‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

...right?

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-multiplayer-co-op-gui...

But there's optional Cross-Platform save sync (independent of the steam one) and multiplayer.

Anyway, as a person who bounced off of the previous entries of this genre I'm really enjoying this one, and I'm very happy for the success the studio is having - they deserve it!

Madden - 34 years old

Pokemon - 26 years old

FIFA - 29 years old

Mario Kart - 30 years old

Call of Duty 20 years old this year! (23 if you count back to Medal of Honor)

God of War - 17 years old

Gran Turismo - 26 years old

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1285658/top-ranked-video...

- Their previous game Divinity: Original Sin 2 was critically acclaimed, very popular for a pretty hardcore CRPG, and had long legs.

- DnD has a lot of brand power and has been strongly in the zeitgeist for years.

- There's a big cohort of millennials who have strong nostalgia for Baldur's Gate and who have plenty of money to buy games (if not time to play them).

- The Early Access release for this game was wildly popular beyond the developer's expectations, and maintained interest for years.

I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate because they aren't very important to me, personally. But also there have been a load of really good CRPGs in recent years and there seemed to be a pretty low ceiling to how much interest they could get. Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and a few others were amazing and beloved CRPG games but were lucky to have a tenth of the success of BG3. But those games were generally less accessible, mostly not multiplayer, and again lacked the brand power.

Many people will claim "graphics don't matter", but the reality is that they do help.

Elden Ring may not be a narrative sequel, but it is definitely a mechanical sequel in the line of From Software games stretching back to Demon Souls in 2009, which makes the series 14 years old. It's innovative in its series, but I wouldn't praise it for a wealth of conceptual originality.

There's also an inherent bias with looking at the Top Sellers - for a game to be bought by lots of people, it has to be known about by lots of people. Brand recognition makes that easier, so even if studios are innovating all the time, you would still expect existing series to show up much more than new IPs. It would take an exceptionally strong game, with good marketing, to break into that list.

It's no surprise to me that it's getting a lot more sales than they expected, and I'm glad to see devs get rewarded for making a quality product.

I feel slightly offended being thrown into the same pot as those weird millenials ;)

Absolutely everybody who owned a PC for gaming in the late 90's played BG1 and BG2, no matter the age. Video games are not just for teenagers you know.

PS: One thing that is a lot better than in BG1 and BG2 is that combat with low-class characters feels a lot more interesting. Not sure how much of this is because of the ADnD vs DnD5 rules or whether Larian has added some tweaks to the DnD5 rules.

This class of couch co-op game is becoming rare but I buy them each time they come out. I hope there's enough of us to provide a market.

I think you're trying to put too much of its success on "brand power". Social proof is a thing, but it's not powerful enough to overcome a bad game. Just look at what happened to the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises.

I think it's doing so well because they nailed the execution. The graphics are great. The game hasn't had any opening week disasters despite getting more than 7x the expected numbers. The intro hook of the game really grabs you and keeps you wanting more (which is why everyone's still so excited about it 3 years later). Also, it's FUN to play.

That last one is probably the biggest factor. When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play? It wasn't too long ago that online streamers were publishing videos lamenting the lack of good games to play.

Relatedly, it’s so satisfying the way the care they took with sound and how impactful your combat actions are as a result. So many game designers ignore sound design; I think this is a huge factor in the success of Blizzard games. People can argue Diablo IV is a poorly designed game, but the sound design is excellent and greatly contributes to the weight of actions and ultimately the dopamine hit factor. I think it’s been their secret weapon as people don’t often realize the effect it has on them. Larian took the same care here and it’s awesome.

I think Larian’s approach to multiplayer is the important bit. I would be curious about the stats of how people play it.

I feel like once you have done a couple CRPGs you’ve kind of seen it all. I’ve done divinity and kingmaker. I can’t really be motivated to do tyranny or the other pathfinder game by owlcat. It’s just so samey.

I will grant, Larian’s divinity 2 did feel a bit different. They managed to make combat feel more interesting. And playing split screen with the wife made it much more enjoyable. Optimistic they’ve done it again here.

- Cyberpunk 2077 with its new path traced lighting option

- Plague Tale Requiem (in general)

- The high action sequences and cut-scenes of FFXVI

These games have their flaws in terms of graphics, but they were very striking to me. Note, this is speaking purely graphics, there's more to be said regarding art design as enabled by graphics tech.

Beloved games have heart, vision, and they don’t establish a predatory relationship with their customers. There will always be a place for them to gamers, because these attributes can’t be faked. There will also always be a place for soulless AAA because, as you said, the MBAs can bake these on paper, reliably, and procedurally.

Nothing else will ever give me the satisfaction of pausing the game, fully assessing the situation, giving a string of commands to all my characters, then unpausing and watching the whole thing play out perfectly (or fail spectacularly).

EDIT: also, the shock of first time seeing Time Stop.

