Baldur’s Gate 3 has blown away expectations and redefined what an RPG can be, and that may put Bethesda’s upcoming Starfield in a rough spot.
I’ll wait a few months before I get Starfield. Bethesda doesn’t have the best track record with new releases’ stability, and with game quality and gamer friendliness since their dreadful last Fallout cash shop game.
BG3 is great. I’m at the end of act 1 in single player and a bit further back in coop. But “redefined what an RPG can be”? Am I going crazy or is this just the usual hyperbole for the latest game?
Starfield is probably going to be very similar to previous Bethesda games, as usual.
“Redefined” is just an industry buzzword used to describe a title that AAA publishers can’t understand why it’s so successful. I firmly believe they are that out of touch with their consumers.
One really cannot underestimate how important presentation and production values is to the vast majority of players, even those taking the hobby seriously enough to read reviews and post on serious gaming forums. If a game is all textboxes, doesn’t feature decent enough graphics and isn’t fully voiced people just won’t be impressed with it or won’t even give it the time of day.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is just a CRPG with AAA production values, which we haven’t really gotten since Dragon Age: Origins, which is 14 years old at this point. And there is something to it, going into some random cave and starting a questline with unique character models, voiced dialogue and cutscenes is kind of more fun than only getting textboxes, even if the actual things you do aren’t any more involved or deep.
I’m with you on the hyperbole. BG3 has been a massive success, but it’s not really innovative or unique. In fact it’s terribly buggy and is missing several features the community has been begging for over years of early access. It suffers all of the same problems other RPGs suffer from.
It’s overall very high quality (other than the bugs), it serves a niche that is perpetually starving for content, and it encourages enthusiastic fans to buy copies for their friends. It has the names of Baldur’s Gate, DnD, and Faerun all going for it. It landed smoothly in between the release windows of FFXVI and Starfield so it has no major competition. That’s why it’s blown up the way it has.
It’s really good, I’m very happy everyone’s loving it, but it’s just… a good game that released with providential circumstance. Why can’t it just be that simple?
The thing is, BG3 hasn’t redefined anything. It has shown that there’s a market for games that do have extremely strong story and character writing and don’t have microtransactions and shitty mini-DLCs like skin packs and late-game equipment early on - basically, pre-Horse Armor gaming.
It’s the same as The Witcher 3 back when that released and also “redefined RPGs”.
Redefined in quality and depth of choices, maybe. It’s certainly a lot better than the vast majority of RPGs that have come out lately. I keep getting surprised while playing it at what’s possible.
