Re telling people to play BG2 first meaning you're bad at business: au contraire.
"Hey your game costs the same as BG2" is a lot like "hey your book costs the same as Pride and Prejudice." And the answer to that is NOT "oh, but my book is totally better" (even, possibly, if it is). It's to say "that's fine, go read it, read mine after."
Like PC Gamer, was looking forward to your take on BG3!
I originally played your games, starting with Geneforge, on disk. Been playing story-driven RPGs for a long time.
It's been exciting to see my friends and partner try and love BG3. I'm playing a 4 person co-op campaign (it's going to take forever) with folks who have never played this kind of game before, and we're having a great time.
Thank you for the pro-union plug. Way back when I got involved in computing--1975, it was, and my company incorporated 2 years later in 1977--I was ***appalled*** that it had no unions to protect its workers. And have seen the results for decades, in the lives of people in all aspects of the industry being hurt or ruined by the greed of their employers.
Maybe, just maybe *this* time Larian’s work will click with me. I’ve played through five of their games, from the original Divine Divinity (yes, they actually called it that) to Divinity: Original Sin 2, and…
My most vivid memory of their games remains the time I finally triumphed over a boss without losing half my party. And then the boss’ post-fight dialog popped up. It stopped character movement mechanics. It didn’t stop, “you’re standing in fire” mechanics. So half my party died by way of gormlessly standing there and burning to death.
But hey, eventually I came around on Obsidian as well, and I *hated* Obsidian. Now I can’t wait for the Outer Worlds 2. Maybe working in something other than their own worlds with a system based on something someone else built will finally make me see what everyone else sees in these Belgian Bioware substitutes.
Hopefully it will hit for you like it did for me, and I also didn't click with the Divinity games (although I had a great time co-op battling through Original Sin with a mate, loved the combat but just couldn't stand the dialogue and story).
I also breezed through OS with my best mate and it was great fun, despite the quirky story. But OS2? Check the forums and you'll find out that most players finish just the first two Acts and start over sometime after that. The problem is that for me BG3 suffers from the same issue, no thanks to its extensive EA stay. The first Act is well polished and exciting and then the game loses momentum as soon as you step into the mists. I am honestly trying to convince myself to continue playing after the battle at the Inn and still haven't managed to do so. It's exactly the same with Obsidian's efforts that turn into a slog in the middle of the story... such as it is. I'd never imagine that I would be looking back so fondly at New Vegas, for all its bugs and issues. From that game onwards, it's like their stories turned into a boring nothingsoup.
New Vegas is one of those games I find people are borderline religious about. Like most such games, you probably just had to be there at the time. As for their other efforts? I’m inclined to agree.
Worst offender in my eyes in Neverwinter Nights 2 – aka, why I hated Obsidian for so very long. Yes, New Vegas was fine, and yes, I really loved Outer Worlds, but their CRPG efforts are… mediocre to screamingly terrible. It does so many things wrong, especially outlined in the blogpost above. Even if their games have routinely let me down, I should be ecstatic Larian took the throne from Bioware, and not Obsidian.
BG3’s like, “There's bad goblins and good refugees, with a few side arguments to add detail. You get to make a few high-stakes decisions to keep you involved, but nothing that ruins the whole game. You get plenty of time to find your footing before it dumps gods and power politics on your head.” NWN2’s like “you’re being attacked by… uh… Bladelings! And … Duergar!” It’s a freakin’ deepcut D&D Madlib. Then it devolves into the sloggiest slog that ever slogged.
Their own game and world building efforts have been… honestly, not much better. I’d say Pillars of Eternity has more competent balance and design, but somehow manages to be both more boring and even more nihilistic than Divinity. I played through D:OS and the sequel. I couldn’t even be bothered to finish Dreadfire.
And it’s not like I don’t want to love these games. Of course I do – that’s why I keep trying and keep hoping. But… really, my measure of a great game is simple: do I go back and play it again? Maybe (probably) it’s just the nostalgia talking, but Spiderweb seems to be the only CRPG company that can still make games that I come back to.
I tried so hard to like PoE and Deadfire actually kept me interested longer than the first game, I'll give it that. At least Larian can make compelling characters. Zany, disjointed storytelling aside, the companions in DOS II were interesting to me. In PoE? I can remember 4 of them from both games combined and not a single thing about their stories or a memorable quote. And like you say, their game just slog to a crawl after a certain point. BG3 has interesting characters too. I just wish they could make them feel more like companions and less like followers.
