I won't compare bg3 to other rpgs, but I sure as hell will compare Larian to other studious. Going from the release of bg3, Larian's openness, excitement and willingness to engage with the community, to Bethesda's handling of Starfield's release in the space of a month was like getting hit in the face with a bucket full of cold water. I genuinely can't stand Todd Howard and his usual routine of dodging critisism and lying outright anymore.
Dark Urge is a really great point of view to play from. I'm pretty convinced that Redeemed Dark Urge is the developer intended canon playthrough. So many differences when you have your own background, and it completely changes the tenor of villain relationships and the whole third act really.
I kinda hate that we can't just say BG3 is a good game without mentioning how it WILL NEVER BE MADE AGAIN AND WE CANNOT COMPARE IT TO ANYTHING BECAUSE IT IS NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO EVER MAKE AGAIN. Like, BG3 has plenty to discuss and compare to other games and the state of the medium at large. The aspects that make it up are easily the biggest thing to discuss as comparison, especially because, regardless of how capital 'b' big it is, it manages to get the basics of game design right, the game knows what it is, and there isn't someone else's motives sticking their hands in the pie, to dilute the experience.
Yeah, I'm sick of us pretending the BG3's biggest strength was simply the fact that it had genuine love and care put in. Triple AAA studios have the budget to make games on par with BG3, and the fact that they actively choose not to is pathetic.
Hot take: a world where alignment exists and creature are naturally evil or good are cool as hell. Specially when both can take unexpected turns (like Angels destroying evildoers before a chance of redemption comes)
your CR comparison just made me consider getting back into one piece, it was daunting at first but I've watched (and rewatched) all CR campaigns, whelp wild how the difference in medium can make things seem longer or shorter in comparison, i always think about how there's many fanfics that are longer than the bible that people read in a handful of days
it's funny that you point out the "sober" tone of BG3 because silly tabletop games have always rubbed me the wrong way. i prefer realistic games and will typically drop games that aren't taking things seriously enough.
I originally went into more detail in my script, but I run games with, "I supply the serious, you supply the funny" mentality. The world needs to be serious to maintain verisimilitude; the players can be dorks. BG3 is very much like this, the lion's share of the time.
god i LOVE these super personal, super niche subject vids you put out, like the root video was amazing and this one's just as good! really enjoying seeing you make videos you love, can't wait for more
I love seeing someone with your writing ability talk about the importance of medium and then do this fantastic cross analysis of a similar piece of entertainment through different mediums. And I'd be excited to watch your take on more rpg systems, as the exercise is pretty similar: they are a change of the entire framework of the piece of media itself.
I just started binge watching your channel again after I discovered you a year or so ago and lo and behold you drop an hour long video. It’s mf Christmas.
You got me on "i know someone who played Skyrim for 1000s hours and never beat it" I have never finished that game, not even watched the ending on UA-cam 😂😂😂
Very interesting video, them you!It is awesome to see you shout out Matt Colville and MCDM; Matt has been a great resource for GM advice for myself and others, and I am very much looking forward to MCDM's own TTRPG
2:50 It's said like having aphantasia is strange, but I think the ability to more or less hallucinate on command is insane. Maybe that's why I'm more logistical instead of imaginative. Imagining is hard
Hi, I just wanted to say thank you for explaining the pop, and that there's a description on the screen. That sounds weird but honestly it's super thoughtful for people like who get up and multitask while listening to what you're saying. Now, I can hear a pop, then run over to the computer and check for the description. Also also, I've enjoyed dnd the ttrpg the most when coming in. I've watched the movie, and x.x have not really gotten into the game yet because my computer would explode. Interested to hear comparisons from the outside looking in on the fresh new blood the vid game has created. Edit: I'm gonna have to politely disagree that many table tops fights have a certain lack of tactics and 'people just do their own thing'. Sir.... There are entire classes built on buffing, healing and positioning players/enemies around the arena. I've been in fights where if we as players didn't fight with tactics in mind, we would be tpk'd. Even better, I've been in a group where except for myself and one other, everyone was noobs, and we struggled with tactics. People almost got killed. Then as time went on everyone got better.... It's so cool to see a party not even level up but be more effective combatants as people get used to the system, and start using all their abilities/items they previously forgot. Better yet if we're able connect these bits of natural growth to the character themselves. (wow sorry that went long)
Yo Superdude. This is a fantastic video, one of your best. To your point about computers not being good enough to adjudicate actual dnd campaigns (players jumping in on conversations, etc), I feel that the only way that could happen is if we used generative AI. I don't support that notion, and would play a hand crafted story over a generic one like that any way of the week though.
