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 cannot play two games that are completely different from one another because one of them came out a month earlier” -Every human being ever who could only enjoy one thing
It is odd, but I suspect it shifts peoples expectations slightly even if they don’t think about it. Also people might not be willing to spend $60 two months in a row so Baldur’s Gate could be dipping into some of Starfields potential earnings here.
And Starfield is not coming to the PS5. So, the choice has be removed for the people who only have a PS5 to game on.
That is sad.
I have not yet bought BG3 because I’m waiting to see if Starfield is with $70.
BG3 is. It will be better than Starfield if you like to be treated like an adult. Starfield will be better if you want them to hold your hand but make sure you don’t do anything “wrong” that could “hurt your experience.”
I can’t though
I don’t even have enough time to play one game
As someone who enjoys RPGs, knowing I will have BG3 on my ps5 (let alone a significant backlog) makes me care less for missing out on starfield. Totally different games, but with huge RPGs and little play time, any such game can literally take up months of my gaming life. I suspect I will eventually want to play starfield, but I won’t be in a hurrry.
Not sure if I entirely agree with this; Bethesda has always made RPGs with mass appeal since TES IV: Oblivion. Personally I prefer RPGs with a stronger focus on role-playing and story, but I know many “casuals” that do not.
One thing I’ve personally disliked about Bethesda games since Skyrim, is their unrelenting willingness to dumb absolutely everything down; even at the cost of making the game world plastic, as if it’s over-catering towards the player. There are no choices, just the illusion of choice and it makes the experience feel faker than fake.
I started with Oblivion and hated how dumbed down Skyrim was. I later played Morrowind and bounced off once (I was too young and stupid, having mostly experienced more “modern” games), but the second time I tried it I loved it. The amount of freedom they lent you made me realize what was wrong with all the later games.
They make roller-coaster rides now, with everything trying to get you into combat as quickly as possible, and the combat encounters being carefully crafted, then you’re on to the next ride. My first several hours in Morrowind my second time included no combat whatsoever and the game didn’t have an issue with it. You can also skip large portions of dungeons with the right skills, and you can also change how you navigate the open world with spells. It’s a wonderful experience that I hope they eventually realize is better than treating players like idiots.
I started with Morrowind and the dumbing down from that to Oblivion puts the dumbing down from Oblivion to Skyrim to shame.
I’m sure those who started with Arena or Daggerfall would probably say the same about Morrowind, though.
Fallout was less dumbed down, believe it or not, but I will never forgive them for removing my ability to aim for the eyes or the groin.
The fact they removed the climbing skill from Daggerfall to Morrowind sucks. It gives an alternative to levitation (or buffed jumping) to non-magic characters. Then Todd liked barbarian characters and saw what magic characters could do, so they nerfed them to be about equal. In Skyrim magic characters are just worse in vanilla. You get so few options it’s stupid. Skyrim is just a bad game that mods have turned into something you can play again, though even then they’re worse than Morrowind or older in terms of options.
I’m really hoping Starfield is a return to form with procedural generation and references to the classic games, but I doubt it. It’s possible it gives choice back to the players. I will absolutely praise them if they do, but if they’re just pandering I will do my best to roast them.
Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield are completely different experiences though. The fact that they’re even in the same genre serves more to highlight just how broad “RPG” really is, rather than suggest BG3 has somehow made Starfield’s impending launch more difficult.
I don’t think it matters if they’re different experiences.
What matters is that the game achieves what is set out to do and if that is an enjoyable and unique experience. Another thing that matters is if they can make a AAA game without scummy monetization.
I would argue that they succeeded.
By some people’s standards, every game is an RPG today
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.
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” 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.
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.
I haven’t gotten to play it yet, but from the gameplay reveal and stuff, it looks… like a traditional CRPG? Like a right proper successor to BG 1 and 2? Bigger, more polished, and not THAC0 based, but an evolution of what used to be plentiful?
Is this not just like saying “this new remastered Duran Druan greatest hits album is really redefining music!”?
Yes and yes
I agree this a statement from an ignorant. I love BG3 but it is just an Ultima but better. With today technology.
Upvote for mentioning Ultima and making me laugh this morning.
I compared the BG3’s Start Screen that has the party opening the door in the cave and the party exploring with torches to Ultima’s start screen with the party fighting monsters.
OMG thanks for the link. Nostalgia intensifie!
My first Ultima was the two, but I was super young. Then I played a lot to the six. Finally Ultima 7 with serpent Isle extension was the sweet slap in the coconuts.
In my book it stayed for years rhe best RPG (with underworld 2).
Good times.
I first played Ultima 3. I was a teen and thought the game was huge. Then Ultima 4 was a lot bigger. I love the music and have the music for the Wanderer as my cell phone ring. It sounds very different than any other ring I can always tell it is my phone.
