Is Baldur's Gate 3 bad for gaming?

Fence Sitters beware!

 

Now you might see that title, guess what I'm about to discuss and raise your ol' finger to start saying something along the lines of 'Excuse me- but there are not absolutes in conversations like these!' To which I would congratulate you for a grown-up take on the matter, before admonishing you. Yes, nuance is an important balance to maintain but at the end of the day, when it comes to the core concepts of progress there are only two directions: Forward and Backwards. We aren't Bumi juggling between the two extremes of Chi- this time Aang is right- there is only positive and negative Chi and we need to choose. When we bring this to the Baldur's Gate debate, we need to ask seriously whether or not a brand new tier of RPG game development is a net positive or negative for the entire RPG development space, because there is no in-between.

So assuming that Baldur's Gate is everything that the team expect to be and what fans hope it to be, the game will land with something of a splash in the next few days. We've been through enough high profile launches like this one to not fool ourselves into believing that all is infallible and perfect, of course, for all we know Larian has tied every extra subclass into DLC or something equally as repulsive. Or maybe the game will literally just install as Malware that uploads explicit bear smut onto everyone's hard drives. It's impossible to know what will happen, is what I'm getting at, when Baldur's Gate drops- but what we have here is a thought experiment. We want to predict how the industry will react when a game with unprecedented levels of player agency, replaybility, reactionary content and all around visual delight greets the wider public.

Of course, ask a general gamer and the answer to that should be pretty obvious. No RPG has ever reached this level of standard before so, as with any game that pushes the boundaries of it's genre, the standards of the consumer base are raised and subsequent products need to step up their game in kind. To this day Rockstar have been pushing forward the Open World genre with every new entry largely putting to shame the many pretenders that trail along wishing they could make a game as detailed as them. A degree of excellence they achieve with unmatched resources and world tier developers as befitting their exclusive brand of isolationist development. Call of Duty spurs on Shooters. Forza spurs on racing games. Persona 5 spurred on stylish JRPGS. So Baldur's Gate, as Mass Effect did before it, would push forward Western RPGs. Right?

Not right, apparently. At least according to the recent thread of developers that have come out over on the-Platform-former-known-as-Twitter. In fact, they seem alarmed at the very idea of a game reaching the level of polish that Baldur's Gate 3 seems destined for. It all started with a thread from a developer who 'lightly' pushed back on the notion that BG3 would be the start of a new standard of RPGs, arguing that the many advantages that Larian benefitted from during their development of the game set their situation apart as 'Rockstar levels' of anomalous in the development space. Citing their successful previous games, their several year long early access period, their seemingly healthy work environment- oh wait, no he didn't mention that last one. (I wonder why...) All reasons why future high profile AAA RPGs shouldn't be admonished when they fail to meet the same standards of Baldur's Gate 3. And of course I can't help but find that a little bit of a bizarre take.

Don't get we wrong, I fully understand the idea of squashing the idiots who'll turn around at indie or medium level studios and mock them for failing to deliver products to the scope and scale of AAA developers or development teams to Larian's recent size. But the kind of people who think like that are abject mole-people anyway. They're literal gremlins with grey matter the size of peanuts, you're not going to get through to people like that with a Tweet. They can't read! Which means for some reason this was aimed at the kind of people who are going to look at what Larian are doing, turn around on the next big overpriced and overly funded AAA RPG and fold their arms expectantly when it turns into another smouldering mess. (>cough< Ubisoft. >cough<) Because if a plucky medium sized studio of passionate RPG lovers can pull it off, why can't an infinitely bigger and more resourceful mega studio? Is that being unfair?

Well apparently it is. Many developers of reputable studios, most of which are veteran RPG developers, have come out to smack back at the rising of expectation in the wake of Larian, in doing so often unconsciously painting Larian as some sort of freakish other rather than a supremely dedicated and hard working equal who efforts may just pay off for them in a big way. It seems to be something of a divide between players and creators right now, where from the perceptive of the creator the potential success of this game offers nothing new to their industry than increased pressure and scrutiny. They sue to denigrate the expansion of design concepts, the exploration and progression of vertical narrative design and the production of high quality cinematics in a true RPG space as mere quirks of abnormality rather than revolutions.

No matter how we look at it I think the matter really settles itself. Expectation is going to rise if Baldur's Gate 3 is as good of a game as people want it to be, just as it would have risen if Cyberpunk was a true RPG rather than just a mechanical one. (No one seemed to push back at that game's impending victories before fortune tipped the other miserable way.) Now will this lead to games not being able to deliver the experience that people love? I think it comes down to a matter of understanding that all games are not created equal, which is a concept I think most sensible people get. Idiots won't. Casuals probably don't even care about genre games at all, they just buy what's popular. So what is really the purpose of this movement? Honestly, I understand the heart behind it but I can just bet the authors lending their voices are themselves disquiet about a message they haven't quite clearly defined with a warning that really doesn't serve anyone.

I don't think that Baldur's Gate's success will lead to an RPG that would have been received well suddenly turning into the industries' whipping boy, because the ways in which Baldur's Gate has chosen to distinguish itself is not universally translatable. Maybe it's proliferation will lead to a downturn in the number of low-effort pseudo-RPGs claiming to be every bit as thoughtfully constructed as the real thing (Assassin's Creed) but personally I don't see that as a bad thing. Although the most bad faith argument I've heard, and I'll bet this even tasted bad on the author's lips when they first spoke it, is the accusation that Baldur's Gate's success is due to the current popularity of the D&D brand. That played a part in marketing, I'm sure, but are you going to sit here and tell me that Dark Alliance was a smash hit? You know, the other more casual-friendly game which literally had 'Dungeons & Dragons' in the title? Sometimes quality is a backbone all on it's own. Food for thought.