I think its possible, but certainly a lot more work. You usually only see such branching conversations in smaller RPGs. I'm fine with it not being here, to be fair. It just ain't to Table D&D
I saw a clip a while back of a Skyrim mod somebody made that let them "have a real conversation" with Lydia. They had a speech-to-text thing on their mic, which was then sent to chatGPT to get an in-character response, which was then sent back to a text-to-speech thing for Lydia. It was a bit clunky (there was some lag on sending and receiving, and the text to speech bot wasn't great), but it did make me wonder if 10 to 15 years in the future we will see games integrating generative AI in this way. Letting us RP seamlessly with characters. That said, I could see a lot of crappy implementations of this happening before an actually good one, which I think would still require the same level of writing and voice acting that bg3 used.
@@JaySwag77 You'll more likely see generative AI being used for entire games instead tbh. It fits better since the nature of generative AI prevents alot of intentional design elements, and intentional design elements take more time and work and money to create. So there'll just be a convergence in the same way that procedural generation went from niche to almost never not being used, because it's just too convenient to not bother with.
Loved your thoughts! Also thought that at 45:54 it was funny that you said "for the price of free," while showing a clip of Dimension 20, which requires a Dropout subscription to watch 😂 (And for anyone out there on the fence about Dropout--get it. It's so good).
You know what? Thinking about it, Dark Urge and it's "custom character, but with story created for them to walk down" are basically the same thing that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous does with its Knight Commander main character, with many different roads to walk down (some more fleshed out then others).
I genuinely think Dark Urge should have been the only non-companion origin, custom Tav is just Dark Urge but worse. Also I disagree with your portrayal of powergaming. I don't think I've ever met someone who takes issue with me engaging with combat over roleplaying, as long as it doesn't interfere with roleplaying. The only thing that's frowned upon is playing in a way which disrupts other people's play, which honestly in my opinion is far more common with roleplay-heavy players'
Funny to think about how earlier this millennium public eye really struggled with the question "are video games art" and they probably still really struggle with it. Video games are certainly art, and they can display complex ideas, emotions, and commentary on modern times. But can i take that a step further and ask "is tabletop as a medium, art? Capable of the same stuff?" I'd say yes. But this probably deserves it's own essay.
51:16 preconceptions and constantly building off of what has been pre-established is quite literally what stops innovation. There's always somebody who does something new and sets the trend that everybody else follows until the next person innovates.
I loved this video, super interesting! I do wanna gently push back on the “stop trying to make DnD into other things” argument though. I don’t disagree that other games do a loooot of things better. The point isn’t that you’ll get a lesser experience though. It’s that many players start breaking into making their own adventures as a DM, which becomes how many DMs start designing their own mechanics, and eventually how many people decide to make their own tabletop game! I mean hey we both love MCDM, and how do you think they got here? :) Looking forward to binging your videos now, keep it up!
To jump off one point made in this video; my games are almost always hexcrawls first and foremost. I run open world games where there is actually a lot of story and prep I put in, but its interspersed with a ton of exploration and emergent story which comes from whatever the players wanna get up to. I plan an adventure with several key places of interest where major story beats happen, but also my players run into some random bandits on the road and decide its their mission to track the bandits down to their lair and wipe them out, and now the bandit leader who got away is a major character who the players are just as invested in taking down as the bbeg. As long as your hexcrawl mechanics are simple (I have three phases of the day; morning, afternoon, and night, and it takes one phase to travel one hex or players can make a con save to avoid exhaustion to travel two hexes, I don't track rations and have very simple rules around travelling more than three phases without having a rest) and you prep random encounters beforehand so they feel a little less random and more like part of the world, playing games this way really brings the exploration of play back into its place as one of the three core pillars without making it that much more complicated or difficult to run.
Great video man! I will say though that it's important to know that the combat in 5e is very clunky compared to Baldur's gate 3, and that it's much more akin to pathfinder 2e :)
The only CRPG that really gave me a sense of my character being a part of the world and having a history within it that I could engage with was Tyranny... I think that's in part because of the Conquest Mechanic, which I wish most CRPGs would adapt.
