D&D 5E Baldur's Gate 3 won so many awards that it started to "affect development"

[Vael]

I think Veilguard may be helped, ironically enough, by how action-y the combat and so on is.

Definitely, the gameplay made it look like Bioware was taking more influence from Dark Souls esque playstyle (not to say it is going to play that way), which will help differentiate it.

Also agreed that both DA:I and ME:A would have been helped if they'd had all the romanceable companions be ... player-sexual, lol, my two main annoyances with DA:I was how grindy and big it was and that I couldn't date certain companions.

TBH, I actually have hope for Veilguard, or more than I did, but I also believe that Larian took Bioware's lunch rather thoroughly with BG3.

 

[Stalker0]

The bar is so high now, that both Larian's next game, and Baldur's Gate 4 will really struggle to match it.

As a leader you have to consider two things:

• Part of the job is to learn everything you can with BG3s design process and replicate as much of it as you can.
• Recognize that such games are "lightning in a bottle", and that replicating such success is practically impossible. You want to push your team to "make a game that's even better than BG3!", while at the same time setting expectation with other leaders and stakeholders that it "would be extremely foolish to assume our next game will be the commercial success BG3 was"

 

[Scribe]

Comes across as slightly pompous.

It was good but I enjoyed the OG BG’s more than this one and would be more likely to replay one of them for the fifth time than this for the second.

It's almost overwhelming yes? BG 1 and 2 I've replayed many many times. Wrath of the Righteous I completed I think 3 times, but the last one was tough.

BG3, I will play again but I'm not in a rush.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Solasta, then.

Warhammer, then.

Kinda.

AAA graphics/UI/sound/music Solasta.

Warhammer would kind of be the idealized vision of that, yes, particularly Warhammer Fantasy, as opposed to the more aggressively grimdark Warhammer 40K. However, we must consider that DOS2 attempted to do Jokey Grimdark and merely landed on "crapsack world but everyone is sarcastic and snarks a lot", and I think most attempts at combining humour and grimdark tend to be car crashes, especially if they're not kind of low-fi/indie. Even the recent initially-good Rogue Trader CRPG eventually lets the impulse to grimdarkery crash it into a wall, and I suspect unrestrained grimdarkery would do the same with a future Larian game.

I think the key for Larian will be restraint in all things, and oddly, that's what BG3 forced them into. They couldn't just "do what they wanted". So when I see Swen crowing that they can "do what they want" creatively now and saying how limiting the BG licence was (which he actually complained about a fair bit before BG3 came out, though much less after*) I worry. For them and us.

I suspect your swandive simile will be apt. They'll probably make some games with some cool ideas, but unless they've really learned a lesson from BG3 (and I suspect Swen at least has learned nothing), they'll probably just be burning BG3 money until they run out and get bought, which will, conveniently, be about when Swen would early-retire anyway.

* = Presumably because he's basically having $100 bills blasted into his face 24/7.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Even the recent initially-good Rogue Trader CRPG eventually lets the impulse to grimdarkery crash it into a wall, and I suspect unrestrained grimdarkery would do the same with a future Larian game.

I think Rogue Trader would have been a lot better if Larian had made it.

But both Warhammer franchises are a lot less silly than they were in the 80s.

 

[Meech17]

As a leader you have to consider two things:

• Part of the job is to learn everything you can with BG3s design process and replicate as much of it as you can.
• Recognize that such games are "lightning in a bottle", and that replicating such success is practically impossible. You want to push your team to "make a game that's even better than BG3!", while at the same time setting expectation with other leaders and stakeholders that it "would be extremely foolish to assume our next game will be the commercial success BG3 was"

The leaders, and the team can understand these things as much as they want..

I was more thinking that it's going to be harsh that probably every game review will inevitably compare it to BG3. Every YouTuber, every streamer..

It's like finding out your girlfriend's Ex was a body building, fire fighting, classically trained musician who volunteered at a retirement home for homeless puppies in his free time.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think Rogue Trader would have been a lot better if Larian had made it.

They would have absolutely killed it, yeah. Everything about the game would have been hugely better, I'd suggest. I don't say that to be mean to Owlcat, who made a pretty good attempt, but they made a lot of mistakes. It's still worth playing but I think most people will give up after Act 2 (which is still a huge amount of game). That Owlcat are completely changing the mechanics away from "ludicrously broken but pretty fun" to seemingly "Painful and annoying unless you play exactly the 'right' way" is perhaps not their smartest move either.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Kinda.

AAA graphics/UI/sound/music Solasta.

Warhammer would kind of be the idealized vision of that, yes, particularly Warhammer Fantasy, as opposed to the more aggressively grimdark Warhammer 40K. However, we must consider that DOS2 attempted to do Jokey Grimdark and merely landed on "crapsack world but everyone is sarcastic and snarks a lot", and I think most attempts at combining humour and grimdark tend to be car crashes, especially if they're not kind of low-fi/indie. Even the recent initially-good Rogue Trader CRPG eventually lets the impulse to grimdarkery crash it into a wall, and I suspect unrestrained grimdarkery would do the same with a future Larian game.

I think the key for Larian will be restraint in all things, and oddly, that's what BG3 forced them into. They couldn't just "do what they wanted". So when I see Swen crowing that they can "do what they want" creatively now and saying how limiting the BG licence was (which he actually complained about a fair bit before BG3 came out, though much less after*) I worry. For them and us.

I suspect your swandive simile will be apt. They'll probably make some games with some cool ideas, but unless they've really learned a lesson from BG3 (and I suspect Swen at least has learned nothing), they'll probably just be burning BG3 money until they run out and get bought, which will, conveniently, be about when Swen would early-retire anyway.

* = Presumably because he's basically having $100 bills blasted into his face 24/7.

When I told people Larian was making a huge mistake deciding to skip the DLC and BG4, that the setting and game system contributed alot more to the success of BG3 then they realized, I got alot of scorn from Larian fans, I was told these things were not so important.

It good to see at least someone else gets it.

As for who does BG4, given their Greed and demands on any studio who does it, I think they may have to build their own custom video game studio to do it.

I mean yeah studios are making their pitches, but whose got the right mix of time, resources, staff size, experience, and motivation?

 

[DarkCrisis]

I would love it if they made a traditional Fallout. Which I believe is rumored as a next product

 

[TwoSix]

When I told people Larian was making a huge mistake deciding to skip the DLC and BG4, that the setting and game system contributed alot more to the success of BG3 then they realized, I got alot of scorn from Larian fans, I was told these things were not so important.

Anything else they do will almost certainly be less successful, but that doesn’t mean the decision to move on was a mistake. Their lack of enthusiasm for staying in the D&D milieu, as well as the near impossibility of catching lightning in a bottle twice, means it makes sense to move on.