Baldur's Gate 3 - the modern 90s game

[HoloDust]

LegitHyperbole said:

HoloDust said:

Pretty much all their games feel like theme parks, and not actual worlds - BG3 is just the latest example.

Which is fine, there is a place for that as well, especially if they went for depicting much smaller areas than BG3 is supposed to cover. That's the reason, why I said (back then, not knowing they will move away from D&D) that they should do Castle Ravenloft/Curse of Strahd next - size and self-contained character of that "world" would play to their advantage, and I can easily see such game being their opus magnum.

But for actual full-fledged fantasy worlds - yeah, no...so far at least.

Yeah I suppose I agree. But it is intended to simulate the taple top experience and their games do exactly that. I've never seen a DM do any grand open world, it's also small on foot strolls like in these games. I would like to see what larian could do if they could bring in their branching paths to something with the scope of Slyrim/The Witcher 3 and perhaps even real time combat in the way the outer worlds or the new Xbox exclusive by obsidian does. My fear though is they'd have to make too many sacrifices but if anyone could do it, it'd be them. They've already went with full cutscenes the next step is getting an over the shoulder camera and a combat system working... God, Imagine how great Divinity Original Sin 2 was remade into a real time action game like those titles and kept all it's intricacies intact. 😍 

Actually, a lot of official 5e Campaigns are much, much bigger in scope than BG3 (Storm King's Thunder probably being the largest), even though all of them are fairly linear, just like BG3. Maybe linear is too harsh, but they are funnel based at best, which means no matter what you do in certain parts of the game (giving you freedom of choice), you'll end up at the same place that serves as starting point for next "chapter". This type of Campaigns started back in 80s with D&D Dragonlance line - and that's why you have clear divide from that point on, with official D&D owners pushing for more linear "Campaign books", instead of Setting books and smaller "Modules" that you can plug into any world, like they used to do.

Honestly, I feel kinda bad for anyone who thinks that BG3 style is "tabletop" experience (and anyone who has similar tabletop experience), since, while technically somewhat true, it is quite a subpar experience, given how much you're limited in whatever you do in it. You don't actually need large worlds to have fully open ended gameplay at the table, a small island is more than enough, but if you populate it with interesting things, few factions that have opposing goals, and one or two underlying mysteries that permeate that world, you got yourself all the ingredients for actual living and breathing adventuring world, instead of theme parks that is BG3 and Larian games.

BG3 succeeds brilliantly in certain aspects - it is really good mega-dungeon crawl (which it really boils down to), its choices, no matter how much smoke and mirrors which don't matter much in the long run, are interestingly made, its immersive sim aspects are well incorporated, though somewhat limited.

Where it fails is being actual BG sequel, being D&D 5e game (it is 5e adjacent, at best) and being fully-fledged CRPG.

But I said all that already in that review a year ago, and depending of what aspects of the game you care for, you will like it more...or less.