Was Larian the right choice?
Paladin
Member Posts: 335
Was Larian the right choice to pick up the Baldur's Gate franchise? Or, would you have rather seen someone else given a shot, such as our friends here at Beamdog, or perhaps Obsidian (who did Pillars of Eternity)?
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The Beamdog team also completely supports this decision.
Anyone have experience with their big titles? What might I expect from a BG3 from Larian? Is there already a thread for this?
Was this a project that Beamdog had wanted? Or, was it just so far beyond the scope of the current team that it wasn't really considered? Larian's team of over 300 is pretty wild.
Obsidian would have been a fine choice as well, but I think they showed some strong inclination in Deadfire to move away from some of the IE and DnD staples that fans would have expected.
I think the OS games, especially outside of combat, show the best evolution on the core Infinity Engine style. Specifically in terms of creating interesting aspects to dungeons, wilderness and towns that allows for puzzles and roleplaying.
1. Adding more content to the existing ToB expansion to make it a Baldur's Gate 3 equivalent using the infinity engine and 2E rules. However, in some ways we got something better in the form of SOD+ minor expansion content in SOA AND TOB = BEAMDOG.(yea!)
2. A moderate budget game focused on delivering more Baldur's Gate gameplay. However the forgotten realms license might not wash well with moderate budget and it would be impossible to legally use second edition gameplay as Wizard's would never allow it. I can't think of any reason to call it anything but Baldur's Gate with a subtitle as the original story is finished. SO, I think POE was actually the best option for a Baldur's Gate "like" game in a modern indie engine and we got that as well. = Obsidian
3. An AAA title that will push graphic cards and CPUs with cutting edge graphics and cinematics. New 5E rules and the forgotten realms license. Most likely a departure from traditional Baldur's Gate gameplay due to costs= mainstream appeal being a mandatory ingredient to the game's high budget success.. No reason to use the name without a subtitle as the original story is over. Looks like we are going to get this or something similar in the future. =Larian.
Larian is using the name without subtitle which could be a sign that it's tied to the original somehow but I think that story is over and the name is being used to garner attention more than anything else. I do agree with calling it a Baldur's Gate title because it's forgotten realms and the city itself will probably be in the game. I've recently been in arguments that I tire of so I'll be brief and say that gameplay has not been announced yet but I have reason to believe it will be turn based which won't make the game bad but it's not my cup of tea. I don't think any dev team is better equipped than Larian to do a triple A version of the game. As long as you are prepared to let go of the old games a little and embrace a new character, story and gameplay all will be fine.
Another of the (many) things I dislike is FMV announcements for games that doesn't show the game. There's really no point in me saying anything else until they actually show something of substance.
Also those 100 externals are not all going to be full time.
Projekt Red are making the Cyberpunk game, and even they made fantastic titles they do not have experience in party-based rpg. Even the first Witcher, the one that uses NWN2 Aurora is not party-based. And I think that is what defines best the BG series. Others like NewWorldComputing are more into strategy games.
Owlcat games´ Pathfinder:kingmaker is my GOTY. I am pretty sure they can do a great job with BG, but they are focused now in pathfinder. They are not a large companty and, to be honest, I prefer that they give us another pathfinder game. You can never have enough of them.
Let us see what happens with Black geyser too, looks pretty well to me.
Seems to me that Larian is a solid choice. I like very much the Divinity games, especially the OS series. And they use to listen and care for the gamers and, more important, the modders; at least in the last titles.
Extra points if old characters (Like Minsc!) make an appearance.
larian has been around since 2001. but t's a telltale situation where people did not notice them until thier big hit gave them attention [ dos 1]
my issue with them is the tone. people expect a more serious game from bg 2 and that teaser. not the larian humor that we may get.
Someone in the other thread said that other companies pitched BG3 and this is the pitch that won.
Without knowing who else pitched and what their concept was, we really can’t say if it was the right choice. If Beamdog pitched when Gaider was still throwing paper airplanes around the office, I think that would have been my choice because you had staff who worked on the first two working on the third. But maybe their idea didn’t fly that well with WotC and they got to do the now cancelled Planescape game instead.
Mindflayers as the big bad wouldn’t have been my go to BG3 but we’ll see what Larian can do with it.
The thing about the Beamdog option is that they could have continued adding gameplay that makes the original games fatter and keep the original 2E rules. They were the only ones In that position. I like the idea of trying the new 5E rules in a new engine, I just don't like the consequences of doing so in the games industry of today. If we are talking about an AAA title, Beamdog is not large enough to do it. That is why my reaction was negative when I heard the news of a new game from a company that just hit the jackpot with their last game. I figured it was going to be an AAA title and well you know how I feel. I don't see why Beamdog couldn't continue to expand the original games even while the new AAA game is being produced though. Beamdog says they don't want to mess with the infinity engine anymore but here they are making console versions of them all.
Maybe I'm too oldschool. Maybe an instant gratification craving cooldown staring MMO generation has taken over. But I would have trusted Beamdog with BG3.
I agree here. I can't comment on Larian as i've never played their games, but just about every original piece of content Beamdog has created so far I was genuinely entertained by, and felt that they understood the "soul" of BG. They would have been my first choice.
I hope they do something again, eventually.
I thoroughly enjoyed SoD and absolutely loved the EE's, but man, even the Beamdog staff knows they could not deliver what a full game studio like Larian can.
This. An expansion to a decades-old game using the existing engine is a far cry from a new, modernized entry built from the ground up. No matter how much one may have enjoyed SoD and felt it honored the spirit of the originals, Larian have been doing this for 20+ years and their last two releases are among the most critically acclaimed RPGs of recent memory.
I trust a large, experienced, proven studio to accomplish the necessary shift in tone to make a proper BG game more than I would trust a relatively young studio - one that had some polish/quality issues with their early releases - to build a new game engine and ruleset from scratch.
I hope they improve their game in one point, I passionately disliked: Camera in D:OS games is painfully close to the ground, closer than in most other isometric games... I always feel like trapped in their games. There has never been a fix for this because their 3D world would otherwise look crap or perform crap, IDK.
As for mods, well, traditionally their games don't get modded... My guess is, that will be a BG which will not be modded at all.