I might not be able to compare BG3, maybe not to their Divinity, but I am happier to wait more years for a game to be better baked than the usual mentality running amok with famous studios. And Larian dosen't publish new games often and clearly they take proper pride in each new title they push. You cannot say the same with others basically doing tax writeoffs with theirs. And I think that mentality is something I miss dearly. This is why my allegiance nowadays is with only indie titles and older games. I genuinely didn't touch a game made in the same year I was playing besides BG3 and now Palworld. That's it. All others in my Steam library I look sorta surprised they got made in 2015.
Agreed. It's not fair to compare BG3 to other CRPGs, but it _is_ fair to compare BG3 and Larian to AAA games and their studios and ask 'how come these games with even more money and resources thrown behind them can't be even half as good?'
The comment about the romance is both true and false. While yes they are fast in starting (mainly to allow the set up of later scenes), I would say their pay offs are overall well written especially for characters like astarion and laz'el who very much change and become so increadibly different from how they started out. (well depending on how you interact witb them (cough cough AA cough cough) ) From the video it seems you hadn't yet finished the game so maybe you haven't experienced a full romance path of one of the characters but I would say I've never felt such strong emotions towards a cast of romancable companions.
This is such a fucking cool, chill, thoughtful video, making comparisons and contrasts that I'm not sure THE UA-cam ALGORITHM will smile upon, but I'm so glad exists. Thanks for the time and effort spend on it, dude(super). Made my night.
S: isn't that just JJ Abrams' version of House of Leaves? I feel like that's a more compelling example of a book as a primarily physical artifact, immune to adaptation by its very structure.
I think you're kind of misrepresenting a few things in the section explaining "adversarial GMs", etc. One example: Extremely deadly games in which players knew their characters had a high likelihood of dying and had one or more backup characters prepared for just that reason were not generally perceived as "adversarial" or "bullsh**" by players. By some of them, probably. But not generally. Another example: Saying, "That's not encouraged behavior nowadays" insinuates that it was encouraged behavior at some post in the past. The way this point is worded in the video appears to be conflating two different things (extremely deadly gameplay and adversarial GMs). In the event that the word "that" is referring to adversarial play, it wasn't ever encouraged. Finally, and this is a more philosophical point than the previous two: An argument is being made that the GM having a disproportionate amount of power over the experience is intrinsically a bad thing ("you're absolutely correct in that thinking"). It's not intrinsically bad or good. It has ramifications for how players and GM approach the game, and so ultimately it's a matter of preference. Different strengths and weaknesses, much like different mediums have different strengths and weaknesses.
Excellent video. My main criticism of BG3 is that I found myself losing track of characters and who/why I was helping. Trying to remember dozens of NPC backstories became a bit too much. The journal is fine for keeping track at a surface level, but isn't very in-depth. Apart from that, it's the best CRPG I've ever played. Also I'm a fan of Act 3 (best act, imo) and enjoy the fact that goblins/orcs are stereotyped. Someone's got to be the fodder. I don't want an erudite, nuanced creature bemoaning their existence. I wanna bop 'em.
Had to look back through my footage. That's from Season 3, Episode 17. Travis has a character that says he's a alpha, and Matt hates it so much he stops the game to explain how this is debunked science, and then stares into the camera, as you see here.
My biggest problem with characters in BG3 is how they interact with you, mostly just the affection system. I have to actively fight them to off they get so horny so fast.
No actually, because they were all cowards and refused to draw from it. Every single session, they came into contact with another card, until they had like 15 or so. They pulled them randomly when fighting a dragon, but outside of that, nope. It didn't even rattle the game.
Thank you for using Ender's Game as an example during your talk about adaptations, I absolutely hate the movie with a burning passion simply for badly thwy disrespected the book!
I think it’s such a cop out to be like “we can’t expect video game studios to make games as good as baldur’s gate.” No we can. And we should. It is not “wrong” to expect the absolute best possible product from game developers.
No, because it's a lot of money to achieve Baldur's Gate 3's production value. It takes enough money to do so that it risks tanking the company if its anything less than a success. And thought I may not have gone into detail on purpose (Noodle's video is a better primer), "good" isnt the best description. Moreso production level. No CRPG studio is on Larian's scale, so we shouldn't expect that production level from smaller studios. Its setting them up for failure.
