Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games

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Burns

Burns

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Trying to live up to the legendary Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 made it a better game. The first iteration that they released into Early Access was closer to Divinity: Original Sin 2 in tone and play. They got feedback on not only gameplay, but how the tone felt too light; which they then took the extra years to implement it correctly (or as best they could).

A main complaint I've read in every thread about their other games has been that people don't like their Dutch based humor. So trying to mold a more serious game really helped get away from much of that silliness (I didn't mind it or could usually overlook it, since they were one of the few companies still making wRPGs that suite my tastes).
 
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Gavinmad

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Bald Brah said:
Baldurs Gate was a dead IP. They could have done any old IP and it would have been successful because it's an awesome game.
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Utter nonsense. Legends don't die. Someone could release Baldur's Gate 4 in 2124 and there would still be hype for it. And no it would not have been anywhere near as successful without the Baldur's Gate name because they got to capitalize on the legacy of Bioware's golden age without being anchored down by all the incompetence and woke faggotry that has been destroying that studio for the last decade+
 
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Mist

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Bald Brah said:
Divinity isn't anywhere near BG3 on a technical level. Baldurs Gate was a dead IP. They could have done any old IP and it would have been successful because it's an awesome game. No one was out there begging hasbro for a baldurs gate revival.

Fromsoft used their own IP and made an amazeballs game that blew everything they'd done previously away. Because it was an amazeballs game.

Larian could have used car wars, games workshop, Ultima, Ur-Quan masters, any dead IP and it would still have sold like gangbusters because it was freaking amazing.
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Yeah I don't think so. There was a ton of cross-promotion involved here, although a bunch of it was mistimed (pun not intended, but awesome.)

BG3, the Baldur's Gate MTG set, and the theatrical movie, all 3 of which were solidly pretty good products, were all supposed to release around the same time, rather than over a year apart.

BG2 is fondly remembered as one of the best games of all time by a whole cohort of people who are reaching prime income age.

Also, beholders and illithid are fucking rad, and both of those are trademarked.
 
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Tuco

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Bald Brah said:
Divinity isn't anywhere near BG3 on a technical level. Baldurs Gate was a dead IP. They could have done any old IP and it would have been successful because it's an awesome game. No one was out there begging hasbro for a baldurs gate revival.
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Huh?

The Enhanced Editions for Baldur's Gate recently came out and did very well. If anything BG was extremely ripe for a third game and BG3's timing capitalized on that.


Also a new Ultima would be great. It's an IP ripe for revival.
 
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Mist

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Tuco said:
Huh?

The Enhanced Editions for Baldur's Gate recently came out and did very well. If anything BG was extremely ripe for a third game and BG3's timing capitalized on that.


Also a new Ultima would be great. It's an IP ripe for revival.
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Tough call. Ultima never had any memorable characters, but the world and lore were pretty decent.
 
Bald Brah

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Mist said:
Tough call. Ultima never had any memorable characters, but the world and lore were pretty decent.
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uwot m8?

image
 
Cybsled

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Zoomers today don’t even know what gold box games are, ancient Ultima stuff is more obscure. If they’ve heard of Ultima, it’s probably just Ultima Online
 
Tuco

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Mist said:
Tough call. Ultima never had any memorable characters, but the world and lore were pretty decent.
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Yeah there are only a few notable characters and it's not as strong as BG but would still generate a lot of interest on its own.


The NPC scheduling in ultima7 is still the best of any game I've ever played.

lycaeum.ultimacodex.com

Ultima Game Developer: NPC Schedules

Beginning with Ultima V, all characters in the game followed schedules. As the complexity of the games increased, the complexity of the schedules do likewise. During Ultima VII and Serpent Isle, a …
lycaeum.ultimacodex.com

During Ultima VII and Serpent Isle, a blacksmith characters might go to bed at night, eat breakfast in the morning, go to work and craft items using items around them, go to a tavern for lunch, return to work, leave at the end of the day and go home for dinner. A farmer could path around their farm, gathering eggs from chickens, milking cows, and threshing grain, taking breaks as appropriate.
 
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Caliane

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consider.

Divinity os is a spiritual successor to Ultima. sven even said so repeatedly in interviews, and how he had been trying to make his own ultima since Divine divinity.
yet, what did every gamer, and journalist compare Divinity os 1 and 2 to?

Baldurs gate.

ultima is legendary to any old school rpg gamer for sure. but, it does NOT have remotely the current cultural mindspace as baldurs gate, planescape or dark souls does nowdays.

hell, see the forgotten pos ultima underworld reboot from just a few years ago. don't get me wrong the ultima is the source of all the immersive sim elements in systemshock/dues ex, divinity, elder scrollls, etc.. but yeah, its just not well known to modern gamers.


and yeah, os2 was a megahit on its own. 1m year 1, up to at least 7.5m estimated by svens comments by 2019.
but I would also agree the baldurs gate secured more sales on name alone. MAYBE os 3 with the same budget would have also sold 10m+. maybe.