I feel exactly like you. CRPGs are my favourite games. I'm just having a tough time finding anything that can match or finally surpass the golden years of BioWare and Black Isle. It seems to me that Larian is the only one who's really trying.
>Honestly, Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't do anything truly new. It's a game where quantity has a quality all its own. This game does what has been done before at an unprecedented scale, level of detail, quality, fun, and just plain style. It's good, it's BIG, and the quality continues the whole way through.
Verifiably untrue. Act III is nigh unplayable from technical standpoint, Act II has countably less to explore than I. I is what they polished for two years of EA, II is where they started cutting corners, III is where they turned it into an art.
>One of the things that makes BG3 work is it has a really good story, and it tells it well.
A good way to start your analysis is with a ridiculous claim. A bad way to end it is to never support it.
>First, it has a great hook. You start with mind-control worms in your head that give you powers but will kill you soon. Instantly compelling and full of urgency and mystery, in the first few minutes of the game.
>Second, the pacing is good, which is key in a lore-heavy game like this. In Act 1, it dumps you into a very simple world with very simple factions and forces you to make high-stakes decisions about them.
The urgency mentioned in the first line fights against you wanting to get involved with stuff mentioned in the second line. You either try to skip most of the game, as some retards online admitted to do, or, more likely, you forget about the apparent "urgency" in fighting a cure, and thus the the first crack in player's immersion appears. That's ignoring a fact that by the story's own rules, the tadpole subplot could be solved by a 4th level cleric.
>Fourth, once you're past the intro, you learn of the existence of the Head Bad Guy.
No, you don't. At that point you're not sure the Absolute exists (and it technically doesn't), and most likely think the BBEG is the cult leader, which the writers want to be a red herring. So you could've rightly praised the writing here, but didn't know to. And besides, you fail to explain how that'd be a positive. In Fallout you don't start to hear about BBEG until a third to half in the game. In Planescape:Torment you don't learn of him until the last stretch of story. In Arcanum you don't really learn about him until the last dungeon.
>Third, the characters immediately start trying to have sex with you. Very attention-grabbing.
>Fifth, your companions are interesting people, funny, flawed, and charming in equal measure.
It's easy to tell you struggled to say anything good about the companions, beyond the most bland generalities.
>More importantly, they immediately start making demands of you.
Gale does. Technically Lae'zel does too but if you try to acquiesce her, you first go through brutal for level 2 characters encounters to be greeted by an immersion-breaking prompt that the next area is for high-level chars, so you turn back with her bitching away. Others are just waiting for you to graciously let them join you.
>Like, you need their help, but they immediately make it clear they won't fight for free. Another example of giving interesting choices early only.
No, they fucking don't. Not even Gale. He takes his time until he starts asking for items. Others just stand there waiting to do what they created to: joining you. At least Wyll is busy helping the tieflings and Lae'zel tries to get to the creche, but Wyll and Astarion just stand around, and Shadowheart keeps convienently bumping into you, because if you choose to ignore her the plot starts falling apart.
>What really impresses me about this is that while BG3's story is really involving, you never actually see that many words.
>However, let's be honest ... In 2024, a game with a ton of reading can do well, but it won't be a megahit.
If you want to make a megahit go make Candy Crush or go after the CoD audience, or create another Halo killer. RPGs will always be a niche. BG3 is unique because it had unlimited (to a point) funding from WoTC. If other studios try to replicate the voice acting standards they won't have resources left for the rest of their games. And dating simulators already exist.
>actors
Yes, they help make up for lack of any good story or characterization for the average glue sniffer. This isn't storytelling.
>That's the storytelling aspect of it.
To sum up, you barely started saying anything about storytelling, most of it false or generalities and then you finished.
I mean, it's an aesthetic judgment. If you didn't like that story, that's cool. No story is universally loved. What I'm trying to say is why I liked it. And I'm doing it, as I do with all my writing, as a creator. I'm picking out a half dozen choices they made that I think are really strong.
I don't want to go into too many specifics about the story or these arguments because I'm not trying to write a book here, but I’ll pick out one thing to try to show what I’m getting at!