Baldur's Gate 3 had a budget that conservative estimates place at over $100 million, possibly over $150 million and it is the only Triple A CRPG of this century. No other CRPG, even the original Baldur's Gate games have had a development time or budget even close to BG3's 6 years and $100+ million budget. The Pathfinder: Kingmaker & Wrath of the Righteous, Rogue Trader, Wasteland 2 and 3, Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera etc. all had budgets of less than $10 million and development times of 3-4 years. Each of these games are good in their own right with well-written stories and well-designed gameplay but are all Double A or indie affairs at most and their developers aren't capable of mustering the budget needed to support a game of BG3's size.
What you described as the GMs buy-in is something that's adressed by pretty much every other new TRPG. Being the GM shouldn't be like being the engine for BG3. You are there to guide and mediate. The great thing is, that the world can and shouldd be flexible to what your players need. A videogame will never have that flexibility but a GM can throw out their selfmade dungeon (or module) and react to what the player's want. I seriously hate how D&D acts like you have to be BG3 or Mathew Mercer of CR. In my experience, it is way more fun asking a lot of questions as a GM, instead of having an answer for everything. Try out or at least read games like Blades in the Dark or The Wildsea and you'll see what I mean.
What bogs me the most about the whole "praise" of Baldur's Gate 3 and how similar It is to a table-top role-playing game experience is that the majority of the dicussion revolves around it's D&D tie in. Completely ignoring even the existence of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and all other two decades of game development of games NOT tied to D&D that have took those steps further in therms of making you feel like your decision matter, you can interact with the world freely and there are lots of non-orthodox ways to progress in the game. When D&D fans discuss Baldur's Gate 3. They discuss in a vacuum where Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas don't exist; The Witcher 3 doesn't exist, DISCO ELSIUM: the game that 2 years ago was praised as the game that better encapsulates the TTRPG experience doesn't exist. Even Larian Studios previous games, which the most remarkable diference from Baldur's Gate 3 is that the camera doesn't get as close to characters face when they talk (like in the Witcher 3, best conversarion system in an RPG so far) and all other systems were there already.
I won't compare bg3 to other rpgs, but I sure as hell will compare Larian to other studious. Going from the release of bg3, Larian's openness, excitement and willingness to engage with the community, to Bethesda's handling of Starfield's release in the space of a month was like getting hit in the face with a bucket full of cold water. I genuinely can't stand Todd Howard and his usual routine of dodging critisism and lying outright anymore.
I completely agree. Bethesda hasnt had an honest streak for more than a decade.
Dark Urge is a really great point of view to play from. I'm pretty convinced that Redeemed Dark Urge is the developer intended canon playthrough. So many differences when you have your own background, and it completely changes the tenor of villain relationships and the whole third act really.
I kinda hate that we can't just say BG3 is a good game without mentioning how it WILL NEVER BE MADE AGAIN AND WE CANNOT COMPARE IT TO ANYTHING BECAUSE IT IS NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO EVER MAKE AGAIN. Like, BG3 has plenty to discuss and compare to other games and the state of the medium at large. The aspects that make it up are easily the biggest thing to discuss as comparison, especially because, regardless of how capital 'b' big it is, it manages to get the basics of game design right, the game knows what it is, and there isn't someone else's motives sticking their hands in the pie, to dilute the experience.
Yeah, I'm sick of us pretending the BG3's biggest strength was simply the fact that it had genuine love and care put in. Triple AAA studios have the budget to make games on par with BG3, and the fact that they actively choose not to is pathetic.
it's dnd but digital it can be made again seeing it was already a thing
I was sent here by Adam Millard and I agree, criminally underrated channel just from the 20 minutes into this video that I am.
Thank you for this video, this is gonna go into my bachelor's thesis
Woah, that's neat!! I would like to see it when it's finished. Good luck, my friend!
i can’t imagine what was left on the cutting room floor for this video, it just talks about everything. love this vid
Hot take: a world where alignment exists and creature are naturally evil or good are cool as hell. Specially when both can take unexpected turns (like Angels destroying evildoers before a chance of redemption comes)
45:45 "For the price of 7$ I went to the movie theater..."
