I like both types of games. I think it’s sad how the industry feels the need to homogenize all types of games in a genre rather than allowing a variety of approaches. Less charitably, I do think there is a failure of empathy with my generation (I’m 29) and younger generations when we demand everything be relatable and allow self insertion. I feel like part of engaging with stories (whether through games, cinema, or books) is allowing yourself to empathize with and understand characters with wildly different world views, morals, perspectives, values, and goals, and to enjoy their journey in the context of the overall narrative.
It's not just good but essential. If people are unable to empathize with someone different than them, very bad things happen in society. We are seeing this happen.
Very well said, and I agree. We need to be able to have variety in our settings, characters and story telling, and I've never understood this obsession with self insertion. I love the idea of playing an RPG and being someone else for a while ...someone not me, who isn't bound by the same upbringing, mindset and experiences. It's in the name ... Role playing. Sure, who we are in the real world always affects our in game choices, and how we play, but to me it seems boring that people would forever just want to be themselves but in a different setting.
It might also help if people stop trying to pretend they are the fictional character. To a mild extent I can understand that if the character in say a video game is a mute who you largely answer for, then maybe that argument can be made, but even then the character has existed in that fictional world already and likely has a past. They are not the person partaking in the media. I've never really understood that notion, that people NEED to pretend they are either the main character in a video game, a movie, a show, etc or a tag along with the main group in order to enjoy the thing they are partaking in. It's always been a bizarre idea to me, the fact that someone can't understand a fiction in front of them that isn't their reality but still enjoy it for what it is and remember it's not you.
@@topgamer101 Or we can allow people to play the game they’ve paid for however they want, especially if it’s a single player experience that has no effect on other players.
I think Sawyer is not giving himself enough credit and/or being too hard on himself. He sounds defeated in some way, which makes sense to me. He's been spending years on the Pillars games, obviously with a lot of passion and love, only for the sales to be disappointing. And then BG3 happens. I can imagine it'd be quite demotivating, thinking you're making something incredible with Deadfire (which it is imo), only to end up with an industry where the sales suggest "No, we actually overwhelmingly like it this other way". I really do feel for the guy. I hope he gets another opportunity with a passionate dev team to make another CRPG
BG3 is an awful game with a terrible, unrelatable Marvel-esque story. But hey, it's flashy and people want to stick it to the Man, so might as well circle the wagons around a product that is differently bad, but at least it's not AAA.
@@rclaws3230 I wouldn't say it is an awful game, but the general story and some of the writing is downright bad. They executed everything else well.
2 месяца назад+72
I’m 51 and I’ve been playing dnd both table top and crpgs since I was 12. Honestly, I think the focus on romance is missing what worked with BG3 and FNV. They are both great because they are about human stories. It’s fine having high minded themes. If reading dry intellectual volumes about those sorts of topics is fun for someone, cool. It’s fun for me sometimes. But these are games. Offering that up without giving an audience something human to care about is malpractice as an artist. I think we are where are because the one step lower down the ladder of fail is Bethesda. Who, regardless of how much Todd says he loves the themes of space exploration, parents his audience with a vacuous, card board cutout product with nothing to say and nothing to care about. That’s become the norm. Doing better than that by having something to say is great. But the bar has fallen off a cliff. Do a theme. Do many. And package it in a full range of human stories that players can choose to engage with or not. That’s an artistic and commercial success.
To be honest, the story in BG3 is kind of weak. And the "romances" are even worse. What is good in BG3 is the fact that there is an huge player agency and emergent gameplay trough interactivity/reactivity. You can proceed through the "quest" in many creative ways, and the game reacts accordingly.
2 месяца назад+3
@@nifftbatuff676 Awesome! Then there should be lots of opportunity for even better storylines and romance options.
The thing about philosophical themes is that they are human. Inherently, in that they deal with human experience and the desire for ultimate truth and values. But also in how they affect society and individuals. New Vegas shows this perfectly. All of their stories, motivations and conflicts arise from philosophy and politics producing an effect on their lives, usually from groups that follow those philosophies. That's why I think presenting characters vs. themes as a dichotomy is a dead end. They complement each other.
The whole romance thing is blown out of proportion. Yes it's nice and a lot of people dig it.Yes the community makes lots of fan art and is at times thirsty. But BG3 without romance would still be a top tier game and succeed as much as it did both commercially and critically.
Production value and mechanics are what made it so strong. I think that has more to do with Larian and than anything else. I found the social narratives contrived and didn't appreciate it but recognize the greatness of the game.
Honestly, the thing with "dating sim aspects" in BG3 feels like a big overstatement to me. Yes, you can start a romance with a character on a much lower approval rate, than in for example: DA:O. And you will get 2 romance scenes per character, instead of one. But thats like it. Its not a significantly different from other RPGs, that have romances.
A late reply, but i missed your comment earlier. No, it is not the amount of content and it is not really the pacing that makes so many people compare bg3 to date sim. It is the way that content is presented and integrated into the game. You have six major companions, all of whom are available to any player to choose from, which is a big (some would even say main) point of marketing im the game. They are responsive to the player (always) and require next to no actions in their favour to trigger the romance. They are just there, waiting for the player to pick and choose, with no agency of their own. I will not make comparisons to Deadfire, but let us instead consider DAO, which BG3 was often compared to. Imagine you meet Leliana and recruit her for the first time only to see her standing in camp in underwear next to Morrigan also in underwear, waiting for the protagonist to come and say "i choose you, come with me". This is how bg3 romance feels like and it is far more similar to a date sim, than to any other rpg with romance elements.
Don't compare it to DA:O because in that game it feels like the romances are measured and kind of have a place/purpose in the overall story. Sawyer's problem (and my own) with it is that developers have forgotten WHY RPGs have romances in the first place, putting them in for their own sake is bloat and takes away from the focus in the game. In-game romances are treated like a back-of-the-box quote, like something your game lives or dies off of having or not having when what matters is implementation and whether it should even be there in the first place. I think Mass Effect is the biggest offender even though people bring DA:O up, Mass Effect was the first game to really stick your nose in it. DA:O has well-written romances that actually effect the main plot, Morrigan's child is a plot-point that is brought up games later and plays a role in the finale of the game (you don't have to romance her for this but it helps). Though Dragon Age 2's romances are so very tacky (character are thin, annoying caricatures/archetypes, uninhibited pirate slut who hides her feelings with meaningless entanglements because she's scared to be vulnerable, adorkable "bless her heart" softie with a dark secret, edgy broody elf that belongs in a JRPG) DA 2 is where Bioware really got shameless with what they were doing, but romances are warranted because as Hawke you are doing the opposite of what you do in every RPG, not traveling the word to challenge a direct threat, but a refugee building your life/legacy over a series of years in a single place. I think throughout Mass Effect and Inquisition is where they became pointless, like Witcher 1's sex cards that are so "controversial", but it's not a set male pursuing multiple women in these other games, even when the implementation is just as meaningless and jarring for the overall plot's focus. In KOTOR romancing Bastila reinforces what we know about what's wrong with the Jedi code, that hiding attachments/passion leads one to fall. Major Theme of Star Wars. In DA:O your child with Morrigan is a major plot point, marrying Alistar can lead to your character becoming queen after the brutal slaughter of your whole house from a rival family at the start of the game. Book-ends and relevant. What's the point of Inquisition's terribly written romance scenes... or ANY of Mass Effects? Baldur's Gate 3 has the "we're going to die from tadpoles, life is short and fragile and worth living" as a major theme throughout, so romances barely pass the mark, though I feel this is not really emphasized as a focus with any other character than Karlach who is all about that, Shadowheart who lost her way after being indoctrinated and has to get back her family where you can serve as a strong anchor for her and maybe Astarion since he's a kicked puppy... Wyll, Lae'zel, Gale... meh feels like trite dating sim. The real reason why romances became a staple instead of part of the organic story in games is to increase reach is the same reason they got slotted into big movie blockbusters, to increase the range of the audience and attract female audience. It's Bioware's fault that sultry, 50 Shades style romances became something we have to deal with in every game, but they used to do it for a reason. It was fucking Mass Effect that tried to market itself as "mature" by showing 2 seconds of Ashley's ass that snowballed to where we are. It's not going anywhere as half the game's fanbases are here just for that and post thirsty memes "ironically" everywhere as it's the only part of their brains that engage with the game it seems.
@@MrMeddyman Well hum... I think the romance help to raise the stakes in a personal level, like during the suicide mission in mass effect 2, I knew that any of my companion could die and my Shepard was with Tali. So every times the game would put Tali in danger I would get twice as nervous because of my character relationships. The ending of mass effect 3 made me so angry especially because Tali was on her own and the only way for me to have shepard and Tali together is to destroy the geths and EDI. Its not just for pointless sex scene.
@@sasha9796How do they lack agency and only exist to be romanced? you can lose them or at least a lot of approval by doing actions that they dislike. The characters will have their own situations if they go unrecruited, usually death are they in their underwear in camp because you unequipped all their gear and made them that way? im confused by what gameplay you're describing because the romance scenes are all telegraphed and have specific triggers maybe they are more sexually open than most video game characters but it's treated reasonably in terms of it being just as easy to lose a bond as make it so quickly. if you mess up a relationship with some companions they will never have a personal conversation with you again for the whole game
Story, choice, and consequence. These are what make RPG’s great games. BG3 was successful because it included all of these. Characters are important. If you think about all the very successful memorable games, they had great characters. This is true for something like fallout new Vegas as well. Pillars was a great game because it had a great story. There’s no need to separate things into different camps based upon the story they tell. I love, dragon age origins because it has great characters and a great story. Love the original Balduar’s Gate for the same reasons. Make a good RPG and people will enjoy it!
BG3 also has amaizng gameplay too. Its immersive sim levels of interactivity and the kind of creativity you can use in the combat and solving general problems is far beyond most CRPGs. Its more comparable to say, Deus Ex.
This is BG3’s true selling point. The immersive sim elements are super peak. It’s the secret sauce. Same with BotW back in 2017. No secret both these huge games with systemic design blew up.
As someone who played both Pillars of Eternity games, I don't think that the issue with POE: Deadfire was the lack of focus on the characters necessarily. I think the issue was something else. Personally I found that the world and the story just didn't grab me all that much. I disliked all the factions more or less equally, and for some reason I found the game less interesting than the first one. However, compare that to "Tyranny" - another game that couldn't compete with BG3 in terms of character focus, and personally I think it was a much better game than Deadfire.
Yeah...i am 43. Gree up with the gilden era of rpg....i wanted to like deadfire...but it fell flat. I dont really know why... the vibe? How the story is told. Its like it never really rise. I never liled it enough to finish it...and i am not mad i didnt.
