Larianis moving on fromBaldur’s Gate3 to make something new, which is asmart move. The studioshouldbe capitalising on its new reputation to make something it’s really passionate about,even if it isn’t Baldur’s Gate or Dungeons & Dragons related. A quote from Larian CEO Swen Vincke has been going around, where he apparently said that the studio’s next game will “dwarf”Baldur’s Gate 3, an already huge game where playthroughs can go into the hundreds of hours if you really take your time.
Thankfully, Vincke latertold Eurogamerthat he thinks he’s been misquoted, or that he might have said something wrongly because of heavy jetlag. We’ve all been there, man. He clarified, “It’s not a very big RPG that will dwarf them all, that we’re making now - I mean like, we have a couple, we have two games that we want to make - and [that] we actually intended on after making BG3, so we’re just back on that track now. They’re big and ambitious, that’s for sure. But I mean, I think scope-wise, BG3’s probably already good enough!”
Thank god. Baldur’s Gate 3 was already too big – I wouldn’t want to play a game that’s even more extensive.
Baldur’s Gate 3’s size is also its bane. The game is so impressive because of its deep roleplaying systems, allowing you to do practically anything within the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset. But because there are so many characters, so many sprawling maps, and so many combinations of what you can do and in what order, the game has a ton of bugs. Even now, more than half a year after launch, players are discovering new bugs and new ways to break things. Because of the nature of the game, the bugs are unavoidable, and this will likely be a permanent flaw: its complexity is at odds with its size.
And honestly, it’s way too long. Or, to be more specific,the third act seems to go on forever. Here is where you wrap up character arcs, do a bunch of massive boss fights, and pick up side quests on top of everything else going on. It’s starting to get very difficult to find the motivation to pick up my controller and wrap up more quests, because everything takes ages. I hate that the game’s pacing has made me lose steam so quickly, and I wish the game didn’t take quite so long to finish.
But I dream of having similar gameplay mechanics in a smaller setting, one that evolves and changes along with our characters. I imagine something like Baldur’s Gate 3, but set only within the city. With less time and energy spent on designing other maps, more focus could be put onmakingeverycharacter more complex, with satisfying and compelling character arcs that materially affect the story being told.
I’ve always preferred smaller, more focused games that tell incredible stories. That’s why I like the Like a Dragon games – up till Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the series has largely explored the same small settings over and over again. What I desperately want to see from Larian is an exploration of the passing of time and the impact of individual actions on a smaller community, instead of an epic spanning an astonishing distance but plagued with characterisation issues and technical faults. Larian has already proven it can tell a hell of a story, and I want to see it focus on that instead of dauntingly big maps.
Baldur’s Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.