SEVEN DOLLARS? WHA- HUH!?!?
Tuesday deal. 7 bucks a ticket. There's a more art house theater near me that has an even lower 2$ Tuesday deal.
your CR comparison just made me consider getting back into one piece, it was daunting at first but I've watched (and rewatched) all CR campaigns, whelp
wild how the difference in medium can make things seem longer or shorter in comparison, i always think about how there's many fanfics that are longer than the bible that people read in a handful of days
it's funny that you point out the "sober" tone of BG3 because silly tabletop games have always rubbed me the wrong way. i prefer realistic games and will typically drop games that aren't taking things seriously enough.
I originally went into more detail in my script, but I run games with, "I supply the serious, you supply the funny" mentality. The world needs to be serious to maintain verisimilitude; the players can be dorks.
BG3 is very much like this, the lion's share of the time.
BG3 is powerful. It's one of my best hyperfixations
god i LOVE these super personal, super niche subject vids you put out, like the root video was amazing and this one's just as good! really enjoying seeing you make videos you love, can't wait for more
I love seeing someone with your writing ability talk about the importance of medium and then do this fantastic cross analysis of a similar piece of entertainment through different mediums. And I'd be excited to watch your take on more rpg systems, as the exercise is pretty similar: they are a change of the entire framework of the piece of media itself.
Well written narration as im listening
I just started binge watching your channel again after I discovered you a year or so ago and lo and behold you drop an hour long video. It’s mf Christmas.
I need the 10 minute warning label irl so people know when I'm about to go off about something I love
You got me on "i know someone who played Skyrim for 1000s hours and never beat it" I have never finished that game, not even watched the ending on UA-cam 😂😂😂
Very interesting video, them you!It is awesome to see you shout out Matt Colville and MCDM; Matt has been a great resource for GM advice for myself and others, and I am very much looking forward to MCDM's own TTRPG
Very interested to see more about how you plan your sessions. 28:24 specifically had me intrigued!
2:50 It's said like having aphantasia is strange, but I think the ability to more or less hallucinate on command is insane. Maybe that's why I'm more logistical instead of imaginative. Imagining is hard
i finally finished bg3 so i could finally watch this video. it was worth the wait, what a banger
Where the hell is a movie 7 bucks? It's no less than 15 bucks where I live.
Phenomenal! You deserve much more attention on your lesser known videos!
Awesome video man, you made an 1 hour video essay seem lile 10 minutes. Love it, keep up the good work
Funny, I just happened to watch Honor Among Thieves last night, the night before this dropped. Love when that happens.
Your videos don't dissapoint. Really good stuff ! Hope this channel grows as it deserves.
i like how you used Pillars of Eternity music while talking about books , that games was a colourful interactional book
This channel about to explode. I was here
Hi, I just wanted to say thank you for explaining the pop, and that there's a description on the screen. That sounds weird but honestly it's super thoughtful for people like who get up and multitask while listening to what you're saying. Now, I can hear a pop, then run over to the computer and check for the description.
Also also, I've enjoyed dnd the ttrpg the most when coming in. I've watched the movie, and x.x have not really gotten into the game yet because my computer would explode. Interested to hear comparisons from the outside looking in on the fresh new blood the vid game has created.
Edit: I'm gonna have to politely disagree that many table tops fights have a certain lack of tactics and 'people just do their own thing'. Sir.... There are entire classes built on buffing, healing and positioning players/enemies around the arena. I've been in fights where if we as players didn't fight with tactics in mind, we would be tpk'd.
Even better, I've been in a group where except for myself and one other, everyone was noobs, and we struggled with tactics. People almost got killed. Then as time went on everyone got better.... It's so cool to see a party not even level up but be more effective combatants as people get used to the system, and start using all their abilities/items they previously forgot. Better yet if we're able connect these bits of natural growth to the character themselves. (wow sorry that went long)
Yo Superdude. This is a fantastic video, one of your best.
To your point about computers not being good enough to adjudicate actual dnd campaigns (players jumping in on conversations, etc), I feel that the only way that could happen is if we used generative AI. I don't support that notion, and would play a hand crafted story over a generic one like that any way of the week though.
I think its possible, but certainly a lot more work. You usually only see such branching conversations in smaller RPGs.
