The bar has not been set too high, it’s been set back to what we expected 15 years ago, a complete and quality game at launch, quality should be the norm, not an industry shattering exception
Complete quality game, sure. Something to this scale? Absolutely not. No game from 15 years ago was this big and even remotely as high quality at the same time
@@existentialselkath1264 Don’t get me wrong, I agree, I would gladly take a polished 8 to 10 hour experience over 100 hours of inconsequential and buggy fluff
@@existentialselkath1264 15 years ago the technology available (console/PC hardware and what the devs could do in-studio) allowed for far less technical achievement. Baldur's Gate 3 is absolutely incredible in terms of both quantity and quality, 100%, but to say that we had nothing comparable 15 years ago is kinda bullshit when you adjust for available technology. GTA IV, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King original release, Fallout 3 -- I put 100+ hours into each of these games easily. Fallout 3 was a lot buggier, granted, but even so, it blew my mind in terms of what you could do with an open world when I was 17 (in '08). And then you had shorter games, like Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Devil May Cry 4, games of clearly higher quality (I.E. more finished) than a typical 2023 release. Is Baldur's Gate 3 an achievement worth fawning over? Fuck yes it is. But should other devs strive to match its quality/content? EVEN MORE FUCK YES THEY SHOULD! Larian studios lifetime revenue is approximately $500 million. Activision/Blizzard/King made over $500 million from the first month of Diablo Immortal alone. 2021-2022 Activision earned about $2.5billion in revenue, 5x more than Larian's lifetime revenue. There is a 0% chance that a company of that size and revenue stream is incapable of making a game as polished and as feature complete as BG3, they simply will not do it because they are solely focused on making the big cheddar.
@@existentialselkath1264 thing is the people panicking about the "new bar" are conflating amount of content with effort, basically saying they never intended to try to make the best game they can with their ability. their goal isn't to make a good game, but to make a good profit with little effort and nothing beyond it. they're just hiding behind smaller studios.
It took fourteen years for them to improve on dragon age origins, party and lore system. They solved a mental barrier players have had since they were children, there is no need to save scum in this game, I have never been compelled to save scum in my week of play. Things feel less like a repercussion and more like a story, and I really enjoyed supporting cast
Baldur's Gate is a game that (like many From Software games), that embraces the chaothic nature of Table Top RPG campaigns. And if you play it with friends that experience gets multipled, something many studios and games do not do a lot.
Oh no poor Ubisoft and Blizzard that worth billions and with thousands of employees don't have the man power to make good games. I'm literally shaking and crying right now I feel so bad for them
First they got heart attack by Elden ring , Then they got emotional attack by Harry potter . Now they got panic attack by Balder gate 3 ? Does any good game didnt made them 💩 their pant
Hogwarts was more of a social, political debacle. It had nothing to do with the game's quality. I don't think devs were commenting on HWs game design so i don't understand why its being included into this.
@@goblincomic4522Devs weren’t really active on HW on the political side either. It was more of a general issue in the gaming culture and maybe I haven’t be around to see it but game devs weren’t saying boycott the game. In most cases if here the opposite. It was select game Jornos that where speaking out about it, not really other game devs so my point still stands in HW lack of relevance in this topic.
"The Bar is too High" No it's not. If Baldur's Gate 3 can be this successful, so can other games. Developers (or rather, directors and management) just have to actually want to make good games and not pseudo-casinos or good graphic garbage
Billion dollar companies like Ubisoft or Blizzard can not and should not be excused . They pump out ten mediocre games (cash grabs) to milk them as hard as they can in the time Rockstar or Larian make one masterpiece. And then they cry about unrealistic effort put into one game? Go complain to your management about it, not fans that want and deserve good games instead of rushed out messes. We all know that BILLION dollar companies with THOUSANDS of employees can afford to pour talent and effort into a project that the developers are passionate about, but they don't.
i like that IGN is talking about this. It's one thing when it's just youtubers and random tweets complaining, which companies gladly ignore, but when it's a major publication that's talking about this, it restores a little faith in me that things may have finally reached a tipping point.
We are at the point where just asking for them to try is apparently too much. They're so terrified of the bar raising because it means the bare minimum is not enough.
The jealousy was strong with this video - brought to you by a bunch of sad developers, knowing they can't compete *edit* Also I'd like to point out that before companies typically make disastrous games, there's a pattern of something going astray in a previous title - usually the very last title released before the "screw up" happens: Bioware: ME3 came out with that... "ending" let's call it. Showing clear signs of writing problems but also a game shift towards more MP and menu-based/lobby area-based gameplay and quest design. Small and lightweight, to make room for an overarching story. Bethesda: Prior to FO4, the last big title that they released was Skyrim which was and still is a critical darling. Bear in mind though, that many longterm fans of the series, myself included, as well as basically the entire modding community was deeply concerned where BGS' next games would go, since they dumbed down all the core RPG mechanics and the game itself turned into an action-adventure first game, instead of an RPG as with their previous titles. Then Fallout 4 came out and I don't need to say anything about the dialogue, bugs, game-breaking quests etc... that eventually led us to FO76. So there signs show before it happens, if you pay attention. That's not even including or talking about media appearances, Developer or insiders talking about their "new directions" or whatever new corporate buzzword they come up with. All of that kind of stuff is super telling and I'm 100% positive there's many more good examples of these patterns but my post is huge now, sorry.
11:30 regarding armor and digital asset making, I had acquaintances in the post-soviet state who was making armor for various game studios, she did not disclose how much she was paid, but it's not a wild guess that it's A LOT less than an American born in-house artist on salary and job benefits, and still a lot for a place she was living in at the time. She also pointed out that she was only given strict technical data and references and wasn't being explicitly told about a project, but being a gamer herself, she could easily guess )
I think this is game of the year, and this has been avery tough year to win that award. We have seen so many awesome games released this year. But Larian and the development team did such an amazing job all around with Baulders Gate 3.
As a Destiny Player, they said they weren't going to make ritual armor annually because no one used them. HOWEVER, they failed to mention that no one used them because they look like absolute trash compared to the paid skins. Bungie is always projecting that the issue is with the players.
I mean, no one is saying that from now on all games should be BG3. But if they just learn one thing or two everyone would already be happy. ESPECIALLY AAA games, they have no excuses...
The biggest issue for me is how games are priced like some deluxe edition of games are 120 dollars in Canada where as baldurs gate 3 deluxe edition is a 106 dollars in Canada and is a far more complete game then games asking between 120 and 140 dollars. Larion studios is generous with how they priced their games it's baffling. Most studios think their games are worth that much. Larion priced it at a point where he'll ya it's worth what they are asking
The Deluxe edition, Gold Edition, Platinum Edition, the "sell your house" for us edition. Oh also rake us in millions in net profit on "micro"transactions the price of full release games pls and ty. If BG3 was released by pretty much anyone else that deluxe edition would be more than double what they are asking. It's ridiculous.
I'm surprised more people aren't bringing up the fact that it's DRM free, like completely. You can literally double click on the EXE file and it just runs the game. No crappy denuvo hurting game performance
I love RPG games that focus on story, and BG3 ranks up there with The Witcher 3 and Skyrim for me. I'm also a fan of turn-based combat, such as Xcom, so love that part too. The exploration and story is so good.
I agree, I think the Witcher is still better but BG3 is more enjoyable to me than Skyrim only because skyrims story was pretty average. I hope Star field is great too so we can have a game of the year battle like there was with god of war vs red dead.
@@epicwolf It does. It has many stories. I enjoyed all the side stories in Skyrim, as I do in most Bethesda games, more than the main plot. BG3s main story seems to intertwine with the side stories far more, some of them quite heavily being connected.
@@ScytheNoire "It does. It has many stories." No it doesn't. What we're talking here is stories, not storeys. Meaning Breezehome's first floor doesn't count, sorry.
Baldur’s Gate had to PAY Wizards of the Coast just to get the rights to D&D. Their budget is minimal at most for most games, that’s why there’s barely news for DLC. They barely made profit, they were just wanting to give us the greatest game they could. We need more companies like Larian.
BG3 only happens when you have great leadership and it’s not stuck in development because they don’t know how to include microtransactions or some other way to sell you something they knew what they wanted and added to it over time with help from early access
I just hope that people is aware it isn't the devs but the companies that truely makes it hard for the devs to do these things. It happens too often that it is the devs that people go after instead of the company, that push the devs to hit a deadline or have microtransaction or the like, so the company can earn more money. It seems Larian have a better situation in that regard, especially with a dev at the top. We can only hope that at some point this will be the case for all studios instead it being the rareity.
The devs should be pleading with the higher ups to help them make better games and point at games like BG3 to show that good complete games sell well instead of pleading with us to lower our expectations.
