this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
28 points (93.8% liked)
Games
16846 readers
948 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean, i was far too young to play em when the original games released, but i could still tell that Baldur's Gate 3 releasing was a big deal and not just your run-of-the-mill game releasing. And I'm hardly the only one either. Its like if Blizzard released Warcraft (not World of Warcraft, just Warcraft) but showed "hey, we're actually pulling all stops this time and actually trying to make a game for fans first, not a way to nickle and dime yall" in their marketing, interviews, and feedback gathered from a beta or Early Access that is actually incorperated into the final release. Yeah, a LOT of players checking it out wouldn't be longtime fans, but that's irrelevant: something with a legacy behind it being continued carries a hype that's almost infectious--especially when done by folks who not only give a damn about the thing being worked on, but can actively show they can bring a good product to the table (I believe the same happened with Cyberpunk too, but Cyberpunk launched rough as all hell. I hear it's better now tho).
That it was almost assured to be good also helped it a lot (again, the successful early access + the fact that, while you're right that Larian's previous games didn't make a very big splash, they were shown to very competently made--some even calling the Original Sin games the best modern CRPGs so far--and garnered a lot of fans over time), and not to mention, when it was releaesed--a period where multiple games that went "against the grain" of what we usually get from games released as well, and to great success.
IDK, you say it's foolish to predict it having as much success it did, but the way I see it, it was kind of inevitable since it did so many things correctly
You are saying this stuff after-the-fact, this is all just explaining why it did well and absolutely nothing to explain why anyone would predict it to be a success on the level it was.
Here's the rub, no one did. Not gamers, not people who's job it is to do this, not the developers. No one. And rightfully so, nothing about bg3 suggests mega hit for someone living in march 2023.
Perhaps it's just me naively believing that something with a legacy behind it (and fanbase) can be a mega hit then. Because honestly, if KOTOR 3 was announced with a competant studio behind it, or a Warcraft sequel, or a Legacy of Kain continuation...i don't see how they wouldn't be mega hits regardless of when they come out if they were all treated with the same care Larian treated Baldur's Gate 3 with (and they don't, you know, take forever and a half to release like System Shock Remake did)
The landscape is cluttered with series that have legacy and failed projects from good studios. It's not enough to make a prediction on, nevermind an outlier prediction like that of bg3. Bg3 was so huge of an outlier that you can't even put it in line with normal successful products.