My understanding is that it is a complete game with no microtransactions to shove along with it. After that I believe it is because it is really really good and not a common genre to get the spot light. Mainly the first part.
I think its based on timing with the state of the game industry being fascinated with various versions of P2W and how to squeeze more out of gamers through monetization of both 'nice to have' and 'need to have.' Larian and BG3 are a breath of fresh air when all the others are prioritizing greed over quality.
If we could just overcome our addictions and vote with our wallet, EA, Blizzard, Activision, M$, etc. would eventually learn, but we can't, and this is the true sad part of the story.
It's just a really good game. It's complete, unlike the majority of things being released these days. The lack of monetization is really nice, but ultimately the fact that it's basically an automatic dungeon master for 5e with compatibility for up to four cooperative players makes it the easiest entry point into Dungeons and Dragons in general. You can enjoy it by yourself solo and have a wild campaign that's totally different than the group campaign you play with your friends.
I've always hesitated stepping into the dungeon master role because I've always wanted to help tell a story, but this negates the need for me to lead anything and I can bring friends with little to no experience and we have a blast. I can focus on helping people with the mechanics rather than having to focus on running the campaign.
See I've been seeing this take in the headlines, but this doesn't seem like enough to me. Folks have been sick of microtransaction-heavy games in the same way for at least 2 years now, and most studios (outside of the ones you listed) have been releasing games that are light on microtransactions. The System Shock Remake is a good comparison point - it was a modern release in a traditionally niche PC genre, it reviewed very well, and to my knowledge it has no DLC. I guess it didn't release on console yet, so maybe that's a key difference?
To be fair, System Shock remake is of incredibly niche interest. (I speak from personal experience being someone who was waiting a long time for it, heh.)
The style of this game hems closer to Dragon Age or Mass Effect in presentation, and those are much more popular game series, by far. So naturally it appeals to fans of those series, of which there are quite large fanbases.
I think that's what I'm gathering - it's that the increased production value has signaled to the mainstream gamer audience that "this is a Mass Effect", and that is a powerful marketing message. The last game of that type was...Dragon Age Inquisition? So yeah, people have been starving for another one of these.
Well damn, I think we solved it. Larian basically reverse-engineered Bioware's origin story, and this release is them fully stepping into old Bioware's shoes.
Quite fitting considering BioWare made Baldurs Gate and Baldurs Gate II before they were acquired by EA and made into a shell of their former glory.
Aside from it just being a very good game (a new game in the all-time top 10 over at Metacritic is going to be news regardless), if you're hanging out in gaming enthusiast discussion a lot, there are a few other things going on that explain why it's generating so much buzz.
It came out at a lull in the release calendar. August isn't typically a hot month for gaming unless you're an NFL fan. It also ended up being a de facto console exclusive, so once the game started blowing up, the usual console war chatter spun up with it.
The other dimension--and one that surprised me--is it fed the "developers vs. gamers" spat to the point where it's been making headlines again. As you've said, one price for admission games have been coming out more, but I think there are some sour grapes around over Larian's successful graduation from AA by way of passion projects. I invite these developers to join in celebrating this release, as the success of games like these are bound to get more of the kind of game they'd rather work on greenlit.
There's also the reaction from other developers claiming that the game "sets an unrealistic standard for what to expect out of a game" despite it being exactly what people want from a triple A studio. Just a complete, well made, functional game with no microtransactions
It's a perfect digitization of D&D 5th edition - it's like having an automatic dungeon master using the rules and regulations we've been playing with on paper for ages.
It has a massive plot that can vary wildly on playthroughs depending on how rolls go, just like the real version.
It's four-player co-op with PVE in an age where cooperation is increasingly rare outside of competitive team games.
It's a well designed, properly built, finished product that can be expanded on with DLC, rather than using them to address core gameplay issues. (looking at you Paradox)
Can you imagine what the mod scene for this game will look like in a year or so? It's going to be amazing.