I may have to pick it up for ps5. I support companies that make quality products. It's not really my type of game, but it could be the one that turns me on to that genre. Based on the good reviews and the pro consumer business practices, I almost have no choice but to vote with my wallet to help this game reach as much success as possible. That's the only way these terrible greedy lazy western developers will change. The greedy western games industry has almost ruined my life long gaming hobby. I've been playing games since the atari before the Nintendo entertainment system was a thing.
There isn't any incentive to meet the Baldur's Gate 3 standard and the gaming community won't make them. They'll buy what they get. Gamers have the same leverage today that they've always had. Baldur's Gate didn't change that.
I can understand smaller indie studios saying BG3 shouldn’t be the standard for them, but when you have Ubisoft and insomniac, 2 AAA multimillion dollar studios crying about it I call BS! They should WANT to strive to not only meet BG3 but surpass it! (imho)
10:22 As of writing this, PS5 version of 'Survivor' has horrendous texture pop-in and some minor glitches, somewhat broken cut scenes and such. I had instances where characters glitched through one another in cut scenes and when objects appeared in random places instead of character's hands.
All the new technology, all the budget, all the staff, all the resource these big triple A developers have, and they claim they just can't make a high quality game that works??
40:43 Elden Ring actually was the game that put me onto FromSoftware's other work. I hated Dark Souls and Bloodborne like hell but I randomly tried it again with Elden Ring and after that Dark Souls and Bloodborne are in my top 5 games of all time because I revisited them after Elden Ring
This is exactly why I loved Elden Ring. It was the absolute best gateway to the other titles (apart from its own quality ofcourse). Welcome to the club haha!
i think the best part is that larian had to pay for the ip for dnd and licensing, they didn't have any extra funding aside from (most likely) early access sales and stuff from dos 2. You got companies with triple their budget and 8x their staff releasing shit like d4 and destiny so like... do better game industry
Yeah, I've poured hundreds of hours into the EA version, the full release is different enough that I've poured another 80ish hours into the SAME area as EA, and while act two is relatively short act three is apparently much larger than act 1. I have said many times, even if BG3 never went into full release, I was over the moon at the amount of time I enjoyed and how great the EA version of ACT ONE was. I would have considered my EA purchase price very, VERY well spent if all I ever got to play was 2/3 of act one with "under construction" banners in place. THAT'S how good it is. Add to this, every. SINGLE. interview I've seen with the Larian staff from the VA's to the devs to random staff, were nostalgic, happy, excited and grateful to have worked on the game. Even when they mentioned burnout and crunch time, they were HAPPY to be experiencing the development of the game. Hells, Astarion's voice actor has CRIED in two of the interviews I've seen because he didn't want the process to end! Compare that to Bioware, Blizzard and even CDProject Red post crunch interviews!! Doesn't matter which way you look at it, this game and its development are what we all SHOULD expect - a work that respects the source material, loves the job, spends money when needed, and is grateful to their customers rather than hating their "consumers". At the end of the day, I don't expect a carbon copy of BG3 to be the standard, I expect the care and RESPECT that Larian show to their staff, their work and their customers to be the standard. Everything else will come if those boxes are ticked.
Not to mention something like the dark urge storyline would have been sold as dlc by any other studio. It's the perfect second playthrough content that easily could have been dlc.
Yeah the bar is set way too high I gotta agree. This game is so immersive I found myself in the underdark hanging out while my toons play some music! 53yrs old and my gaming days are over and then there is BG3 :)
It is a game for the players, not the company! The only non turn based games i play are Minecraft and No Man's Sky! I have played Baldur's Gate 1&2 and add-ons, so i had to play Baldur's Gate 3! Planescape Torment is still my favorite CRPG, but Torment - Tides of Numenera is a good successor to and uses my favorite TTRPG system!
It is not the AAA DEVELOPERS who do not want the bar to be raised. It's the corporate publishers that OWN them. It is the owner-publishers that heap these marketing mandates on the developers to nickel-and-dime consumers as much as possible. What Larian did was not only sen a message that they did not need the marketing schemes to have a successful product. They self-published Baldur's Gate 3, which also sends a harsher message to those corporations: "We don't need YOU!" Corporate publishers have been snatching up studio after studio with the lie that they cannot possibly survive in the industry without them. The last thing they want is an anomaly stepping up and proving the lie. Look how many studios that have been bought by publishers only for the sake of getting the IP they owned, and then running the studios into the ground and then shutting them down. And the IPs aren't even used. The just get sat on by the publishers. It's one less thing they would have had to compete with. Larian gave the corporate publishers and their egregious marketing tactics a huge middle-finger. Pandora's box has been opened. I hope other studios who have not yet sold out follow Larian's example and actively up their game, and that Baldur's Gate 3 is just the first in a surge of new games developed for the purpose of giving players a satisfying gameplay experience, which will actually cause the money to take care of itself. There is always the possibility for expansions, or modular side-stories that could be experience which could be sold as DLC. To give3 players more things to do, not just give them a gimmicky incentive to spend money and play through existing content in a different costume. Those could be sold and would always be presented as completely optional and not required to complete the core game. Sell them for something like $5. and make them choice-agnostic so that no matter how the player chooses to play, they are available. There are ways for Larian to further capitalize on Baldur's Gate 3 that would be acceptable. Especially if it is new gameplay that is being sold and not just fluff.. They should hold off on it for a while, though. Let the majority of the active player base finish the game in its entirety. And then start releasing content modules that play like a solid session of tabletop AD&D. Ot turn around and release a campaign builder toolset an make Baldur's Gate 3 a spiritual successor to Neverwinter Nights.Give the community the official tools needed to carry on the story for themselves, or tell new stories. The way that AD&D is now heavily creative commons licensed, and the terms governing that are leveraged correctly, Larian could open a massive door to a path that goes way beyond anyone might expect. And those corporate owner-publishers won't be able to do a blasted thing about it. See if keeping the bar low does them any good then.
This is a common refrain, and yes, sometimes corporate higher ups with no game development experience drive bad decisions. However, there are absolutely lazy or not especially talented devs working at these companies. The idea that there are all of these brilliant games waiting to be created if only the shackles of giant publishers were removed is silly. Most artistic products aren't very good, regardless of the medium. Why would games be different?
@jamesr123 Yes, there are lazy incompetent developers. But they are there because of the corporatization of the industry. They are a symptom of the disease. See the corporate suits want to generate the most money for the lowest amount of investment, be it time or money. That being their goal, they need not hire or keep developers on board who have any sort of real creative ambition. Those who do have it and manage to stay on have learned to keep it in check. They parrot the corporate party line. The ones who do have the ambition and drive to create something substantial, are typically cut loose, or else leave of their own volition and end up working on projects like Baldur's Gate 3. Or leading independent projects.. Now none of this stuff is easy, or quick. It requires a significn amount of dedication to see projects like this through. But the fact that a game like Baldur's Gate was produced and has been released is all I need to see to know that if the industry would make that level of dedication the standard, rather than just following the path of least resistance, then there would be far more games releasing in a state similar to BG3, and consumer satisfaction with products on offer would be a lot higher. It isn't that they CAN'T do it. It's that they WON'T. That's why I feel that this "Don't let BG3 raise the bar for your expectations" rhetoric comes by corporate decree. Maybe the developers paroting it are lazy and don't want to have to put in the work it would call for. But the suits don't want to have to pay for the man hours it would call for either. At the end of the day, it's the people at the top that makes the real decisions. A lazy developer would have to either step up their game or quit if they don't want to do what is required. Corporate will get what corporate wants.
Your take on buying skins when you only buy 2 or 3 games a year is spot on. Especially for FTP games. They gave me a game for free, I don’t mind supporting the devs by buying a battle pass. I do t deserve anything as a consumer of a free product.
I think it’s hilarious that on a budget of $100 million, Larian gave us an experience that could last us months or even years at a one-time charge, and most other video game and film studios can’t even do it with budgets twice or even three times as huge. I’m aware the conversation is around video games, but visual/audio media as a whole is going down a path that I’m glad BG3 avoided
The bar has returned to what it was over a decade ago. Now, this is only for AAA games. We aren't stupid, and don't expect smaller studios to make BG3 2.0. We just want similar sized or larger studios to stop ripping us off and make games worthy of the price tag they oh so desperately need.
These guys are all missing the point. The key to Larian's success for Divinity 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 was their early access system. Having a long testing period where players get to test a small portion of the game and give feedback THAT THE DEVELOPERS LISTEN TO, and make changes that players actually want. If other companies, almost no matter their size, did this, I bet they'd make a lot more games that were received well by fans.
i started to play this game im 3 hours in, and im completely lost on what to do, i can go so many places. i really want to play it all the way, but honestlyim getting the "players blcok". any tips? should i just follow random quests that show in my map?