I don't know if I agree. Sawyer seems to have an overly mechanistic way of thinking about reality and stories, which isn't overlaying very well with actual people in the way he wants it to. Even the framing of POE: II's story as "whether is utilitarian or not" strips the phenomena he is trying to explore from its context and reduces it down to something it can't be: utilitarian, mechanical, and explicit. His thematic examination is like trying to understand a joke by explaining it, then being confounded how something critical was lost in the process. While I enjoyed the Pillars game for their mechanics, they don't actually even register for me as meaningful narrative vehicles, and I'm evidently not alone in that. The second game in particular seems to suffer badly when trying to convey the story it seems to want to convey, with endless distracting side quests, and a mythology delivered through interruptive cutscenes that felt distant, jarring, and impersonal. It feels like the game is constantly getting in its own way in both hooking the player deeply with the narrative it thinks is interesting, and how it explores it. And this is from someone that normally rolls his eyes at complaints of there being "too much dialogue." That's not to say there isn't beauty in those games, but I found it a real struggle to dig for it, and I think this is the reason both games get the perpetual qualifiers, complaints, and sidelined status they do. And that makes sense too: if your game revolves around mechanical and thematic examinations of "utility", it kind of has to exclude beauty, or at least limit itself to understanding beauty in the way an orc would. BG:3 feels a lot more relatable and natural because it is more relatable and natural: it focuses on characters and the way the players organically feel and relate to those characters. It's implicit rather than explicit, organic rather than mechanical. Sawyer has a map, but i.m.o the map doesn't matches the players' emotive terrain very well.
Pentiment proves that he has got great story telling ability. The story is intriguing, the characters charming, and the setting is incredibly evocative. It’s a shame that there is little in the way of gameplay mechanics, but I found the experience engaging nonetheless. And I’m someone who usually plays games for the gameplay and immersion; I’d rather watch movies or read books than play a game that doesn’t provide me with some interesting form of agency.
Romance is and always has been a cool added feature to rpgs but just having solid companion quests is a huge sale. The best rpgs ive enjoyed would be the storyline and the desolate plot threads in Tyranny and the dark morbid reality of children being born without souls in pillar stand at the top for me.
Baldur's Gate 3 had a budget of 100 million USD and the lowest estimate of copies sold on PC alone is 5 million. If you did some basic math, you'd know that's far more than it cost to make. The game sold for between $59.99 and $69.99 At $59.99 they would have made from the 5 million copies sold = $299,950,000 so basically $300,000,000.00 Around a month ago, Larian's Michael Douse revealed that Baldur's Gate 3 had sold 'way over' 10 million units. In a new interview with Gamespot from GDC 2024, Larian CEO Swen Vincke provided an updated sales figure by comparing the studio's latest game from the previous one, Divinity: Original Sin 2. So if the USA game companies would stop being greedy and take the time to make something good and not over charge for trash and make it fast and then on to the next one, then they would continue to sell the good game over time. The corporate system is ruining games , because those at the top are not gamers and have no understanding of what is wanted. Larian are gamers so they understand.
I think the reason behind BG3 success and Pillars Of Eternity's reception is that despite whatever theme is expressed - BG3 had more of showing the plot instead of telling it. PoE has much more exposition than showing what is going on, and no matter which generation it is - showing the story in visual medium always wins over the exposition. At the end of the day, games are closer to movies than to books as a medium. Also... I think the whole daring thing is a bit blown out of proportion. It probably was great for marketing, but for the game? I guess that's one of the weakest and less important elements that make is successful.
This. Cinematic cutscenes are the difference. And I'm not gonna lie, I love cinematic cut scenes as well. Even if I do enjoy Pillars games as well. I guess you can say Dragon Age: Origins got me hooked on that style of RPG, and BG3 took a lot of lessons from DA: Origins.
Very smart guy, he understands he is out of touch in some things and that is ok. Personally i loved Pillars 1 & 2 but in my opinion there is definitely a lot of fluff and writing that goes nowhere. I agree with him that romance is not needed, but that is what it is, optional for the people that want that and gives immersion in the end. If you want 200 grand for your sequel then you have to earn it, just as how Larian went from the Original Sin series to this, and he knows he is not gonna earn it and even if he gets it, his game is not gonna even break even. This is a man who has his feet on earth. Thanks for this interesting interview.
Yeah, I agree: imho the PoE2 story tried to be grand but ultimately fell flat. Imho its best strength was actually its classes and flexibility to make fun and unique builds.
As a former bookstore manager in the late 90s, I always remember that what we called "category romance," which just means books shelved in the romance section of the store, outsold all other categories of mass market paperback fiction: combined. People like romance. I remember commenting elsewhere that the issue I saw with leaving romance out of RPGs was that it's a huge part of peoples' lives that it's impossible to create a truly deep character without including it. Now, with this argument about philosophy, I can see reasons why people would want to do it. Now I don't think a philosophical approach is bad--I've loved almost everything Sawyer has produced and the only ones I haven't loved I haven't played (Pentiment, Alpha Protocol, and Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows), but I do think it can only succeed in the mass market if it's combined with character depth and romance.
I don't necessarily agree that bg3 doesn't have any deeper themes. I think BG3 does an incredible job of portraying the theme of cycles of abuse and trauma. Pretty much every character in the game can be interpreted as a metaphor for a common type of generational trauma. Shadowheart is religious trauma, gale is relationship power dynamics, astarion is sexual trauma etc.. And I think the dark urge exemplifies this the most being all about this overbearing urge that you don't understand but it controls your actions, and only once you come face to face with your traume can you overcome your urge
I sort of disagree; it is clear that romance and relationships are the main pull for BG3; what if it had just been the story without romance? Doubt it would have been that succesful.
@@spellandshield it is my opinion it would have still been a massive success but I am sure it would hurt it with some players. My contention is that it would have still been very successful and made lots of money. But sure the romances I am sure brought some in. Romance was not a main pull for me personally. But it also doesn’t bother me the way they did it.
@@spellandshield I think it's not just the romance itself that was the draw, rather it was the excellent writing and voice acting that those characters benefited from. Shadowheart and Karlach are compelling characters with interesting backstories even without having nude romance scenes with them. At least, that's what I think.
@@spellandshield Imo Sawyer is wrong about anything changing. Bioware made character focused games with romance for decades before BG3, none came close to this level of success, they even tried making them more action focused, still tes games were always more popular (btw not even sure tes has romance). So my take is gameplay sold bg3, not complexity of it, but sandboxy nature, simmilar to tes games, plus coop. Search youtube and tons of most viewed bg3 videos are party of 4 doing some whacky things.
In my view, it all boils down to what kind of writers you have. In the case of BG3, the writers clearly played to their strengths by not focussing on great, overarching thematic progressions (like the TV series 'Babylon 5') or philosophical metanarratives (a really pretentious example being the film 'Inception'), but instead on the character-driven aspects of narrative design. In terms of the traditional writer archetypes of gardener vs. architect, the BG3 writers clearly were of the gardener variety. It's important to know what you do best. If you, during game development, do have access to the architect variety of writer, then sure, that's what you'll get. Having said that, more often than not, these days, I find myself getting bored by people's attempts at creating big narrative story arcs. But maybe that's my professional deformation as a recovering academic in the humanities - it takes years of academic study to really get into any philosophical problem, and the absence of such effort really shows. I'd rather have a rich character-driven hothouse of flavourful details than a bunch of generic NPCs who exist solely for the purpose of demonstrating the writer's broader philosophical points (looking at you, Asimov).
You can have both, though. Like, B5 broke ground at serialized TV, but it also had incredible character work woven throughout all that revolutionary storytelling, as well. I'd put Katsulas's G'kar up in the top tier, just as I would Newbon's Astarion, for example. I do agree that I'd rather not be disappointed by a half-measure, though. There's so many examples of showrunners crawling up their own backsides, spoiling everything they touched in the process. Westworld is probably the most striking contrast I can think of in recent memory, but I, and I suspect you, could spend quite a long time listing genre fiction writers that have reached further than they could grasp, so I'll leave that
Conversely, you can find Asimov very pleasant in it's simple and snappy way to present stories and characters. You can tell also that the quality of it's novels declined when he tried to write more character-driven stories.
I agree. I think guys like Chris Avellone can write some great dialogue but when they get to "THE THEMES", they not only hit you about the noggin with a hammer, but they also actively prevent you from making effective arguments that oppose what is clearly the writers' philosophical position. I'd rather not get a pretentious PHI 101 lecture and get a story where the characters act like real people, not just something you use to make a point.
I kinda disagree while sure BG3 has less meaningful story as it portraits the world, yet DOS2 had it in spades. I just think you can't have world shattering debates and questions in a game when you can't actually solve them. Pillars, DOS2 and many others can do that on a level that BG3 can't, the game world has to remain in balance at the end of the story, it's why the ending feels so abrupt, so inviting for more conclusion, but that's something that can't happen as just in most sitcoms the world has to stay more or less static. I'm 100% sure any new thing Larian does will have far more deep questions and a more impactful story on the world it is told in.
@@spellandshield One does not exclude the other though. DOS2 has romance too, just not as fleshed out, DOS2 has world ending consequences, easily the scope of Pillars world ending consequences. BG3 just wasn't their own IP so they couldn't go hogwild with a world impacting story. It's my number 1 reason why I'm glad they aren't doing BG4 or DLC. Lastly I have to repeat this but one aspect really doesn't exclude the other, but when you work within a set world with set lore with a prefered balance you simply can't deviate enough to make any questions you put forward actually meaningful cause a posed question without any possible resolve is just cheap and pointless. Characters interaction, motion capture, voice acting is almost entirely different from world interaction, story and quest scope. Sure one impacts the other budget and time wise but BG3 could have easily put more worldshattering questions and different options to solve them. They simply couldn't because of limitations set on them by WotC.
BG3 isn't really on a different level than DOS2. It's the same design philosophy. DOS2 doesn't aspire to be some profoundly philosophical game like Pillars does.
@@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842 I don't know about the second one, but the first didn't. I loved a lot of the area art, thought the combat was fun, but the characters left me absolutely cold, and the story was something that I'm sure a Philosophy 101 course would find groovy, but I found the main "dilemma" incredibly dim once it became clear.
Baldur's Gate 3 brought back something that we lost somewhere along the way, something that's quite hard to achieve due to heightened expectations and cultural shift. It did Western RPG whimsy right and in this era that's quite fresh, no one's had more than a sensible chuckle at Western RPG whimsy since 2008.