Sure, but people were really mad earlier this year because Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns D&D tried to pull some licencing related shenanigans that would have massively fucked over the community. People were boycotting the movie a couple of months ago over that. It's interesting, that Baldurs Gate seems to not be affected by this at all.
Yeah because Twitter is not a real place. The actual D&D community spoke with their wallets and they said "we like a good, finished product without stupid terms of use" and all bought BG3. People who don't even play D&D bought BS3 to play with folks who do play D&D.
It's just a quality Western RPG, the like of which we haven't seen since Bioware was bought.
Good products create buzz; I really think is is simply that.
That and it's a tire-screeching exit from the abusive road we thought gaming was going down. Microtransactions, lootboxes etc. Baldur's Gate 3 is refreshing from that perspective and, like me, I think many are amazed that it's actually working.
I see nothing revolutionary about a game not having things like microtransactions and loot boxes. Those are mostly restricted to multiplayer games, and the industry never stopped making good single-player games without that bullshit.
Even a lot of the AAA single player games have day 1 DLCs with skins or 15 different deluxe packages for preorder or something similar though
Doesn't need to be the in-game microtransactions but it's very rare today that everyone starts out with the same stuff in AAA games today
But bg3 is a multiplayer inspired game.
Bg 1 and 2 set the rpg world on fire. 3 lived up to the hype.
Not just multiplayer-inspired. Fully multiplayer start to finish, if you want
DOS 1 and 2 were almost on par with BG3 imo.
Pillars of Eternity was also really good.
The short version:
Longer details:
Game is good. People like to talk about stuff they like.
Most great games never get anywhere near this much buzz.
I think it's a product of the genre. BG3 is in the CRPG category, which had a bit of a resurgence lately between Pillars 1+2, Pathfinder 1+2, and (perhaps most relevantly) DOS 1+2. Good games in an existing category of game helps build up buzz in that category and more players. More players creates more demand... but there hasn't been that much being made in the CRPG bucket lately.
Then, on comes BG3. It fits in that bucket. It has much higher production values than the other recent games in that bucket. It's got one of the most valuable CRPG IPs attached to it with Baldur's Gate. And it's reportedly amazing as a game on top. The last part wouldn't get it anywhere near this much attention on its own, but in conjunction with the others it's gotten lots of buzz.
I also feel like Larian handled the early access part really well for keeping the game in discussion without making the game oversaturated in gaming circles. They got a lot of "free" (not actually free, but you know what I mean) marketing out of that.
No in-game store
The game isn't shit
People are beyond bored of 95% of the absolute trash that's being pumped out by the asinine asshole accountants. (AAA Studios)
It's nice seeing something that isn't even close to trash be released.
It's not perfect or anything, but it feels like a release with very pure intentions and people seem to resonate with that. No micro transactions, no lootboxes, no DRM (not even Steam's is implemented), no release day DLC, fast hotfixing, and maybe with the promise of classic expansion packs. The sort of practices that people want to encourage, packaged with a formidable and generally well put together game.
When bigger, more corporate dev studios come out and give it free marketing by saying how unrealistic it is to make games like it... that's free, excellent publicity.
It's also bright and colourful and slightly cartoonish in a way that, say, Pillars of Eternity wasn't. I wonder if this makes it feel slightly more mainstream, slightly more 'fun', and a bit less like a stodgy old CRPG from yesterday (and to be clear, I loved PoE the way I loved BG and BG2).
It's also got enough wild shit in it to grab a few headlines that way.
I don't think I have a lot to add to what was already said here.
But I will say that the Baldurs Gate series already had a pretty big following. It had an established fan-base, like Fallout. But unlike Fallout, Larian chose to stick with what people liked about the originals and expand upon that.
So there's another tiny reason to add to the collective.
I’m a crpg fan, and a D&D/PF fan. For me, the thing that makes this game so fun is it feels like a streamlined D&D session. Sure, you can’t do as much as you would like in a D&D session, but you can do 99% of what you would typically want to do.
