D&D 5E Baldur's Gate 3 won so many awards that it started to "affect development"
- Thread starter Henadic Theologian
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Ruin Explorer
Legend
The Outer Worlds doesn't really even come close to meeting the standards for grimdark.
It's just a bog-standard corporate dystopia. There are actual good guys and bad guys, it's not amoral, it's not doomed, and whilst you can't fix everything, there is hope! You're absolutely not doomed. I don't think it's even possible to pick a "doomed" ending except by having a low-INT character try and make the jump by themselves! Spoilers but you can destroy the Board. That cannot be "grimdark". I feel like maybe you didn't finish TOW? We can't just call every dystopia grimdark or it completely obliterates the meaning of the term!
Pillars of Eternity, likewise, isn't even close to grimdark. It's barely even possible to argue it's "dark fantasy". It's just fantasy that's got a vague interest in political realism, but actually does stuff like offers apologia for some political bad behaviour, defending it as actually a path to a better future, at least in the eyes of the people involved, and maybe in the eyes of the player too. It's not a resounding downer unless you pick the worst ending (which is your choice), nor amoral - rather both Pillars games are tales of conflicting but genuine moralities, rather than just a bunch of terrible disaster factions like 40K or truly horrible people like Joe Abercrombie books. It's not even dystopian! Many of the nations/empires are even pretty well-run! Arguably better than our world at the same level of societal development. If Pillars is "grimdark" or a "dystopia", so has the real world always been and is today, which again renders both terms meaningless.
Tyranny is closest, because it's about a severe dystopia where evil already won - but the entire plot of Tyranny is that, despite the Dark Lord having conquered the world, there is still hope, and you, as the Fatebinder, can potentially cause a huge upset for the Dark Lord (The Archon I think he's called), and make the world a distinctly better place, albeit not a perfect one. Had the series continued I think it would have become more clear that it wasn't just grimdark. But it doesn't imply your victory is only temporary or fleeting, the implication is you really have changed things, permanently.
Like, I get that you'd like to see more straightforward fantasy, but calling all those settings grimdark just makes the term entirely meaningless. What Obsidian like, generally, is socio-political realism (or what they see as such), which, when mental adults are involved, always cuts both ways - it's never just negative. When edgelords who are mentally teens try and do that, then you get grimdark. Fallout: NV isn't grimdark either - I think it's particularly easy to see what Obsidian are doing there, because it's closer to the real world.
Which brings us to DOS2, which is genuinely grimdark. Everyone is compromised. Everyone is amoral (including the party). Everyone behaves like trash. Everything about the world is horrible. Only one of the five endings is even arguably looking towards a better future, and even that is completely questionable due to the history of the setting. I'd say it's more grimdark than Warhammer Fantasy, even (more on-par with 40K, except in 40K there are at least some non-awful individuals, just no non-awful factions).
TOW is more similar to the original DOS, which was a bit edgelord-y but not grimdark, though TOW's humour is a lot funnier than the weird "Dutch guy trying to translate an bad sexist or scatological joke into English" vibes that most DOS humour had (I am aware Larian are Belgian!)
Paul Farquhar
Legend
The best ending I could get: "sure you have destroyed the evil corporations, but everyone is going to die anyway in a few years because the colony cannot produce enough resources for everyone".
PoE2: "there is nothing you can do to prevent the destruction of the wheel, which means souls will not be reborn, so everyone will die out due to not having a soul within a generation."
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Maybe you should try and get better endings lol? That you get bad ones doesn't make the game grimdark. That's like me saying ME2 is grimdark if I screwed up the suicide mission so bad even Shepard died.
I mean, that's simply not what PoE 2's ending says. In fact, it directly contradicts that, in most endings. I suggest you read the wiki page and don't stop at the first bit:
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire endings
This page covers all Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire endings and the conditions needed to achieve them. Prior to the end-game slides playing, you will see one of two scripted interactions. You can either win or lose the game. Losing the game will only show these slides and no more. Winning the...
pillarsofeternity.fandom.com
Most of the endings are essentially "This artificial machine for reincarnating people was destroyed, which was only built a few thousand years ago, and now the world will need to find another way to kickstart reincarnation, fairly soon" (which might have been the plot of PoE3, had PoE2 not sold like 3 copies). That's world in peril, not world destroyed - and there's explicitly hope of success!
And some of the endings are more even more explicit, like "You broke this artificial machine which had destroyed a natural process, and now the very best minds in the world are making huge breakthroughs at fixing this" or "Yo the Rauatai are going to fix it".
