna find you eventually. You just have to poke around a bit. Developers, pretty please: If you think your players would get lost in their own toilets without heavy guidance, just don't include quest like that. Thanks. 

Otherwise, I really like this so far, and I wasn't overly fond of DOS. It's also refreshing in that regard in that contrary to DOS (or even the originals), you don't run into mobs of enemies every two meters or so, even deep down in the Underdark (which really was just a dungeon crawl in BG2). There's a quality over quantity approach attempted -- and even then not every combat is mandatory, with skill, even character checks applied. My drow commands some respect out of goblins et all. who'd otherwise turn hostile ASAP. Recently I avoided a fight against an enemy able to disguise itself by having a companion succeeding in a skill check likewise. There's oft also numerous routes throughout the maps, including entry points, which alongside to sneaking can skip encounters entirelly (or entry quests in various ways). The 3 billion endings are certainly hyperbole right there, but the same area can play differently solely by all of that alone. If this game is gonna have an influence (big IF), it will be a better one than any influence Bioware had in like the last two decades. Mechanically, for 100000% sure either way.

Also, in a sense, this looks like the anti-Fallout 3 so far. Both Fallout 3 and BG3 were made by a different developer than their respective original games, and attempted to make them more popular. Fallout 3 "streamlined" much of what made Fallout SPECIAL (Hah) in a bid to reach a more mainstream audience. By Fallout 4, the series was literally a completely different game, being turned from a series reknown for its complex quests with multiple solutions, unique experiences (and dialogue choice) depending on character builds and choice&consequence into a sandbox exploration action game where squat all matters (including that dialogue). BG3 is, at heart, still a party-based tactical CRPG. Generally, it's not a game afraid of its roots, but wears them proudly on its sleeve. If all it takes to inject some boobies and a popular license, I shall be expecting more AAA CRPGs of all kinds pretty damn soon. And the reign of the Canadish "Romance Company" and the Polish "Movie company" over the bigger budget space to be truly over once and for all.

[BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!]

5 hours ago, Wormerine said:

 

If Larian were to make another super RPG (which according to Sven isn't going to happen) and would once again reuse D:OS2/BG3 formula

[snip]

Whilst I can see how some went as far as calling BG3 a reskin, I still don't get it. The game has most of the DOS systems in place, yes. It also controls the same way, yes. But, for a start, I've just explored almost the entirety of the first map again, and didn'T fight once.

Whereas in DOS, it's really just a thinly veiled combat parcours. There's also less alternative solutions, alternative routes, and everything. Exploration in DOS1+2 is completely linear anyway, as enemies just a few notches  above your level are going to obliterate you (and all paths throughout the maps are gatekept and blocked by enemies. DOS1 in particular almost plays like a combat system demo in comparison. Whereas BG3 has evolved into an RPG "proper". It shares a lot of its ingridients and is built with the same tech. But it's a completely different recipe and meal -- and that goes even without anything D&D attached to it.

As of the game's success that obviously exceeded expectations from the go: There's not gonna be a wealth of triple A CRPGS now simply alone by the fact that there's like not even a handful of studios able to deliver such, let alone interested in doing it... It's more about a game like this getting exposure and people realizing they enjoy this kind of game. Kinda like these. What and whether an impact BG3 had can only be judged in the longer run. If it has one, if you ask me it would be a better one than any major Bioware release post Neverwinter Nights. Mass Effect players blowing the **** out of enemies Gears Of War-style in between a bunch of cutscenes weren't massively encouraged to look for D&Dish type of games or similar.

That sounds a bit sarcastic. But I'm not trying to talk about quality with all of this. Just the type of games being represented here. To this day, I'm really not much of a fan of Bioshock, which to me is pretty much "System Shock for dummys" and full of repetitive and average corridor shooter gameplay (despite everbody gushing over it). But there's not doubt that it played a role that Immersive Sims were revitalized a couple years later...  at least for a while. With even Eidos doing two decent Deus Ex games... and a decent System Shock remake I'd just finished about two weeks ago. Speaking about which, gamings truly last action hero, Arkane's founder Raf Colantonio digs this. Doesn't surprise me.
 

 

[BG3]

Still Steam no. 1 bestseller plus being at the top of PS5 preorder charts.


It's not going to be that bad.

[BG3]

On 8/7/2023 at 3:21 PM, kanisatha said:

I don't see any reason to interpret things this way at all. The game sold a bit over 2 million during EA. And it sat in EA for three years. It should come as no surprise at all to anyone that when the game is finally released, those 2 million people who bought and played it during EA would want to immediately play the full game. Hence the huge surge in people playing it concurrently at release. There is no reason to interpret it as a huge number of NEW players wanting to play the game. 