The other thing is the game is extremely polished. So many recent games have been underproduced, unpolished garbage with DLC/MTX shoved in and a $70 price tag. BG3 is a breath of fresh air. It’s not perfect, but the care and dedication that went into it clearly shows.
I feel what makes this game so popular is the fact that the game is just really well made. The story is great, the classes are much better balanced than 5e, and the amount of interesting solutions you can use to solve any problem is just fun. Add co-op, and the game becomes a blast to play with friends.
Considering the recent rise in trrpg popularity and fans of older titles in the franchise, Larian’s existing fans, and an early access that showed off the game as being fun and promising, I’m not surprised it ended up attracting a lot of players. If you have a large enough player base at launch, and an amazing game, I don’t think it is a surprise the game is lighting the world on fire.
I think what isn't being discussed enough is how many fans of games like Dragon Age Origins this game is pulling in.
What this game does is straddles the difference between classic CRPGs like the original Baldurs Gate and modern, cinematic RPGs like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, whose games began to veer into very action-oriented cinematic style as opposed to classic three-quarter-overhead-view turn-based style. It also brings the cinematic aspect to romancing companions as well, something that was also pioneered in DAO and ME. Other games had ability to romance as well, but not deeply like DAO and ME made it, with their cinematic style allusion-to-sex scenes.
This game does both and so it is grabbing the attention of people who loved classic CRPGs like Baldurs Gate, Fallout and Neverwinter Nights, but it's also grabbing the attention of more "normie(?)" players who cut their teeth on Dragon Age Origins through Inquisition.
It's a "best of both worlds" approach that has solidified success because it appeals to the people who loved classic CRPGs as well as the people who wanted the cinematic beauty as well as ability to cinematically romance companions. It has beautiful cinematic detail as well as a fully fleshed out CRPG system and non-linear CRPG story. It's giving players of all types what they wanted out of an RPG.
Also, excellent console controls directly help this. Old CRPGs required a mouse and keyboard, but I can play this game split-screen with my SO who only ever played the Dragon Age games and who I struggled to get into D&D previously.
My SO fucking loves this game, and she wouldn't have ever been opened up to such a style of game without the excellent cinematic graphics alongside the top tier classic CRPG gameplay. There is no way in hell I could get her to play a strictly top-down no-cinematics classic CRPG. This game opened her up to the genre. It's essentially the perfect modernization of a classic CRPG.
This is it right here, at least for me personally. I’m a huge Dragon Age fan (played through DAO and DA2 before Inquisition’s release) who has always been vaguely interested in Larian’s Divinity Original Sin games but never made them a priority in my backlog. Seeing the cinematic cutscenes and the 3rd-person voice acted dialog for BG3 made me immediately interested and now I’m 10-ish hours deep into Baldur’s Gate and loving it!
Also slowly resigning myself to DA4 not even coming close to matching BG3 in quality given the circumstances of its development.
Are you aware of what a big deal Baldurs Gate series, especially 2, were when they launched back at the millennium?
It’s a combination of good timing, a perfect product and going against the direction of most AAA-studios.
Though BG2 is more than two decades old, a lot of us still considers it one of the best games ever. I think quite a few of us have been eager to return to forgotten realms. That’s one group.
Then there’s a group of Divinity fans (some overlapping the old BG group) waiting for Larians next RPG.
Those two groups would be the critical mass for creating hype. Would the game live up to the old games? Would it be as good as Divinty?
Then comes the first reviews and people get to play the beta, and though the first few months were rough, once we got close to release it was clear, that BG3 would not only live up to its expectations, it would smash through the roof.
Now you have your core fan base talking about how good this game is, how do you sell this to people who normally don’t play this type of game?
Well, talk to them in a language they understand. This game is complete from day 1. No DLC. No ingame shop. Just a complete game that you can play over and over again with new ways of completing it… oh, and you can co-op with your friends. Even on the couch in split screen.