“The urgency mentioned in the first line fights against you wanting to get involved with stuff mentioned in the second line.”
No! That’s not how this works! That’s not how ANY of this works!
This isn’t a novel. It’s a game. There are 80 things going on. Wandering. Fighting. Solving puzzles. Fighting. Looting. Fighting. Opening empty boxes.
The purpose of the story is to give some emotional resonance to the other stuff, to make the game more than the sum of its parts. There is no real suspense about the worms. Every player knows they aren’t going to get converted. RIGHT!? It’s not meant to be some bulletproof story thing. It’s seasoning. It’s herbs.
The companions don’t make lots of demands on you, and all the companions don’t demand stuff right away, because that’s not the game! They spread out their demands to remind you they’re characters. Again, it’s seasoning. Gale asks for something. You play a while. Lae’zel asks for something. It's not Companion Simulator Pro. It’s one splash of color in a big painting.
Play RPGs or don’t, it’s fine. But you’re pricing yourself out of the market.
I thought this was just an intro and the real "picking apart" of the story would happen later, when I suddenly ran into the end of the article. Disappointing. There's a lot more to say on the story, what works and what doesn't, other than noticing that its VO is great and its text isn't overly verbose.
That storytelling sells is very true, look at any sport. If there's no story behind a match, e.g. a UFC match, nobody cares. If there's some story, like the two guys used to spar together, but then their friendship fell apart, and now they roast each other on social media, suddenly it's a sold out arena. And another point is that watching sports without commentary is just not the same, the commentary adds to the storytelling. Games that are purely about combat like Dungeon Rats perform 5 times worse than their storied counterparts like Age of Decadence. Look, I just accidentally wrote more on that point than the author did.
I'm a bit surprised when people praise BG3 for its story and companions. I mean, yes, it's not bad, and it's an improvement over previous Larian titles (I have to admit they grow steadily from game to game, from a very bland story of D:OS, to a better one with colorful companions in D:OS2, to mostly competent, but still not amazing one in BG3). But I still like story and companions in Owlcat games better, despite the lack of facial animations and limited voice-over (but I love to read, so maybe that's why). Frankly, for world-building and philosophy I like YOUR games much better than BG3 - its story is pretty generic and shallow fantasy fare, especially when compared to complexity of Geneforge's conflict.
I mean, I loved BG3 - as I loved D:OS 1 & 2, - but it was mostly the mechanics, and not the story that did it for me. Larian sure know how to build a combat encounter, and how to give you tools to overcome it in endlessly varying ways - there is no denying it. But story? Well, it's not bad, but I was never too hooked on it, and I haven't spend a sleepless night thinking about factions and their motivations here. Really, it's more of a dark comedy, with 3 hapless idiot servants of banished gods who imagine themselves much more clever than they really are, and suffer for it, with party as agents of this suffering.
The story is pretty generic in large parts, but most RPG plots are pretty generic. It goes with the genre. The question is how interesting the stuff hanging off the main framework is. The brain worms. Auntie Ethel. The story of the Emperor. I think there's a lot of neat stuff in there.
"It goes with the genre" - but it mustn't! OK, if you're making a straight old-school dungeon crawler, or a tactic RPG, sure, go ahead a plunk an evil wizard who stole Amulet of Whatever at the lowest level and be done with it - as long as mechanics are fun, the story may take a step aside, as Knights of Chalice prove. But a high-budget story-heavy RPG... Here, generic plot seems like a wasted opportunity. Maybe I'm asking too much, but I want games to be more like books, where there are all kinds of complex, interesting plots that make you think (yes, even in fantasy titles - Brandon Sanderson's worlds are a good example), than like Hollywood blockbusters. Witcher series manages that, for example - CD Projekt somehow managed to preserve all the right parts from Sapkowski's books. The overall plot might still seem generic - rescue the princess, defeat the evil wizard - but so much other good stuff happens around it, so much choices that let you pick your philosophy, not just your side of alignment chart...
I have to admit that BG3, too, have at least some interesting quests, yes. The same, actually, can be said about Divinity: Original Sin 2. I distinctly remember my impressions of this game - a weak main plot, but brilliant companion stories. I just wish Larian would finally manage to write a really great main storyline, too.