Tears of the Kingdom, Resident evil 4, Street Fighter 6

I love the idea behind CRPGs, but have found that I have a difficult time committing to them. I.E. I own Divinity 2, but have struggled to get past the first few hours of the story as the first area makes it so open-ended it's tough to know how to move forward. Additionally, turn-based games often get quickly boring for me as they are often so challenging it doesn't feel worth it (I'm aware I definitely fall under the "casual" category in this realm).

After playing BG3 for over ten hours, I'm hooked. It seems they have struck such a great balance for me (on the "Balanced" difficulty) at making combat engaging, difficult and interesting -- but not so difficult I get bored/hate it. As a casual CRPG gamer, BG3 seems to have struck a near-perfect balance for me.

One of my favorite moments so far: get into a fight with a group of around 10 goblins with my 3-member group. I'm outnumbered so I fall back to a somewhat narrow bridge, to serve as a bottleneck. Once I have all 3 members of my group on the bridge (none of the goblins have made it yet), I throw a grease bottle at the beginning of the bridge to slow down my enemies. Sure enough, it slowed down my enemies enough that when they got to the bridge, I took them out with my two archer party members.

Amazing game.

I know you can’t really tell based on one parameter like this, but you also kind of can.

You can tell by this they got the product out they wanted and worked till it was complete. That goes a long way.

> Baldur's Gate 3 tells its story differently too. Those atmospheric chapter introductions, where the narrator sets the scene, are sadly gone. Dialogue is short and to the point, with no great walls of descriptive text drawing you into the world. And honestly, that's something I miss. I love the sheer wordiness of the old games, and how a flurry of prose would bring those pre-rendered backgrounds to life.

Is that all?

edit: I didn't play the other two games. One's a remake of a game I never played (I never owned playstations) and I don't really play fighting games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

edit2: this is getting ridiculous.

If you're a fan of sound in games, check out the original Dead Space. Master class in using sound to create atmosphere.

It doesn’t mean franchises make the best games, it’s just unsurprising they’re top sellers.

1. As it's been said before, if you go at it MBA style you'll end up with a crap soul less design by commitee game.

2. DnD has a lot of brand power? The only thing related to DnD that I did was play some computer RPGs. The Infinity Engine games could have had any other RPG system in the background and they'd have been as much fun.

3. Getting Early Access wrong too. It got popular in early access because some people considered it good.

4. You may be right about Baldur's Gate nostalgia, that is probably the greatest driver behind this. Personally I will get the game because of said nostalgia, but I'll wait for enough reviews to have something to read between the lines and decide if the game is any good.

That includes Pillars of Eternity, and the other games I mentioned. They made great games but they just weren't that popular. I agree in general about checkbox thinking.

No, this is wildly beyond expectations. They sold 2.5M copies of BG3 in Early Access (>500k in July alone) which is already amazing, but one might have expected it to eat into their launch day numbers as most of the fans already bought in during EA. Instead it it looks like they probably sold ~10M more copies just in the 3 days after launch.

Unfortunately, EA still holds the rights. The new mmo-ish game that Garriet made is one I have not really dived into yet

Maybe I've played BG2 too many times, but for me this was a no-brainer. You could read the steam reviews from early access as well, and the prediction should have been pretty easy. People were already impressed with the early campaign.

Personally I'm putting off buying BG3 because I know how addictive it'll be.

I don't have experience with every franchise here but at lest with God of War and Call of Duty, there are lots of gameplay and graphical innovations that get made despite the game being largely the same at the 10,000 foot level.

On top of that a lot of people enjoy these games and are willing to pay for a version that works on modern platforms with higher res textures/models and quality of life improvements.

Mission Impossible and Fast and the Furious franchises are approaching 20 movie sequels between them, but people are willing to pay to see them because its fun and each movie brings something new to the table. Some Anime franchises have hundreds of episodes.

It's like ordering a burger or Mac & Cheese. You like it and you know what you're going to get, and sometimes that's what you want.

So far there has been a lot less of that in BG3 which is disappointing but maybe I just need to level up my spellcasters more. (I hate the DnD spell preparation system but that's another matter)

The fact it had such a great reputation from the fanbase who'd been playing it in early access probably pushed a lot of people to go ahead and get it.

But Larian's previous game was extremely similar to this one in all respects. It's not even that flippant to say BG3 is DOS2 with the lore and rules swapped for DnD ones which isn't that much of a practical difference (I'd argue a slight downgrade). And yet BG3 is on track to be maybe 4x as successful. It's hard to argue the BG and DnD brands didn't play a big part in this.

"When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play?"

The comment in reply answer the question.

You then preceded to gatekeep by redefining what "AAA game" meant but dismissing the ones listed out of ignorance.

I can think of numerous AAA games that are fun to play. the first one that came to mind was Elden Ring. I know others that while I didn't play, others loved, such as God of War.