Follow quests and in particular listen to your companions. In fact, listen and observe in general. There aren't quest markers in this game; there are less obvious clues like visual or audio queues.
I am loving BG3 so far, great story and character designs and world design, i am having a blast in playing with a friend in Co-op and also having my own playthrough, the bar has been pulled back to when it used to be the standard and i do hope that game devs will wake up just a bit and actually be inspired to make better games again. :) I was so sad to see Bioware fall to where they are now and it all happened because they let EA buy them...!! (Now a small touch on dnd and BG3 as i'm a long time DnD player/DM, having played, ADnD/3rd/3.5e/5e) The Issue i have with 5th Edition (More or less the only issue), is the fact how nerfed Casters has become, while still having been buffed, but imo, the concentration limitation for DnD 5e was just horrible and the frustrating feeling is just the same for BG3 (obviously as it's made with 5e in mind). The problem this causes, is that you can no longer truely, play a buffing or cc character as too many spells have concentration requirements and you can only have 1 concentration spell running, if only Wizards of the Coast had atleast made it balanced and linked it to the modifier that the class uses for it's casting, with a max of 5 concentration spells active at once when you manage to get a 20 in said attribute, it would have been a much better way to do it and it is a huge frustration when playing dnd and the game :P My hope is that someone at some point might make a mod that will change this aspect (I'm not capable of it myself)
Eh, the flipside to this is that casters were simply way, way too good before, and then encounters were designed around the assumption that players would be walking around buffed to the gills. It just made the experience more tedious. If you want that greater level of mechanical depth, play the Owlcat's Pathfinder games. They're also very good, even if they don't quite have the same level of polish as Larian's offering here.
Max of 5 concentration spells at once???? That’s completely insane imo. A single concentration spell changes the battle completely nevermind 2, nevermind 5!!!
@@CreativeUsernameEh Speaking on the game or in terms of DnD PnP? Not really, shield of Faith changes little, but your own or a party members AC, you can use Bless but then you can't use SoF, there are so many spells that have become utterly useless because you can't use them in conjunction with others, effectively ending buffing and debuffing... These spells are useless since there are others that are much better for yourself, i pick one.. ONE.. Concentration spell if i play a caster and no i do not pick something like Bless or Hold Person/Monster or any of those, i'll pick a utility like invisibility for arcane and SoF for Divine. Having more than one Concentration spell in your prepped spells is absolutely useless! But of course, that is just my personal opinion, it was a ridiculous nerf by WoTC to casters ensuring that you are less likely to use most of these concentration spells when you find ONE that is more usefull than the rest!
Once I saw that Larian delivered on their promise (after playing a good bit in EA) I also pre-purchased it on PS5. I don't have a PS5. This game is easily worth $150. If you are a company that wants me to be happy PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY.
What other gaming studios need to realize is BG3 is already destined to "classic" status and will still be a popular selling "must play" title 15+ years from now still making the studio money for their efforts and fantastic game they made today. I would love to see a BG3 quality remake of the original BG1 and BG2 titles as those games were well done, had some awesome characters and storyline and a modern remake to the level of BG3 would make those titles also candidates for multiple awards. The gaming studios instead of panicking should be celebrating that BG3 has proven beyond a doubt if you put in the work and actually release a stellar product that appeals to the gamers that it can return you success and sales beyond your wildest expectations.
Larian bet the studio that this would sell, and they were right. Other studios would rather half-ass it than match the bet. It's like Swen said, they make games they want to play. So long as that is what players want too they are fine, but if it misaligns they will be in trouble. My money says that so long as the buck stops with Swen they should do fine. I laughed when people started whining about TotK getting the Silver it deserved. They should just be thankful the Souls games aren't spanking them.
Starfield is more expensive compared to Baldur's Gate 3. So I am expecting higher quality from Starfield due to the increase in pricing which should equate to higher quality. But we all know the truth of current triple A developers/publishers...
That happens with every great game that releases. After I played Witcher 3 in 2015 or 2016 no game was ever able to satisfy me outside of AC Odyssey(and that is because of the naval combat and because I really love Ancient Greece not because that was a game of the same level of quality as Witcher 3). I played many good games after but there always felt that something was missing
BG3 is a game that you can definitely play multiple times, not just for the story options but because you can play one of 12 different classes, multiple sub-classes, multiple companions, different choices in pivotal parts of the game and play styles. 😁
Even Larian probably won't do something this big again because it's a huge risk and if it goes wrong you've basically destroyed an entire studio (if you're lucky enough not to take down multiple). BG3 is an incredible game, Larian deserve a ton of praise and AAA studios could learn a lot from it's quality, deep unapologetically genre specific gameplay, lack of monetisation, etc. But it's scope, scale, and the whole package should not be the standard that we should expect to be repeated. One of the biggest problems with modern games (and movies) is just how big and expensive they are. If we expect this to be the new standard, it's only going to get worse. We need smaller games that can take more risks and appeal to niche markets again (like what ubisoft used to do).
That's what indie and new studios are for. But when you are funneling hundreds of millions and even billions out of your games each year, that's not an excuse. The AAA studios can absolutely do this. Why would they when people are still buying their games and defending them online though? No one is expecting small studios to create something like this, but when you're starting to charge $70 for your game, you should expect high expectations.
@@chase5436 have you seen the budget of AAA games? They're already spending a ton for the trash they're pumping out, how much more do you think a game like this would cost? As I said, Larian is the only company to have pulled off a game of this kinda scope and scale, and they're not doing it again. It's an insane risk, the entire studio could have been taken down with it, not to mention nobody might have ever touched the D&D style RPG genre again. You can't expect every single game to take that gamble constantly, especially if we want to avoid including the absolutely awful monetization that'd recoup losses if it did fail. As for indie studios making smaller games, I didn't mean that small. I'm talking about the likes of the old Splinter Cell games, Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 1, Forza Horizon 1, etc. Still big AAA games, but more concerned about building a complete and deep experience catered to a niche, rather than a breadth of shallow content targeted at the widest possible audience to make up for the overinflated budgets.
@@existentialselkath1264 You're talking like you and I have any responsibility for the industry. We don't. We're customers, they have a responsibly to us, and it's to make a good product. Whatever excuses people or the studios want to make about how they can't do whatever it is they can't do, just takes time and attention away from actually making something great. If a game like this bankrupts big studios, then big studios aren't working anymore. It's literally not my job to keep buying their games and supporting their devs. It is their job to make me want to.
@@chase5436 you can't just ignore everything and demand the unfeasible just because you're a customer. I want every movie to be as good as empire strikes back, but that's simply impossible. I want every handheld to have the same price to performance as the steamdeck, but that's simply impossible. I want every open world to be as detailed as a Rockstar game... I could go on. You can't just expect everything to be as good as the very best. You'll miss out on a ton of great movies if you don't care about anything worse than empire strikes back for example. This line of thinking has never worked, EVER. That doesn't mean you should just sit back and take bad games either, but a game doesn't have to be near perfect to be good.
About the bloat engineers, adding to that in the end they put you in a non-compete agreemen so even if they fired you or just you want to get out because you're doing nothing you can't work somewhere else, sometimes is 3-6 months, sometimes it's 12 and they keep paying you but men you feel like nothing doing nothing or worst, because they "fired" you sometimes the tech companies doesn't give a f if you worked or not they sometimes just don't want to hire you because this big tech company just "fired you", or sometimes you are lucky and the company you applied thinks you have info or something and they hired you, men this is a horrendous industry, worst to those who are in contracts or are from other countries via remote or in place (my case), i just wanted to add that to the conversation of the end of the video.
Just on the note of Bioware, they HAVE downsized. The new studio that made Andromeda closed down not long after, I believe. The Austin offices are closing down and moving the future development and support of The Old Republic to a different studio. So there is pretty much just the one Bioware studio now.
Great video. I do disagree with the Elden ring take because I still am not a huge Dark Souls fan but Elden ring allows you to explore the open-world and get overpowered which allowed me to beat the game where I don't feel that same kind of Freedom with the other Dark Souls games so Elden ring does stick out as a game I like in the franchise while not liking the other games or at least they feel more unapproachable to me Elden ring still was very difficult and I died hundreds of times but I was eventually able through the open world to level up enough to make it through the game.
I only bought it yesterday. I didn't think i would love it, after all i liked some aspects of dos2 but id get stuck in sections not sure what to do. Not to mention the lack of cutscenes made player agency less compelling. So overall i put about 30 hours into it and wished i could love it but didn't. BG3 feels more akin to mass effect in that its more cinematic. I don't mind the Camera angle and combat is difficult but manageable so far. And i have found im not really stuck or not aure what to do so far, the story just flows as yoh wander about. Mind you, im only about 8 hours in.