"Third, the characters immediately start trying to have sex with you. Very attention-grabbing." It is attention grabbing, but it's also extremely annoying and, frankly, disappointing. And I'm far from a prude. But I don't want my story-driven RPGs to remind me of adult visual novels where everyone throws themselves at you just because you're the MC. In those games, that's the whole deal: the action and the crazy gonzo-like excuses people will find to drop their pants for you. But that's not suitable for an RPG because it diminishes companions to the role of hero-worshipers.
And that, unfortunately, is where BG3 falls flat on its face and breaks its nose. It's all about player worship. Everyone tells the player how wonderful they are (unless they really, really try to ruin things for everyone), and with few exceptions (see Gale) they don't expect much from them in return. It doesn't feel like the companions are their own people, even the most antagonizing ones, such as Lae'zel. In BG, if you tried to keep both the Zhentarim and the Harpers in the group for a significant amount of time they would come to blows and kill each other. This had never before happened in the history of RPGs (and, unfortunately, unless I'm mistaken, since). Want Jaheira to join you? Sure, but you have to put up with Khalid or no deal. Same with Minsc and Dynaheir. These companions had conditions for the player. Too much Mr. Niceguy? Montaron and his bestie would leave in disgust. Too much of the opposite and most good characters would do the same. It's nearly impossible to do that in BG3 (people have tried). Not to mention consistency with the world. I half-expected a bloodbath when the Selunite priestess blessed Shadowheart, but all she did was whine as if someone mildly annoyed her. We're talking Christians and Muslims in the midst of the Crusades here. These religions (Shar and Selune) have been in open war for countless millennia. Heck Shadowheart had previously made a point of saying that she would defile any Selunite shrine if she came across one in the Underdark.
I had high hopes for BG3 to be honest and although it's far from a bad game (in fact, I'll agree that it's the best CRPG to appear in years, probably since BG2 itself), its still very disappointing in its storytelling imho. It's as if CDPR's games never existed as far as Larian is concerned.
I can totally see where you're coming from. It's a legit aesthetic preference.
But it's not the game I personally want. Reading the description of the game you want stresses me out. I spent 100 hours in BG3. I don't want to feel like I'm walking a tightrope all the time.
I mean, at the end I was enjoying my party and relying on them. If the warrior I built my party around takes off 70 hours in because of some moderate decision I made? That sucks!
"I half-expected a bloodbath when the Selunite priestess blessed Shadowheart"
But Shadowheart IS a Selunite! Just on a temporary detour.
You make a good point but didn't this work in Baldur's Gate? I mean, you couldn't get to max positive or negative reputation with just one decision. It took consistency and dedication to get there. And the companions that were offended offered plenty of warnings before leaving. I'm not dreaming of an RPG that can destabilize a party the player has been working on for hours, I'm not a masochist. But I want companions to have more agency. When they "fixed" the "problem" of the companions speaking in dialogues instead of the MC, I was appalled. It was actually one of the few elements that made me feel that the companions were that and not followers.
Also, yes, Shadowheart is obviously an abducted Selunite (and it was obvious even as early as that in the game) but she was trying hard to be a good priestess of Shar for a long time. She should have reacted even more strongly because of that.
Just one comment: " people who DO like reading in their video games are an underserved niche "
As a person that loves reading in my video games (and loves the Geneforge games)... there is, at least for me, saturation. We're not underserved. Good and above-average Visual noves and make-your-own-adventure computer games are coming out much faster than I can play them. I go for just the ones that really seem promising to me + have good reviews and I still end up with more games than I play.
I could point to some awesome ones and the geneforge games are in that list.
I know there's a lot of visual novels (and people still write text adventures) and that's totally cool, but an RPG with a system and tactical combat is a very different experience with its own set of fans (my own fans).
If you like reading and RPGs and don't like visual novels, then you're still underserved (like me), because aside from titles by a few powerhouses, most RPGs still come out with rudimentary story, even if they don't do voice acting, or the story is just so bland or bad that it's detracts from the game (e.g. I have a very low opinion about The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk - that game overflowed my patience with pathetic attempts at absurdist humor).
Re telling people to play BG2 first meaning you're bad at business: au contraire.
"Hey your game costs the same as BG2" is a lot like "hey your book costs the same as Pride and Prejudice." And the answer to that is NOT "oh, but my book is totally better" (even, possibly, if it is). It's to say "that's fine, go read it, read mine after."
