This is the best summary I could come up with:
Baldur’s Gate 3 just hit half a million concurrent players, and is already on track to challenge mega-franchise Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Legacy for this year’s Steam sales crown.
While old-school tactics franchises like XCOM vanish from purview, series like Final Fantasy drop turn-based gameplay altogether chasing broader audiences, and classic names like Diablo go always-online rammed with in-app purchases — Larian said no.
It’s also a turn-based RPG that follows cRPG traditions carried forward by a shrinking number of studios who seem to have convinced themselves in various ways that players don’t want this kind of game.
Forget for a moment that the game is just insanely good, with great writing, endless Dungeons & Dragons-inspired depth, and quite polished, optimized PC performance.
As such, I’m similarly nervous for Dragon Age 4, which according to leaks, has dropped tactical play in favor of chasing more action-oriented combat, doubtless with trend-chasing in mind.
Larian’s respect for its audience, the relentless pursuit of quality over quarterly targets, and the rejection of trend-chasing in favor of elevating classic gameplay conventions are being rewarded by gamers in droves.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Dragon Age Inquisition was already a giant pile of shit, why would anyone expect anything else from a studio that hasn’t released a decent game in over a decade?
Do what people want and they buy your game?
Lets get those fucking MBAs out of the gaming industry.
Fuck you bobby kotik for creating this mess.
It all started with the horse armor and we laughed
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For anyone else who is wondering - the game works great on the steam deck. I actually prefer it over my macbook pro because it’s easier to read the screen. I’ve gotten hours logged into the game so far.
It is a perfect update of the franchise. The storylines and writing are top notch, and the technology is blowing me away with how they managed to update everything while keeping the feel.
Just started playing myself, annoyed that I had to start over because people who join you in multiplayer PERMANENTLY JOIN THE PARTY! No way to dismiss them meaning you’re permanently locked out of Story Based Party Members…
Brilliant…
Whoever came up with that should be fired, out of a cannon and into the sun.
This is great news. Hopefully their success will inspire more studios to hold onto the genre.
i’m telling you, i hadn’t really been considering it all that seriously, but all this positivity absolutely makes me want to just go ahead and dive in with everyone… and reward the devs…
The paradox of homogeneization… The more the industry trends towards chasing what’s considered to work and be safe, the more room it leaves for the truly bold like these guys to be successful by doing what’s considered to not work anymore.
Always beautiful to see.It’s true. Kevin Feige (of the Marvel movies) once said something like, “People love chocolate ice cream, but if that’s all you offer them every day, they’ll start to hate it.” and for a time, it seemed like he and Disney / Marvel understood that, which lead to such a wide range of movie genres for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the breakout successes… but now I feel like they’ve forgotten that, and now we get the formulaic “Marvel Movie” template shoveled out, and now they’re slowly starting to fail.
And for good reason. People need variety, and it’s because entertainment producers don’t understand this need that so many major studios are flailing. Hence the recent purge at Pixar for example, and why Ubisoft is struggling lately, etc. It’s not just game publishers that have this issue, it’s movies, tv, and comics too. Like the recent “Death” of Ms. Marvel which is eerily similar to all the extremely temporary crap that happened to Peter Parker’s Spiderman in the past, like the “death” of his aunt, or his “marriage” to Mary Jane.
Great to see baulders gate 3 doing well. A perfect storm of development conditions and we get rewarded at the end of it with a fantastic game. Hopefully heaps of extra extra content down the track to keep it going
Why do people say “perfect storm of conditions”? Larian has worked hard to perfect their style of crpgs through the divinity series. They put an emphasis on good storytelling and listening to fan feedback. They do early access to perfect their systems. They hire writers, composers and developers based on merit. They care about what they are creating. This is not a perfect storm but good management and development cycle. There is nothing random or lucky about it.