I'm fine with it not being here, to be fair. It just ain't to Table D&D
I saw a clip a while back of a Skyrim mod somebody made that let them "have a real conversation" with Lydia. They had a speech-to-text thing on their mic, which was then sent to chatGPT to get an in-character response, which was then sent back to a text-to-speech thing for Lydia.
It was a bit clunky (there was some lag on sending and receiving, and the text to speech bot wasn't great), but it did make me wonder if 10 to 15 years in the future we will see games integrating generative AI in this way. Letting us RP seamlessly with characters.
That said, I could see a lot of crappy implementations of this happening before an actually good one, which I think would still require the same level of writing and voice acting that bg3 used.
@@JaySwag77 You'll more likely see generative AI being used for entire games instead tbh. It fits better since the nature of generative AI prevents alot of intentional design elements, and intentional design elements take more time and work and money to create. So there'll just be a convergence in the same way that procedural generation went from niche to almost never not being used, because it's just too convenient to not bother with.
Loved your thoughts!
Also thought that at 45:54 it was funny that you said "for the price of free," while showing a clip of Dimension 20, which requires a Dropout subscription to watch 😂
(And for anyone out there on the fence about Dropout--get it. It's so good).
I like how intrigue is "intreej"
You know what? Thinking about it, Dark Urge and it's "custom character, but with story created for them to walk down" are basically the same thing that Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous does with its Knight Commander main character, with many different roads to walk down (some more fleshed out then others).
I genuinely think Dark Urge should have been the only non-companion origin, custom Tav is just Dark Urge but worse.
Also I disagree with your portrayal of powergaming. I don't think I've ever met someone who takes issue with me engaging with combat over roleplaying, as long as it doesn't interfere with roleplaying. The only thing that's frowned upon is playing in a way which disrupts other people's play, which honestly in my opinion is far more common with roleplay-heavy players'
Funny to think about how earlier this millennium public eye really struggled with the question "are video games art" and they probably still really struggle with it. Video games are certainly art, and they can display complex ideas, emotions, and commentary on modern times. But can i take that a step further and ask "is tabletop as a medium, art? Capable of the same stuff?" I'd say yes. But this probably deserves it's own essay.
What about sports? What makes certain games art, and sports not? Or are they both art?
As soon as you said the word "webcomic" I felt that foul beast creeping up my spine. How dare you summon that thing. You know I can't fight it.
51:16 preconceptions and constantly building off of what has been pre-established is quite literally what stops innovation. There's always somebody who does something new and sets the trend that everybody else follows until the next person innovates.
I found your channel recently, it's great :D
I loved this video, super interesting! I do wanna gently push back on the “stop trying to make DnD into other things” argument though.
I don’t disagree that other games do a loooot of things better. The point isn’t that you’ll get a lesser experience though. It’s that many players start breaking into making their own adventures as a DM, which becomes how many DMs start designing their own mechanics, and eventually how many people decide to make their own tabletop game! I mean hey we both love MCDM, and how do you think they got here? :)
Looking forward to binging your videos now, keep it up!
To jump off one point made in this video; my games are almost always hexcrawls first and foremost. I run open world games where there is actually a lot of story and prep I put in, but its interspersed with a ton of exploration and emergent story which comes from whatever the players wanna get up to. I plan an adventure with several key places of interest where major story beats happen, but also my players run into some random bandits on the road and decide its their mission to track the bandits down to their lair and wipe them out, and now the bandit leader who got away is a major character who the players are just as invested in taking down as the bbeg. As long as your hexcrawl mechanics are simple (I have three phases of the day; morning, afternoon, and night, and it takes one phase to travel one hex or players can make a con save to avoid exhaustion to travel two hexes, I don't track rations and have very simple rules around travelling more than three phases without having a rest) and you prep random encounters beforehand so they feel a little less random and more like part of the world, playing games this way really brings the exploration of play back into its place as one of the three core pillars without making it that much more complicated or difficult to run.
There is precisely 0 wrong with inherently evil sentient monsters. What is wrong with creatures having a good or evil nature?
Not exactly what I meant. Evil sentient monsters are fine, it's if literally all of them are, as a species. That's what people are arguing over.