Rather than ask a question and start dismissing answers, gate keeping what "AAA game" means, instead accept the fact that there are numerous AAA games that have been released this year alone that people are having lots of fun with. That doesn't take away from smaller, indy titles, nor does it mean AAA is without fault.

tl;dr: Stop gatekeeping with ignorance.

They all have preexisting affection for both D&D and BG. They went into character creation with strong opinions about their favorite races and esp. classes.

If I'm missing some studio which has a diverse catalogue of consistently successful games, then please tell me which. But I feel they usually find a niche and then work that.

Want to dragon punch like Ryu, throw a sonic boom like Guile, and kick like Chun Li? You can do that now.

Metroid Prime Remastered

Diablo IV

Persona 4 Golden

Dead Space Remake

Final Fanatasy XVI

Pikmin 4

Star Wars Jedi Survivor

Hogwarts Legacy

Remnant II

So this year actually seems to be pretty great w.r.t. AAA games, and the next months will be pretty ridiculous, with Armored Core VI, Starfield, Mortal Kombat 1, Forza Motorsport, Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2, Cities: Skylines 2, Super Mario RPG... all still being released.

So if anything, there's probably too much AAA games worth playing out there.

BG2 was, for almost all of the 2000s, one of the highest ranked games of all time.

I didn't want to follow it before it was out, waiting a bit before I jump in.

I was glad to learn it’s likely as silly (good!) and enjoyed dipping into twitch to get a feel on the pen & paper turned "cyber" D&D party play.

It really looks like great fun, wish I had the time / friends in sync / on same platform. Eventually the bespoke Apple silicon version should work cross play with Windows / Linux but console friends apparently won’t get included.

https://www.twitch.tv/willneff/clip/TentativeSweetEyeballTBT...

-God of War Ragnarok

-Tears of the Kingdom

-Hogwarts Legacy

-Star Wars Jedi Survivor

-Final Fantasy XVI

All entirely or almost entirely singleplayer and all receiving critical acclaim (except for the poor launch of Jedi Survivor's PC port). And the next few months include Starfield and Spider-Man 2, both blockbuster singleplayer games with no microtransactions which stand a good chance of winning game of the year.

I like to read the negative reviews on Steam to help talk myself out of purchases. I usually find something convincing, the urge passes, and I spend more time doing something with a longer-lasting benefit (for who I an now, anyway). I thought for so long that I'd never quit gaming, but it served its purpose, I try not to regret it as wasted time (gaming gave me an easy sense of purpose, without which I might have joined a cult or become an alcoholic like my dad), and I try not to rain on anyone's parade.

I am tired of the games that present you with illusion of choice but it actually doesn't matter. In BG3 you can actually be the evil character so that by itself lends the game at least for 2 playthroughs. Personally I am playing it through as Dark Urge first, and later going to do another run with good druid.

Also the graphics are really nice, almost everything is voice acted, companions have interesting stories. Story is already much better than divinity 2. I have 39 hours in now and I bought it at launch

You must have missed the 2.2 score that it currently has after being review bombed due to recent development decisions.

On a personal level, I will say that they got the campaign right, but the rest of the game is incomplete. This game should have been released as a public beta — it’s currently not close to being a complete experience, imho.

They had Twitch integration since the beginning and judging by some accounts they weren't prepared for how much that would be in demand on full release. Each user can see streamer's full inventory and journal, vote on dialogue options when asked, etc. Surely Steam isn't handling that.

AAA production costs make it difficult: you can't just spread the game's budget equally into niche content most will never see.

But if you do it smartly, it seems like there's still financial and development space for "Wouldn't players find it cool if...?" things.

One of the major turn-offs of post-TES3 Bethesda style games has been just how soul-less the tracks through their content have been. It's obvious anything "weird" had to get approved through a committee and was watered down in the process.

Games were the better when there was a path for a development team member to have 10% time to implement some kooky feature.

And maybe now that needs to flow through approval... but don't soften it into pablum in the process.

BG3 is single player offline game, mainly distributed globally through Steam (and GOG) which runs it's own CDN for games. There is a multiplayer mode but that is co-ordinated via p2p for the most part.

The "IT team" at Larian doesn't get hit with those downloads as they only send a single copy up to Steam's CDN which handles the traffic (perhaps some backend user authentication too?)

so essentially this article is "Baldur's Gate 3, is a very popular download on Steam" just buzz to push more sales presumably.

The inventory management is little messy and could be better, but honestly I don't find much else to critique yet.

And DOS2 had the best combat in decades.

playstation exclusive

>-Tears of the Kingdom

nintendo exclusive

>-Hogwarts Legacy

I don't know anyone who has played it - maybe we're just not that interested in harry potter

>-Star Wars Jedi Survivor

launched with multiple huge bugs including progression stopping bugs. I'll get it when its cheap and theyve fixed everything, or they haven't and I won't. If your game is bugged from day one don't expect day one pricing to work out.