There are simply not anything of major significance to criticize about this game. You may not like it, or the genre is not for you, but as a complete product it’s simply perfect.
As a player you get the feeling that Larian focus on the game first where others focus on money first. That may not be the whole truth, but it’s the feeling this is creating, and hopefully other studios will acknowledge that there are other ways to do things.
I was in my early 20s when BG1, BG2, NWN, and Icewind Dale came out. The hype was real, and it was a spectacular time in gaming.
On top of some of the commentary here, I'd like to add that I think there's a real chance that WoTC's put some money behind getting it heavily reviewed/boosted, and so more articles about it and wider attention. That is not to undercut its quality, just that I think its layers of support. (I'll admit there's more than a little bit of my distrust of WoTC in that. Like after all their other scandals they need a win to try and suck newbies into the game after so much messing up. And I don't even mean in the last year or something, their release quality for 5e has been abysmal for a long time.)
Additionally Larian played the early access thing very well. Not only did they listen to their ongoing players, and even netted some "tried it didn't like it" people back, it gave time for everyone who was perhaps too into the older isometric BG1&2 titles (like me) to realize the game didn't seem quite like it was for them and not pick it up. So you get clear, mostly good(if outdated) information out there for people to use in researching if they wanted to buy it, helping to avoid a lot of the knee-jerk hate that stuff like Fallout 4 and 76 got from misplaced expectations that could dull the release.
I think there are three vectors going on:
It's apparently a super good game. I'm just basing it on reviews, I won't be playing it until the PS5 version launches.
It has nudity and is being described as "super horny", so, you know, clickbait.
https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-the-horniest-rpg-ive-ever-played-and-i-love-it/
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-a-relentlessly-horny-video-game
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-a-relentlessly-horny-video-game
You've also missed all the hype about the lack of microtransactions. That one is pretty big.
And the bear sex. Although you'd think a sub bullet of point 2, I think its less horniness and more absurdity and "you can do anything".
It's the modern equivalent of "see that mountain? You can go there."
"See that bear? You can fuck it"
It's not REALLY bear sex though, it's a druid who SHAPESHIFTS into a bear...
As I see it, it's a confluence of things which have captured the zeitgeist:
These five things, in my opinion, have pushed Baldur's Gate 3 to the front of media outlets and, in turn, to the forefront of conversations.
It's a great game, but so was Divinity: Original Sin 2. The main difference, besides the rules swap, is the cutscenes and dialogue animations.
I think BG3 is riding on the D&D brand and marketing campaign. In my mind there isn't a massive difference between BG3 and D:OS2 (or other titles they've done) from a pure gameplay perspective.
Regardless, I'm for it. Hopefully we'll see more innovative and high budget CRPGs.
The Baldur's Gate IP has a solid fanbase, D&D is really popular now, and also Larian knocked this one out of the park.
It's also refreshingly consumer-friendly, like others have said.
I played but did not get very far into Divinity: Original Sin, mostly because I tried twice to play them co-op, and coordinating adults' schedules is hard. I love how systemic those games are, but the presentation is limited to what you'd expect from an old-school CRPG. Shortly before release, I saw that this game retains all of that creativity while upping the presentation to the level of something like a Mass Effect, which makes it much more appealing. I hear that Ralph of SkillUp had exactly the same reaction to BG3. So, deep systems + finally catching up in production value and presentation.
I've played the Divinity games, which are very good CRPGs, but in my opinion, Baldur's Gate 3 is in another league compared to those. The amount of choices and possibilities the game offers and its sheer vastness are amazing. Add to that the many fully voiced and well directed cutscenes and you have an awesome game that manages to appeal not only to hardcore CRPG fans.
Michael Bell from Bellular Studios just did a video about it if you want something to listen to. It is pretty much all of it that was said here.
How Baldur's Gate 3 Humbled AAA
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