People are talking about AAA games being a big risk. Yet we are seeing studios paying incredible money(likely) for movie stars and spending relatively much lesser on R&D. Now almost all engine R&D is being offloaded to epic games while game studios produce subpar quality games which ignore best practices from the documentation of these public engines. Personally, I think hardcore low level software engineering has just disappeared from this industry due to their subpar pay and extreme crunch. If you're a software engineer, there are so many expanding fields with lots of potential that pay way more than video games industry
I can definitely get behind battlepasses and skins in a FTP game. They deserve to make money if the game is enjoyable enough that I want to buy those things to customize my experience or support them. If I paid 70+ dollars for a game you shouldn’t expect me to cough up even more money.
We are shocked about a finished/complete game at launch, well-rounded mechanics, and great storytelling. Lately, we've barely been getting a finished game
Imagine that. Devs upset about BG3's reception because they know the shackles of their publisher overlords won't allow them to just make whatever they deem to be ethical because in the AAA industry, the gamers are not the customers but the shareholders are. It's why the industry sucks so bad and why BG3 is indeed an anomaly.
The conversation shouldn't be around size. Yes, it's huge. But far more importantly the quality is through the roof. It's not unfeasible for a triple A developer to make a high quality product. In fact, they're in THE position to do just that with the resources they have at their disposal. I don't expect a large game. I expect a good one. And apparently that's a big ask.
Lyrian creating a full, feature complete game with no strings attached at AAA quality (Yes even with bugs, AAA games aren't void of bugs) shows that it is possible to make a good game and have it sell well without abusing players. The problem with the AAA game industry is that there are just too many people involved. A game at most takes 20-30 people, artists, coders, music, writer, and director, ect. When you get too many people involved you turn an artform into an asset farm because its nearly impossible to manage that many people into a single cohesive vision without excessive managerial bloat that slows production and grinds quality down in its own overbearing way. When your team sizes start to get into the hundreds of thousands, how many of those are actually developing the game at its core? Those people still need to be paid, and they still need to justify the existence of their position at the job, and you have to ask, how many of these people actually have a real hand in the development in the game, and how many of them are marketing and sales, metrics and market analysis, or various artists who's job isn't to work with the director for a cohesive vision but rather are just there to create assets farm based on a design doc. And once you get those games in the thousands of developers, those costs become too high for a standard price game to cover the production costs. A company isn't going to make their money back. Hence why the AAA has become too reliant on live service crap. Gutting the core game to repackage and resell you content for day 1 DLC or battlepass content. When games come out broken, buggy, and borderline unplayable, with a gameplay loop that just straight up sucks. But I guarantee you that the cash shop will always work, and have way more design put into it than the actual gameplay. Look at what happened with Diablo 4, when the top hardcore player died to a server disconnect, which was caused by an emergency update to fix a bug with the cash shop.
HOW?!?! Honestly how do you think it is the same as those? It is a board game with cutscenes. Or am I missing the first or even 3rd person mode? How do you immerse yourself looking down onto the characters and clicking where they should go. Do not in any sense feel like I am the character more like there puppets. Not a fan at all. Please stop comparing it to true RPG's.
The gaming industry is so weird. These developers are speaking out against providing customers with complete and fulfulling experiences. This is the only industry that I can think of that has made it common practice to ship out unfinished and poor products with the expectations of it just being the norm. Baldur's Gate is great, and no one is expecting EVERY game to be so large and expansive. But, I don't think that's where people are placing the bar, there's plenty of people who actually want the opposite of such large scales games. The bar is simply set at shipping out COMPLETE AND WORKING GAMES. How divisive can this truly be? How high of a standard is this truly? I don't expect every game to be a masterpeice, but I expect every game developer to try to make the best version of the game they're trying to make. So the "problem" that some developers have with Baldur's Gate 3 are just them exposing the gaming industry and validating what we already know about it. It's full of greedy and lazy gaming companies that have zero care in making a complete game nowadays.
I'm not used to tb RPGs, so I'm playing on the baby difficulty, and man I have never been challenged so much on low difficulty before (I don't play dark souls games).
I just don’t understand how as consumers us expecting a full game that is finished and polished. If we cannot be sold a product that runs stable and finished, then those companies need to close those doors and others need to open up that will.
Larian won’t mess up their next game they made BG3 after DOS2 which was praised and one of the best rpgs of all time I know whatever they make next is going to have the same love and care that these two games have had
Although I won’t play the game myself due to the horrid turn-based combat, the game with all of its decisions, intricacies and branching storylines is superb. It is stupendous that when choosing to tap into the parasite potential, you gain power, but all of the spells,traits and bonuses have adverse direct/side effects as well. It shows how your brain slowly deteriorates as the parasites take over and grant you more …’’power’’. The dialogue options are so quippy, varied and entertaining. The writers were truly inspired when they created this game. This relationship simulator has such a complex, wide branching story, I love it. If only it had proper combat then this would have been the new Skyrim. I love when games punish you for making stupid decisions. It makes this game so interesting to see how different people's perceptions and choices are and how it affects them in game. (Similar to CP 2077).
My only response to the accusation that gaming studios are "bloated" is that ive never heard a dev complain that they were overstaffed or didnt have enough to do.
Larian didnt raise the bar they just made a game that meets the bar of what the average gamer expects a finished product with no microtransactions for a reasonable box price. The only developers scared of this are the ones that hedged the future of their companies on predatory live service games and aaa studios that keep looking for ways to automate away their qorkforce and ship barely servicable games
44:33 You know what's really funny about saying no one is expecting an Indie dev to make Baldur's Gate 3? Larian, I think, technically meets the definition for "independent developer" lol. They self-published the game. By definition, they are independent.
honestly its not hard to figure out. if publishers would stop rushing their devlopers and give the developers the time they need to put the love and care into a game like larian they would have far more critical praise and financial success. not hard to figure out but publishers just want that instant gratification instead of taking the time to make a good product and have long term success.
Larian had 400 people and 6 years on a genre type they are familiar with and we got the gem that is Baldur's Gate 3. Blizzard had over 9000 people and 6 years with a genre they are familiar with, we got the mess that is Diablo 4.
I'm playing the game and I must say, it's a good RPG, like we used to have in the good old times. But at the same time I see a wild exageration of the game capabilities in the press... it's just a good RPG.
I have no issue with some monetization like skins, cosmetics, stuff like that, but just like I hate UA-cam for charging for TV, premium UA-cam, AND they get paid from ads on everyones content lol. If you monetize too much it looks like you are just double, even tripple, dipping lol.
The tide didn’t turn on BioWare quick. Things just finally boiled over with Anthem and Andromeda where even their biggest supporters started turning on them. And let’s be honest, Inquisition was terrible too, it’s just people (especially review sites) seemingly weren’t ready to call them out yet. But there’d been problems since the days of Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2, and that was at the start of the decade; it took around ten years for BioWare to piss away the good will they’d built during their CRPG and original Xbox days.
The bar has not been set too high, it’s been set back to what we expected 15 years ago, a complete and quality game at launch, quality should be the norm, not an industry shattering exception
Complete quality game, sure. Something to this scale? Absolutely not. No game from 15 years ago was this big and even remotely as high quality at the same time
@@existentialselkath1264 Don’t get me wrong, I agree, I would gladly take a polished 8 to 10 hour experience over 100 hours of inconsequential and buggy fluff
@@existentialselkath1264 15 years ago the technology available (console/PC hardware and what the devs could do in-studio) allowed for far less technical achievement. Baldur's Gate 3 is absolutely incredible in terms of both quantity and quality, 100%, but to say that we had nothing comparable 15 years ago is kinda bullshit when you adjust for available technology.
GTA IV, WoW: Wrath of the Lich King original release, Fallout 3 -- I put 100+ hours into each of these games easily. Fallout 3 was a lot buggier, granted, but even so, it blew my mind in terms of what you could do with an open world when I was 17 (in '08). And then you had shorter games, like Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Devil May Cry 4, games of clearly higher quality (I.E. more finished) than a typical 2023 release.
Is Baldur's Gate 3 an achievement worth fawning over? Fuck yes it is. But should other devs strive to match its quality/content? EVEN MORE FUCK YES THEY SHOULD! Larian studios lifetime revenue is approximately $500 million. Activision/Blizzard/King made over $500 million from the first month of Diablo Immortal alone. 2021-2022 Activision earned about $2.5billion in revenue, 5x more than Larian's lifetime revenue. There is a 0% chance that a company of that size and revenue stream is incapable of making a game as polished and as feature complete as BG3, they simply will not do it because they are solely focused on making the big cheddar.