Being honest about your product matters.
Like PC Gamer, was looking forward to your take on BG3!
I originally played your games, starting with Geneforge, on disk. Been playing story-driven RPGs for a long time.
It's been exciting to see my friends and partner try and love BG3. I'm playing a 4 person co-op campaign (it's going to take forever) with folks who have never played this kind of game before, and we're having a great time.
The pie gets bigger for everyone.
Thank you for the pro-union plug. Way back when I got involved in computing--1975, it was, and my company incorporated 2 years later in 1977--I was ***appalled*** that it had no unions to protect its workers. And have seen the results for decades, in the lives of people in all aspects of the industry being hurt or ruined by the greed of their employers.
Maybe, just maybe *this* time Larian’s work will click with me. I’ve played through five of their games, from the original Divine Divinity (yes, they actually called it that) to Divinity: Original Sin 2, and…
My most vivid memory of their games remains the time I finally triumphed over a boss without losing half my party. And then the boss’ post-fight dialog popped up. It stopped character movement mechanics. It didn’t stop, “you’re standing in fire” mechanics. So half my party died by way of gormlessly standing there and burning to death.
But hey, eventually I came around on Obsidian as well, and I *hated* Obsidian. Now I can’t wait for the Outer Worlds 2. Maybe working in something other than their own worlds with a system based on something someone else built will finally make me see what everyone else sees in these Belgian Bioware substitutes.
… after Geneforge 2 though.
I was worried about this too. Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 were really punishing and hard for me all the way through.
BG3 is way easier. It was pretty tricky early on and I had to use a few resurrection scrolls. It got a lot more chill as the game went on.
Hopefully it will hit for you like it did for me, and I also didn't click with the Divinity games (although I had a great time co-op battling through Original Sin with a mate, loved the combat but just couldn't stand the dialogue and story).
I also breezed through OS with my best mate and it was great fun, despite the quirky story. But OS2? Check the forums and you'll find out that most players finish just the first two Acts and start over sometime after that. The problem is that for me BG3 suffers from the same issue, no thanks to its extensive EA stay. The first Act is well polished and exciting and then the game loses momentum as soon as you step into the mists. I am honestly trying to convince myself to continue playing after the battle at the Inn and still haven't managed to do so. It's exactly the same with Obsidian's efforts that turn into a slog in the middle of the story... such as it is. I'd never imagine that I would be looking back so fondly at New Vegas, for all its bugs and issues. From that game onwards, it's like their stories turned into a boring nothingsoup.
New Vegas is one of those games I find people are borderline religious about. Like most such games, you probably just had to be there at the time. As for their other efforts? I’m inclined to agree.
Worst offender in my eyes in Neverwinter Nights 2 – aka, why I hated Obsidian for so very long. Yes, New Vegas was fine, and yes, I really loved Outer Worlds, but their CRPG efforts are… mediocre to screamingly terrible. It does so many things wrong, especially outlined in the blogpost above. Even if their games have routinely let me down, I should be ecstatic Larian took the throne from Bioware, and not Obsidian.
BG3’s like, “There's bad goblins and good refugees, with a few side arguments to add detail. You get to make a few high-stakes decisions to keep you involved, but nothing that ruins the whole game. You get plenty of time to find your footing before it dumps gods and power politics on your head.” NWN2’s like “you’re being attacked by… uh… Bladelings! And … Duergar!” It’s a freakin’ deepcut D&D Madlib. Then it devolves into the sloggiest slog that ever slogged.
Their own game and world building efforts have been… honestly, not much better. I’d say Pillars of Eternity has more competent balance and design, but somehow manages to be both more boring and even more nihilistic than Divinity. I played through D:OS and the sequel. I couldn’t even be bothered to finish Dreadfire.
And it’s not like I don’t want to love these games. Of course I do – that’s why I keep trying and keep hoping. But… really, my measure of a great game is simple: do I go back and play it again? Maybe (probably) it’s just the nostalgia talking, but Spiderweb seems to be the only CRPG company that can still make games that I come back to.
