Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 is poised to be one of the biggest cinematic role-playing games in years & many devs are criticizing the scale/scope of it!
Interesting video describing various developers’ take on the game. Is it a genre-defining game or not?
Except my point has very little to do with complexity or how long it is. I rather a game be short than waste your fucking time, we don’t need 200+ hour games. It is one of those things I hate about modern gaming where if a game is less than 20 hours of enjoyment it is worthless to many. I want quality yet many AAA studios don’t pump out the best stuff. Halo infinite ended up as a trash fire that didn’t respect its players and has basically been put down because of pointless money grubbing. Every Ubisoft game follows the very same formula make a large empty world where you clear towers.
We as gamers should strive for games like BG3 because they were quality works that were made for the enjoyment of the player. They aren’t meant to fuck with you and hand over your wallet. Hell one of the biggest games this summer was a fucking roblox Battlefield game. People just want to play a good game that isn’t trying to always nickle and dime them. Its a plus when there is complexity but its not a requirement for it to work.
Edit: Larian is a studio that has basically been the poster child for “crowdfunding” and I personally am fine with that. This can be what happens when we support studios with an idea. There will be a ton of failure but crowdfunding has brought many top tier indie games especially in genres thought dead in modern gaming (FTL, Divinity Original sin, Shovel Knight, Wasteland 2, Superhot, Yooka-Laylee, Night in the Woods, A Hat in Time, Elite Dangerous, Ready or Not, etc.)
But that’s what the comments that people are taking as “criticisms of BG3” are talking about, and is the context for the video from OP. There aren’t developers saying “High quality games shouldn’t be the standard”.
I asked for examples of developers criticizing the scope of BG3, and you replied with examples. I guess I’m confused as to how I was supposed to know you weren’t talking about “complexity or how long it is” (aka. scope)?
But yes, if your point is “developers should make good games, and not bad games” (yes, I’m being reductionist) then sure, I agree with that, but that’s not really what I was trying to point out, and that’s not what the video was about.
I think saying you can make 2/3 games out of the effort of 1 is a more cynical approach of you should be milking your consumers, you don’t need to put this much effort into the game when 1/3 of that would have been “worthy” of release in the modern AAA space.
Since yes in a reductive point I’m just saying “Make good games, not bad ones idiot AAA devs” I’m just anti devs (more realistically publishers) trying to milk consumer’s wallets.