>Final Fantasy XVI

playstation exclusive.

out of your list there the only ones not platform exclusive or riddled with bugs on launch is hogwarts legacy which honestly doesn't sound like anything I'd be interested in playing.

So there’s a deluxe edition, which is an extra ten bucks and adds some cosmetics and physical items. But with the base game at $60, the collector’s edition probably should have brought it to $75. For a game that will easily hit 1.5 million downloads in the first few weeks, let the whales fund updates and sequels.

I am already almost finished with Act 2 and I have to say this game will keep me occupied for many a night to come.

AMAZING team they have at Larian and their passion for quality shines in this game.

The last D&D game I remember, Dark Alliance, is horrible.

700k players when you:

- Don't run your own game update distribution/patcher

- Don't provide real-time chat

- Don't run your own arbitration (what's the point if mostly everything is P2P/high trust sessions and cooperative?)

- ...

700k players is great for them and by all accounts they seem to have done a great job overall, but it's a far cry from League of Legends or even DotA2 in terms of system stress.

Was that pitched to them? Solicited to studios by them? In the latter case that would be a fascinating process to observe.

I read your reply as saying "no, it's not possible to analyze why games fails / succeed, because they're all different". I feel that's usually unhelpful: assuming we can't explain things because they're all idiosyncratic is usually not productive. It's more productive if you, for example, point to something extra that is missing.

Yeah, it was hard for me to get into Path of Exile over D3 and D4, despite being a technically 'deeper' game

And, when you boot the game, it instead boots a window GUI that I can imagine serves only to display the giant ad to upgrade to the more expensive version of the game. You have to search for the de-emphasized not-quite-a-button below to actually play the game.

This is one of the things I like about truly single-player games, where no interaction with other players is possible. Mostly puzzle games. None of those games have any of these dark patterns or unnecessary connectivity.

I have been enjoying Baldur's Gate 3. Offline :)

EDIT: nevermind, Googling "baldur's gate 3 development critics" yields tons of results

oh and the original is regarded as one of the best games of all time

I'm not sure if I trust your opinion on anything if you so confidently spread misinformation and then deflect with "oh but little me don't know that!! emoji"

If you actively make decisions to upset the players, then don't act confused when your player rating tanks.

They have also changed a lot, compare God of War 1 to the recent one. They are completely different, and I would say newer is worse. I miss the rage.

Compare something like CoD1 and MW2... totally different. They both have you shoot military guns, I guess.

This one doesn't do that, so I bought it!

I've never played any of the previous Baldur's Gate games, but I did play Neverwinter Nights (2002) so I have some nostalgia for computer D&D.

Haven't tried the multiplayer yet, but I probably will. I heard there are some kinks to work out with drop in/out characters, but maybe that's just how it's going to work and you're expected to commit to one group the whole way through.

CRPGs aren't a genre, but RPGs are. wRPGs like Mass Effect, Fallout, TES, The Witcher are some of the most popular franchises in all of gaming. Then you have jRPGs like Zelda, Elden Ring... The ones you listed are similar to Divinity & BG3, but the fact is the games are either on the extreme end of hardcore (Pathfinder especially), or are made without the production values or marketing. You've got examples like

The main difference that would still throw a lot of games is that BG3 is turn based combat, but I'd argue that with the dialogue, branching trees etc its more akin to Mass Effect or Fallout. Ultimately its its own thing, and it is a well crafted game, in a setting that many core fans already know and love.

Anyway, I was just surprised because I guess I never looked up a review of the Dark Alliance games but my general impression was actually pretty good.

edit: Apparently there is a Dark Alliance game with a naming collision that came out much more recently than the Dark Alliance series I'm thinking of. Smart move, Wizards of the Coast/DnD.

To this day, there are quotes that live on from Baldur's Gate ("Go for the eyes, Boo!"). It has place in a lot of people's hearts. Had BG3 been bad, it would have been a horror show of hate for the developer. But it looks like they delivered, and the adoring fans of decades ago appreciate that.

I laughed heartily.

If your turn doesn't give you enough movement to run up to the enemies and stab them, you can't say "I run next to the doorway and wait to stab the first person who runs through it."

Instead, you have to waste your turn and then stand around getting attacked. So it's often to your advantage to roll worse in the initiative order, because the enemies will spend their turn dashing to within your movement range and then you actually get to hit them on your turn. Kind of hate it, rolling high initiative is supposed to let you get the drop on people or set up the battlefield more to your liking.

BG3 players, please let me know if I'm missing something here.

Probably a high 7 or low 8 out of 10 for me.

Games get review-bombed for the silliest reasons nowadays. Often times, a fundamentalist minority of gamers feels overly protective about "their" franchise, reacting to even the tiniest disturbance with maniacal anger. If a game has a high score from critics and a low score from users, to me that's actually a good sign that the game might even try something interesting (Last of Us II would be an example here). Of course, the critics score for Diablo IV was the post-release score, not including these new patches, so it might very well be that it really is worse now...

