There is a lot of drama and discussion around the game, sparked by a Twitter thread by an indie game dev that wanted to preemptively push back against the notion that BG raised the expected standards for games going forward. This take seems... weird to me.

See I played the original 90s Baldur's Gate games and now BG III. And while I love it, I don't see anything in the new game, which doesn't feel like a continuation or evolution on what we saw in the original games. Sure, technology has moved in the last 25 years and that is applied here. But I think: if Bioware (the dev of the originals) kept producing such RPGs, than what BG III now show is exactly what the genre standard would be.

Let me explain a bit. Sure BG III changes a lot in regards to the originals, but we have to keep in mind: there is 25+ year gap we have to consider. Technology has moved a lot since the 90s and with it also tools to develop such games, standards on funding (like early access which Larian used) and the industry learned a lot about game design. For instance Larian used motion capture in cut scenes, which was not a thing back then, and the 90s games had prerendered environments instead of rendering it live like BG III does, which allows for more complex interactions. But these are things that would have been done obviously, if such games had been made in the decades between.

BG III has a lot of narrative choices and branching paths. And this has evolved quite a but over the original two games. But the original games were already praised for their narrative complexity and flexibility. In these games Bioware started to use systems to have player choices reflect in the world, while still keeping an overall narrative. They refined these techniques over the years, just not with BG but instead in Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Larian applies these evolutions back to the series they originated from. An evolution, not a revolution, not a raised or new standard, just normal development over time.

BG III has a lot, really a lot of options what you can do in a fight. But this also feels like a natural evolution. Sure, while GB III might have around 100 options in each fight, the original had 30, maybe 50. But that seems like the obvious thing to develop on further. More spells and more 'other' options like throwing stuff or dipping weapons. But this is a natural evolution of what the originals had.

The originals also had a lot of funny and quirky dialogue. Which is exactly something some people like in BG III. A lot of games today seems to scale that back in favor of 'seriousness' and 'immersion'. Yes you can say and do stupid stuff. And characters do as well. You have a squirrel defending "it's" tree against these pesky humans. Or other squirrels that complain (if you use speak with animal) about the bad song of the bard. This is silly stuff. Exactly like you expect from a 90s game.

So in conclusion: Baldur's Gate III has no new or raised standards. Instead it follows the standards of the 90s, just with modern tech and dev experience. That is also true in one other area: as games in the 90s it is complete on release, without additional payments. So Baldur's Gate III sets no new standards, it just follows very old standards - and this feels out of place in the world of 2023.

I think it was mainly AAA devs panicking thinking that people will expect them to put out games as huge as Baldur's Gate 3 combined with high-end AAA graphics. Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive game in terms of the scale of what they designed, 2 million word script (which is more than the entire Harry Potter series, Chronicles of Narnia series, and LOTR+The Hobbit all combined) which was translated into I believe 12 languages for subtitle purposes, 174 hours of cinematics (of which you will only see like 20 hours on a single 70-100 hour playthrough due to the branching storyline and large number of dialogue options). It's just a huge game.

Your typical AAA is already struggling to break even, they already raised prices to $70 and still many must rely on microtransactions to turn a profit due to the fact that they just don't sell enough copies; it's hard to make a profit on 4 or 5m sales, less than half of which were full priced $70 sales. These developers were panicking thinking that Baldur's Gate 3 would make gamers expect a similar level of scale from their AAA games moving forwards. That is why one of the first developers to panic post about BG3 noted that only the most popular AAA devs like Rockstar and Bethesda sell enough copies to be able to afford to make a AAA game with a similar level of scale to BG3, the rest of them just couldn't do it. Larian used a few cost cutting measures to be able to manage that high level of scale on Baldur's Gate 3, it doesn't have top-of-the-line AAA graphics for starters, character models are pretty good but the environment graphics are a bit outdated, but more importantly, the 2 million word fully voiced script was only recorded in a single language, English, whereas many AAA's have voice acting in multiple languages, each language you voice a large script game in is going to add a pretty significant chunk of money to the budget. That developer was likely right that only the AAA devs who have proven capable of selling a large number of copies in the past would be able to pull off BG3's scale and complexity in a AAA game.

Aside from the sheer scale, it doesn't seem to me like Baldur's Gate 3 does anything too groundbreaking. It seems to be an excellent game, but I'm not sure that it is suddenly going to set a trend of other RPG devs trying to make a game with a similarly large scale and branching storylines, most of them just couldn't afford to do that. 

I'm fairly early in the game, so while the choices are on every step, I'm not sure how much they matter overall (whether they are in the end just cosmetics, or they actually change the world). I find gameplay to be actually worse than BG1/2 - exploration is very slow, camera is completely wrong for this type of game (as if ther isn't numerous iso cRPGs out there they could've copied in that regard), inventory is a mess and they managed to make turned based combat actually worse than real time with pause of the originals (which was based on AD&D 2e with weapon speed option, so it actually worked quite well as real time with pause).
If anything, I find something like The Age of Decadence to be better for advancing roleplay experience than BG3, but BG3 being high budget DnD title pushed by Hasbro will certainly make more splash than some indy game.

I simply think this game went to look the other way of current AAA trends and made good word of mouth around it. Basically backpedalling on the idea that games can't be featured complete on release, need an obscene amount of budgets for "AAA" graphics, overbearing monetization which absolutely influence bad and tedious gameplay designs, required online connectivity, etc ...

Being contrarian pays up in this industry of knowadays lookalikes.

Not like these kind of developers don't exist in and off itself apart from Larian anyway but are moreso left out of the pictures because western AAA is just the usual center of discussion.

But yeah, if you expect this game in particular to spark a new trend in the AAA space .... Ain't happening with the current moneymakers at the top of the market lol.

I hate turn based RPG's might as well watch a movie.

I don't think this is the complaint some devs are levelling at BG3. Rather, the issue is that the overall quality of assets and size of the game for the genre will make audiences expect a similar level of quality for similar indie experiences. For AAA devs, it's just AAA devs complaining. 

I made a thread which was banned by the moderators on this site for calling out Assassin Creed and Horizon ZD devs for bashing Elden Rings narrative and game design. Glad they can finally see more proof of this.

Eh. Similar indie experiences would be far and wide between. Most indies have smaller experiences - and I am fine for it. And as far as I can see most "gamers". They only level comparisons with BG3 towards AAA games. And for AAA, I am sure Starfield and Diablo have put more resources in overall asset quality and scope. I am sure I heard Todd Howard bragging about it before.

Haven't played it yet, but Public Enemy taught me in my childhood days not to believe the hype!

I loved the first game though. Didn't like BG2 that much. But I will still check BG3 out sometime. I don't even expect it to raise any standards. But a fun AAA game without any major bugs from someone else than Nintendo would be nice. Haven't experienced that in a while. Ok, I'm enjoying Steet Fighter 6 quite a bit, but I still had some major disappointments in the last couple of years.

Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this. =P

You should probably watch A LOT of movies if you equate turn based battle systems to movies. Smh