@@existentialselkath1264 thing is the people panicking about the "new bar" are conflating amount of content with effort, basically saying they never intended to try to make the best game they can with their ability. their goal isn't to make a good game, but to make a good profit with little effort and nothing beyond it. they're just hiding behind smaller studios.
I'd like to like this comment 100 times but I cant.
Baldurs gate is basically what all rpgs should have become after Dragon Age Origins
Including inquisition lol
@@Solaxer especially inquisition i would say
It took fourteen years for them to improve on dragon age origins, party and lore system.
They solved a mental barrier players have had since they were children, there is no need to save scum in this game, I have never been compelled to save scum in my week of play.
Things feel less like a repercussion and more like a story, and I really enjoyed supporting cast
@@SLVYER1respectfully, I'll probably still scum my guy.
Baldur's Gate is a game that (like many From Software games), that embraces the chaothic nature of Table Top RPG campaigns. And if you play it with friends that experience gets multipled, something many studios and games do not do a lot.
Larian's success is due to competency and RESPECT, not budget or manpower.
That's not a "higher standard" 😂
Oh no poor Ubisoft and Blizzard that worth billions and with thousands of employees don't have the man power to make good games. I'm literally shaking and crying right now I feel so bad for them
Surely we can manage something a bit more effusive than “competency”? It takes more than competency to produce what they’ve produced here.
@@johndeighan2495I think "passion" is an apt word here. You can feel the passion the devs put into this game
First they got heart attack by Elden ring , Then they got emotional attack by Harry potter . Now they got panic attack by Balder gate 3 ? Does any good game didnt made them 💩 their pant
Hogwarts was more of a social, political debacle. It had nothing to do with the game's quality. I don't think devs were commenting on HWs game design so i don't understand why its being included into this.
@@simonealcazar816 YEAH DUH...! That why i call it emotional attack
@@goblincomic4522Devs weren’t really active on HW on the political side either. It was more of a general issue in the gaming culture and maybe I haven’t be around to see it but game devs weren’t saying boycott the game. In most cases if here the opposite. It was select game Jornos that where speaking out about it, not really other game devs so my point still stands in HW lack of relevance in this topic.
"The Bar is too High" No it's not. If Baldur's Gate 3 can be this successful, so can other games. Developers (or rather, directors and management) just have to actually want to make good games and not pseudo-casinos or good graphic garbage
Billion dollar companies like Ubisoft or Blizzard can not and should not be excused . They pump out ten mediocre games (cash grabs) to milk them as hard as they can in the time Rockstar or Larian make one masterpiece. And then they cry about unrealistic effort put into one game? Go complain to your management about it, not fans that want and deserve good games instead of rushed out messes. We all know that BILLION dollar companies with THOUSANDS of employees can afford to pour talent and effort into a project that the developers are passionate about, but they don't.
i like that IGN is talking about this. It's one thing when it's just youtubers and random tweets complaining, which companies gladly ignore, but when it's a major publication that's talking about this, it restores a little faith in me that things may have finally reached a tipping point.
Hate how games just went to 70$ but the quality didn't match that.
It even went significantly down
The correct and only correct response is.. No, the bar is not too high. They put it back to where it should be
The thing is games used to be this deep! Neverwinter games, Witcher 1, STALKER 1, etc.
Choices used to matter.
crazy that doing the bare minimum is considered too high a bar to reach
We are at the point where just asking for them to try is apparently too much. They're so terrified of the bar raising because it means the bare minimum is not enough.
The jealousy was strong with this video - brought to you by a bunch of sad developers, knowing they can't compete
*edit* Also I'd like to point out that before companies typically make disastrous games, there's a pattern of something going astray in a previous title - usually the very last title released before the "screw up" happens:
Bioware: ME3 came out with that... "ending" let's call it. Showing clear signs of writing problems but also a game shift towards more MP and menu-based/lobby area-based gameplay and quest design. Small and lightweight, to make room for an overarching story.
Bethesda: Prior to FO4, the last big title that they released was Skyrim which was and still is a critical darling. Bear in mind though, that many longterm fans of the series, myself included, as well as basically the entire modding community was deeply concerned where BGS' next games would go, since they dumbed down all the core RPG mechanics and the game itself turned into an action-adventure first game, instead of an RPG as with their previous titles. Then Fallout 4 came out and I don't need to say anything about the dialogue, bugs, game-breaking quests etc... that eventually led us to FO76.
So there signs show before it happens, if you pay attention. That's not even including or talking about media appearances, Developer or insiders talking about their "new directions" or whatever new corporate buzzword they come up with. All of that kind of stuff is super telling and I'm 100% positive there's many more good examples of these patterns but my post is huge now, sorry.
Appreciate the video Luke. Really good production value on your set!
They have the tech, but they are lazy or focused on milking the consumer with microtransaction store than making a good game.
putting games at 70 dollars pushed a lot of players out idk wtf tripal aaa is thinking
11:30 regarding armor and digital asset making, I had acquaintances in the post-soviet state who was making armor for various game studios, she did not disclose how much she was paid, but it's not a wild guess that it's A LOT less than an American born in-house artist on salary and job benefits, and still a lot for a place she was living in at the time. She also pointed out that she was only given strict technical data and references and wasn't being explicitly told about a project, but being a gamer herself, she could easily guess )
I think this is game of the year, and this has been avery tough year to win that award. We have seen so many awesome games released this year. But Larian and the development team did such an amazing job all around with Baulders Gate 3.
Larian won't drop the ball while Swen's at the helm.
As a Destiny Player, they said they weren't going to make ritual armor annually because no one used them. HOWEVER, they failed to mention that no one used them because they look like absolute trash compared to the paid skins.
Bungie is always projecting that the issue is with the players.
Bingo! 🎯
Makes me really happy to see the surge of support for quality games in the past year and a half or so
I mean, no one is saying that from now on all games should be BG3. But if they just learn one thing or two everyone would already be happy. ESPECIALLY AAA games, they have no excuses...
The biggest issue for me is how games are priced like some deluxe edition of games are 120 dollars in Canada where as baldurs gate 3 deluxe edition is a 106 dollars in Canada and is a far more complete game then games asking between 120 and 140 dollars. Larion studios is generous with how they priced their games it's baffling. Most studios think their games are worth that much. Larion priced it at a point where he'll ya it's worth what they are asking
The Deluxe edition, Gold Edition, Platinum Edition, the "sell your house" for us edition. Oh also rake us in millions in net profit on "micro"transactions the price of full release games pls and ty.
If BG3 was released by pretty much anyone else that deluxe edition would be more than double what they are asking. It's ridiculous.
I'm surprised more people aren't bringing up the fact that it's DRM free, like completely. You can literally double click on the EXE file and it just runs the game. No crappy denuvo hurting game performance
I love RPG games that focus on story, and BG3 ranks up there with The Witcher 3 and Skyrim for me.
I'm also a fan of turn-based combat, such as Xcom, so love that part too.
The exploration and story is so good.
I agree, I think the Witcher is still better but BG3 is more enjoyable to me than Skyrim only because skyrims story was pretty average. I hope Star field is great too so we can have a game of the year battle like there was with god of war vs red dead.
Skyrim has a story?
@@epicwolf It does. It has many stories. I enjoyed all the side stories in Skyrim, as I do in most Bethesda games, more than the main plot.
BG3s main story seems to intertwine with the side stories far more, some of them quite heavily being connected.
Yeah, WAT? A story in Skyrim? Where?
@@ScytheNoire "It does. It has many stories."
No it doesn't. What we're talking here is stories, not storeys. Meaning Breezehome's first floor doesn't count, sorry.
Baldur’s Gate had to PAY Wizards of the Coast just to get the rights to D&D. Their budget is minimal at most for most games, that’s why there’s barely news for DLC. They barely made profit, they were just wanting to give us the greatest game they could.
We need more companies like Larian.
BG3 only happens when you have great leadership and it’s not stuck in development because they don’t know how to include microtransactions or some other way to sell you something they knew what they wanted and added to it over time with help from early access
I just hope that people is aware it isn't the devs but the companies that truely makes it hard for the devs to do these things. It happens too often that it is the devs that people go after instead of the company, that push the devs to hit a deadline or have microtransaction or the like, so the company can earn more money.
It seems Larian have a better situation in that regard, especially with a dev at the top. We can only hope that at some point this will be the case for all studios instead it being the rareity.
The devs should be pleading with the higher ups to help them make better games and point at games like BG3 to show that good complete games sell well instead of pleading with us to lower our expectations.
I may have to pick it up for ps5. I support companies that make quality products. It's not really my type of game, but it could be the one that turns me on to that genre. Based on the good reviews and the pro consumer business practices, I almost have no choice but to vote with my wallet to help this game reach as much success as possible. That's the only way these terrible greedy lazy western developers will change. The greedy western games industry has almost ruined my life long gaming hobby. I've been playing games since the atari before the Nintendo entertainment system was a thing.
