That IGN take...

 Unbelievable.

If you've spent any amount of time bouncing around the online game journalist circuit then first of all let me say that I'm sorry. I'm not personally responsible for the state of such work or anything, but I am a fellow human and thus that side of the industry confers a deep shame upon my person. Because honestly, gaming journalism is so denigrated from it's core most duties that these days it merely serves as a paid creative writing platform to advertise to bigger potential employers how gosh darn good you at stirring up pity clicks with some backwards article that rockets public discourse back to the stone age. I would genuinely believe all those new world order nonsense conspiracy theories if they contained within a clause that video game journalists were NWO vanguards employed to whittle away at critical thinking and general societal intelligence with mind destroying pathetic content. But what if I told you that somehow the pendulum has swung the other way?

What if I told you that water is floating up into the sky? That the Moon is coming down to take it's first steps on the Earth? That Peter Jackson was on his way to ruin the legacy of his award winning Hobbit Trilogy by stretching out a painfully bloated Lord of the Rings adaption? (... I was going for a 'backwards world' kind of vibe but that last one just felt dirty coming out of my mouth...) What if I told you that IGN, the IGN, pioneers of the industries worst kept lie- the 7 out of 10, (Which is well known code for- this game was trash but we don't want to get blacklisted by the publisher) managed to cough up a phlegm ball of truth? A nugget of objective, unequivocal, righteous honesty that finally gives a loud voice to a gaming public who feel spoken over? You know, the thing they were supposedly founded to do? Would you believe me? Have I managed to stick a question mark at the end of every sentence in this paragraph?

And the take in question just so happens to pertain to a topic I've brought up more than once on this blog, and one I wanted to bring up again but I just didn't know how. That bizarre moment of developer push back about the coming release, and now the burgeoning success, of Larian Studios Baldur's Gate 3 and how it makes literally no sense if you really think about it. To put things simply: in the leadup to the launch there was one well-intentioned developer who needlessly opened up Pandora's box by stamping down on the idea that the success of Baldur's Gate should relate to any upcoming raised standards in the gaming space because other studios aren't privy to the success story that Larian has had and comparing new games with their game would be just unfair. He went on to label the game 'Rockstar levels of ridiculous', accused the game of riding the coat-tails of the recent DnD craze for marketing and claimed that Larian is a huge company that others just can't compare to. And IGN gave that entire take the smack down.

In a recent, well received, video IGN laid down the brass tacks with the might of god. They said what the detractors weren't ready to hear yet: why shouldn't the audience expect more out of subsequently releasing games now that Baldur's Gate 3 has landed with a smash, blown everyone away and shown everyone how it's done? A transparent development process, focusing on the player's enjoyment above all else and throwing aside all of the monetisation aspects, dedicating 100% of the development effort towards expanding the boundaries of the game- why shouldn't some small glimmer of that example be set as the standard going forth? Could it perhaps be because it sounds too hard to replicate? It's dangerous and risky instead of safe and comfortable? Because it will challenge the industry to change? Because none of those sound like very compelling arguments against...

And this isn't an all-or-nothing conundrum. Just because the upper echelons have a renewed scrutiny above them, that doesn't mean that suddenly Rogue Trader is going to be torn down because it doesn't have incredible cinematic quality cutscenes! But maybe the next pathetically dry 'RPG' that slithers out of the Assassin's Creed factory will finally get the universal derision it deserves for being absolutely, unabashedly, terrible: like all the Assassin's Creed RPGs have been! Because when it comes to those giant studios that eclipse Larian in size, capability and resources- why the hell aren't they making games as big as, or at least attempting to be as big as, Baldur's Gate 3? Is the answer that those who hold the corporate purse-strings won't let them? Because then maybe it's good that as a consumer base our taste is getting more refined, because only we have the power to tip those scales.

I think one of the big points of contention that will inevitably set a lot of brows sweating is Larian's dedication to not introduce Microtransactions of any sort into the game. They don't want to tie down cosmetics in their single player game to purchase options, and they've even up-in-the-air about whether or not to commit to DLC. (Although that is just as much because they aren't prepared to ramp up encounters to the god-like level of late Baldur's Gate 2. All I'm saying on that point is thus: Mindflayer Dragons.) The worry among the industry is thus: modern developers don't know how to add value for their investors and keep a game microtransaction free in the same breath. They don't know how to conjure up the excitement and attention of a player without chucking in a season pass to keep them tied down to the game. They don't know how to do what Larian did, and that makes them scared.

Modern developers are scared that the only way they can compete with the critical successes of games like Elden Ring, Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur's Gate is to take risks and throw away the easy standards of creation they've grown comfortable living within. But masterpieces and timeless classics are never achieved by the comfortable. Some of the greatest movies of all time are financed by directors who put up their house as collateral, the greatest novels are penned by psychological wrecks of people who torment the stories out of themselves, and Baldur's Gate 3 was developed by a team who sunk every last penny they had in the hopes that this would be a success. Not everyone can commit to that sort of risk and that's fine, but don't turn around and tell me that those who did don't matter in the grand scheme of the industry: because they do.

Larian themselves are a humble sort, and as they themselves have said: they don't see themselves as the standard because they know someone else is going to come around and make something cooler. They will, and when this 'they' does, they'll do so spurred on by the desire to make something bigger and more elaborate and genre effecting than Baldur's Gate 3 was. Just like how Larian themselves were spurred on by the indomitable legacy of Baldur's Gate 2. Standards rise, expectations rise and people rise to meet those new standards. Just as Spiderverse rebooted animation, I hope Larian have shaken the tree enough to remind the AAA that there are other ways to stand-out from the crowd beyond making the biggest and longest time waster.