I tried so hard to like PoE and Deadfire actually kept me interested longer than the first game, I'll give it that. At least Larian can make compelling characters. Zany, disjointed storytelling aside, the companions in DOS II were interesting to me. In PoE? I can remember 4 of them from both games combined and not a single thing about their stories or a memorable quote. And like you say, their game just slog to a crawl after a certain point. BG3 has interesting characters too. I just wish they could make them feel more like companions and less like followers.
I feel exactly like you. CRPGs are my favourite games. I'm just having a tough time finding anything that can match or finally surpass the golden years of BioWare and Black Isle. It seems to me that Larian is the only one who's really trying.
>Honestly, Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't do anything truly new. It's a game where quantity has a quality all its own. This game does what has been done before at an unprecedented scale, level of detail, quality, fun, and just plain style. It's good, it's BIG, and the quality continues the whole way through.
Verifiably untrue. Act III is nigh unplayable from technical standpoint, Act II has countably less to explore than I. I is what they polished for two years of EA, II is where they started cutting corners, III is where they turned it into an art.
>One of the things that makes BG3 work is it has a really good story, and it tells it well.
A good way to start your analysis is with a ridiculous claim. A bad way to end it is to never support it.
>First, it has a great hook. You start with mind-control worms in your head that give you powers but will kill you soon. Instantly compelling and full of urgency and mystery, in the first few minutes of the game.
>Second, the pacing is good, which is key in a lore-heavy game like this. In Act 1, it dumps you into a very simple world with very simple factions and forces you to make high-stakes decisions about them.
The urgency mentioned in the first line fights against you wanting to get involved with stuff mentioned in the second line. You either try to skip most of the game, as some retards online admitted to do, or, more likely, you forget about the apparent "urgency" in fighting a cure, and thus the the first crack in player's immersion appears. That's ignoring a fact that by the story's own rules, the tadpole subplot could be solved by a 4th level cleric.
>Fourth, once you're past the intro, you learn of the existence of the Head Bad Guy.
No, you don't. At that point you're not sure the Absolute exists (and it technically doesn't), and most likely think the BBEG is the cult leader, which the writers want to be a red herring. So you could've rightly praised the writing here, but didn't know to. And besides, you fail to explain how that'd be a positive. In Fallout you don't start to hear about BBEG until a third to half in the game. In Planescape:Torment you don't learn of him until the last stretch of story. In Arcanum you don't really learn about him until the last dungeon.
>Third, the characters immediately start trying to have sex with you. Very attention-grabbing.
>Fifth, your companions are interesting people, funny, flawed, and charming in equal measure.
It's easy to tell you struggled to say anything good about the companions, beyond the most bland generalities.
>More importantly, they immediately start making demands of you.
Gale does. Technically Lae'zel does too but if you try to acquiesce her, you first go through brutal for level 2 characters encounters to be greeted by an immersion-breaking prompt that the next area is for high-level chars, so you turn back with her bitching away. Others are just waiting for you to graciously let them join you.
>Like, you need their help, but they immediately make it clear they won't fight for free. Another example of giving interesting choices early only.
No, they fucking don't. Not even Gale. He takes his time until he starts asking for items. Others just stand there waiting to do what they created to: joining you. At least Wyll is busy helping the tieflings and Lae'zel tries to get to the creche, but Wyll and Astarion just stand around, and Shadowheart keeps convienently bumping into you, because if you choose to ignore her the plot starts falling apart.
>What really impresses me about this is that while BG3's story is really involving, you never actually see that many words.
>However, let's be honest ... In 2024, a game with a ton of reading can do well, but it won't be a megahit.
If you want to make a megahit go make Candy Crush or go after the CoD audience, or create another Halo killer. RPGs will always be a niche. BG3 is unique because it had unlimited (to a point) funding from WoTC. If other studios try to replicate the voice acting standards they won't have resources left for the rest of their games. And dating simulators already exist.
>actors
Yes, they help make up for lack of any good story or characterization for the average glue sniffer. This isn't storytelling.
>That's the storytelling aspect of it.
To sum up, you barely started saying anything about storytelling, most of it false or generalities and then you finished.
Wow. You are REALLY mad at this game.
I mean, it's an aesthetic judgment. If you didn't like that story, that's cool. No story is universally loved. What I'm trying to say is why I liked it. And I'm doing it, as I do with all my writing, as a creator. I'm picking out a half dozen choices they made that I think are really strong.