As a long-time Pikmin fan it is absolutely wild to me to see Pikmin 4 in a list of AAA games.

There's nothing else like that series in terms of aesthetics, in-game lore or gameplay. It's always been its own singular sub-genre which screams "indy game", and the mediocre sales reflected that. Except that it just happens to also be a first-party Nintendo game that Shigeru Miyamoto is personally invested in.

And now Pikmin 4 suddenly blows everyone's expectations away.

At least so far, the difficulty curve is much less steep which I suspect put a lot of people off DOS2. I certainly resented needing to kill everyone to remain on track with the XP curve, but that's presumably because Pillars has spoiled me.

The point is that there must be a formula if studios can consistently deliver.

It had nothing to do with "brand power" - we didn't even know it was DnD.

We just bought what seems like a great game with no bullshit microtransaction.

I think you are overanalyzing it.

One of my concerns is that these single-player (even small-group-of-players) games are too much like choose-your-own-adventure books (I'm in my 40s and don't remember any of these being very good; maybe modern ones are better, if they even exist?), which are difficult to have a shared experience over unless reading together or the discussion is about what options you each chose and why. Now that I've read Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy), The Kiss Quotient (Helen Huang), and Feral (George Monbiot), and so on, I have more common ground with anyone I meet down the road who has read those books. When I meet people who sunk years of their lives into WoW or EverQuest, the predominant feeling seems usually to be a shared sadness and also relief at having finally unsubscribed. When I meet someone who has played single-player games there's not much to talk about either, other than listing games we've played and thus bonding a bit over the games we have in common. Maybe that's enough, but it feels more shallow than I'd like.

Maybe post-activity discussion really isn't the point, though? Are there game clubs like there are book clubs? Perhaps it is enough to have an artificial sense of purpose and to share in that escapism, but escapism beyond coping with stress until a better opportunity arises (I didn't have much guidance out of a rough childhood and took refuge in games, which may have helped me survive) feels like an unmoored state that contributes to our collective apathy over existential crises (looking at you, anthropogenic climate change, which will be an "interesting story" but not one I look forward to living through part of and ultimately dying in :). What can we do to reduce the stressors we escape from, and/or increase our ability to respond in healthier ways?

My main hope for writing this is that it helps anyone who wants to spend less time playing games take the steps to do so (for the rest of you who can moderate their playtime, hats off to you, too ;). I would love to discuss all this more, but my relationship with social media is similarly troubled and thus I almost never wade back in to learn more from responses. I DO learn quite a bit from so many of you, and I'm grateful for the depth and breadth and moderation of HN discussions.

E: Spelling, gotta love mobile.

It's is particularly impressive in both its breadth and depth: not only does it have huge beautiful landscapes in deserts, plains, mountains, forests, swamps, beaches, snow & rain, but also includes tiny details like being able to shoot out individual spokes of a wagon wheel, and the way the sun glows through the cartilage of characters ears.

Oh and how much publishers meddled in games and/or set constraints. At one point one of the big 3 wasn't approving games that didn't have multiplayer regardless of genre, got to spend ~5mo working on multiplayer that was totally broken until we got sign-off that we could pull it from the title.

Also their facial animation and dialogue direction is far ahead of any other game I've seen - those conversations feel much more visceral than anything.

It was really about Garriott exploring innovative ways in how to translate the tabletop RPG experience into a computer game. You don't need an Avatar or Britannia to pursue ideas like Ultima 4's virtue system or Ultima 7's interactivity.

Modern rpgs ( Witcher 3, dos2, etc), on the contrary, are amazing : technology has finally caught up, and my mind no longer has to compensate for the rather bland visual/sounds/lack of voices/limited freedom/etc.

I used to play dune2, red alert, sim city, etc but these days I play rpgs !

this is Wizardry III erasure.

(i'm a bit older and solidly GenX)

It's worse than that, it's creepy. What is a single-player offline game phoning home anyway? On every play? It's crazy how much software companies get away with these days.

The frog is well and truly boiled.

I'd say you're understating this and it is actually strengthening a lot.

For example google trends shows "dnd" taking off:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22dnd%2...

It is actively trendy right now.

Hah, I do the same thing. On other sites too - the well-written negative reviews have a lot of value. Although, on some of the best games on steam, I've seen a few top negative reviews that say something like: "Why are you looking at the negative reviews? You know this game is great."

I think you're right though. Games have their place and are culturally important, but the trend has veered more toward optimizing for engagement (addiction) and dark patterns like overcharging for cosmetics and such.

No lone-wolf mode made me wonder if the game would be too fiddly for me, but there are other ways to streamline combat. Champion fighters, berserker barbarians, non-arcane trickster rogues are mechanically simple subclasses that are fun to play. 5e is forgiving for party composition in a way DOS2 isn't.