You missed the point. Evil people exist everywhere. Evil races don't
HOMESTUCK JUMPSCARE
Vulfpeck too? Youre the goat
Awesome content, keep it up!
surprised you didn't mention vox Machina
Jj abrum book sounds interesting and reminded me of undertale who story would not work anywhere else because the game mechanics are apart of the story
Great video man! I will say though that it's important to know that the combat in 5e is very clunky compared to Baldur's gate 3, and that it's much more akin to pathfinder 2e :)
The only CRPG that really gave me a sense of my character being a part of the world and having a history within it that I could engage with was Tyranny... I think that's in part because of the Conquest Mechanic, which I wish most CRPGs would adapt.
I'm super excited to give Tyranny a try, once it goes on sale.
@@superdude10000 If you're down for some unsollicited advice: Play a Wizard. It's very fun.
I might not be able to compare BG3, maybe not to their Divinity, but I am happier to wait more years for a game to be better baked than the usual mentality running amok with famous studios. And Larian dosen't publish new games often and clearly they take proper pride in each new title they push. You cannot say the same with others basically doing tax writeoffs with theirs.
And I think that mentality is something I miss dearly. This is why my allegiance nowadays is with only indie titles and older games. I genuinely didn't touch a game made in the same year I was playing besides BG3 and now Palworld. That's it. All others in my Steam library I look sorta surprised they got made in 2015.
Agreed. It's not fair to compare BG3 to other CRPGs, but it _is_ fair to compare BG3 and Larian to AAA games and their studios and ask 'how come these games with even more money and resources thrown behind them can't be even half as good?'
The comment about the romance is both true and false. While yes they are fast in starting (mainly to allow the set up of later scenes), I would say their pay offs are overall well written especially for characters like astarion and laz'el who very much change and become so increadibly different from how they started out. (well depending on how you interact witb them (cough cough AA cough cough) ) From the video it seems you hadn't yet finished the game so maybe you haven't experienced a full romance path of one of the characters but I would say I've never felt such strong emotions towards a cast of romancable companions.
fantastic vid! thanks :DD
This is such a fucking cool, chill, thoughtful video, making comparisons and contrasts that I'm not sure THE UA-cam ALGORITHM will smile upon, but I'm so glad exists. Thanks for the time and effort spend on it, dude(super). Made my night.
Raise your hand if the "6 to medium to hard encounters per adventuring day" from the 2014 DMG has ever happened to you.
My favorite ttrpgs are the ffg wh40k games, mostly cause warhammer but also their brutally funny
a VR ttrpg as in there is a gm and they make the game its just all in VR would be awsome
I have 500 hours in the game and i still just saw the 49:00 for the first time in my life i have never seen that in the game holy mother of god
❤❤
S: isn't that just JJ Abrams' version of House of Leaves? I feel like that's a more compelling example of a book as a primarily physical artifact, immune to adaptation by its very structure.
I think you're kind of misrepresenting a few things in the section explaining "adversarial GMs", etc. One example: Extremely deadly games in which players knew their characters had a high likelihood of dying and had one or more backup characters prepared for just that reason were not generally perceived as "adversarial" or "bullsh**" by players. By some of them, probably. But not generally.
Another example: Saying, "That's not encouraged behavior nowadays" insinuates that it was encouraged behavior at some post in the past. The way this point is worded in the video appears to be conflating two different things (extremely deadly gameplay and adversarial GMs). In the event that the word "that" is referring to adversarial play, it wasn't ever encouraged.
Finally, and this is a more philosophical point than the previous two: An argument is being made that the GM having a disproportionate amount of power over the experience is intrinsically a bad thing ("you're absolutely correct in that thinking"). It's not intrinsically bad or good. It has ramifications for how players and GM approach the game, and so ultimately it's a matter of preference. Different strengths and weaknesses, much like different mediums have different strengths and weaknesses.
Excellent video. My main criticism of BG3 is that I found myself losing track of characters and who/why I was helping. Trying to remember dozens of NPC backstories became a bit too much. The journal is fine for keeping track at a surface level, but isn't very in-depth. Apart from that, it's the best CRPG I've ever played.
Also I'm a fan of Act 3 (best act, imo) and enjoy the fact that goblins/orcs are stereotyped. Someone's got to be the fodder. I don't want an erudite, nuanced creature bemoaning their existence. I wanna bop 'em.