Conversely, Owlcat gets the 40k roguetrader Ip and it does pretty mediocre it seems. that somehow didn't bring in more numbers based on name alone.
 
mkopec

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40K got Owlcat 500K first month on all platforms. Top 50 best sellers on steam in 2023. Not sure what its up to now but I would venture a cool million after the expansion pack. A lot of people wait with Owlcat games because they are known to be buggy at launch.
 
Bald Brah

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Owlcat isn't a great developer though. Another 40k game by another single A developer is only going to generate so much buzz. The dawn of war and space marine (and starcraft lol) series had great sales.

Larian is 2nd or third best developer out right now. Anything they do next is going to sell like hotcakes. I'm extremely happy to see them dump D&D even though I love the forgotten realms.

A BG3 style remake of Undermountain would be incredible. But fuck Hasbro.
 
Caliane

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Owlcat is AA. Larian was AA up until bg 3.
Larian was ALSO known for buggy as hell releases requiring 1 year of patches, and an "enhanced edition" 1 to 2 years later fixing and finishing the game.

its bizarre we are suddenly acting like Larian has always been AAA and pumping out perfect work.

Wrath of the righteous, did announce 1m sales back in jan 23. I don't know if we have updated numbers anywhere. I forget if he said in that one interview.
its generally considered top 3 best rpgs of all time.

RT has never actually announced breaking 1m sales. it did start well. so, name and wotr possibly did impact that, but then buggy release killed sales over time?

Owlcat probably should do the Larian thing of early access, and polish the shit out of act 1. give insanely good first impressions for word of mouth and reviews. then, can fix the later parts of the game.. later. 50% of players don't ever make it that far anyway.
 
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Hateyou

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Caliane said:
its bizarre we are suddenly acting like Larian has always been AAA and pumping out perfect work.
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There were plenty of people before bg3 release who were saying “I’ll wait a year and get the definitive version that fixes everything.”

Since they didn’t appear to really need it this time, even though this had large bugs it wasn’t nearly as bad as their earlier stuff, I’m guessing people are just holding them in much higher regard than they used to.
 
Mist

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Caliane said:
Owlcat is AA. Larian was AA up until bg 3.
Larian was ALSO known for buggy as hell releases requiring 1 year of patches, and an "enhanced edition" 1 to 2 years later fixing and finishing the game.

its bizarre we are suddenly acting like Larian has always been AAA and pumping out perfect work.

Wrath of the righteous, did announce 1m sales back in jan 23. I don't know if we have updated numbers anywhere. I forget if he said in that one interview.
its generally considered top 3 best rpgs of all time.

RT has never actually announced breaking 1m sales. it did start well. so, name and wotr possibly did impact that, but then buggy release killed sales over time?

Owlcat probably should do the Larian thing of early access, and polish the shit out of act 1. give insanely good first impressions for word of mouth and reviews. then, can fix the later parts of the game.. later. 50% of players don't ever make it that far anyway.
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Wow I 100% agree with this Caliane Caliane post there's a first time for everything.
 
Harshaw

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Cybsled said:
Zoomers today don’t even know what gold box games are, ancient Ultima stuff is more obscure. If they’ve heard of Ultima, it’s probably just Ultima Online
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A Pools of Radiance D&D Movie would be sweet. The people ignoring the popularity of Drizzt because of optics are retarded though. I had friends that didn't game that loved those books.
 
Argarth

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Hateyou said:
There were plenty of people before bg3 release who were saying “I’ll wait a year and get the definitive version that fixes everything.”

Since they didn’t appear to really need it this time, even though this had large bugs it wasn’t nearly as bad as their earlier stuff, I’m guessing people are just holding them in much higher regard than they used to.
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I'm still waiting for the "Enhanced - Definitive - Complete" edition of BG3 to land. Sometime next year I guess, no hurry.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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BG3 had problems in ACT 3 and it took them a while to finish it after release. I remember ACT 3 even ran like shit compared to the rest of the game. So yeah, while it was definitely the most polished game they had, it still needed like 6 months if not more of polish after release to tidy everything up. The entire divinity series of CRPG were def not AAA games, lol. Although once they were polished up, usually with their definitive editions or whatever, like a year later, they were great games.

But yeah, it only takes one game for a dev to break through into the spotlight. Maybe Owlcat will have one of those games? Then again maybe not. But still I will continue to play their shit because I like CRPG and I like what Owlcat is making. I really dont care if they are super popular or whatever. Im sure they are making great bank since they have like 4 titles iin production right now and about to publish 2 games from other studios too. One of them Im really looking forward to, Shadow of the Road made by a Polish dev.
 
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