Fun times.
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.
Yeah I’d sooner say “gone back to its roots” than “redefined”. This is how I remember RPGs.
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?
Disclaimer: I am a massive Baldur’s Gate 3 fan and fully expected it to blow-up, admittedly not in the way it has. I personally consider the game to be my favorite game of all time and won’t go into too much detail as to why, I am only attempting to explain the phenomenon that is this game from my perspective. It will be hyperbolic, but hopefully, I’m able to illustrate why I am.
Larian has been an indie developer for quite some time now and have been getting more and more popular with each game, similar to CDPR’s trajectory before the CP2077 launch. They have been a clear ally of the anti-DRM and microtransaction movement since its inception to now, a day and age where publishers have gotten so cozy with monetization that we have glorified mobile games releasing as fully priced AAA games with minimum effort.
Here comes along this developer that has incrementally gotten better at this one, admittedly niche genre of games. Then, it is revealed that those games, already well-loved, were sorta an audition for the D&D franchise and Wizards of the Coast. And then the same developer gets the license to Baldur’s Gate, takes 6 years with a massive, talent, and passionate studio, and delivers a game with legitimately hundreds of hours of interesting stories to tell.
This game is now the highest rated PC game of all time, highest ratest game in a year where a mainline Zelda game of all time, and has turned a NICHE genre to one of the games with a top 10 amount of concurrent players on a SINGLE platform. All while giving players so much… freedom. Gameplay wise (choices, experimentation, splitscreen or online co-op, etc), monetization wise (no-DRM, no-MTX, etc).
I completely understand if, in your eyes, Baldur’s Gate 3 is meh or even a great game that “isn’t anything special.” But this type of zeitgeist is only captured by a very few amount of games in existence, and the fact an indie-turned-AAA developer managed to do it while promoting the absolute best politics and sentiment in video games? That’s a massive win, in my opinion. This moment is very special in gaming, mostly because of its significance in this current time in history.
I almost bought Baldurs Gate 3, but stopped when I realised I had DOS2 in my Steam library that I haven’t played.
So I’m going to be playing DOS2 for a bit, and when Starfield comes out I’ll buy BG3 at a reduced price, then when I’ve finished that I’ll buy Starfield at a reduced price
I was replaying DOS2 while I waited for BG3. It is a great game. The only thing I think it was missing was cinematics. The voice acting is great but it plays out with you looking down at your characters. I believe Larian knew this was a weak spot of their games and fixed it with BG3. Now their cinematics are fun to watch. It is now very entertaining to interact with these interesting NPCs.
I was playing DOS2 dwarven Beast as a fighter with a shield.
I felt the exact same way – I played ~20hrs of DOS2 over the past few years, about 1/4 of that in the lead up to BG3’s release, and wasn’t sure if I would bounce off of BG3 like I did DOS2. I’m about 25hrs in BG3, and having an absolute blast. It really does feel like a more refined, and friendlier experience than DOS2, and the in engine cinematics for dialogue are a huge part of that.
Hell yeah. Thanks for saying this.
I wish BG3 had interaction between player characters in coop, I seem to remember DOS2 having that but it’s been a while and I never finished it.
You are correct. Your friend could have the option to interject with their own sentence. Cool until you play with someone who immediately zones out when a cutscene is playing.
I bounced off DOS1 and DOS2 hard but BG3 is great and I’m having a great time (once I restarted with a character that fit the party and my playstyle more).
🧠
Tl;Dr: No-name site makes hot take with no evidence.
Someone go make a tweet and screenshot it so they can go, “Bauldurs Gate fans said this!”
worse than no-name imo. the kind of name you quickly learn to scroll past in the search results. shit-name
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.
I love Bethesda games and I am sure this game will… probably be a big success…? I play their Elder Scrolls series of games and these are iconic. I hadn’t planned to get Starfield but if it is a great game with planets to explore, I may buy it later.
with planets to explore
My worry here is that the majority will be procedurally generated planets.
Or how well they can pull off procedurally generated planets and have interesting and fun things to do there.
I play Valheim and it has procedurally generated land to explore. But their dungeon mazes are just hallways and doors that open to nothing. This becomes boring fast.
I have also played Bloodborne- Lovecraftian masterpiece. It has random generated dungeons and it is done well and are fun to explore. But nothing beats a human well crafted dungeon. At least not yet.
I am thinking the same thing. I do want Starfield but do not have a PC to play it on sadly. I am buying BG3 when it drops for PS5 next month so I also wonder how much they will lose out on by not having it released on PS.
Feels like a Uno reverse if BG3 moved up to not compete with Starfield.
what a stupid article these are two very different games
Starfield is going to be disappointing as fuck after bg3.
Skywind or bust.
I fully expect Starfield was going to be disappointing, full stop.
The only way to anticipate a Bethesda release.
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