You make some absolutely fantastic points in this video about how the direction of RPGs is changing, but I disagree with your analysis of BG3's story. I think you are absolutely correct in saying that BG3's narrative does not explore any deep philosophical, social, or political themes but I have seen in a few previous videos that you described BG3's story as not really having a central point or theme and I just cannot disagree more with that statement. I firmly believe that the core theme of BG3's story is trust, more specifically, learning to trust and learning who to trust. I think this theme is best shown in the player's interactions with the companions, as all of them (with the exception of Karlach) begin in a state of relative hostility toward the player. Even though they are willing to follow you in hopes of a cure, they are either extremely rude, pretentious, or clearly hiding essential details from the player. However, as your travels go on and the player shows their willingness to assist them (giving Gale magic items even when inconvenient, not judging Shadowheart for her association with Shar, backing up Lae'zel in her confrontation with the Gith in act 1, helping with Astarion's bloodwork issues, etc.) Each of these characters, in turn, open up to the player and are willing to trust their guidance during character quests. For me personally, and I think a lot of other players, that was a very rewarding narrative experience that teaches the player that by being a reliable and trustworthy friend to your party members, they will, in turn, reciprocate. The theme of who to trust is also exemplified by how the character interacts with the villains. Auntie Ethel, The Emperor, and Raphael are introduced in an opposite fashion to the companions; instead of being prickly and rude at the start, they try to come off as hospitable and welcoming, and if you trust them, your party ends up manipulated and screwed. One of my favorite examples of this is when you ask Auntie Ethel to take out the tadpole, and after she fails, you are simply left without an eye while she tells you to fuck off. This was a great way to drive home the idea that putting trust in these shady strangers without building up some sort of companionship can lead to ruin. So, while it is entirely fair not to like this theme or think that it's overdone or poorly executed, I don't think it fair to say that the story doesn't have a theme or that the story isn’t about anything.
Indeed. There is also the theme of the cost of power. Every party member has a past that tempts them to give up humanity for power. And all of the main companions can easily fall into them. After forsaking their humanity, none of them are better off for it. Also good luck to anyones characters if you romance Ascended Evil Astarion.
But this is the problem I feel, the problem is characters in RPGs becoming a focus over what the world has to offer in most RPGs. Or at least being PRESENTED as the main draw. Characters should supplement the world, if Deadfire didn't pull you in because you weren't into its' colonial pirate fantasy cool, but it shouldn't be because of the characters in an RPG they are secondary to the core question yyour world is posing. Whether you are writing contemporary fiction or high fantasy, your characters anchors the story and gives your world a point of focus. They are a reference point. Fae'run can be generic compared to worlds with more focus because it's D&D and all other worlds draw from it, but since we're especially talking about Illithids here the core theme is actually control and the illusion of it. The characters THINK they know who they are at the beginning of the game only to have their preconceptions challenged by the threat of death and control by an outside force, without realizing that the existence they lead and the people that they (and we as audiences are) erodes our freedom. You're not wrong about trust and power, but illusion of autonomy is more succinct and plays into almost every story, "problem" is it's still rooted in the characters who are done well rather than the world. The solution each character has to "solve" this supposed lack of autonomy is to go deeper like with Sharran Shadowheart, Ascended Gale/Astarion, Lae'zel but that doesn't really make them happy because they need to re-evaluate their identity and who they are. Their very motivations are rooted in a lack of understanding of who they are.
Just a short personal list about games with character-driven plot and at the same time has a (at least somewhat) deep philosophical question: KotOR 2 (admittedly the themes of the game were already planted by the first title) Planescape Torment Persona 3 (maybe even 4) Fire Emblem 4-5-6-7-9-10 Deus Ex (the very first game) Dragon Age Origins (which interestingly, to me at least, pose the same question as of Baldur's Gate 3: up to what level does the mean justify the ends and at what level it all just turns into abuse of power?) Arcanum and Baldur's Gate 2 (both tackles the same idea as baldur's Gate 3: does the circumstance of a man birth matter more than his blood?)
The main reason BG3 was so successful is the amount of choice or even just perceived choice it provides to the player. So far, no other modern triple-A has done this. It's a bit disappointing to hear that cinematics and romance are the reason while ignoring the main reason the game appealed to so many players. Most players say "hey I wonder if I can do this" and in BG3 the number of times they'll then say "wow, I CAN do this! Can't believe the game accounted for this!" is, compared to any other game, astronomical
I totally agree. I am willing to guarantee nobody who is a fan of BG3 would cite "personal narrative as opposed to asking deep philosophical questions" or "all the romances" as the reason why they like the game. They like it because it allows them the perception of freedom of choice, to explore and try different things, and then rewards them for it. I'd also add that another aspect not mentioned here that I can see is that BG3 did so well in large part because it almost completely avoids preaching at its audience. I'd argue that the average person is so sick and tired of every single form of relaxation media being so crammed full of ideologically driven pulpit pounding that literally anything that gives them something to do without it will be successful. And let's face it: the preaching is coming pretty well exclusively from one particular worldview, and that worldview is unquestionably spending billions of dollars "consulting" with firms specifically designed to figure out how to cram it into everything. It's gotten so pervasive that people feel like they can't watch a movie, turn on the TV, play a game, or do much of anything without it being rammed in their faces - and they are just tired of it. That would be almost exclusively the reason why Black Myth Wukong is crushing it right now I'd guess - it's a mechanically solid game with a decent story that completely and totally avoids ideological scolding.
I don't think even if, for example, Microsoft would give Josh BG3's budget he wouldn't be able to create a Pillars 3 on the same level. And this is because his design philosophy is so different than other CRPG developers. He doesn't care about romances, whereas at least in the mainstream part of RPG's, that's where the success of Dragon Age, Mass Effect and pretty much all of Bioware's games have flourished in. Josh would get bogged down by scope creep with POE3 and not focus on the main drive of what made BG3 so amazing: the characters and relationships that the main character has with them. No other company (besides CDPR) would actually invest so much time and money into the mocap, voice acting and make the narrator one of the "main NPC" characters of the game. This is why I don't think even as good as a dev and director as Josh is, would be able to create a game where it appeals to anyone other than the hardcore CRPG crowd (because he cares too much about gameplay systems as a priority over the others). Don't get me wrong..I LOVE all kinds of RPG's of all shapes and sizes and I do love me a proper hardcore CRPG, but the reality is those are few and far between and it's gonna be a long time until the next Pathfinder game from Owlcat to get me that "fix" again. But, unfortunately, those games don't appeal to the mass audience so they can't sell or breakout from their shell and they are extremely high risk of investment.
You act like Baldur's Gate 3 is the only game ever made that had romance in it. Both Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 had romance in it. I could have sworn remembering hooking up with Jaheira and Viconia in BG2. The Dragon Age and Mass Effect games all have had romance in them and are very popular to this day. To me romance is the least thing I look forward to in rpg's I prefer philosophical crpg's. My two favorite crpg's of all time are Planescape: Torment and KOTOR 2 both philosophical games and written by Chris Avellone who was a fellow alumni of Sawyer. I am also Gen X and have beem playing video games for 40+ years and can say that Baldur's Gate 3 is up there on my list of best rpg's of all time. Next to both the aforemnetioned Planescape: Torment and KOTOR 2 plus Dragon Age: Origins.
I was under the impression that Chris Avellone write most if not all of the games Sawyer is famous for working on. I must be mistaken and Avellone doesn't exist anymore. His writing credits should definitely be given to someone who has admitted multiple times that he didn't write those games.
I see your irony here but on the flip side Avellone was credited(by the audience) for everything Obsidian made over the years. Avellone wrote only 1 companion for NV main game for example but most people are under the impression that "Avellone wrote most if not all of it" for some reason. There are two games that "he wrote most if not all of it" and those are Planescape Torment(25 years ago) and KotOR 2(20 years ago). No one made NV single handedly, Obsidian was writing powerhouse back then and they lost almost all of them including Avellone. The Outer Worlds by the og fallout creators was a big disappointment for anyone who knew their previous games(Fallout1, Arcanum, Bloodlines) so while Josh should get the biggest credit for NV its not a guarantee a Sawyer directed sequel to Fallout will be success/good/great game.
@@NEKASABA I love Chris. He is one of if not the best writer in the history of the gaming industry and it’s a fucking disgrace that he has essentially been blacklisted from the industry, but I will say John Gonzalez also deserves a lot of love as he was very important in the writing department. Too
People oversell and undersell how much Avellone work. He didn't do much when came to New Vegas base game for example , but it was the lead designer for Old World Blues , Dead Money and Lonesome road. John González and Sawywer were the "main guys" behind Base and Honest Hearts. Avellone was the one of leads during Planescape Torment and Kotor 2 , also worker on Mask of the betrayer. He wrote Durance and Griving Mother in Pillars of eternity 1. Also one of the main leads with Chris Parker , a often forgetting key member of Obisidan, in Alpha protocol. But Sawyer was the director and did a lore of the lore for Pillars of eternity , also wrote Pallegina.
@@NEKASABA The Outer Worlds is only a "disappointment" when you compare it to New Vegas. And honestly, every game is a disappointment when you start comparing it to one of the greatest RPGs ever made. However, it is a very solid RPG on it's own and reminds me a lot of KotOR.
fair points but to give bg3 credit where it's due it maintains a strong theme about submission and control. the illithid crisis overall and the personal stories all share a throughline about this and say different things about it
Thank you for the Seneca quote, mate. As for a character driven vs. deeply philosophical RPGs: I do not think this is an either-or dichotomy at all. KotOR (especially the second game) showed us, that a melange of both is possible, and - frankly speaking - quite awesome. Furthermore, although not as obvious as in games like the Pillars of Eternity series, BG3 raised quite a few profound philosophical questions as well, IMO. For example, the fundamental lure of power: is it acceptable to embrace your inner (Ilithid) shadow, in order to fight the darkness in the world, despite the real possibility of becoming another, potentially more devastating darkness yourself? Fritz Nietzsche would have loved this thought experiment I guess.