It's worth noting that Diablo 3 went through similar pains upon release; though with less "read the room" type issues like they're having now.

Maybe among your friends? Sales numbers don't back that up and anecdotally among my friends and classmates barely anyone played BG, but everyone played Quake, StarCraft, Diablo, Need For Speed, etc. Even among RPGs Morrowing and Fallout were much more popular and accessible back in the day.

I don't think that demographic is driving the sales. Anecdotally I hear/read fans of originals mostly complaining about how this is some turn-based reskinned D:OS with Zoomer-oriented Critical Role-themed writing and VO.

Yes, but naming the game "Baldur's Gate 3" instead of something like "Divinity: Dungeons & Dragons" is, unfortunately, a successful cash-grab. Which is to be expected considering that AFAIK _none_ of the original developers or writers worked on it.

I hope some day to play grand theft spaceship, grand theft dragon, and maybe grand theft dinosaur.

While there are some very difficult arcade games, Kings Field, SoulsBorne and Elden Ring build a landscape around difficulty in such a way that it becomes an inherent property of the world in which the games are set. The embodiment of difficulty is where these games shine;

- the landscape is a maze, and every new place you encounter needs you to overcome a sort of soft anxiety (Souls games were weird in this sense, every new place you encountered was a relief because it meant you were done with the previous place; but at the same time it was a chore because you became so accustomed to the previous place (LITERALLY HELL) that it felt like you were leaving your house for the unknown wilderness)

- the choreographic patterns of the enemies were exactly the same. You beat a boss forever, on NG+ every boss you encounter is a joke because you feel at home. The way enemies move makes you run backwards, and you feel like you're trapped in a no-match boxing contest where you're a salmon swimming around white sharks; until you realize that all of the mess happening is nothing else than scripted patterns and animated 3d meshes. The bosses seem strong because they seem random or 'human". Pontiff and Malenia seemed to me so spontaneous and virtuosos that it felt impossible to beat them on the first encounters, and it didn't felt "arcade" difficult, but organic-mozart-michelangelo difficult, everything in the fights was there to participate closely to the dramaturgic aspect of the game approach of difficulty.

- Kings Field save spots (and therefore, the lack of save spots) probably lead the way to the bonfire approach featured in souls games. It feels like a "galvanisation" of the concept of obstacle made possible only by the fact that you don't know in advance the location of possible "safe places" (it goes with point number 1). You have to RISK your runes/souls/money in order to progress through the unknown. Kings Field felt sometimes like a collection of safe place connected by some dev jokes that would insta-kill your character, and you knew that to reach hypothetical safe place B you had to go through real trap 1,2,3 and 4.

- Playing the game is a chore and a pleasure at the same time. The gameplay is incredible, the feel is rewarding, succeeding is satisfying and etc, but sometimes in my younger years when playing Souls I really could question my own desire to play the game: a lot of things in the game is made to impress/intimidate/bully you, I never identified what gave me the motivation to continue, all that I can say is that other games felt bland after playing my first fromsoftware game, and that since then I only open steam for one month everytime fromsoftware release something.

My only complaints about the game are the rough edges it's inherited from 5e and the general horniness of all the main characters. Otherwise having a really great time with it, fantastic game that deserves all the accolades it's getting

I heard of Divinity but just not into gaming anymore (too much other stuff going on). That said I'll probably find the time to play this on PS5 because it seems like a super polished immersive experience. Just like cyberpunk (although that was a bit disappointing).

My point is there's probably a bunch of "ex" gamers that pick a few games to play occasionally - it's very much down to quality of execution - if this game didn't have the graphics/voice acting/story I've seen from early access and was divinity level I'd just skip this as well.

You're unhappy that it's titled like a thematic sequel but isn't one? Or that the gameplay is too different than it's predecessors? Or something else?

There's an entire normal arcade mode where the characters are balanced and tiered. All the tournament formats use those presets.

Then there's the open world mode where your own character learns from these characters and creates your own moveset.

There are also zones later in the acts where they disable resting - this really impacts spell casters. You have to really ration your ability usage (rely on consumables for healing etc), somewhat annoyingly you have no real way of knowing how far through the no-rest zones you are (could be 4 or 5 fights in a row you need to get through or only 1 or 2). I'd often end these zones with big spells still in reserve cleric in particular with turn undead would have helped immensely in one area but I thought there would be another fight still to come so I saved it. This is somewhat true to tabletop D&D but left me feeling a little frustrated I think on repeated playthroughs these areas will be much less frustrating.

After the golden age of late 90s, CRPGs went into shadows of a very narrow niche until maybe 2012-2013. Larian were unlucky enough to work during that winter, and their games weren't particularly successful, although well known in the niche community. Pure RPGs were always niche, and it was hard for them to survive because the market has been split into AAA and indie, leaving no space for anything in between.

