Baldur's Gate 3 is a singular game—a step up for the CRPG genre, proof that turn-based combat and deep, thoughtful storytelling is still fashionable no matter what some live-service brainwormed EA suit might tell you, and likely to be one of the best RPGs that'll arrive this decade.
It's so singular, in fact, that there's been an enduring discourse around whether it's raised the bar for the genre, or whether that's setting a standard impossible for other studios to meet. Mark Darrah, an executive producer at BioWare until 2020, clearly leans towards the latter, as he explained on his YouTube channel yesterday.
"Baldur's Gate 3 was immensely successful—and [it] did change the landscape in terms of who was willing to look at an RPG," Darrah explains. "But I think its impact on the way that games are actually developed is going to be more muted than people who are outside the videogame industry might be expecting."
Darrah explains that it's not about time or money—though BG3 did have both—but rather, he posits that the game was a "perfect storm of factors, working together to make this game work. Some of which are externalities that aren't something that another studio can replicate."
Those factors include working with D&D "arguably at the peak of its popularity—and its popularity has since declined", but also a unique combo of licensing, good will, and studio structure that has allowed Larian to go against conventional trends and industry wisdom about RPGS. "Having an [unvoiced] protagonist, having cinematics that are simplified in some cases," and so on.
Now, I won't disagree with Darrah and say that these things haven't been tremendously unpopular with AAA developers—but I've been banging the 'unvoiced protagonists are better' drum since Dragon Age: Origins, and I'm feeling a little miffed. I've been plenty immersed by CRPGs such as Pillars of Eternity where most of the action just happens in a text box. Glossy cinematics and a Shepard-esque heroes are nice, but they're also completely overvalued, and have been ever since Dragon Age made the jump.
"Maybe the videogame development industry is wrong about these assumptions about what it can get away with, but to a large degree when they look at Baldur's Gate 3, what they see is a game that very successfully executes on what it is trying to do. But what it's trying to do isn't something that a lot of other games would be allowed to do."
I think Darrah is coming from a case of practical wisdom here, and he is very much correct when he says "It will have impact, it will influence RPGs going forward, I just expect that the influence will be somewhat muted." I think most big studios with execs looming over the development teams foster incredibly punishing environments with little room for agility—just listening to Gaider describe the acrid environment that plagued BioWare before his departure is proof of that.
But I can't help but wonder if we've got it backwards. Baldur's Gate 3 might have a muted impact if the games industry—which has seen a huge amount of turmoil and job insecurity despite making an absurd amount of money all the time—simply continues on as it has been.
Mind, I'm not expecting developers working under duress to simply spin up Baldur's Gate 3, and my sympathy goes to them. Especially since your average punter will strike out at developers, rather than publishers or publishing executives—working under the assumption that videogames are made with a magic wand and not massive projects controlled by enormous corporations. But we've been shown a game like Baldur's Gate 3 is possible, and it's incumbent to work towards a future where that's a thing.
As PC Gamer's own Robin Valentine pretty astutely pointed out earlier this year, the future of RPGs very well may just not lie with AAA studios like BioWare. RPGs might just be a genre beyond the corporate environment, requiring a level of enthusiasm a board of shareholders simply can't spin up. That doesn't mean the industry won't change, it'll just be leaving studios like BioWare behind.