Warning, Long Comment Ahead: I disagree. Here's the thing; I get where you're coming from. And you aren't entirely wrong about anything you said in this video. But I do think there is more curmudgeon-y, "Oh these youths of today" energy here than you realize. So let me be upfront with my biases. I am 27. Exactly within the demographic you mentioned. I have vastly less life experience than you and will not purport otherwise. That said, I am also a writer and someone who passionately studies literature. I bring this up not to say that you are wrong in your assessments, but rather that there is more nuance than you are acknowledging. You are right to say that Baldur's Gate 3 is character-driven, but it also absolutely has overarching narrative themes. It approaches topics related to subjugation, whether by religion (Shadowheart), abusers (Astarion), oppressive government (Gortash), hierarchical militaristic structures, including forced inscription (Lae'zel and Karlach), selling one's soul for the "greater good" (Wyll), hiveminds and cultish manipulation of large swaths of people (The mind flayers and the entire concept of the Absolute, honestly this is reinforced basically everywhere in the game), and even, ultimately, the subjugation to our own mortality and impending doom (Karlach again, but also the entire idea of turning into mind flayers). Throughout the story, we consistently see recurring themes of the abuse of power, along with the idea of whether power inherently corrupts and is prone to abuse, even when good-natured people with initially good intentions come to that power (Ketheric). The game even subverts this idea with Gale's relationship with Mystra, where he literally had a romantic relationship with the god he worshipped. These characters each have various endings, usually related to whether they escape these oppressive forces, fall victim to them, or become the oppressors themselves (Astarion is the best example of this). Yes, the game is character-driven, but that is because the characters *are* the story. Every disparate aspect of the game's narrative is tied to this overarching theme, and they all work together to inform the player of what the creators' beliefs and intentions are, while also leaving room for the player to bring their own beliefs into the themes. We can debate how *effective* the game is at conveying these themes, and in my opinion, it sometimes falters. But the themes are there, and they aren't hidden. You have to want to engage with the game in that way, though. You have to take what it is offering seriously. Story and character are not truly separable. You can emphasize one more than the other, but there is no story without agents of action, which is what characters are. They are the subjects of the story. Their level of depth, and how they relate to the overarching themes of the story, can vary of course. But they are essential to a narrative. And likewise, what the characters do, the struggles they face, both internal and external, and the choices they make in response to those struggles - that becomes the story. Storytelling is holistic in that way. Each disparate element informs all others, working together to form a cohesive whole. That includes romance. I personally love romance. I also think it is rarely, if ever, handled well in games. Honestly, I think Cyberpunk has the most realistic, natural-feeling romances through Panam and Judy, and that game uses your romance with them to enforce its own themes of mortality and seizing the life you have while you have it, along with the stronger emphasis on family and community through Panam. I think BG3 doesn't reach that same level of effectiveness. But its romances do play a role in these larger themes. Astarion in particular, despite being someone I so fundamentally am not interested in romantically, really highlights this. If you look at vampirism as analogous to sexual coercion and abuse (which absolutely has always been part of the vampire mythos historically), then you can see the value in him working through his trauma individually while also along with a partner who comes along and shows him he is worthy of love and that he deserves better treatment than he experienced in the past. There is value there, and it is value I would not get if I were self-inserting, because if I were doing that, I would just romance Shadowheart every time. And finally, on the topic of self-inserting. Once again, it's nuanced. You say you've never done it in your fifty-something years, but you absolutely have. What we take and give to a character we create comes from us. Even if we use it as a tool of empathy, of exploring another perspective or another person's shoes, we still take our own preconceived notions and inherent biases and preferences into that exploration. We can never totally separate ourselves from the characters we envision and inhabit. That is the beauty of roleplaying, in my opinion. That we may explore not just alternative lifestyles and perspectives, but also our own beliefs through another lens. That is the beauty of all art, if I'm honest. Art is a tool of human empathy. It begs the reader, viewer, etc. to engage with it and invest in other people's lives and struggles. BG3 absolutely does that, even if it doesn't always do it effectively.
@@spellandshield In my experience it isn't a given. I meet some weird people who sincerely believe in objectivity around storytelling and what makes art "good." But I get where you're coming from and I'm glad to know we're on the same page there :)
@@charismacaster2429 We don't WANT to be ourself in fantasy worlds but rather the idealised comic book version where boring things we do in our real life don't happen in the fantasy world. The reason? We play these games for entertainment not as a life simulator. A lot of you guys that want self insert see Role Playing Games as Life Simulators in Fantasy worlds like Animal Crossing or The Sims. Some of us don't want to LIVE inside the world as ourselves. Rather we are escaping the boring real world to enter into a fantasy world which is like going on a vacation where we can be someone else for a while and kick back and do adventurous things that have nothing to do with our real world which is depressing, boring and too risky to be a hero. Think back to when you were a kick dressing p as Batman or Superman and role playing these characters. You chose to be these characters because they have things you don't: high intellect, bravery, super human strength and speed, fighting skills etc. That's what Role Playing Games are at the CORE. However over the years RPG have turned into life simulation games by adding in more player-driven additions like base building, the ability to customise your face, the ability to go fishing, the ability to romance people, the ability to buy a pet and feed it, etc which are just extras that are added to help immerse you into the world a bit more. But these are not the reason why you play a RPG. You play it because you want to be those cool characters and not be yourself. Some would strongly disagree with me on this and I would wager it's mostly women since a study was conducted by the Toy company Lego that girls when they play with dolls self insert themselves into the dolls rather than role play as Barbie or the cartoon characters. Whereas when boys play with Gi Joe or superhoeroes they role play those heroes instead of self insert. This is the reason Josh Sawyer probably doesn't want to make those romance games. That's not his thing. I agree with him. It's a genre that guys don't typicall care much for historically. (its just a novelty to most of us old timers) If you like dating simulators or pet simulators and want to see more of that in games in the RPG genre I don't want to stop you from enjoying that. But lets us be honest: you are here to escape the real world to enter a more interesting fantasy world and that is the core audience for RPG since the start. Nerds were the core audience for RPG and over time it's trying to expand to the normies for big $. You like the idea of RPG expanding that is fine but it cannot be denied that the hobby has been hijacked by normies and those normies simetimes bring negative effects to the genre (like the obsession of needing to be represented all the time. See Kingdom Come Deliverance's recent problems of being attacked by the SJW who insist that they add more black people in the game which is trying to be historically accurate. This didn't happen in the 1980s and 90s. The normies are destroying the nerds hobbies.
I feel a part of roleplaying that Pillars is missing is connecting with your own character, ie the roleplay part. Eg I can be excited about the amusing circumstances my class/race may cause in BG3 and the story I create around their path. Eg my dark urge warlock who becomes a vengeance paladin feels as close to canon as I could imagine, so it feels like a personalised story
Not gonna lie, while there are things I appreciate in Pillars 1 and Deadfire, the characters there are their weakest link. There are a few exceptions, but most of them are just boring and few of those are barely relatable as human beings, let alone people. If we go all the way back to Planescape: Torment it didn't really compromise characters for the sake of its story and neither it did compromise its big themes for the sake of its characters. It is a very personal game and it has ideas to discuss. Disco Elysium didn't compromise it'd characters nor its ideas. There are very believable people in this game and yet I wouldn't call the game or its story shallow or simple-minded or subordinate to the charactee development. Owlcat games exist and romance is small part of them, important only if it is important for you. Now, whether do you value media that teaches you ideas or media that teaches you emotions is gonna to depend on many things. I personally don't believe one is better than another. Do most companies choose the path of least resistance, when it comes to money and meny other dubious things? Yes. But if you want to complain, that your competition undercuts by making a product that easier to market and sell, you gotta step up your game, man. If nobody wants to buy your games about ideas, you gotta package those ideas better. You gotta make better games. There is no other way, but to get good. 🤷♀️😐 Otherwise you might as well start yelling at clouds. p.s. Fallout: New Vegas is a bit shallow.. when it comes to its ideas. It's all visible from miles away, it doesn't say much new about those ideas. Heck, I've seen RUclips videos more articulate and more in-depth about those same ideas. I get that a lot of people value F:NV for putting these ideas forward (definitely did a better job, than F3 ever tried), but it's just so heavy-handed and sloppy. The biggest value of the New Vegas for me is that it tells me a story of a belieavable world and believable cultures, of believable people with believable problems. The quests don't all warp the people and the world around them for the entertainment value. That I appreciate. Pillars 1 and Pillars 2 are not that much better it terms of discussing its ideas wirh you as a player. Admit it, Josh Sawyer is not the best rerpesentation for the 'idea game designer'. He's passionate about it, true, but that alone doesn't make him a good storyteller.
BG3 also had a lot of marketing that made sure everyone knew of it, even those like me that doesn't "follow" the genre (or game releases in general) closely. Hadn't heard about the pillars games so thanks for that tip. Been playing games since early 90s, love RPGs like icewind dale, NWN, BG etc, so pillars should be perfect for me after my current BG3 honor run is done!
Hmmmmm interesting take, I have to say myself I definitely prefer a greater focus on characters but I still like Pillars and FNV. I think you make a strong point though. A big mistake often made is people want one thing and one thing only.
Hi. I found your channel recently and I enjoyed your opinion about your favourites modern crpgs. In fact, when you talk about the narrative of Pillars of Eternity made me wonder, what are your favourites crpgs in storytelling of all time. Those games which had such an incredible narrative that with the pass of the years you still remenber. I would love to know your choices for play them in the future. Would you consider to make a video about this topic? Excuse me if i made some mistake, english is not my native language. Thanks you and sorry for the off topic.
I find Josh Sawyer a very frustrating dev. I miss the times when people actually made the games they wanted to make without being affected by it being a massive success or not. And listen, I understand we live in a capitalist world and that money is crucial, the thing is... Obsidian relied on crowd funding for both Pillars 1 and 2 and surpassed what they asked for in a single day for both games. The problem with capitalism here (and most places) is that people don't just want to live a humble, comfortable life, they want oceans of money and they want to be recognized by the mainstream public/media. When I look at the CRPG "landscape" I see studios like Owlcat, InXile, Iron Tower, Spiderweb Software, Logic Artists, and even Larian, who went through a lot and was actually a "well kept secret" of the RPG genre not too long ago until BG3. All of these studios make passionate games, all of them are either AA or straight up indie. None of them cries about Baldur's Gate 3 like Josh does. I can't help but feel that he's more focused on becoming the next Todd Howard rather than making games his fans love. It sucks that a guy that made so many games we love and is a huge name in this genre has succumbed to these defeatist thoughts. Baldur's Gate 3 might look like it but it ISN'T a "Baldur's Gate 1 and 2-like". People that like BG3 does not like old school CRPGs by "approximation". Josh thinks he doesn't get the audience anymore because 80% of the BG3 audience isn't the Pillars of Eternity audience, obviously. The frustrating part is that he feels like he NEEDS to make a game for that audience while the other 5 studios I mentioned don't, because they know who their audience actually are and most important of all, they are satisfied with their market share, with their place in this industry. At this point Josh should just apply for a job in Activision and be another cog developing the next Call of Duty, since he seems to desperately want to be part of something "larger than life", with massive mainstream appeal.
BG3 is my second favorite CRPG, just behind Planescape Torment! Both have fun and creative character, great story and great combat! Releasing the "bear" scene really caught peoples attention and made people want to find out about the game! Even some people that don't like CRPG's love BG3!
