Baldur's Gate III sets no new or raised standards...

[Mnementh]

Shadow1980 said:

What BG3 does is threefold: 1) it's a game that's feature complete and polished at launch, 2) it's a big game that managed to avoid being a typical cookie-cutter open world filled with a tedious checklist of repetitive objectives, and 3) it doesn't try to relentlessly nickel-and-dime its players through microtransactions, battle passes, etc. Such a game is a rarity in the modern AAA space. The only other AAA third-party game released this generation that manages that combination of scale, quality, and completeness is arguably Elden Ring.

BG3 is incredibly ambitious, and no developer should feel like its necessary to do something of BG3's scale and complexity, but I do hope the reaction to it at least signals to the industry that it's time for a change. Hopefully it encourages them to stop rushing buggy, incomplete games out the door and treating their customers as glorified beta testers, to ease off of the aggressive monetization schemes and "live service" bullshit, and to put more thought into their game worlds instead of their constant parade of 20 square-mile, 60-hour-long adventures packed to the brim with filler that doesn't do anything to actually justify a game of that size.

Hehe, all three points were "standard" in the 90s, hence my take.

And yes, not every game needs to be as the best in it's field. But that was always so, with Skyrim, Zelda, Final Fantasy. All these games blew gamers away, but other games still released.

And yeah, instead of asking gamers to "not raise standards" the industry might be well off to cut back on the monetization bullshit and I am sure they will win back some customer goodwill.