this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3 is defying game industry trend-chasers — and is being rewarded for doing so | Windows Central (www.windowscentral.com)
submitted 1 year ago by nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[–] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 97 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago

Thank you for sharing this awesome news! Time to go pick up this game, huzzah.

[–] illah@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does it save to the cloud so I can play on both?

[–] EnglishMobster@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Yes, and if you wind up moving to a console (once console versions come out) it will support those saves on console as well - if the launcher is to be believed.

[–] FunkyMonkey@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yup, I've tested windows->steam deck so far. No reason to believe it won't work the other way around (paths seem to be compatible at least).

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[–] InfiniteLoop@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

how’s the current state of controller support? i played a bit during EA but had been planning on waiting til the PS5 release cuz I figure the layout options would be in a better state by then.

[–] MasterCelebrator@feddit.de 10 points 1 year ago

The cool Thing about playing with Controller is, that you can play it like a 3rd Person game, which is a cool option to experience the gane in a different way. But yeah problem is that all the skills and spells are not as essy to manage as with Mouse and keyboard.

[–] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Different than D:OS2, which means I've skipped a couple turns accidentally while adjusting to the new scheme. And there is some level of "I have 30 actions I could do so have multiple screens of choices to sort through", but it's not bad to get used to and I think it mostly works reasonably well. There are a couple changes vs D:OS2 I would have rather seen reverted (I like the old inventory better), but for the depth of the options you have it's done pretty well. As much as I personally want to play everything with a controller, there's a reason certain games don't bother supporting them. They do a good job of showing that controllers are capable with good design.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 94 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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!

[–] Call_Me_Maple@lemmy.world 82 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People are just tired of the anti-consumer bullshit and it shows. I'm glad Larian are thinking ahead instead of grabbing the cash now and running unlike most modern day triple A developers.

Really shows that they care for the games that they make and the audience they've amassed.

Hopefully this helps kill MTX, lootboxes and Battlepasses.

[–] rhokwar@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hate MTX, lootboxes, and battle passes, but I cannot imagine that they'll go away unless it's to replace them with something even worse.

[–] kadu@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Those "games" on Nintendo Switch that are just a license to access a cloud streaming version of the title is, in my opinion, a much worse issue than MTX.

In fact, one of them was taken offline - the Switch is still active, which means there are people who paid full price for a singleplayer game and it no longer exists.

[–] rhokwar@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Oh wow I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah you're right that does sound worse.

[–] Call_Me_Maple@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Evil is evil. Greater, lesser, middling. If I had to choose I'd rather not choose at all.

[–] Animoscity@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Good concise bot

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[–] Yewb@kbin.social 88 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It all started with the horse armor and we laughed

[–] _wintermute@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And then bought the fucking horse armor apparently.

[–] sodiumbromley@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well think of the ROI for horse armor. One new model. How many sales do you need before you cover that cost?

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[–] paddirn@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago (7 children)

EXCEPT it uses a launcher, that’d be my only complaint. When I click ‘Play’, I want my game to launch, not take me to another screen where I have to click ‘Play’ yet again.

[–] KJ118@lemmy.world 79 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"--skip-launcher" added to launch options in steam should skip straight to the game

[–] the_gmg@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I literally read this while waiting for shaders to process on first run. Good timing and thanks!

[–] h3rm17@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In Linux it is pretty much mandatory, it asks for NVIDIA 536 drivers, max on linux is 535... skip the launcher, and suddenly my drivers are okay (and tbf, aside from my card not being extra good, and a couple texture bleed in portraits and some weird texture loading issues (like, some times faces look like they were hyper pimpled, for a lil while, then looks normal) it plays amazingly

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[–] GyozaPower@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On one hand though, it at least offers something with the launcher: cross-saving. Not for everyone, but kinda neat if you also play in a console.

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[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago

add --skip-launcher to the launch options

[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago

You can add --skip-launcher to the game launch options. I actually did it while debugging an issue getting the game to launch and have never even seen the launcher despite playing quite a few sessions!

It'd be nice not to have to tweak things like that but at least the option is there similar to Cyberpunk

[–] SamboT@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

Any other reason to not like launchers other than 2 clicks? Just wondering...

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[–] BudgieMania@kbin.social 63 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CIWS-30@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Poggervania@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Adding onto this, it also doesn’t help that executives go “hey, this movie/game/show has proven to work in the past and generated X amount of money, let’s do it again but slightly different,” which also contributes to everything feeling the same and formulaic due to corporate entities wanting their investment back on a “creative” entertainment product.

[–] IAmTheZeke@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

You seem like someone I could talk to at a party for hours

[–] XLRV@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago

That's how you succeed, you make a great game, and be pro customer. Not complicated.

[–] Heeveho@lemm.ee 28 points 1 year ago

Divinity OS2 had a dungeom master/builder and workshop support. Im assuming that will be expanded upon and put into BG3. I cant wait for peoples custom campaigns. The game is pure creative excellence and exactly what gamers have been wanting for a long time. A game you buy once.

[–] TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is great news. Hopefully their success will inspire more studios to hold onto the genre.

[–] theodewere@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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..

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[–] AnonymousLlama@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] talung@lemmy.talung.org 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do people know this game was in early access for more than a year. They were fine-tuning and really paying attention.

A lot of factors lead to this reward. But Imo, it's them building what could have been a 7/10 game (Divinity games), spending a lot of time polishing and then Publicly releasing a 10/10 game

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[–] snapsofnature@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Would you guys recommend this for a casual gamer I love playing Zelda but rarely progress the story because I just like exploring. I know they aren't the same game but just giving an example of how I play games. Also, never played the other games before.

[–] pacoboyd@lemm.ee 33 points 1 year ago

I'm gonna be the guy that says no. It's not an open world exploration game, it's more of an exposition game. Playing in small bits is likely gonna leave you stuggling to remeber where the story left off and what you were trying to do. Maybe if you did chunks of the story at once but even short sessions for me turn into hours.

[–] BloodForTheBloodGod@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

No, probably not for casual. The D&D combat takes a good bit of time spent.

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[–] agentshags@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Does anyone know if you had to have played the first two games to understand the story? Or is it standalone, or do they catch you up on lore?

[–] Proofofnothing@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

It seems completely separate, as it should be tbh. I am sure there will be sone references but this title has nothing to do with the narrative events of bg1 and 2. It is just the setting afaik.

[–] Maolmi@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As someone who has played BG1 and 2 and is now 21 hours in the game ... so far there are no references. But the story, the worldbuilding and the characters are sooo gloriously brilliant

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[–] RQG@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I'm very happy to hear that make fantastic video games without any nonsense attached is still a business model that works today. Good to hear Larian and BG3 are doing great. Very well deserved.

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