You might be right about the character-based stories being a significant factor in BG3’s success, but I’m not so sure about the romance being a big of a factor as it is made out to be. As someone who liked both series, I vastly preferred Pillars 1 over Deadfire because it felt like the characters were more tightly written. Even the player character had a personal stake in seeing the adventure through, as they had personal history with Thaos/Iovara (that the player could dictate in the various memory sequences about Thaos) in addition to needing to confront Thaos to avoid going insane. Even the characters I liked the best (Eder, Aloth, Durance, Zahua, Devil of Carroc) had their own character arcs that either had strong themes that could stand on their own, or were adjacent to the Watcher’s own character arc. Overall, I felt that the character writing in Deadfire felt shallower and less well written compared to Pillars 1, even when it comes to the returning party members from the first game. Eder lacks the dark humor that he had in the first game, and Aloth’s entire character arc was undone for who knows why. The gods are turned into bickering powerful people instead of monolithic and titanic spiritual entities who, despite being created by humans, feel like something much more than human. The political factions in Deadfire were still interesting, but the story overall felt much less personal and thus harder to get invested in. It felt like the writing team threw out all of the mystery and development in the first game in order to dumb things down and make it more “relatable” for the average gamer, and the game suffered for it.
I think the analysis here is flawed and I don't understand this focus and obsession on romances and self-insertion. I am Gen X, 54 years old, and I have been playing games since the Atari 2600. I have experienced a wide variety of stories and methods of storytelling, and I cherish them all. Over the course of my life I have had discussions about games with a great many people including children as young as 8 years old. Not once, ever, has anyone said that they want to be themselves in a game. If you are playing a character in a CRPG, you either want to be that character to experience life in that particular fictional universe through their eyes, or you will create a character that is not yourself because it literally cannot be yourself. It's a spell casting mage in medieval times or a super soldier in the future. Everyone I've ever spoken to plays these games because they want to be someone else for a little while, never themselves. Character driven stories give you the opportunity to do that. It's not inherently better or worse than stories that tell things in a different way. As far as romances are concerned, games don't revolve around romances, and if that is your perception, that is skewed from what is actually going on because you have a certain way of feeling about romances in games. Romances in Baldur's Gate 3 or DA:O or Mass Effect or whatever are not great because they're romances, but because they're ways for you to learn more about a character. There are things that any game with romance has that you will never learn unless you engage in the romance. It's a way of gating information. Another way is locational. In Elden Ring, Melina will only tell you certain things if you are in certain locations. Otherwise, you will never learn these things. Romance is a way to create more depth in a character and to gate information. It's not a simulator and no one legitimately thinks that they personally are boning Alistair or Morrigan. Stories told in different ways give you new avenues for appreciating a story that cannot be garnered if told from a different perspective. This is why we need different kinds of storytelling methods to enable us to get the most value from these stories.
Well, allow me to introduce you to someone who DOES want to play themself in a game...sort of...I'm 53 and for decades I've wanted to be able to not just make myself in a game, but of course, my idealized self. The Self I wish I could be in real life, but that I'm not. And I think in some ways that's what a lot of people do. Sure, some people (myself included) will often make characters that are nothing like themselves (as much as possible), but I think generally, a lot of people want to be themselves, but better. Or at least some imagined version of themselves. Whether they're aware of it, or not.
@@DavesChaoticBrain Those are outliers. RPG fantasy is about playing hero that defeats evil by correcting the mistakes of the past by righting wrongs. It's not really about your player character but what it takes to conquer demons and overcome your flaws as a person so you can eliminate the obstacles that brought the fall of the land around you to begin with. If it's not about that I have no real interest in the main protagonist. Why should I care about a random guy that is just like millions of other people who don't get off their butt and take a risk to slay the dragon that is threat to survival of the world? Games are games, and story is story. A game iwth a good story is better than a game wth no story but the gam's core is the chalenge you the player overcome and not the characters. I don't play RPG thinking I am the character but that I the player must make the decisions necessary to overcome the problems. There is a correct way to do it and an incorrect way to do it just like there is a correct way to win a game of sports and incorrect way. RPG is a sport that rewards your knowledge of the rules and how to exploit those rules to always be on top of the problem. Without the game I may as well just read a novel. The reason Star Wars is popular is it doesn't give you the random nobody as the protagonist. He is the son of the most powerful knight in the lore of the story. But his flaw is lack of discipline to control himself (impatience) and to think carefully before acting. It's the overcoming of the flaws of the character that makes him strong and defeat evil since he senses the good in the bad guy to be able to manipulate the bad guy to turn against the threat (sith lord is the red dragon that is slain). Stories have to have moral behind them or else nobody will care about your characters. Nobody cares about Han Solo because he is cool. They care that he turned himself into a hero when he shot Darth Vader so Luke could destroy the Death Star which in turn saved the peaceful people enslaved by the evil empire. If I were Luke I would just continue to be a farm boy and fly civilian ships and not be adventurous. I am boring. I have no real story. But Luke Skywalker isn't boring. If I am role playing I don't want to control boring people. Vast majority of people want to be interesting people.
To have good cRPG you can't overfocus on one aspect of story/character-driven scale. Video games are an interactive medium, and in games like BG3 or PoE, players will always find it easier to experience overall narrative through more personal and character-driven interactions. BG3 main narrative explore themes like power, control and manipulation, but in ironic twist of fate, has so well written companions, that most people reduce main story as just another "kill bad guys" story. IMO Dragon Age Orgins is best example of having perfect balance of both types of storytelling. Josh prefers telling story through philosophical questions and overarching themes, and thinks characters are of secondary importance - thats is why I think he "dosen't get" BG3 audience. If we ever get PoE3, Josh just needs to find one or more co-author who specializes in character-driven stories.
Sadly a lot of people are mixing between '' we want a good game '' and '' we want a similar game''. I don't want to play another Baldurs Gate 3 and I LOVE the game. As a gen X too, working in the gaming industry, i can relate to so many points of view you are talking about. I think this youtube channel is the best embodiment of gen X hhhh. Nice video again!!
I don't think that the romances are a key element to the success but it makes sense to have them in a RPG. One have to take into account that Baldur's Gate is a strong name, BG3 has a splendid presentation and gives the player a lot of opportunities. Also people like me like the tactical combat system far more than the traditional real time with pause (at which I really suck). Can't speak for Pillars of Eternity 2 but the first one were a rather stiff experience in my eyes and the target audience were fans of the golden era of CRPGs and no one more.
It would be interesting to poll BG3 players and find out how many actually cared about the romance in the game, versus how many cared about the romance as portrayed on Reddit, Tiktok and RUclips. Because my feeling is far more people cared for the social media exploration of that romance versus the game. However, maybe I'm totally off-base. For me, BG3's romance interludes were a distraction and kind of annoying. I far prefer character interludes that invite us into their world and their mind than their bed, but that's just me I guess.
I'm not sure I agree with your relatability point, or maybe I'm just misunderstanding it. Like, Shadowheart is the most romanced companion. I don't think that's the case because lots of people can relate to the experience of dating someone who's part of a cult. In fact, I think people with direct experience on that front would be less likely to go for Shadowheart.
I don't think it's about modern vs older audiences, it's about mass appeal. If you made BG3 10 years ago it still would have made alot of money. Godard said it best: "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun". I prefer if you put the girl and the gun into a rich political, sociological setting that tackles niche themes and philosophies I never heard about but I can't deny the power of deeply personal relationships. BG3 story didn't set the world on fire but it sure tackled alot of mature, intimate and personal themes. The horniness was acutally a breath of fresh air, even if I didn't find it that appealing.
Love BG3, loved Pillars 1 and 2. Over 50 years old. I can enjoy both types. I am sure many others can as well. I think there are enough players to support both. Create a Pillars game with the quality of BG3 and I think it sells amazingly well, with little or no romance and a deeper main story. Hate that he seems to feel he is out of touch. JMO.
Bruh that clip at the beginning hurt for real because pillars 2 is one of my favorite games despite the flaws it has. The actual writing and interactions as well as the combat were all immersive and fun. My main issue was just the menuing aspects. I think a pillars 3 could be an equal to wrath of the righteous if they had the right amount of freedom
That's an odd sentiment I didn't expect from Josh. I like the honesty that he can't lead design a game exactly like BG3, but it's a bit defeatist attitude to believe the BG3 model is the only way to have critical and commercial success. I've played every game Josh has had a major hand in and have enjoyed/Loved them all. If he was given the budget/time BG3 had, I'd love to see his vision.
This interview shed a light on why some developers are successful and why others aren’t. I like pillars. Played 1 and beat 2 several times. The ship battles were atrocious and several things that fans clamored for were begrudgingly added. I think Sawyer is brilliant in some respects but I wouldn’t want him to lead a project in the modern age. If you can’t connect with a modern audience then you shouldn’t lead projects that companies hope will have mass appeal such as pillars II when it was released.
I'm also a gen-x gamer and I can't agree with you. I've always enjoyed stories that made me feel for the characters, whether or not there was romance. POE was not as popular because the characters didn't seem to fit the story and there was no effort to make me feel for them. You had to ignore the characters and focus entirely on the narrative, which is only half the story to me.
I deep respect your opinion and you are one of my favourite RUclipsrs but I don't agree 100%. I don't think BG3 is a dating simulation, I had a playthrough and my character didn't romance anyone. I understand and agree BG3 has loads of focus in romance but is 100% optional. I had an internship in Larian studios as part of my games design course and what they tried in BG3 was make everyone happy, people like me fan of old CRPGs and also the new audience. In my application for Larian I deeply criticised them and they still invited me to experience BG3 and give my opinion as an old school player and games design student. Anyway after my experience in Larian and more than 700h playing BG3 I understand unfortunately at the end of the day they needed to have all the money back and for it make the old and new audience happy. And just an observation for me pillars of eternity is a fantastic franchise and I definitely love it and yes it is not for the same audience as BG3 but that's ok.
I'm 31 now. When I was in my late teens / early 20's, I was a sucker for RPG romance. Nowadays, I wish BG3 was a bit less of a dating sim honestly, even though I find it to be an enjoyable part of the experience.
I think you’re overstating the impact romance had on drawing the large audience. I think it’s the presentation factor, the high quality cutscenes and voice acting. Most people would rather have these high quality cutscenes than have to read through a bunch of text or hear a faceless voice. Dnd 5e is also quite simple so that helped too.
I have grown to dislike the CRPG overreliance on combat. Think about BG1/2/POE. Imagine you enter the Charred woods from the south - there is the Wolven glade to the east, spider infested caves to the west, a goblin/kobold/bandit camp to the center/north area. Combat feels like a chore (at the lower difficulties) and just a time padding. I really liked Disco Elysium's approach - tons of dialogue trues, fun and useful skills, ability to RP rather than slaughter the world on your way to the next boss battle, just to get a +1 armor/weapon that does not FEEL better. My RPG fix is to switch to storytelling and character interaction. Treat combat as sex after a date- it should be meaningful, short, but climactic exclamation mark after many question marks and full stops.