I don't want to go into too many specifics about the story or these arguments because I'm not trying to write a book here, but I’ll pick out one thing to try to show what I’m getting at!
“The urgency mentioned in the first line fights against you wanting to get involved with stuff mentioned in the second line.”
No! That’s not how this works! That’s not how ANY of this works!
This isn’t a novel. It’s a game. There are 80 things going on. Wandering. Fighting. Solving puzzles. Fighting. Looting. Fighting. Opening empty boxes.
The purpose of the story is to give some emotional resonance to the other stuff, to make the game more than the sum of its parts. There is no real suspense about the worms. Every player knows they aren’t going to get converted. RIGHT!? It’s not meant to be some bulletproof story thing. It’s seasoning. It’s herbs.
The companions don’t make lots of demands on you, and all the companions don’t demand stuff right away, because that’s not the game! They spread out their demands to remind you they’re characters. Again, it’s seasoning. Gale asks for something. You play a while. Lae’zel asks for something. It's not Companion Simulator Pro. It’s one splash of color in a big painting.
Play RPGs or don’t, it’s fine. But you’re pricing yourself out of the market.
I did add an edit to the article to clarify what I'm getting at.
I thought this was just an intro and the real "picking apart" of the story would happen later, when I suddenly ran into the end of the article. Disappointing. There's a lot more to say on the story, what works and what doesn't, other than noticing that its VO is great and its text isn't overly verbose.
That storytelling sells is very true, look at any sport. If there's no story behind a match, e.g. a UFC match, nobody cares. If there's some story, like the two guys used to spar together, but then their friendship fell apart, and now they roast each other on social media, suddenly it's a sold out arena. And another point is that watching sports without commentary is just not the same, the commentary adds to the storytelling. Games that are purely about combat like Dungeon Rats perform 5 times worse than their storied counterparts like Age of Decadence. Look, I just accidentally wrote more on that point than the author did.
I'm a bit surprised when people praise BG3 for its story and companions. I mean, yes, it's not bad, and it's an improvement over previous Larian titles (I have to admit they grow steadily from game to game, from a very bland story of D:OS, to a better one with colorful companions in D:OS2, to mostly competent, but still not amazing one in BG3). But I still like story and companions in Owlcat games better, despite the lack of facial animations and limited voice-over (but I love to read, so maybe that's why). Frankly, for world-building and philosophy I like YOUR games much better than BG3 - its story is pretty generic and shallow fantasy fare, especially when compared to complexity of Geneforge's conflict.
I mean, I loved BG3 - as I loved D:OS 1 & 2, - but it was mostly the mechanics, and not the story that did it for me. Larian sure know how to build a combat encounter, and how to give you tools to overcome it in endlessly varying ways - there is no denying it. But story? Well, it's not bad, but I was never too hooked on it, and I haven't spend a sleepless night thinking about factions and their motivations here. Really, it's more of a dark comedy, with 3 hapless idiot servants of banished gods who imagine themselves much more clever than they really are, and suffer for it, with party as agents of this suffering.
The story is pretty generic in large parts, but most RPG plots are pretty generic. It goes with the genre. The question is how interesting the stuff hanging off the main framework is. The brain worms. Auntie Ethel. The story of the Emperor. I think there's a lot of neat stuff in there.
"It goes with the genre" - but it mustn't! OK, if you're making a straight old-school dungeon crawler, or a tactic RPG, sure, go ahead a plunk an evil wizard who stole Amulet of Whatever at the lowest level and be done with it - as long as mechanics are fun, the story may take a step aside, as Knights of Chalice prove. But a high-budget story-heavy RPG... Here, generic plot seems like a wasted opportunity. Maybe I'm asking too much, but I want games to be more like books, where there are all kinds of complex, interesting plots that make you think (yes, even in fantasy titles - Brandon Sanderson's worlds are a good example), than like Hollywood blockbusters. Witcher series manages that, for example - CD Projekt somehow managed to preserve all the right parts from Sapkowski's books. The overall plot might still seem generic - rescue the princess, defeat the evil wizard - but so much other good stuff happens around it, so much choices that let you pick your philosophy, not just your side of alignment chart...
