I think that one (HUGE) part of BG3’s success is that it was in Early Access for, what, 2-3 years? During which it grew a dedicated modding scene, received a metric fuck-ton of feedback, and regularly dropped large content patches. This wasn’t an average dev cycle, and I think it shows. In some ways, the Dev. Feedback and interactivity reminded me a lot of the way Warframe does dev interactions.
Would it be so bad if games didn’t have insane budgets? Most of my favorite games from the past decade are from small studios operating on pizza and hope.
BG3 did have a pretty huge budget though. I would totally be fine if games took notes from BG3 but reduced scope a lot. Bioware used to make games similar to BG, but they stopped and now make garbage. The idea other studios can’t make similar games is wrong. They can’t make games this big usually though without publishers telling them they need to include microtransactions and other bullshit.
Black Isle was the publisher, Bioware developed the game. Baldurs Gate lead to BG2, which lead to Neverwinter Nights, which lead to Knights of the Old Republic.
Kind of! Though if we are being entirely honest, the real thing to blame is the head writer being replaced and the dev time cut by almost a year.
Personally would have enjoyed it more if they went with the Biotics/Dark Energy that Drew Karpyshyn had put down groundwork for, rather than the AI subplot that Mac Walters hastily slapped together for ME3 that directly contradicted ME1 threads and subplots.
Uhh… today’s AAA studios have THOUSANDS of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets, and huge IPs on which to draw. Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age… these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian. Like, an order of magnitude larger. This is gaslighting and whining. I’m not having it. Do better, AAA devs. Do a lot better.
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