BG3's peak of players is 875,343 since yesterday. beating cyberpunk of its spot
There isn't any incentive to meet the Baldur's Gate 3 standard and the gaming community won't make them. They'll buy what they get. Gamers have the same leverage today that they've always had. Baldur's Gate didn't change that.
Sad, but true.
I can understand smaller indie studios saying BG3 shouldn’t be the standard for them, but when you have Ubisoft and insomniac, 2 AAA multimillion dollar studios crying about it I call BS! They should WANT to strive to not only meet BG3 but surpass it! (imho)
Larian Studios also knocked it out the park with Divinity Origjnal Sin 2.
10:22 As of writing this, PS5 version of 'Survivor' has horrendous texture pop-in and some minor glitches, somewhat broken cut scenes and such. I had instances where characters glitched through one another in cut scenes and when objects appeared in random places instead of character's hands.
All the new technology, all the budget, all the staff, all the resource these big triple A developers have, and they claim they just can't make a high quality game that works??
40:43 Elden Ring actually was the game that put me onto FromSoftware's other work. I hated Dark Souls and Bloodborne like hell but I randomly tried it again with Elden Ring and after that Dark Souls and Bloodborne are in my top 5 games of all time because I revisited them after Elden Ring
This is exactly why I loved Elden Ring. It was the absolute best gateway to the other titles (apart from its own quality ofcourse).
Welcome to the club haha!
Now try Sekiro ;) Sekiro's combat ruined other games for me
i've platinumed it a long time ago buddy, no worries ;)@@trsammy432
i think the best part is that larian had to pay for the ip for dnd and licensing, they didn't have any extra funding aside from (most likely) early access sales and stuff from dos 2.
You got companies with triple their budget and 8x their staff releasing shit like d4 and destiny so like... do better game industry
Yeah, I've poured hundreds of hours into the EA version, the full release is different enough that I've poured another 80ish hours into the SAME area as EA, and while act two is relatively short act three is apparently much larger than act 1. I have said many times, even if BG3 never went into full release, I was over the moon at the amount of time I enjoyed and how great the EA version of ACT ONE was. I would have considered my EA purchase price very, VERY well spent if all I ever got to play was 2/3 of act one with "under construction" banners in place. THAT'S how good it is.
Add to this, every. SINGLE. interview I've seen with the Larian staff from the VA's to the devs to random staff, were nostalgic, happy, excited and grateful to have worked on the game. Even when they mentioned burnout and crunch time, they were HAPPY to be experiencing the development of the game. Hells, Astarion's voice actor has CRIED in two of the interviews I've seen because he didn't want the process to end! Compare that to Bioware, Blizzard and even CDProject Red post crunch interviews!!
Doesn't matter which way you look at it, this game and its development are what we all SHOULD expect - a work that respects the source material, loves the job, spends money when needed, and is grateful to their customers rather than hating their "consumers". At the end of the day, I don't expect a carbon copy of BG3 to be the standard, I expect the care and RESPECT that Larian show to their staff, their work and their customers to be the standard. Everything else will come if those boxes are ticked.
Not to mention something like the dark urge storyline would have been sold as dlc by any other studio. It's the perfect second playthrough content that easily could have been dlc.
Very true
Yeah the bar is set way too high I gotta agree. This game is so immersive I found myself in the underdark hanging out while my toons play some music! 53yrs old and my gaming days are over and then there is BG3 :)
Baldurs gate 3 will be my first turn based game I learned of it the other day and just had to preorder 😂
It is a game for the players, not the company!
The only non turn based games i play are Minecraft and No Man's Sky! I have played Baldur's Gate 1&2 and add-ons, so i had to play Baldur's Gate 3! Planescape Torment is still my favorite CRPG, but Torment - Tides of Numenera is a good successor to and uses my favorite TTRPG system!
It is not the AAA DEVELOPERS who do not want the bar to be raised. It's the corporate publishers that OWN them. It is the owner-publishers that heap these marketing mandates on the developers to nickel-and-dime consumers as much as possible. What Larian did was not only sen a message that they did not need the marketing schemes to have a successful product. They self-published Baldur's Gate 3, which also sends a harsher message to those corporations: "We don't need YOU!"
Corporate publishers have been snatching up studio after studio with the lie that they cannot possibly survive in the industry without them. The last thing they want is an anomaly stepping up and proving the lie. Look how many studios that have been bought by publishers only for the sake of getting the IP they owned, and then running the studios into the ground and then shutting them down. And the IPs aren't even used. The just get sat on by the publishers. It's one less thing they would have had to compete with.
Larian gave the corporate publishers and their egregious marketing tactics a huge middle-finger. Pandora's box has been opened. I hope other studios who have not yet sold out follow Larian's example and actively up their game, and that Baldur's Gate 3 is just the first in a surge of new games developed for the purpose of giving players a satisfying gameplay experience, which will actually cause the money to take care of itself.
There is always the possibility for expansions, or modular side-stories that could be experience which could be sold as DLC. To give3 players more things to do, not just give them a gimmicky incentive to spend money and play through existing content in a different costume. Those could be sold and would always be presented as completely optional and not required to complete the core game. Sell them for something like $5. and make them choice-agnostic so that no matter how the player chooses to play, they are available. There are ways for Larian to further capitalize on Baldur's Gate 3 that would be acceptable. Especially if it is new gameplay that is being sold and not just fluff.. They should hold off on it for a while, though. Let the majority of the active player base finish the game in its entirety. And then start releasing content modules that play like a solid session of tabletop AD&D. Ot turn around and release a campaign builder toolset an make Baldur's Gate 3 a spiritual successor to Neverwinter Nights.Give the community the official tools needed to carry on the story for themselves, or tell new stories.
The way that AD&D is now heavily creative commons licensed, and the terms governing that are leveraged correctly, Larian could open a massive door to a path that goes way beyond anyone might expect. And those corporate owner-publishers won't be able to do a blasted thing about it. See if keeping the bar low does them any good then.
This is a common refrain, and yes, sometimes corporate higher ups with no game development experience drive bad decisions. However, there are absolutely lazy or not especially talented devs working at these companies. The idea that there are all of these brilliant games waiting to be created if only the shackles of giant publishers were removed is silly. Most artistic products aren't very good, regardless of the medium. Why would games be different?
@jamesr123 Yes, there are lazy incompetent developers. But they are there because of the corporatization of the industry. They are a symptom of the disease.
See the corporate suits want to generate the most money for the lowest amount of investment, be it time or money. That being their goal, they need not hire or keep developers on board who have any sort of real creative ambition. Those who do have it and manage to stay on have learned to keep it in check. They parrot the corporate party line.
The ones who do have the ambition and drive to create something substantial, are typically cut loose, or else leave of their own volition and end up working on projects like Baldur's Gate 3. Or leading independent projects..
Now none of this stuff is easy, or quick. It requires a significn amount of dedication to see projects like this through. But the fact that a game like Baldur's Gate was produced and has been released is all I need to see to know that if the industry would make that level of dedication the standard, rather than just following the path of least resistance, then there would be far more games releasing in a state similar to BG3, and consumer satisfaction with products on offer would be a lot higher.
It isn't that they CAN'T do it. It's that they WON'T. That's why I feel that this "Don't let BG3 raise the bar for your expectations" rhetoric comes by corporate decree. Maybe the developers paroting it are lazy and don't want to have to put in the work it would call for. But the suits don't want to have to pay for the man hours it would call for either.
At the end of the day, it's the people at the top that makes the real decisions. A lazy developer would have to either step up their game or quit if they don't want to do what is required. Corporate will get what corporate wants.
Your take on buying skins when you only buy 2 or 3 games a year is spot on.
Especially for FTP games. They gave me a game for free, I don’t mind supporting the devs by buying a battle pass. I do t deserve anything as a consumer of a free product.
I think it’s hilarious that on a budget of $100 million, Larian gave us an experience that could last us months or even years at a one-time charge, and most other video game and film studios can’t even do it with budgets twice or even three times as huge. I’m aware the conversation is around video games, but visual/audio media as a whole is going down a path that I’m glad BG3 avoided
The bar has returned to what it was over a decade ago.
Now, this is only for AAA games. We aren't stupid, and don't expect smaller studios to make BG3 2.0. We just want similar sized or larger studios to stop ripping us off and make games worthy of the price tag they oh so desperately need.
These guys are all missing the point.
The key to Larian's success for Divinity 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 was their early access system. Having a long testing period where players get to test a small portion of the game and give feedback THAT THE DEVELOPERS LISTEN TO, and make changes that players actually want. If other companies, almost no matter their size, did this, I bet they'd make a lot more games that were received well by fans.
i started to play this game im 3 hours in, and im completely lost on what to do, i can go so many places. i really want to play it all the way, but honestlyim getting the "players blcok".
any tips? should i just follow random quests that show in my map?