Full voice acting would have made all the difference to POE2. Just give Josh enough budget to add voices. That would do it. The romance crowd and the cosplay crowd is small but vocal. Romances don't make millions and millions of difference. That said - I always felt Mass Effect 2 was the best compromise between and interesting story and a wonderful characters.
Relatability and deeper meaning don't have to be mutually exclusive. Classic bioware like dao and kotor are good examples of this but in general you know what else is character driven? tabletop RPGs which heavily influenced bg3 and crpgs
What a question heh? We are all standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. And there will be a generation of Devs building on what Larian has done today.
I hate seeing Sawyer be so hard on himself. Screw the reception to Deadfire by the vocal minority. Deadfire is one of my favorite games of all times and I've been gaming for over 35 years. Look at the Steam numbers at 87% that is by no means a weak game. It didn't pull the numbers like BG3 but it had a fraction of the marketing and virality. The only areas Deadfire lacked in where definitely related to Obsidian's much smaller budgets.
I understand your point, but I feel like the stories i prefer the most are character driven in nature. even games done by josh sawyer had this kind of character driven writing for sure. Cass, Raul, Veronica, you CAN tell character driven stories in the kind of themes josh likes. I just feel like your story has to be good to sell the themes you want to explore. That's what really matters to me, the romance people will find a way to write it in their minds. just look at souls games and the romanticizing of the lore on that game.
@@spellandshield Yeah. Bridges were burned, and I don't see things going back to how they were. And it's probably for the best if his allegations are true. I just hope he can find his place in the industry after all of the stuff he's had to deal with.
I think Avellone is overrated, with a mixed record at best. His writing for Kreia was awful, but far worse was the fact the player was never given a good riposte to her, you either agreed or were "a fool". Avellone wanted to deconstruct Star Wars, he just did a piss-poor job of it, and rather than let the player point out that his cat's paw had garbage arguments, he just stuffed you by not allowing you to mount any sort of real defense. Ulysses in NV wasn't even a character, he was simply a machine that endlessly pontificated some nonsense on nationalism, history, and behaving in a way literally no one would in a post-nuclear apocalypse. His endless monologues can be summed up as "NO ONE IS AS SMART AS ME, EVERYONE WILL FAIL!" without putting forth a single idea on how better to build a nation in the post-apocalypse. On the other hand, I thought Mask of the Betrayer was great, and a huge step up from the original Neverwinter Nights 2, so I don't know if he just had better supervision or had been reducing the amount of TED Talks he was watching. Old World Blues was also a heck of a lot of fun, and an unbelievable contrast to Lonesome Road's pedantic, self-important nonsense.
BG3's success has very little to do with characters and romances or anything like that. It was super successful because it was the first CRPG to come close to nailing the feeling of freedom you have in a "real" game of D&D. The sheer amount of different options Larian managed to bake into game is what made it so compelling. It was that vibe - "what if I do this crazy thing? holy crap, they actually thought of that!" Both when it comes to the gameplay and the story. BG3's story and companions are not particularly strong, to be honest. And part of that is precisely because it is so open in terms of what you can do. The sheer amount of eventualities they covered mean that a lot of the story feels....well, just like your DM in a normal game of D&D making stuff up on the spot does. The attraction is that it is responsive to the player's actions, not that it is true on some deep psychological level. You can't have a "choose your adventure" book - which is essentially what BG3 is at its heart - that is also great literature that feels like the work of a singular genius. You can't write a character or a situation that can turn out in many different, polar opposite ways and have them all feel equally true and accurate to the character or the situation. There's a large element of fudging that simply has to occur. But again...that's exactly how tabletop D&D is. It prioritizes responsiveness to player actions over coherent and cohesive stories. So it's no surprise that BG3 taking that approach with a D&D computer game was so wildly successful. It's a perfect overlap with the IP.
The two types of RPG's are not mutually exclusive. Persona 3 has a character-driven plot and at the same time has a deep philosophical question, the meaning of life in face of death. Oh, and also have romances.
You seem to have completely missed out on quite a few games that were absolutely able to make you think, have that grand storytelling thing with the philosophical and political questions behind it, while still ALSO focusing on character development and story and be relatable. You can absolutely do both. And I agree that BG3 or previously DOS 2, even though great games, failed at this. But others like early Bioware games or Kingdom Come: Deliverance for instance, didn't. They weren't perfect but we still saw a glimpse of what could be possible, if they pumped more of that money in the part that matter most when those things are concerned: writing, a good and solid writing and narrative design team. But what the industry does nowadays is thinking those most creative parts in games can be simply replaced with AI, when it cannot.
Problem with the "do anything you want" type RPG in 2024+, is that people will want to delve into subjects or actions that as a director you would never want to touch. That's why it's better to begin design as a vilain (GTA style) and work your way to the good guy mechanics. Mayhem is much more popular than normal behaviour in video games. Anytime you can destroy, romance, steal, burglarize, intimidate, scare, trap, lie in a video game it will be cool. This is where BG3 shined where other more standard RPG's failed.
I don't think it is necessarily a generational issue or an old vs modern issue. This is more of an Obsidian issue. Obsidian specifically has always been more about the philosophical side of things, even for games back in the day. Compare Kotor 1 (Bioware) to Kotor 2 (Obsidian).
My take on why POE did not do well and then BG3 comes along and smashes with furor is the system its designed around. Pillars is a new system built from ground up by the pillars team and BG3 uses a system that has been tweaked and played and tweaked ad nauseam for decades. This to me is the main reason why pillars did not do well. You can say it was the hyper sexuality of BG3 or the crisp highly detailed world and character models but for me it was the system it was built around. I just don't seem to vibe with POE series. As a long time nerd with a fondness of D&D I have always cherished the feel of the mighty +1. Its clean and it invokes a feeling in me that I just don't get from the POE systems. As example +35% critical hit damage. This does nothing at all for my nerd brain. Or I took a perk in POE2 that had me attacking a hurt person with 55% more damage. Then there is the might stat causing wizards to be just as strong as a barbarian etc. To me its just workarounds to make this complicated system work that detracts from decades and decades of tweaking to the D&D formula.
You're in for a treat when you play pentiment. Also if you haven't played Disco Elysium you really should give it a try. It's a game where, while there's no way to self insert, it's a character driven story with massive narrative ideas. Really fun.
I dont think the difference between BG3's and PoE 2's commercial succes has much to do with generational contrasts. I think BG3 was just an amazing RPG with amazing presentation that was easy to relate to and hit a chord. If you're going to make art or games about difficult topics like politics or religion, especially if you challenge the powerful, and that's your passion, you should a accept that you may not be as widely relatable, and that's okay. No, he might not get the budget of a BG3. No, he may not get the commercial success, but not every game should be compared in that way. Making something you are so passionate about that doesnt get the reception you know it deserves is about the toughest thing an artist og gamemaker can experience. The absolute worst reception being indifference. I feel Sawyers pain, but at least I know... I love PoE 2. He isn't out of touch, that's actually not how you make games. He should take a little bit of lessons from commercial successes such as BG3, and he should go his own way.
Younger players also prefer a more sandbox experience. They’re used to using their own creativity to, for example, do something insane with an exploding truck, record it, and post it for likes and comments. This is totally different from the kind of narrative Sawyer likes. (Pentiment is a fantastic game btw, play it!)
He say it himself he is out of touch, if you dont get how that is possible take the total amount of gamers from 2002 minus the total amount in 2018 and the negative number you will get is the amount this great dev is out of sync, its not entirely his fault, times changes, but he sees he is lacking something vital, I only hope he overcome it and give us POE3 sooner than later IMO. Also BG3 is great no ifs, no buts, no coconuts.
Most of the time, I don't like the limits Josh sets for himself when he makes games. I really like the design and ideas. The games I like from him that you mentioned in your video are PoE2 and IWD2. PoE2 seems to be taking the fans' criticisms voiced in PoE1 seriously, and IWD2 seems to be a godsend, since they were desperate when they developed the game. In general, I understand him too, even if I don't belong to his or your generation (I'm a little younger). Still, his approach is flawed because if you have problems with some topics like romance, you should contact someone who has a lot of experience in this regard, such as: e.g. successful book author. Don't work alone. I agree with the philosophical theme of PoE which gives it more depth, but such themes don't stop it from also making it a personal story like in BG3. That's what bothers me about Josh, he restricts himself too much and, in my opinion, puts those restrictions in the wrong places. As I mentioned before, he makes games very well when he listens to the players and the fan base. I mean, think about it. If he combined a character-driven story AND deep philosophical storytelling, it could be the next step in the evolution of role-playing games. The hard part would be finding the right point to transition between these two, but that's where he needs to stop limiting himself with his logic. I mean seriously, his answer was based on money not being an issue. Come on Josh, you can do better.
So sad deadfire was such a commercial disappointment. Especially compared to how good it was. It was a way better game than how it was received. My shallow thought on the matter of why it was a flop was the setting. Most people aren't that interested in pirate themed rpgs. I know I wasn't at first. It was a hurdle I had to get over but fortunately I got over it once I made it to Neketaka
The lukewarm reception that the Pillars games got still weighs pretty hard on Josh. He would never admit to it of course but he's still wrestling with the reasons why BG3 was such a smash hit and the Pillars games sold bad enough that Pillars 3 is almost impossible to pitch. I still believe that hardly anyone would have touched BG3 if loads of people weren't intimately familiar with D&D through Critical Role etc. and also the ankle deep milktoast fantasy world of Eora didn't help.
BG3 does absolutely pose deep questions of faith through the character arcs and stories. Not sure why you don't consider the story of Vlaakith or Shar and the their worshippers to be a meaningful philosophical concept. Honestly weird take from you.
Mmmmm... I actually (shockingly, because I usually agree wholeheartedly with your vids) disagree with almost all of this. I'm GenX as well, and truly don't understand how it could be a generational thing. It's *absolutely* a trend/personal taste thing. It's also a "yes he's a veteran, but he's also a condescending #$$ to his customers when they have ANY kind of criticism, and was incredibly dismissive and bullying to his customers who *actually enjoy romance in games* " thing. He created a game that somehow managed to draw in a bunch of female and queer players, but has NO idea how to relate to them, or their desire to see representation in games. So... when he made the sequel he tried to please everyone doing something he hated and had a dummy spit when he had to live up to his promises. I think how political and "outside the box" BG3 is, very much depends on your choices during the game. I've had almost every playthrough I've done in BG3 seeing Astarion and the Emperor as *extremely* sympathetic and honest. Others have literally abused the crap out of me for being "ignorant" because *their* experience was the complete opposite. Different writing style yes, but absolutely still political and far less 'on the rails' than POE was. I also f$cking HATE when people pull the "dating sim" card on BG3. It's absolutely not. Again, it's your choices that make the characters react. Seriously, go do a "dating sim" search on Steam, BG3 is just... not. Josh, however, at least knows his weaknesses as a dev and writer. He's terrible at writing romance, and he should stay far, FAR away from them. Deadfire was pushed into uncanny valley territory because he didn't want to write romance, he convinced himself he HAD to for the game to be received well, and he then rubbed his disdain for his own game in his customers faces, while making it clear he felt the SAME way about those customers. His game would have been far better, and received far, FAR less flack if he'd had some integrity and not sold a product he resented.