 

The pre-release numbers for the console release additonally hint at something a bit more going on. The 800+K peak numbers on Steam are concurrent players, not total. That's a number only ever reached by PC gaming's biggest hits. Larian's management told their staff to expect ~100K concurrent players. And they knew their EA sales numbers. Larian's boss worried Baldur's Gate 3 had peaked in early access, so its massive 800K concurrent player launch was 'way, way beyond' expectations | PC Gamer

Personally, I'm just glad an (AAA) RPG "proper" is rocking things out fairly decently anyway. It may of course never even hint at Skyrim-ish numbers or anything (neither did the original Dragon Age, arguably one of the last AAA RPGs harkening back to 1990s design ethos some). But in an (AAA) RPG world dominated by action-adventure-ish gameplay and shallow (character) systems, BG3's not the worst of things to ever happen. I don't think it will influence much though. No less as the entire AAA industry has moved into a different direction -- and this includes the staff that have been built (and/or left studios) throughout the years. Additionally, BG3 may have shipped at the perfect time. With D&D being at another peak (even though the fun movie flopped), too.

Personally, without the digital distribution / indie / crowdfuding revolution of the early 2010s (of which Larian have been a part of, even if I didn't like DOS overly much), I may have stopped playing one of my fav genres altogether... it's just changed that much ever since the demise of Interplay, Origin, Looking Glass, Black Isle, Troika, Sir-Tech, New World Computing et all.. Immersive Sims meanwhile at least had Arkane Studios going strong (with both classic CRPGs and IMmersive Sims being influenced by the very same thing.... TT RPGS). Arkane even pulled off Prey, a game that in many ways is even MORE complex than the 1990s/early 2000s games it took inspiration from. Whereas Dragon Age:Origins is a simplified BG in almost every way.


That said, BG3 also badly needs more UI/font size scaling options. Even indies are doing it as a standard feature these days...

[BG3]

13 hours ago, MrBrown said:

I have no idea why BG3 turned out to be such a big thing. It doesn't do things that differently from other RPGs like PoE or the PF ones.

PoE or PF are direct descendants off Infinity Engine games. The INfinity Engine was pretty static even back in the day. Basically, you couldn't touch anything besides loot, loot containers, NPCs and enemies. Else everything was a static, but beautiful backdrop to your questing.

Larian jump straight off Ultima (at least, in terms of interactivity and systems). (Almost) anything can be picked up and messed around with in some form or other. One of the first things I did back in the EA was taking delight in taking a couple of corpses (about to raise as undead), throw them in a fireball trap nearby and watch the fireworks when they DID rise. Bliss.

For anybody into systems driven games (also to be found in Immersive Sims, e.g. Deus Ex, Dishonored, Prey et all!), the difference is significant. DOes that in itself make the ONE difference? Unlikely. This has become such a huge hit that there are likely various contributing factors at work (one of which also being that there isn't much new BIG games around at the moment, at least until Starfield hits).

However, Larian have argued previous that their audience has gone way beyond PF/PoE/BG fandom before. They attributed it to their systemic design (which is also hugely popular in the more recent Zelda games). And it's certainly one major design ethos that makes their games different from any Infinity Engine "follow-up". It also makes for fun Streamer's material...

 

Quote

Who mainly are your players? Are they people who played these classic RPGs as children, or are you attracting even more, say, young players these days?

That's one of the surprising statistics, because we thought we were really competing with other developers for that archetypal classic RPG player - it turns out not at all. The market is more about the midcore RPG player. I think it's because of the systemic nature that such people like it. That was certainly the reason for the success of DOS2. I think it will be the same for BG3. We'll see. But it was surprising. We didn't expect it ourselves. We have always seen our games as "classics", competing with the works of Obsidian or inXile, but this is not the case.

 

 

[BG3]

2 hours ago, Wormerine said:

Yeah, I didn't see the coming. That is will do well was fairly predictible (I think it already sold 2,5m in early access), but it seemed to break into the mainstream in the way I didn't expect.

Same. Even Larian themselves calculated with up to 100,000 players concurrently (see Vincke's Twitter). The EA was a success, but there was a viable possibility that player's who'd bought the game had already bought it.

That said, can you imagine the numbers hadn't they paired with D&D, but LOTR? Crazy. Maybe that's their next goal.

Well, either that, or buying the rights to Ultima. For which they now must have money a plenty, given their independent status. How an obsession with Ultima 7 led to some of the PC's best RPGs | PC Gamer

I liked the EA back in 2020 already though. And certainly far more than DOS.

- The map was actually open, rather than pretending to be (no clearly level gating and zones, no clear gate keeping of every possible path either, making maps feel like thinly veiled linear compat parcours in DOS)
- no DOS item system of every gear having a level, so that you'd need to replace it like five minutes after looting
- constant looting and selling was a pain in the butt in DOS either way, and a time-sinking mini game on its own, also thanks to UI issues (honestly BG1 plays more user-friendly than this)
- Also no copy&paste trash mobs, like the orcs in the second map of DOS, and generally more "quality over quantity", including more varied avenues of getting past foes

I honestly think DOS would have worked better as a tactical combat game... with more ressources being spend on making scnearios unique, think Blackguards. BG3 is a fully-fledged RPG proper, including your low int Barbarian having the options to intimdate the **** (and combat urge) out of foes quite regularly.