this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3

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All things BG3!

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)

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For context, Larian Studio founder Swen Vincke predicted that the game could reach 100,000 peak concurrent users during its debut period, and that was a fairly optimistic prediction. I work in IT, and really feel for those folks. I hope they designed their infrastructure to scale!

And that's only Steam, not including GOG, or the influx of PS5 users next month. Let's take it to 1 million!

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would it want to be more than a good DnD campaign? That’s exactly what Larian hoped it would be, and pretty much what it is. It’s not as open-ended as a real campaign can be, but given the scale and quality of the content, it’s really something special. It’s only the best dnd game ever made.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't question the quality of the game, I just don't feel that just doing Baldur's Gate again, twenty years later, really warrants ALL of the hype. Like the games from that time people still talk about, like Planescape Torment, Arcanum, even something like Fallout 2 or somewhat later Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines are games that are just a bit more "out there". Baldur's Gate feels comparably more vanilla compared to those. It's full of tropes and it does them well, but as far as I've played it doesn't always manage to rise above them and even from a design standpoint it is not that much different from original Baldurs Gate games.

I guess this is more of a lament about the state of the industry right now, but the fact that twenty years of gaming evolution leads to just doing the same types of games again but doesn't really fill me with that much excitement.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Those are completely different genres of games, though, and certainly not what I or anyone else I know that was hyped for BG3 wanted. We wanted a modern DnD game, Larian wanted to make a modern DnD game. We got a modern DnD game.

DnD is massively popular nowadays, more so than ever. It's okay that it's not what YOU wanted, but it's not saying anything about the "state of the industry".

[–] rambaroo -5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This the exact kind of hyperbole the thread op was just talking about. The "best d&d game ever made" is a highly subjective opinion. The amount of content is being massively overrated by the hype. Yeah, it's a solid amount, but BG2 had more content than this game 20 years ago especially when it comes to dialogue, since people can't be bothered to read without a voice actor doing it for them.

I'm really enjoying it but I'm also tired of how ridiculous and aggressively cultish fanboys get during the post release period. The game is far from perfect.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I have 165 hours played, about half of that in early access. I’m just about to get to Baldur’s Gate itself for the first time, and can already see that I’m going to have at least two more full playthroughs to explore the campaign’s boundaries. How much content do you think qualifies for your standard?

There are no perfect games, but this one hits a lot more than it misses.