BG3 did not even have good romance, merely passable. Every NPC was extremely aggressive trying to bed the player by the end of act 1. I concluded in my playthrough that I did not want to get together with any of them. Larian studios can do excellent and succesful RPGs that focus on the world as well as characters, just check Divinity: Original Sin 2. It has some of the best old school writing that Josh is looking for, with a focus on gods and dilemmas similar to PoE. The problem is selling a game based solely on one aspect while lacking in everything else. I have a very good memory but I cannot remember anything from PoE aside from the one big philosophical plot point because the characters are forgettable and combat is bad, which prevents repeat playthroughs from being fun. Then I tried PoE 2 Deadfire, and I could not get past the beginning. Combat was still abysmal by the standards set by Larian and the writing sucked. The stupidest thing is to take the fully leveled player character from first game, remove all levels and send the epic hero back to doing random fetch quests while there is a literal god trashing cities out there. NPC dialog was garbage as none of them took the situation seriously. It would have been epic if we kept our power level from the first game so we could go full steam after the god while trying to sort out diplomacy with the locals as we enter their territory.
For me personally, I stopped enjoying RPGs about the same time they started adding the romance feature. I know it was an overwhelmingly popular game, but Mass Effect, in my opinion, started the downwards trend in RPG quality. I preferred video game back when they were made 100% for an audience of teenage boys.
I think this is where I landed on BG3 as well. I really do love the game, because I'm an RPG nerd who loves character builds, turn-based combat, and lore, especially in a setting that was my introduction to fantasy in general, with the Avatar Trilogy of books when I was young. Larian did a great job with those things, and that was my hook. But when I look at fan communities for the game, it's as if all the Twilight shippers from Tumblr gravitated to this game, and probably wouldn't care if it had been a visual novel with zero RPG mechanics instead. And I don't think the game would have been half as popular if it hadn't catered to those fans. They want to cosplay and write erotic fanfic and self-insert and daydream about Astarion's abs, whereas I want to see how much damage I can squeeze out of my Lockadin with gear synergies , or if I can solo honor mode with my bard. To Larian's great credit, they built a game for both of those audiences, and made it satisfying for both of them, and included a lot of deep lore and references for longtime fans of the setting who would have immediately recognized who Withers was, for example. They deserve a lot of praise for that
I also think that a bigger problem with the pillars series as a zoomer fan, is the fact that turn based is more approchable than real time with pause. Also the ship combat in PoE2 sucked. In my opinion gameplay and the game engine is a bigger problem than the story of the PoE series. I hope Josh Sawyer gives CRPGS another try with a turn based rpg, and more modern gameplay, because as a zoomer myself i love his storytelling.
In my opinion those deep philosophical stories are the issue. Its sort of like when most people like juice even the best made tea just isn't going to hit the same. Some mid level or light philosophical narrative is fine in my book. However, the whole story being an examination of a philosophical point in game form is a bit offputting.
Yeah, this pattern has been clear for a while now and it is a simple fact that romance sells but other things sell well too...like you said, there is also a market for other stuff.
If you look at the past 20 years of evolution of RPG the "pattern" is not clear at all. The pattern also tell that turn based RPGs should not sell at all. The same BG3 it's outside any pattern.
I feel like he thinks that a small portion of the audience is bigger than what it is. I firmly believe, the reason why BG3 was so successful was the cinematic approach. It just let’s you connect differently with characters. He’s probably in a circle with thirsty journalists who only care about shipping characters and who’s gay.
That is why there is a huge fanbase of old games. Recently a patreon project by Pyrdacor made a remake of a very good old RPG Ambermoon, a trilogy by Thalion Software which consist of Amberstar (PC/Amiga) Ambermoon (Amiga) and later Albion by BlueByte (1996 PC). Personaly I hope for more dungeon crawlers, since games like Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master or Ishar were the games of my childhood but also very good games even with the simple graphics of those old times.
I'd disagree with you that character study vs analytical stories are an either/or scenario; Disco Elysium is extremely strong in both character writing and in its political worldbuilding that is clearly much larger than your personal story. Now, its probably very difficult to marry the two, but I think there is a way BG3 could have improved its worldbuilding, and Josh Sawyer could make another Pillars that goes wild critically and commercially.
Josh sounds bitter, honestly. He doesn't seem to be willing to change for the sake of making profitable and popular games that will strike a chord with audience. We wants to tell his stories and have people appreciate his vision, and there's nothing wrong with that. But that interview left a bad taste in my mouth, honeslty. He comes across as a person who looks down upon the audience he wants to connect with. That's bizarre As for the shallowness of BG3, I have to disagree. The main quest basically tells a story of indoctrination VS freedom (at least that's how I interpret it) and companions' quests play really well into that overarching narrative of opression and people fighting against it. It it done perfectly? No, no way. But it is there, at least I see it. Hsd they been given more liberties by WOTC, I sure they would've explored these themes much better.
Josh has been complaining about these things since the 2000s. He doesn't like player-serving aspects of cRPGs and it's the main gripe he's had about the genre for that long, as far as I can tell. It's also why he doesn't like romance in these games, it's ultimately player-serving in a way or another. He doesn't want to adapt the games to sell more because it compromises his vision for these games. It's a fairly stubborn way of thinking, but he's been pretty consistent about it over the years at least. BG3 (and Larian's games in general) are very deliberately about giving things players can have the most fun with and not necessarily some philosophical message. There is probably a message to be found there, but it's definitely not as concrete as in a game where everything is subordinate to a philosophically consistent vision. Personally I'm fine with that, but different strokes for different folks.
@@rb98769 I mean, I totally get why a creator wouldn't like to compromise their vision and sacrifice it for the sake of profit. But to me he sounds as if really WANTED to make popular games, just not at the expense of his ideas and aspirations. I don't think it's possible. You either cater to bigger audiences or you don't and keep making niche games (which is totally fine, I loved Pentiment). The only people who's gonna be hurt by this are himself and devs who he works with anyway.
What is the last high production game that had some big overarching idea larger then the chatacters? How can we be sure that people wouldn't love it. Before BG3 we didnt know that people would like game like that. The other games by Larian prove that
I think Josh is being WAY too hard on himself. In any medium a writer needs to play by their strengths and this includes RPGs and there's a lot of RPGs out there that doesn't have romance in it, but they have other things that make them just as good. Fallout 1 and 2 don't have romance but they have such good worldbuilding it's the best part about them! Or VTM Bloodlines! So many good characters and no romance but it immerses you in this amazing world of vampire politics and treachery! I think romance in RPGs works better when it's a more character driven story instead of a world or plot driven one. BG 3 works as well as it does because a lot of the conflict is character driven. Got to get that tadpole out! Gotta help Karlach! And Wyll! And all the others! Which also makes returning characters such a fun thing! But it's more about the journey with your virtual friends and less about THE FATE OF FORGOTEN REALMS! So you know its all relative.
Actually it's very easy to miss the romances in this game completely. Not all of them, but depending on your gameplay you might get all of them triggered or just one. And then you can tell them to fuck 0ff. What's left are their personal stories. If you gonna tell me BG2 or Planescape didn't have those I'd laugh in your face.
Hate to break it to you, but the majority of Gen X rpg players are also into relatability. One of the reasons Baldur's Gate 2 was received better than Baldur's Gate 1 (from a commercial point of view) is because of romance, etc. And you trying to do something as 'highbrow' is no different than older generations like baby boomers who said playing any video game was a waste of time, etc.
I'll always say story wise, setting, and even characters personal story was far better in Pillars 1 then it was in 2. 2 just felt boring and i couldnt get into like i did the dirst game.
I don't think romance is a must in a video game, that said like many other features if well executed I believe romance can also add value to a story in a videogame like it does in book or a movie. In a game you are basically experiencing a story that could be writen in a book and there are great romances in books so why shouldn't it exist as well in a game.
So there's one huge flaw I see in your argument as a whole. What you attribute to Baldur's Gate 3, i.e. character-driven with a generally superficial story without greater, wider philosophical questions or challenges, were true of Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 as well. They were also more character-driven, and didn't really challenge you philosophically. Baldur's Gate 2 even got big into romance as well. The difference in the kind of storytelling is valid, but this doesn't demonstrate that it's a generational difference. There are RPGs today that still go for the wide philosophic explorations, such as Disco Elysium and, as you pointed out, Pillars of Eternity. Let's not pretend their audiences don't exist today and such games are impossible to sell to a new generation.
I like both types of games. I think it’s sad how the industry feels the need to homogenize all types of games in a genre rather than allowing a variety of approaches. Less charitably, I do think there is a failure of empathy with my generation (I’m 29) and younger generations when we demand everything be relatable and allow self insertion. I feel like part of engaging with stories (whether through games, cinema, or books) is allowing yourself to empathize with and understand characters with wildly different world views, morals, perspectives, values, and goals, and to enjoy their journey in the context of the overall narrative.
It's not just good but essential. If people are unable to empathize with someone different than them, very bad things happen in society. We are seeing this happen.
Very well said, and I agree. We need to be able to have variety in our settings, characters and story telling, and I've never understood this obsession with self insertion. I love the idea of playing an RPG and being someone else for a while ...someone not me, who isn't bound by the same upbringing, mindset and experiences. It's in the name ... Role playing. Sure, who we are in the real world always affects our in game choices, and how we play, but to me it seems boring that people would forever just want to be themselves but in a different setting.
The last thing I want in RPGs is to self insert. I want it to be unique
It might also help if people stop trying to pretend they are the fictional character. To a mild extent I can understand that if the character in say a video game is a mute who you largely answer for, then maybe that argument can be made, but even then the character has existed in that fictional world already and likely has a past. They are not the person partaking in the media.
I've never really understood that notion, that people NEED to pretend they are either the main character in a video game, a movie, a show, etc or a tag along with the main group in order to enjoy the thing they are partaking in. It's always been a bizarre idea to me, the fact that someone can't understand a fiction in front of them that isn't their reality but still enjoy it for what it is and remember it's not you.
@@topgamer101 Or we can allow people to play the game they’ve paid for however they want, especially if it’s a single player experience that has no effect on other players.
