3mo ago

Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and Bioware have to offer

www.pcgamer.com Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and BioWare have to offer

Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Starfield came and went—meanwhile, a new breed of RPG dominates the conversation.

Games @sh.itjust.works

www.pcgamer.com /games/rpg/baldurs-gate-3-and-kingdom-come-deliverance-2-show-that-the-future-of-rpgs-is-in-games-way-more-ambitious-weird-and-unexpected-than-anything-bethesda-and-bioware-have-to-offer/

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BG3 isnt even a deep RPG. Im really glad it's popular, but as an rpg it doesn't even have half the options final fantasy 7 had.
Kingdom Come is a much richer experience, imo. Even though the options are even fewer on paper.
I'll just sit over here rocking in place and muttering Owlcat Games over and over
- You're going to have to elaborate on those first two sentences, because that's a wild thing to say.
  
  Youve never played the original FF 7?
  
  I have. I don't know which options you're referring to. Materia selection? I guess, but there are fewer permutations of those than there are spells/feats/stats in D&D 5e, and that's before we even get to all the stuff that makes BG3 stand out, like its emergent design. FF7 is a great game, but it is not emergent, and emergent design will nearly always be deeper than the finite stuff.
  
  No you're right. Oil puddles are amazing emergent designs. My bad.
  
  There are challenge runners who've beaten the entire game with only salami for weapons. Oil puddles are just a small part of it. There was a part in act 3 where I was denied entry to a place by failing a speech check. I could have possibly brute forced my way in and murdered everyone, but instead I found a back door that was three stories up on a balcony, cast flight on my rogue, and had him stealth in to achieve the objective. That's emergent design. Solutions to problems that weren't explicitly programmed in but work because the rules are loose and can be applied intuitively. There's a part in the game where you have to cross a bridge blocked off by some high level enemies, and there are a ton of ways to get across the bridge that I know of, several of which the developers didn't intend for, and probably dozens more that I've never even seen before, because the game just lets you run loose with its systems.
  That's depth.
  
  That is very cool, i agree.
  There are other games out there that give that amount of freedom. If not more. That's all I'm saying.
  It's a very pretty game.
  
  I don't think FF7 is one of those games.
  
  Can you give some examples of games that give more freedom than that? Because as the other person said, ff7 is not one of those. And I too am curious because I love those kinds of games. And while owlcat's pathfinder games are great, they're also not a viable answer, since you've mentioned them.
  
  Fallout. Tyranny. Disco Elysium. Wastland. Ultima. New Vegas. Deus Ex. Outward. Vampire the Masquerade. Any Owlcat game (yes they are a valid answer). Kingdom Come.
  Those are just off the top of my head.
  
  Guess we just have a different definition of deep then if you feel like those games give you more options than bg3.
  
  Lmao!
  
  Half the options of the original FF7
  I'm pretty sure nobody had the option to save Aeris, side with Sephiroth, finish blowing up Shinra before having to change to disc 2, etc
- your comparison to FF7 isn't really accurate as they're two different types of RPGs
  and CRPGs are known for being far more fleshed out than any jrpg, so I'm curious to hear your reasons for saying so. considering FF7 doesn't even allow you to make your own character to roleplay.
  
  BG3, while very fun, is a pretty shallow game. Obviously that's not a popular opinion, but it's unfortunately true. There are far more fleshed out CRPGs out there.
  
  i think you possibly are confusing BG3 for another game. nobody would make a statement like that unless they either hadn't played it or were trying to troll.
  
  I generally agree with his statement, bg3 is very simple in terms of character building and has shallow exploration/questing (particularly after act 1). But then again, that's the case for most AAA games out there - they are made in a way that anyone can play them to the end.
  
  You all keep throwing these big accusations around without actually giving any alternatives for those of us that actually want to play these deeper more complex games that we've somehow never heard of. Why is that? Give us some games to play, please!
  
  The op did give an alternative, I can't speak much for it however.
  Baldur's gate 3 barely has any character building after picking a class at the start. It really doesn't feel you're building a character so much as following a template. And worse, the classes are all very vanilla. Pathfinder wotr for example has much better character building, the mythic classes add a ton of depth and interesting interlacing.
  The big problem about exploration in bg3 is that there's just not much to do. Most dungeons are like a handful of rooms and that's that. You go in, you talk to a few people, you do 1 combat and rarely 2 and go out. There's no sprawling or sense of discovery. I'll recommend Underrail for exploration.
  
  I see. We just have different opinions on what RPGs should be and that's okay. I prefer a deep lake to a shallow ocean, so to say. I'll take bg3, disco Elysium or mass effect over Skyrim any day of the week.
  I've still got 100+ hours in games like that as well.. they're just not as fun or memorable to me and I often end up bored before the end. Had to force myself to ignore a bunch of the map in order to finish Witcher 3 and kingdom come, for example.
  Gothic 2 is like the sweet spot, imo. Large enough that you don't feel confined, but not that large that you get bored doing the same stuff over and over again. And while I did say that KC:D had me bored with exploration by the end, I didn't feel bad about skipping parts of it like I did in other games because there the size of the map is just for realism and it's not actually filled with meaningless stuff.
  As for character building, I just play path of exile for that. I play RPGs for the stories. If it can have both, great, but I'm not gonna complain about build diversity in a game that I'm not gonna play more than once or twice anyway.
  
  I'll take bg3, disco Elysium or mass effect over Skyrim any day of the week.
  I too. That doesn't mean bg3 is perfect by any stretch, it's the epitome of a theme park crpg, and quite frankly your shallow ocean analogy too. One encounter with harpies, one encounter with owlbears, one encounter with fungi, one random dragon tossed in... Everything starts and ends in a flash.
  
  Never said it was perfect. I'm just saying that op claiming it's shallow is wrong. At least not more shallow than any other rpg out there. And at least by my definition. And I think other people's too, because as of right now, they're at -16.
  Just because it doesn't have a huge map with a 1000 pointless quests and bandit camps that add nothing to the game doesn't mean it's shallow. The biggest decision a game like fallout ever gave us was the decision to nuke a town. Beyond that, it was just a kill this guy or convince him to run away. Not sure how that's deep but whatever.
  
  You really shouldn't base your opinion on how other people perceive it, we're in a bg3 thread, most people here see it positively - so do i for that matter, but any criticism here is gonna be met adversarially. It's always weird interacting with a fanbase when 80% of ppl that started bg3 never finished it, most ppl here never really got the full experience.
  a huge map with a 1000 pointless quests
  Act 3 in bg3 is exactly that though. The game has huge pacing issues. The whole tadpole stuff goes completely limp halfway through act 1. Companions interactions die off after act 1. Act 2 is full of rewrites and undercooked content. The emperor was obviously added very late in game development and the story twist as a result is cheap as hell. There's no bad guy path - most of the evil interactions are killing off people and effectively locking yourself out of content. I could go on...
  
  Pretty+cinematic does not mean better. You need to play more crpgs, my friend.
  
  oh, I'd say ive played quite a few, bud. but the advice is appreciated.
  enjoy your generic protagonist with a mysterious dark past. seems like a truly unique concept in RPGs! 🙏
  
  Then i recommend playing more games with unique concepts. DnD is like the most generic concept on the planet.
- BG3 is the same as any of the other games previously. A D&D game with an amazing DM. Immersive story and characters, great system at the foundation, and excellent gameplay to channel the story and system through.
  I think BG3 spent most of their time saying no to dull or shallow ideas, rather than reinventing the wheel. And of course it worked incredibly.

174 comments