With TOW, you simply got a bad version of that ending because you made some choices that didn't fit or didn't succeed at all the right checks. It's absolutely possible to get a "kick the corps out" ending and also have a bright and prosperous future for the colonies. I mean, you can look up how if you want - just Google "TOW best ending".
There are certainly some characters in PoE2 that suggest the process of new souls entering the setting will never be restarted, dooming everyone eventually. But I never took those as statements of absolute fact. Even when Rymrgand suggests it, it's opposed by Eothas saying he didn't know but had hope we would figure something out.
I think the point was always to present multiple perspectives and let the player make their own conclusion.
I think the point was always to present multiple perspectives and let the player make their own conclusion.
Well that is the lightning in the bottle element. Having a solid success from your game, sure you might expect that. Your game making a billion dollars, winning every award out there, and changing the scope of the market.....that is not something that always happens even if you work hard and plan for it.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I just don't really think it is. The market is ever-expanding (for now). When you spend money on quality work, and present an RPG that's accessible and not very challenging conceptually (the most challenging element being turn-based, honestly, but that's still wildly more popular now than, say, 5-10 years ago), people buy it, because the market is nowhere near saturation. We'd probably have to release 2-3x as many AAA RPGs per year to hit saturation (whereas shooters, for example, esp. competitive multiplayer ones, are wildly over-saturated). Maybe they couldn't have "counted" on $1bn, but they could have "counted" on probably $400-500m.
I'm struggling to think of any AAA single-player RPGs that genuinely "worked hard and planned for it" which weren't massive successes - indeed most kind of commensurate with their budget or better. Can you think of any? That just inexplicably flopped or done "mid numbers"?
The only way to avoid this is to really make a huge effort to screw things up.
Cyberpunk 2077, for example, rushed to release, and had failed to address the wild and unrealistic beliefs gamers had about the game. It'd have got away with that, though, if it wasn't for releasing on older consoles in a version which was barely functional and insulting to customers. Even then, the core of the game was sufficiently solid that it sold 13m copies early on. It's now over 25m sales (and sold 5m copies of the expansion DLC nearly instantly when that came out - quite deservedly - it's an incredibly DLC for which they did "work hard"). That's incredible sales, and it's because it was basically a really good game they just messed up a bit on. Even at 13m copies it sold it had a huge profit.
Starfield did underperform, but it was obvious that it would, and had been obvious for some time, and they hadn't "worked hard" nor properly "planned for it". That was the entire problem. The game is a half-arsed outdated-feeling mess that's lazy on literally every single design and conceptual level except maybe textures. 7 years of resting on their laurels and deciding that junky systems, and poor design, and more repetition/reuse of maps than Dragon Age 2 were "good enough". People attempted to defend it, but what a mess. In fact the biggest problem is it was defended so extensively by some fans and even some critics that I'm not sure BGS will actually learn a lesson from it. People love to say "Well Creation Engine is fine", but no, it isn't. They had to drop many of the coolest features of the engine (like people having proper day-behaviour cycles and travelling and so on) because the engine is creaking too much, and they clearly could not just upgrade the engine enough to look good, feel good, or even play good. It did pay for this and especially for being available for "free" on Game Pass and has only sold like 3-4m copies to date.
Mass Effect Andromeda failed for somewhat related reasons - they didn't plan and they didn't "put in the time". They were basically making No Man's Sky before No Man's Sky before they were told, "Nah, kick it out the door!" by Aaryn Flynn, who wanted everyone to come and work on Anthem full-time. So apart from the art assets, the entire game was developed in 18 months. Further, it had a $40m budget, which was a fine budget for an AAA in 2007, and okay budget for one in 2010 or 2012 (ME1, 2 and 3 respectively, which all also had $40m budgets), but was pretty pathetic for an AAA coming out in 2017, especially spread over 5 years of development.
Now in the AA sphere things are a bit different. Where budgets aren't as high, things aren't as guaranteed, and you can't provide the same experiences that bring people to AAAs. But that's not where BG3 was ever operating. It was always a high-budget AAA.
Marandahir
Crown-Forester (he/him)
Here's hoping that success will lead to a Switch Port, or at least a Switch 2 Port.
As it stands it's the only BG game I haven't played, and yet the one I want to play the most.
As it stands it's the only BG game I haven't played, and yet the one I want to play the most.
Aldarc
Legend
I'm feeling so called out right now.
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