Then the non-mainstream communities like RPG Codex produced several indie RPGs like Age of Decadence which also piqued curiosity of the people outside of the niche who grew tired of the constant stream of shallow same-face sandbox action soups with RPG elements like Skyrim.

Larian in particular decided to have their presence on RPG Codex and 100% cater to their desires. They crowdsourced Divinity Original Sin development and implemented almost every reasonable advice RPG nerds gave them under their own vision. The result was a solid and fun game that was a breath of fresh air in the context of 2014. Since about that time, pure RPGs formed a much larger following that steadily grew over the years.

The current sales are mostly because the genre itself got popular again - without it they couldn't have possibly reached those numbers regardless of the quality of their game, as they never did in the previous 2 decades.

2011-2014 were transformative years after the massive boredom of the "next-gen" treadmill of the mid-late 2000s. CRPG is not the only genre that benefited from that. Military-like sandbox games skyrocketed in popularity, giving birth to various offshoots like Battle Royale; soulslike games multiplied; there was even a short revival of arena shooters, although not really successful.

You can definitely see the amount of effort put into recreating the castle/town.

Also Unreal Engine 5 is to me at the leading edge of graphics engines right now: https://youtu.be/-lkEOEEKYD0

Voice acting as well is another key thing I think easy to overlook but it helps a lot with the immersion and getting invested in the world. Pathfinder Wrath of Righteous was a fun game but lack of voice acting made it a slog to get through there were what felt like paragraphs of text to read through constantly. By mid way through the game I found myself skipping over a lot of it. Imagine if tabletop roleplaying the DM handed you a stack of paper to read every conversation instead of narrating what was happening - that was kind of how I felt.

Any true novelty is likely to come from a mid/indie developer.

you cannot. The money is interested in making more money. Good art may, or may not make money - and that's because the goal of the artist(s) aren't aligned with making money. It just so happens that it _could_ make money, and thus that became the pitch to investors.

If given the chance (imagine an unlimited UBI for example), the same artists would make such a game without investors (and might make an even better one...).

Fingers crossed that Diablo 4 will eventually be on sale for $30 and have reached a point where it's worth that much. That's my price cap for anything with always online single player, and I can't see that being fixed.

Maybe I can be generous and bump it up to $35 now to give them 50% of the launch price.

And either way, if there's a crowd of archers in the next room I wouldn't want to walk in (sneaking or no) where I have no cover, so I'm going to try and hold at the door. Still the better play even if it costs a whole turn of not being able to use my action.

The missing Ready action really tilts things toward those "alpha strike" characters made to hit first and hit hard, which isn't a design choice I like much. I want to be able to lure enemies into a room with minor illusion or other sounds and have the whole party readied the jump them.

That's entirely on D&D 5e rules. Combat with chars under lvl 5 is essentially 1 mechanic per class, and really boring.

Tabletop suffers from exactly the same issue, even if you use all the extra/optional subclasses and backstories. So does Solasta (the other 5e PC game)

Most will find a formula that works for a niche and stick with it. Which is smart because innovation increases both the chance of achieving something great and of releasing a fiasco.

Creative Assembly's Total War series had good and popular games but their popularity exploded when they made a Warhammer game despite the original fanbase preferring historical games and many hoping for a TW Medieval 3. Most games with the Warhammer IP at that time were mediocre at best. So brand doesn't carry on it's own and it helps when your target audience has nothing else that they might be interested to play when your game is released. Diablo 4 sucks and Pillars 2 was released in 2018.

given that the whole dark alliance branch exists and essentially turned the game into something totally different it's not like the precedent for radical change hasn't already been set.

also phrasing 'cash grab' in association to any 'Wizards of the Coast' IP as if it were any kind of surprise seems to be missing their whole business tactic for the past 20+ years.

See: the new Neverwinter Nights branches and the cadre of expansion packs/add-ons/dlcs/campaigns/skins/whatever.

if anything BG3 exhibits less cash-grab behaviors than the entire rest of the portfolio of WotC at the moment.

It reminds me of the montage scene in Matrix 4 where all these business types are telling Neo how to make a new hit game, when he already had made one, so he should be telling them.

This difference, is the key difference I've seen in my career between successful startups and ones that fail.

So I’m not surprised it’s doing well. I will probably try and have a play myself.

I wouldn't call it a defining characteristic since neither SoA nor ToB is happening in Baldur's Gate on nearby areas. But "top-down view cRPG heavy on RTwP D&D tactical combat with 6 character party" would be more or less correct, if imprecise, definition. Minsc unfortunately also seems to have become the distinctive characteristic of the series, but what can you do...

But that was my point - they didn't dare to name it "Baldur's Gate _3_ Dark Alliance". It would rub people the wrong way much less if they named the new game "Baldur's Gate: Divinity" I assume.

