Everyone hoped that Baldur’s Gate 3 would serve as a lesson for the big publishers. But it did not, says someone who should know.
Few games have been as successful in recent months as Baldur’s Gate 3. Therefore, many fans hope that major publishers will take a close look at this success and create more players that can captivate just as much. However, this hope is in vain. At least, that is what the man behind the stories of the first “Baldur’s Gate” games and Dragon Age believes.
What does this have to do with Baldur’s Gate 3? Baldur’s Gate 3 is considered one of the best, if not the best, RPGs of all time. This is also due to the fact that Baldur’s Gate 3 has made no compromises. It has opted for a tactical, complex combat system with relatively little action and created a vast world full of far-reaching connections, countless choices, and plenty of dialogues. For many, Baldur’s Gate 3 is thus seen as the new “gold standard” that even large AAA developers and their publishers should follow.
But will this really happen? At least the former lead writer behind the “Dragon Age” games strongly doubts it.
What did Gaider say? In an interview with PCGamesN, David Gaider spoke about the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 and the hope that publishers might learn from it. Gaider was the lead writer from Dragon Age: Origins to Inquisition, but also responsible for Knights of the Old Republic and the original “Baldur’s Gate” games. He said:
This is the hope: [The success of Baldur’s Gate 3] shows all companies with big IPs like Dragon Age or any good RPG IP what is possible when you focus on the genre and don’t approach it with the idea that RPGs are just a niche thing. You don’t have to say: “Oh, we need the action demographic and have to make it appealing to the masses” – why? Because RPGs are such a niche and nerdy thing that they will never be mass successes? No. If you focus on what the genre does well, people will play it.
This is at least the theory. But Gaider does not believe that this realization will reach the publishers.
[…] I don’t think many publishers will learn such lessons. My fear is that they will tell their developers “We want results like Baldur’s Gate 3” and the developers will then say “Okay, but then we need X and Y in resources.” Then they will say “Can’t you achieve the same results with half the resources?” Of course, the developer will probably say: “Yes, we can.” But the true answer would be No, because that’s just not how it works.
Publishers draw the wrong conclusions – they just want success
When it comes to lessons that publishers should learn, Gaider also believes that quickly wrong conclusions are drawn. Since the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, many new games have romance options. While these did exist before, now games seem to increasingly rely on them. Gaider has said:
This is disturbing. It is so easy for companies to learn the wrong lessons: The idea that romances should become a routine. That if you have a character, you just make “Let’s attach a romance to it”, which is just a few extra lines of dialogue and maybe a cutscene – that this is what the player base wants. It does not advance the medium. If we reach the point where romances are simply seen as the standard to add, then there will be a backlash and people will say: “Look, these romances feel very heartless, as if it’s just another item on the checklist of features.”
Even if big publishers may not draw the lessons from the success of such games that they should, perhaps it gives smaller teams at least hope that they can complete their vision. Because even the current hit Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is currently showing the big AAA publishers what is possible. They just have to learn from it.