43:11 please, i need to know what episode thats from, I need to know what they (probablly sam) said this time, i never notice those matt looks
Had to look back through my footage. That's from Season 3, Episode 17. Travis has a character that says he's a alpha, and Matt hates it so much he stops the game to explain how this is debunked science, and then stares into the camera, as you see here.
@@superdude10000 ohhh i remember that one xD, ty
Fucking killer video
NEW VIDEO
you calling baldur's gate 3 mid, dude?!?!
jk XD
My biggest problem with characters in BG3 is how they interact with you, mostly just the affection system. I have to actively fight them to off they get so horny so fast.
YEAHH BOIIIII
ADAM MILARD GANG
The best version of d&d is Dragon Quest imo and the franchise that followed
Howdy
16:25 did this campaign get destroyed by that deck of many things I see?
No actually, because they were all cowards and refused to draw from it. Every single session, they came into contact with another card, until they had like 15 or so. They pulled them randomly when fighting a dragon, but outside of that, nope. It didn't even rattle the game.
That's almost more devastating than the derailment it causes, with a little gambling you could have a few free levels! Among other things...
Thank you for using Ender's Game as an example during your talk about adaptations, I absolutely hate the movie with a burning passion simply for badly thwy disrespected the book!
I think it’s such a cop out to be like “we can’t expect video game studios to make games as good as baldur’s gate.” No we can. And we should. It is not “wrong” to expect the absolute best possible product from game developers.
No, because it's a lot of money to achieve Baldur's Gate 3's production value. It takes enough money to do so that it risks tanking the company if its anything less than a success.
And thought I may not have gone into detail on purpose (Noodle's video is a better primer), "good" isnt the best description. Moreso production level. No CRPG studio is on Larian's scale, so we shouldn't expect that production level from smaller studios. Its setting them up for failure.
Baldur's Gate 3 had a budget that conservative estimates place at over $100 million, possibly over $150 million and it is the only Triple A CRPG of this century. No other CRPG, even the original Baldur's Gate games have had a development time or budget even close to BG3's 6 years and $100+ million budget.
The Pathfinder: Kingmaker & Wrath of the Righteous, Rogue Trader, Wasteland 2 and 3, Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera etc. all had budgets of less than $10 million and development times of 3-4 years.
Each of these games are good in their own right with well-written stories and well-designed gameplay but are all Double A or indie affairs at most and their developers aren't capable of mustering the budget needed to support a game of BG3's size.
What you described as the GMs buy-in is something that's adressed by pretty much every other new TRPG. Being the GM shouldn't be like being the engine for BG3. You are there to guide and mediate. The great thing is, that the world can and shouldd be flexible to what your players need. A videogame will never have that flexibility but a GM can throw out their selfmade dungeon (or module) and react to what the player's want. I seriously hate how D&D acts like you have to be BG3 or Mathew Mercer of CR. In my experience, it is way more fun asking a lot of questions as a GM, instead of having an answer for everything. Try out or at least read games like Blades in the Dark or The Wildsea and you'll see what I mean.
Ethan talked plenty in Re7 what are you on about
Media?
I could never get into these unfortunately.
I watched this whole video but I'm still not sure what a CRPG is
I never defined it in the video, that wasnt one of the goals.
Next time someone tries to convince you to watch One Piece, remember: It could be WAY WORSE.
What bogs me the most about the whole "praise" of Baldur's Gate 3 and how similar It is to a table-top role-playing game experience is that the majority of the dicussion revolves around it's D&D tie in. Completely ignoring even the existence of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and all other two decades of game development of games NOT tied to D&D that have took those steps further in therms of making you feel like your decision matter, you can interact with the world freely and there are lots of non-orthodox ways to progress in the game.
When D&D fans discuss Baldur's Gate 3. They discuss in a vacuum where Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas don't exist; The Witcher 3 doesn't exist, DISCO ELSIUM: the game that 2 years ago was praised as the game that better encapsulates the TTRPG experience doesn't exist. Even Larian Studios previous games, which the most remarkable diference from Baldur's Gate 3 is that the camera doesn't get as close to characters face when they talk (like in the Witcher 3, best conversarion system in an RPG so far) and all other systems were there already.
1+1=3
what video is 16:05
Dimension 20 - Unsleeping City finale, which is free on UA-cam
@@superdude10000 thank you !
But, I like computer :(