I have to admit that BG3, too, have at least some interesting quests, yes. The same, actually, can be said about Divinity: Original Sin 2. I distinctly remember my impressions of this game - a weak main plot, but brilliant companion stories. I just wish Larian would finally manage to write a really great main storyline, too.
"Third, the characters immediately start trying to have sex with you. Very attention-grabbing." It is attention grabbing, but it's also extremely annoying and, frankly, disappointing. And I'm far from a prude. But I don't want my story-driven RPGs to remind me of adult visual novels where everyone throws themselves at you just because you're the MC. In those games, that's the whole deal: the action and the crazy gonzo-like excuses people will find to drop their pants for you. But that's not suitable for an RPG because it diminishes companions to the role of hero-worshipers.
And that, unfortunately, is where BG3 falls flat on its face and breaks its nose. It's all about player worship. Everyone tells the player how wonderful they are (unless they really, really try to ruin things for everyone), and with few exceptions (see Gale) they don't expect much from them in return. It doesn't feel like the companions are their own people, even the most antagonizing ones, such as Lae'zel. In BG, if you tried to keep both the Zhentarim and the Harpers in the group for a significant amount of time they would come to blows and kill each other. This had never before happened in the history of RPGs (and, unfortunately, unless I'm mistaken, since). Want Jaheira to join you? Sure, but you have to put up with Khalid or no deal. Same with Minsc and Dynaheir. These companions had conditions for the player. Too much Mr. Niceguy? Montaron and his bestie would leave in disgust. Too much of the opposite and most good characters would do the same. It's nearly impossible to do that in BG3 (people have tried). Not to mention consistency with the world. I half-expected a bloodbath when the Selunite priestess blessed Shadowheart, but all she did was whine as if someone mildly annoyed her. We're talking Christians and Muslims in the midst of the Crusades here. These religions (Shar and Selune) have been in open war for countless millennia. Heck Shadowheart had previously made a point of saying that she would defile any Selunite shrine if she came across one in the Underdark.
I had high hopes for BG3 to be honest and although it's far from a bad game (in fact, I'll agree that it's the best CRPG to appear in years, probably since BG2 itself), its still very disappointing in its storytelling imho. It's as if CDPR's games never existed as far as Larian is concerned.
I can totally see where you're coming from. It's a legit aesthetic preference.
But it's not the game I personally want. Reading the description of the game you want stresses me out. I spent 100 hours in BG3. I don't want to feel like I'm walking a tightrope all the time.
I mean, at the end I was enjoying my party and relying on them. If the warrior I built my party around takes off 70 hours in because of some moderate decision I made? That sucks!
"I half-expected a bloodbath when the Selunite priestess blessed Shadowheart"
But Shadowheart IS a Selunite! Just on a temporary detour.
You make a good point but didn't this work in Baldur's Gate? I mean, you couldn't get to max positive or negative reputation with just one decision. It took consistency and dedication to get there. And the companions that were offended offered plenty of warnings before leaving. I'm not dreaming of an RPG that can destabilize a party the player has been working on for hours, I'm not a masochist. But I want companions to have more agency. When they "fixed" the "problem" of the companions speaking in dialogues instead of the MC, I was appalled. It was actually one of the few elements that made me feel that the companions were that and not followers.
Also, yes, Shadowheart is obviously an abducted Selunite (and it was obvious even as early as that in the game) but she was trying hard to be a good priestess of Shar for a long time. She should have reacted even more strongly because of that.
Just one comment: " people who DO like reading in their video games are an underserved niche "
As a person that loves reading in my video games (and loves the Geneforge games)... there is, at least for me, saturation. We're not underserved. Good and above-average Visual noves and make-your-own-adventure computer games are coming out much faster than I can play them. I go for just the ones that really seem promising to me + have good reviews and I still end up with more games than I play.
I could point to some awesome ones and the geneforge games are in that list.
I know there's a lot of visual novels (and people still write text adventures) and that's totally cool, but an RPG with a system and tactical combat is a very different experience with its own set of fans (my own fans).
If you like reading and RPGs and don't like visual novels, then you're still underserved (like me), because aside from titles by a few powerhouses, most RPGs still come out with rudimentary story, even if they don't do voice acting, or the story is just so bland or bad that it's detracts from the game (e.g. I have a very low opinion about The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk - that game overflowed my patience with pathetic attempts at absurdist humor).