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Was 2023 the Greatest Gaming Year of All Time?
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this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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No, not even remotely. The biggest game of the year was an antiquated cRPG, followed by a bunch of sequels and remakes. The industry as a whole has been rocked with scandal after scandal, with the most recent being the large, widespread Christmas layoffs. Innovative gameplay is now something that completely eludes AAA studios, who only seem to know how to regurgitate trends popularized by better games.
2023 was another shite year for gaming, and rewarding it with brain-dead articles like this is why 2024 probably won't be any better.
"Antiquated" is certainly not a word I've heard anyone describe BG3 with until now. Personally, this is the first year in a long time that AAA has spoken to me, because they haven't been catering to me much for the past number of years.
I mean, Larian isn't even a AAA studio. They're still technically an independent studio, though with the success and polish of Divinity I think most would have considered them AA even before BG:3. Also you'd need a lot of evidence to convince me that any cRPG isn't a product of antiquated design, there's a reason the genre completely died off. From my experience playing it, even Larian couldn't figure out how to make combat with 20+ enemies feel fun, a problem nearly every cRPG has had for years.
I'd consider them a AAA studio, at least at this point. BG3 had a budget of $100M, a team of 400 people, and if I remember correctly, a 30% stake from Tencent. I think they count now.
As for antiquated, they added emergent design elements on top of a solid CRPG foundation and married that with a level of production value that we typically associate with RPGs that had to tone down their RPG systems, like Mass Effect or Cyberpunk, which is why I'm having a hard time meeting you on that word. If I was going to assign reasons to why CRPGs died off (only for about 10 years at that), I'd say it was because people were chasing that production value, but the audience still hungered for the depth that their predecessors offered. I had a ton of fun in the BG3 combat encounters with 20+ enemies. I love XCOM, and I thought BG3's combat encounters were more fun than anything I played in XCOM.
I'd even say the genre never died, just became a little more niche. I think the ARPG kind of dominated there for a bit, but CRPGs still existed. The time between Baldur's Gate 2 and Dragon Age: Origins was only 9 years. There were several games between those games that I quite enjoyed (Arcanum, Fallout Tactics, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, and more). I realize that wasn't your argument at all, just wanted to add a little more weight to what you were getting across
I haven't played DA:O to know if it counted, but I do know it was at least trying to tap into that lineage a bit. I was mostly going from NWN/KOTOR-ish to the Kickstarter boom that birthed Shadowrun, Wasteland, and Torment successors, among others.
DA:O was touted as the spiritual successor to BG2 at the time, so totally was. And yeah, there was a little lull, but there were still games in there.
Gross
The genre didn't die off though. It may have become a niche, but died isn't the right description. Not saying that means you should like it, just that it has been in the background for a very long time.
Not saying you‘re wrong, but your arguments are weird. cRPGs are obviously not dead, and I‘ve encountered a group of more than 10 enemies maybe a handful of times. And, subjectively, that was fun.
I would call either Divinity game polished
I didn't really see anything in BG3 that was antiquated, but I also didn't see anything innovative. It's DOS2 in Faerun.
What made BG3 "antiquated" to you? Just the nature of it being a cRPG? I thought it had some really good modern game design.
To me, it fell into the same trap basically every cRPG falls into; late game combat is a chore. Once the number of enemies and skills you have to juggle gets high enough, you can't realistically use real-time on the harder fights, but you can run into so many enemies that turn-based takes forever.
I don't even really mean that as a criticism of Larian, since nobody else ever managed to fix that issue either. It's a big reason why the genre died off for so long.
Real-time isn't an option at all in BG3, and RTWP always felt messy to me anyway, even as I'm now playing Pillars of Eternity. Especially in a lot of those old Infinity Engine games, it felt like it incentivized devs to add more trash mobs, as opposed to paying closer attention to pacing and encounter design.
I totally apologize, you've unlocked a memory. It's so good in KOTOR that my brain doesn't remember it's a cRPG. I'm really hoping that if it gets a remake, it keeps all the guts of the original combat system, and doesn't get simplified to a toggle between real time and pause.
oh shit this game looks awesome, thanks for the suggestion.