Follow quests and in particular listen to your companions.
In fact, listen and observe in general. There aren't quest markers in this game; there are less obvious clues like visual or audio queues.
AAA devs need to stop tweeting and go work on their craft.
IGN with an actually good take? What year is it?
The bar sits at a complete play-tested game with little to no microtransactions. Doesn't seem too high to me.
A rare based take from IGN.
I am loving BG3 so far, great story and character designs and world design, i am having a blast in playing with a friend in Co-op and also having my own playthrough, the bar has been pulled back to when it used to be the standard and i do hope that game devs will wake up just a bit and actually be inspired to make better games again. :)
I was so sad to see Bioware fall to where they are now and it all happened because they let EA buy them...!!
(Now a small touch on dnd and BG3 as i'm a long time DnD player/DM, having played, ADnD/3rd/3.5e/5e)
The Issue i have with 5th Edition (More or less the only issue), is the fact how nerfed Casters has become, while still having been buffed,
but imo, the concentration limitation for DnD 5e was just horrible and the frustrating feeling is just the same for BG3 (obviously as it's made with 5e in mind).
The problem this causes, is that you can no longer truely, play a buffing or cc character as too many spells have concentration requirements and you can only have 1 concentration spell running, if only Wizards of the Coast had atleast made it balanced and linked it to the modifier that the class uses for it's casting, with a max of 5 concentration spells active at once when you manage to get a 20 in said attribute, it would have been a much better way to do it and it is a huge frustration when playing dnd and the game :P
My hope is that someone at some point might make a mod that will change this aspect (I'm not capable of it myself)
Eh, the flipside to this is that casters were simply way, way too good before, and then encounters were designed around the assumption that players would be walking around buffed to the gills. It just made the experience more tedious.
If you want that greater level of mechanical depth, play the Owlcat's Pathfinder games. They're also very good, even if they don't quite have the same level of polish as Larian's offering here.
Max of 5 concentration spells at once???? That’s completely insane imo. A single concentration spell changes the battle completely nevermind 2, nevermind 5!!!
@@CreativeUsernameEh Speaking on the game or in terms of DnD PnP?
Not really, shield of Faith changes little, but your own or a party members AC, you can use Bless but then you can't use SoF, there are so many spells that have become utterly useless because you can't use them in conjunction with others, effectively ending buffing and debuffing...
These spells are useless since there are others that are much better for yourself, i pick one.. ONE.. Concentration spell if i play a caster and no i do not pick something like Bless or Hold Person/Monster or any of those, i'll pick a utility like invisibility for arcane and SoF for Divine.
Having more than one Concentration spell in your prepped spells is absolutely useless!
But of course, that is just my personal opinion, it was a ridiculous nerf by WoTC to casters ensuring that you are less likely to use most of these concentration spells when you find ONE that is more usefull than the rest!
Once I saw that Larian delivered on their promise (after playing a good bit in EA) I also pre-purchased it on PS5. I don't have a PS5. This game is easily worth $150. If you are a company that wants me to be happy PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY.
What other gaming studios need to realize is BG3 is already destined to "classic" status and will still be a popular selling "must play" title 15+ years from now still making the studio money for their efforts and fantastic game they made today.
I would love to see a BG3 quality remake of the original BG1 and BG2 titles as those games were well done, had some awesome characters and storyline and a modern remake to the level of BG3 would make those titles also candidates for multiple awards.
The gaming studios instead of panicking should be celebrating that BG3 has proven beyond a doubt if you put in the work and actually release a stellar product that appeals to the gamers that it can return you success and sales beyond your wildest expectations.
Larian bet the studio that this would sell, and they were right. Other studios would rather half-ass it than match the bet.
It's like Swen said, they make games they want to play. So long as that is what players want too they are fine, but if it misaligns they will be in trouble. My money says that so long as the buck stops with Swen they should do fine.
I laughed when people started whining about TotK getting the Silver it deserved. They should just be thankful the Souls games aren't spanking them.
Starfield is more expensive compared to Baldur's Gate 3. So I am expecting higher quality from Starfield due to the increase in pricing which should equate to higher quality.
But we all know the truth of current triple A developers/publishers...
That happens with every great game that releases. After I played Witcher 3 in 2015 or 2016 no game was ever able to satisfy me outside of AC Odyssey(and that is because of the naval combat and because I really love Ancient Greece not because that was a game of the same level of quality as Witcher 3). I played many good games after but there always felt that something was missing
BG3 is a game that you can definitely play multiple times, not just for the story options but because you can play one of 12 different classes, multiple sub-classes, multiple companions, different choices in pivotal parts of the game and play styles. 😁
Even Larian probably won't do something this big again because it's a huge risk and if it goes wrong you've basically destroyed an entire studio (if you're lucky enough not to take down multiple).
BG3 is an incredible game, Larian deserve a ton of praise and AAA studios could learn a lot from it's quality, deep unapologetically genre specific gameplay, lack of monetisation, etc. But it's scope, scale, and the whole package should not be the standard that we should expect to be repeated.
One of the biggest problems with modern games (and movies) is just how big and expensive they are. If we expect this to be the new standard, it's only going to get worse. We need smaller games that can take more risks and appeal to niche markets again (like what ubisoft used to do).
That's what indie and new studios are for. But when you are funneling hundreds of millions and even billions out of your games each year, that's not an excuse. The AAA studios can absolutely do this. Why would they when people are still buying their games and defending them online though? No one is expecting small studios to create something like this, but when you're starting to charge $70 for your game, you should expect high expectations.
@@chase5436 have you seen the budget of AAA games? They're already spending a ton for the trash they're pumping out, how much more do you think a game like this would cost?
As I said, Larian is the only company to have pulled off a game of this kinda scope and scale, and they're not doing it again. It's an insane risk, the entire studio could have been taken down with it, not to mention nobody might have ever touched the D&D style RPG genre again.
You can't expect every single game to take that gamble constantly, especially if we want to avoid including the absolutely awful monetization that'd recoup losses if it did fail.
As for indie studios making smaller games, I didn't mean that small. I'm talking about the likes of the old Splinter Cell games, Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 1, Forza Horizon 1, etc. Still big AAA games, but more concerned about building a complete and deep experience catered to a niche, rather than a breadth of shallow content targeted at the widest possible audience to make up for the overinflated budgets.
@@existentialselkath1264 You're talking like you and I have any responsibility for the industry. We don't. We're customers, they have a responsibly to us, and it's to make a good product. Whatever excuses people or the studios want to make about how they can't do whatever it is they can't do, just takes time and attention away from actually making something great.
If a game like this bankrupts big studios, then big studios aren't working anymore. It's literally not my job to keep buying their games and supporting their devs. It is their job to make me want to.
@@chase5436 you can't just ignore everything and demand the unfeasible just because you're a customer.
I want every movie to be as good as empire strikes back, but that's simply impossible. I want every handheld to have the same price to performance as the steamdeck, but that's simply impossible. I want every open world to be as detailed as a Rockstar game... I could go on.
You can't just expect everything to be as good as the very best. You'll miss out on a ton of great movies if you don't care about anything worse than empire strikes back for example. This line of thinking has never worked, EVER. That doesn't mean you should just sit back and take bad games either, but a game doesn't have to be near perfect to be good.
Baldurs Gate 3 is now the #1 best rated game of all time for PC on Metacritic
About the bloat engineers, adding to that in the end they put you in a non-compete agreemen so even if they fired you or just you want to get out because you're doing nothing you can't work somewhere else, sometimes is 3-6 months, sometimes it's 12 and they keep paying you but men you feel like nothing doing nothing or worst, because they "fired" you sometimes the tech companies doesn't give a f if you worked or not they sometimes just don't want to hire you because this big tech company just "fired you", or sometimes you are lucky and the company you applied thinks you have info or something and they hired you, men this is a horrendous industry, worst to those who are in contracts or are from other countries via remote or in place (my case), i just wanted to add that to the conversation of the end of the video.
Just on the note of Bioware, they HAVE downsized. The new studio that made Andromeda closed down not long after, I believe. The Austin offices are closing down and moving the future development and support of The Old Republic to a different studio. So there is pretty much just the one Bioware studio now.
Great video. I do disagree with the Elden ring take because I still am not a huge Dark Souls fan but Elden ring allows you to explore the open-world and get overpowered which allowed me to beat the game where I don't feel that same kind of Freedom with the other Dark Souls games so Elden ring does stick out as a game I like in the franchise while not liking the other games or at least they feel more unapproachable to me Elden ring still was very difficult and I died hundreds of times but I was eventually able through the open world to level up enough to make it through the game.