> also phrasing 'cash grab' in association to any 'Wizards of the Coast' IP as if it were any kind of surprise seems to be missing their whole business tactic for the past 20+ years.

Cash grab from Larian. Obviously I don't expect WotC to have any ethics or integrity.

> if anything BG3 exhibits less cash-grab behaviors than the entire rest of the portfolio of WotC at the moment.

I kinda agree, but I never claimed that BG3 is somehow most blatant cash grab from the long list of WotC cash grabs over the years. I'm just disappointed that they have succeeded with it :)

There is stinky game launcher. It might not waste my money, but it definitely wastes my time

Still puzzled about why Souls games difficulty is so overhyped on the Internet. Souls game have a gameplay which takes some time to get used to, don't shy from encounters with a bit of complexity and don't mind trolling the player a bit on their first go around a new level. It means you have to play for a bit before you are good.

They remain modern games however and are not overtly punishing. You always have a respawn point close to the boss room. Hardest challenges are optional. They give you ample space to get better if you want to grind. They try to avoid difficulty spikes. It's pretty far removed from hell, certainly a lot easier and fair that most NES games. There is a reason they are that successful.

I think I'm starting to get old.

The ready action is designed to get used for delaying actions to bypass initiative order.

If you're wrong about the one sentence in your comment that I have knowledge of, what other bits are wrong? Why should I assume the one sentence I can relate to is wrong but the other sentences are not?

Maybe that's the secret.

> I try not to regret it as wasted time

I wish games had more transferable skills … most games unfortunately are at best a very ineffective use of time.

The new is about 700k concurrent players though (the next evening it was already over 800k), not 700k units sold, and that's just a few days into launch. Don't know how concurrent players translates into units sold on Steam after such a short time, but I think you can easily multiply by 5..10.

What surprised me the most is that the game's first act has been in early access for everybody to try since 2020 (so most hardcore fans most likely bought the game already in early access), and yet the launch exceeded the wildest expectations.

This means that Larian must have done an exceptionally great job of balancing the expections of their hardcore fanbase and the general RPG audience.

That wasn't my intention. My intention was to point to the fact that production of fun AAA games is much lower than it was a decade ago. As a result, the few big hits hit even bigger.

Also the studio was already known for quality and some of their own brands were already quite successful, making them more or less the top CRPG developer that also brought a lot of innovation to the genre. Although Baldurs Gate certainly is a brand that draws additional people. I could imagine that their other games will also get in the focus again when people are finished with the new title.

That said, all the games you mentioned were a success I believe. Maybe not that large, but I think they all were "surprisingly" successful compared to many AAA titles that wished they were.

As far as readying an action, at minimum it could work like XCOM's "Overwatch" action, targeting the first enemy you see within range.

But it would be nice to give you a choice of targeting options so that you can designate a smaller area, just in case that's useful. But fine leave it as "first enemy in this area" instead of trying to give you full pencil and paper D&D flexibility. There is a UI for picking between options in an action, such as Enhance Ability needing you to pick an ability.

Speaking of delay, I know that's not part of 5e (it was in 3.5), but if we can't have ready action could we at least have the delay option? A lot simpler to implement and it'd at least help with the situations where you would have been better off at worse initiative.

But I can’t agree with your second statement. The problem with long boring text is not the lack of voice acting’s it’s the text itself. I’m not going to listen to some guy ramble about lore that seems unlikely to matter.

Even 100+ hours (without getting sick of it) is insane for a modern game for me. Like I put 35 hours into God of War Ragnarok and did most of the things (left maybe 10-15 hours worth of samey boring or overly difficult side activities) and I felt that overly padded that game out, I would have been happier with that game if it were about 20 hours long, I think. Still a great game though. One of the small handful of games I've completed the story for in the past five years.

Persona is the only other series I can usually get close to that many hours in without getting sick of it (I think I put 80 into Persona 5).

I do think the AAA market is recovering a little however in the last few years, pretty much exclusively thanks to japan.

Making it flammable sounds very powerful.

If you don't want to pay for hardware you don't get to own then console games might as well not exist.

I genuinely am surprised that there are people out there who think this way.

I'm the complete opposite. I skip all voice acting, because I read faster than anyone can deliver lines, and frankly I'm not there for the performance or the "experience". I'm there for the game. The voice acting doesn't add anything to the gameplay for me. I wish games that have dialog boxes would let me turn it off entirely, honestly.

They had their chance and came out lacking.

I nominate adding Torment: Tides of Numeneria to this; I discovered it's a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment (which I never got to play); I had never played a CRPG before and I could not put it down until I was done.

Also, I forgot about plain old jumping for the first ~15 hours of play. I was so stumped about a route I was supposed to take until I put on my glasses and _really_ scrutinized the action bar.

I gave my rogue an amulet that lets him use Misty Step; it's been an absolute game changer for my rogue stealth archer.