I only bought it yesterday. I didn't think i would love it, after all i liked some aspects of dos2 but id get stuck in sections not sure what to do. Not to mention the lack of cutscenes made player agency less compelling. So overall i put about 30 hours into it and wished i could love it but didn't. BG3 feels more akin to mass effect in that its more cinematic. I don't mind the Camera angle and combat is difficult but manageable so far. And i have found im not really stuck or not aure what to do so far, the story just flows as yoh wander about. Mind you, im only about 8 hours in.
People are talking about AAA games being a big risk. Yet we are seeing studios paying incredible money(likely) for movie stars and spending relatively much lesser on R&D.
Now almost all engine R&D is being offloaded to epic games while game studios produce subpar quality games which ignore best practices from the documentation of these public engines.
Personally, I think hardcore low level software engineering has just disappeared from this industry due to their subpar pay and extreme crunch. If you're a software engineer, there are so many expanding fields with lots of potential that pay way more than video games industry
Just imagine if Valerian did knights of the Old Republic
I can definitely get behind battlepasses and skins in a FTP game. They deserve to make money if the game is enjoyable enough that I want to buy those things to customize my experience or support them.
If I paid 70+ dollars for a game you shouldn’t expect me to cough up even more money.
We are shocked about a finished/complete game at launch, well-rounded mechanics, and great storytelling.
Lately, we've barely been getting a finished game
Imagine that. Devs upset about BG3's reception because they know the shackles of their publisher overlords won't allow them to just make whatever they deem to be ethical because in the AAA industry, the gamers are not the customers but the shareholders are. It's why the industry sucks so bad and why BG3 is indeed an anomaly.
Clearly the issue is no paid DLC on day one or microtransactions on such a big game. THAT is the standard game companies don't want players to expect.
Hopefully 2023s trend of good games continues for Starfield, Spider-Man, and armored core
Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube
The conversation shouldn't be around size. Yes, it's huge. But far more importantly the quality is through the roof. It's not unfeasible for a triple A developer to make a high quality product. In fact, they're in THE position to do just that with the resources they have at their disposal. I don't expect a large game. I expect a good one. And apparently that's a big ask.
when AAA devs have to do their job
Lyrian creating a full, feature complete game with no strings attached at AAA quality (Yes even with bugs, AAA games aren't void of bugs) shows that it is possible to make a good game and have it sell well without abusing players.
The problem with the AAA game industry is that there are just too many people involved. A game at most takes 20-30 people, artists, coders, music, writer, and director, ect. When you get too many people involved you turn an artform into an asset farm because its nearly impossible to manage that many people into a single cohesive vision without excessive managerial bloat that slows production and grinds quality down in its own overbearing way. When your team sizes start to get into the hundreds of thousands, how many of those are actually developing the game at its core?
Those people still need to be paid, and they still need to justify the existence of their position at the job, and you have to ask, how many of these people actually have a real hand in the development in the game, and how many of them are marketing and sales, metrics and market analysis, or various artists who's job isn't to work with the director for a cohesive vision but rather are just there to create assets farm based on a design doc.
And once you get those games in the thousands of developers, those costs become too high for a standard price game to cover the production costs. A company isn't going to make their money back. Hence why the AAA has become too reliant on live service crap. Gutting the core game to repackage and resell you content for day 1 DLC or battlepass content. When games come out broken, buggy, and borderline unplayable, with a gameplay loop that just straight up sucks. But I guarantee you that the cash shop will always work, and have way more design put into it than the actual gameplay. Look at what happened with Diablo 4, when the top hardcore player died to a server disconnect, which was caused by an emergency update to fix a bug with the cash shop.
I'm so happy to see this game succeed. it's up there with tw3 and rdr2 for me.
HOW?!?! Honestly how do you think it is the same as those? It is a board game with cutscenes. Or am I missing the first or even 3rd person mode? How do you immerse yourself looking down onto the characters and clicking where they should go. Do not in any sense feel like I am the character more like there puppets. Not a fan at all. Please stop comparing it to true RPG's.
The gaming industry is so weird. These developers are speaking out against providing customers with complete and fulfulling experiences. This is the only industry that I can think of that has made it common practice to ship out unfinished and poor products with the expectations of it just being the norm. Baldur's Gate is great, and no one is expecting EVERY game to be so large and expansive. But, I don't think that's where people are placing the bar, there's plenty of people who actually want the opposite of such large scales games. The bar is simply set at shipping out COMPLETE AND WORKING GAMES. How divisive can this truly be? How high of a standard is this truly? I don't expect every game to be a masterpeice, but I expect every game developer to try to make the best version of the game they're trying to make. So the "problem" that some developers have with Baldur's Gate 3 are just them exposing the gaming industry and validating what we already know about it. It's full of greedy and lazy gaming companies that have zero care in making a complete game nowadays.
I'm not used to tb RPGs, so I'm playing on the baby difficulty, and man I have never been challenged so much on low difficulty before (I don't play dark souls games).
I just don’t understand how as consumers us expecting a full game that is finished and polished. If we cannot be sold a product that runs stable and finished, then those companies need to close those doors and others need to open up that will.
Larian won’t mess up their next game they made BG3 after DOS2 which was praised and one of the best rpgs of all time I know whatever they make next is going to have the same love and care that these two games have had
Although I won’t play the game myself due to the horrid turn-based combat, the game with all of its decisions, intricacies and branching storylines is superb.
It is stupendous that when choosing to tap into the parasite potential, you gain power, but all of the spells,traits and bonuses have adverse direct/side effects as well. It shows how your brain slowly deteriorates as the parasites take over and grant you more …’’power’’.
The dialogue options are so quippy, varied and entertaining. The writers were truly inspired when they created this game.
This relationship simulator has such a complex, wide branching story, I love it.
If only it had proper combat then this would have been the new Skyrim.
I love when games punish you for making stupid decisions.
It makes this game so interesting to see how different people's perceptions and choices are and how it affects them in game. (Similar to CP 2077).
it wouldn't be good w/o turn based combat, and I say that as someone who does not enjoy TBC
My only response to the accusation that gaming studios are "bloated" is that ive never heard a dev complain that they were overstaffed or didnt have enough to do.
Larian didnt raise the bar they just made a game that meets the bar of what the average gamer expects a finished product with no microtransactions for a reasonable box price. The only developers scared of this are the ones that hedged the future of their companies on predatory live service games and aaa studios that keep looking for ways to automate away their qorkforce and ship barely servicable games
Fantastic Video
44:33 You know what's really funny about saying no one is expecting an Indie dev to make Baldur's Gate 3? Larian, I think, technically meets the definition for "independent developer" lol. They self-published the game. By definition, they are independent.
The panic is from the developers knowing the live service teet is drying up.
Getting by on cosmetics for years.
honestly its not hard to figure out. if publishers would stop rushing their devlopers and give the developers the time they need to put the love and care into a game like larian they would have far more critical praise and financial success. not hard to figure out but publishers just want that instant gratification instead of taking the time to make a good product and have long term success.
Larian had 400 people and 6 years on a genre type they are familiar with and we got the gem that is Baldur's Gate 3. Blizzard had over 9000 people and 6 years with a genre they are familiar with, we got the mess that is Diablo 4.
Huh. Who knew that the best way to have a faithful customer base involves being honest, taking time for quality and not being deceptive to the fans?
3:08 lmao LUKE!!!
Baldur's gate 3 and Larian Studios deserve all the success of the world!!
James Cameron did it again, he raised the bar. God bless him
I'm playing the game and I must say, it's a good RPG, like we used to have in the good old times. But at the same time I see a wild exageration of the game capabilities in the press... it's just a good RPG.
46:26 Thats when you should double dip.
Finished in 80 hours. Did not rush it, got pretty powerful
You shouldn't call an experience AAA unless you're willing to deliver on that number of As.
yeah in harder dificulty It takes me to finsh Act 1 around 45 hours
I have no issue with some monetization like skins, cosmetics, stuff like that, but just like I hate UA-cam for charging for TV, premium UA-cam, AND they get paid from ads on everyones content lol. If you monetize too much it looks like you are just double, even tripple, dipping lol.
Who can say no to a sloppy encouragement?
The tide didn’t turn on BioWare quick. Things just finally boiled over with Anthem and Andromeda where even their biggest supporters started turning on them. And let’s be honest, Inquisition was terrible too, it’s just people (especially review sites) seemingly weren’t ready to call them out yet. But there’d been problems since the days of Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2, and that was at the start of the decade; it took around ten years for BioWare to piss away the good will they’d built during their CRPG and original Xbox days.
19:45 Not fake news. It happened to a streamer I was watching.