I think Sawyer is not giving himself enough credit and/or being too hard on himself. He sounds defeated in some way, which makes sense to me. He's been spending years on the Pillars games, obviously with a lot of passion and love, only for the sales to be disappointing. And then BG3 happens. I can imagine it'd be quite demotivating, thinking you're making something incredible with Deadfire (which it is imo), only to end up with an industry where the sales suggest "No, we actually overwhelmingly like it this other way". I really do feel for the guy. I hope he gets another opportunity with a passionate dev team to make another CRPG
I played the pillar game...pillar of eternity 2 was....boring actually.
@@celuiquipeut6527 That might speak to the disconnect. I also thought Pillars II was incredible. I enjoyed it far more than BG3.
Pillars of Eternity's writing is boring, there's simply no two ways about it. Dry as people who don't know anything about RPGs expect it to be.
BG3 is an awful game with a terrible, unrelatable Marvel-esque story. But hey, it's flashy and people want to stick it to the Man, so might as well circle the wagons around a product that is differently bad, but at least it's not AAA.
@@rclaws3230 I wouldn't say it is an awful game, but the general story and some of the writing is downright bad. They executed everything else well.
I’m 51 and I’ve been playing dnd both table top and crpgs since I was 12. Honestly, I think the focus on romance is missing what worked with BG3 and FNV.
They are both great because they are about human stories.
It’s fine having high minded themes. If reading dry intellectual volumes about those sorts of topics is fun for someone, cool. It’s fun for me sometimes. But these are games. Offering that up without giving an audience something human to care about is malpractice as an artist.
I think we are where are because the one step lower down the ladder of fail is Bethesda. Who, regardless of how much Todd says he loves the themes of space exploration, parents his audience with a vacuous, card board cutout product with nothing to say and nothing to care about.
That’s become the norm. Doing better than that by having something to say is great. But the bar has fallen off a cliff.
Do a theme. Do many. And package it in a full range of human stories that players can choose to engage with or not. That’s an artistic and commercial success.
Hear, hear!
To be honest, the story in BG3 is kind of weak. And the "romances" are even worse. What is good in BG3 is the fact that there is an huge player agency and emergent gameplay trough interactivity/reactivity. You can proceed through the "quest" in many creative ways, and the game reacts accordingly.
@@nifftbatuff676 Awesome! Then there should be lots of opportunity for even better storylines and romance options.
Great take, this and the other comment talking about choices really nailed it, expressing something than I didn't know how to say. Thanks man.
The thing about philosophical themes is that they are human. Inherently, in that they deal with human experience and the desire for ultimate truth and values. But also in how they affect society and individuals. New Vegas shows this perfectly. All of their stories, motivations and conflicts arise from philosophy and politics producing an effect on their lives, usually from groups that follow those philosophies. That's why I think presenting characters vs. themes as a dichotomy is a dead end. They complement each other.
The whole romance thing is blown out of proportion. Yes it's nice and a lot of people dig it.Yes the community makes lots of fan art and is at times thirsty. But BG3 without romance would still be a top tier game and succeed as much as it did both commercially and critically.
Production value and mechanics are what made it so strong. I think that has more to do with Larian and than anything else. I found the social narratives contrived and didn't appreciate it but recognize the greatness of the game.
Honestly, the thing with "dating sim aspects" in BG3 feels like a big overstatement to me.
Yes, you can start a romance with a character on a much lower approval rate, than in for example: DA:O.
And you will get 2 romance scenes per character, instead of one.
But thats like it. Its not a significantly different from other RPGs, that have romances.
A late reply, but i missed your comment earlier. No, it is not the amount of content and it is not really the pacing that makes so many people compare bg3 to date sim. It is the way that content is presented and integrated into the game. You have six major companions, all of whom are available to any player to choose from, which is a big (some would even say main) point of marketing im the game. They are responsive to the player (always) and require next to no actions in their favour to trigger the romance. They are just there, waiting for the player to pick and choose, with no agency of their own. I will not make comparisons to Deadfire, but let us instead consider DAO, which BG3 was often compared to. Imagine you meet Leliana and recruit her for the first time only to see her standing in camp in underwear next to Morrigan also in underwear, waiting for the protagonist to come and say "i choose you, come with me". This is how bg3 romance feels like and it is far more similar to a date sim, than to any other rpg with romance elements.
Don't compare it to DA:O because in that game it feels like the romances are measured and kind of have a place/purpose in the overall story. Sawyer's problem (and my own) with it is that developers have forgotten WHY RPGs have romances in the first place, putting them in for their own sake is bloat and takes away from the focus in the game. In-game romances are treated like a back-of-the-box quote, like something your game lives or dies off of having or not having when what matters is implementation and whether it should even be there in the first place. I think Mass Effect is the biggest offender even though people bring DA:O up, Mass Effect was the first game to really stick your nose in it. DA:O has well-written romances that actually effect the main plot, Morrigan's child is a plot-point that is brought up games later and plays a role in the finale of the game (you don't have to romance her for this but it helps). Though Dragon Age 2's romances are so very tacky (character are thin, annoying caricatures/archetypes, uninhibited pirate slut who hides her feelings with meaningless entanglements because she's scared to be vulnerable, adorkable "bless her heart" softie with a dark secret, edgy broody elf that belongs in a JRPG) DA 2 is where Bioware really got shameless with what they were doing, but romances are warranted because as Hawke you are doing the opposite of what you do in every RPG, not traveling the word to challenge a direct threat, but a refugee building your life/legacy over a series of years in a single place. I think throughout Mass Effect and Inquisition is where they became pointless, like Witcher 1's sex cards that are so "controversial", but it's not a set male pursuing multiple women in these other games, even when the implementation is just as meaningless and jarring for the overall plot's focus.
In KOTOR romancing Bastila reinforces what we know about what's wrong with the Jedi code, that hiding attachments/passion leads one to fall. Major Theme of Star Wars. In DA:O your child with Morrigan is a major plot point, marrying Alistar can lead to your character becoming queen after the brutal slaughter of your whole house from a rival family at the start of the game. Book-ends and relevant. What's the point of Inquisition's terribly written romance scenes... or ANY of Mass Effects? Baldur's Gate 3 has the "we're going to die from tadpoles, life is short and fragile and worth living" as a major theme throughout, so romances barely pass the mark, though I feel this is not really emphasized as a focus with any other character than Karlach who is all about that, Shadowheart who lost her way after being indoctrinated and has to get back her family where you can serve as a strong anchor for her and maybe Astarion since he's a kicked puppy... Wyll, Lae'zel, Gale... meh feels like trite dating sim.
The real reason why romances became a staple instead of part of the organic story in games is to increase reach is the same reason they got slotted into big movie blockbusters, to increase the range of the audience and attract female audience. It's Bioware's fault that sultry, 50 Shades style romances became something we have to deal with in every game, but they used to do it for a reason. It was fucking Mass Effect that tried to market itself as "mature" by showing 2 seconds of Ashley's ass that snowballed to where we are. It's not going anywhere as half the game's fanbases are here just for that and post thirsty memes "ironically" everywhere as it's the only part of their brains that engage with the game it seems.
@@MrMeddyman Well hum... I think the romance help to raise the stakes in a personal level, like during the suicide mission in mass effect 2, I knew that any of my companion could die and my Shepard was with Tali. So every times the game would put Tali in danger I would get twice as nervous because of my character relationships.
The ending of mass effect 3 made me so angry especially because Tali was on her own and the only way for me to have shepard and Tali together is to destroy the geths and EDI.
Its not just for pointless sex scene.
Anyone who says BG3 is like a dating sim has never played a dating sim before. If you have, you'd know that it's a ridiculous comparison to make.
@@sasha9796How do they lack agency and only exist to be romanced? you can lose them or at least a lot of approval by doing actions that they dislike. The characters will have their own situations if they go unrecruited, usually death
are they in their underwear in camp because you unequipped all their gear and made them that way? im confused by what gameplay you're describing because the romance scenes are all telegraphed and have specific triggers
maybe they are more sexually open than most video game characters but it's treated reasonably in terms of it being just as easy to lose a bond as make it so quickly. if you mess up a relationship with some companions they will never have a personal conversation with you again for the whole game
Story, choice, and consequence. These are what make RPG’s great games. BG3 was successful because it included all of these. Characters are important. If you think about all the very successful memorable games, they had great characters. This is true for something like fallout new Vegas as well. Pillars was a great game because it had a great story. There’s no need to separate things into different camps based upon the story they tell. I love, dragon age origins because it has great characters and a great story. Love the original Balduar’s Gate for the same reasons. Make a good RPG and people will enjoy it!
True, choices. One which I really liked on Pathfinder Wrath recently.
BG3 also has amaizng gameplay too. Its immersive sim levels of interactivity and the kind of creativity you can use in the combat and solving general problems is far beyond most CRPGs. Its more comparable to say, Deus Ex.
This is BG3’s true selling point. The immersive sim elements are super peak. It’s the secret sauce.
Same with BotW back in 2017. No secret both these huge games with systemic design blew up.
As someone who played both Pillars of Eternity games, I don't think that the issue with POE: Deadfire was the lack of focus on the characters necessarily.
I think the issue was something else. Personally I found that the world and the story just didn't grab me all that much.
I disliked all the factions more or less equally, and for some reason I found the game less interesting than the first one.
However, compare that to "Tyranny" - another game that couldn't compete with BG3 in terms of character focus, and personally I think it was a much better game than Deadfire.
Yeah...i am 43. Gree up with the gilden era of rpg....i wanted to like deadfire...but it fell flat. I dont really know why... the vibe? How the story is told. Its like it never really rise. I never liled it enough to finish it...and i am not mad i didnt.
I found Tyranny better than both Pillars and BG3, story-wise. The story and the "romances" are the last thing that I liked in BG3.
@@nifftbatuff676same here. I enjoyed Tyranny a lot more as well
I don't know if I agree. Sawyer seems to have an overly mechanistic way of thinking about reality and stories, which isn't overlaying very well with actual people in the way he wants it to. Even the framing of POE: II's story as "whether is utilitarian or not" strips the phenomena he is trying to explore from its context and reduces it down to something it can't be: utilitarian, mechanical, and explicit. His thematic examination is like trying to understand a joke by explaining it, then being confounded how something critical was lost in the process.
While I enjoyed the Pillars game for their mechanics, they don't actually even register for me as meaningful narrative vehicles, and I'm evidently not alone in that. The second game in particular seems to suffer badly when trying to convey the story it seems to want to convey, with endless distracting side quests, and a mythology delivered through interruptive cutscenes that felt distant, jarring, and impersonal. It feels like the game is constantly getting in its own way in both hooking the player deeply with the narrative it thinks is interesting, and how it explores it. And this is from someone that normally rolls his eyes at complaints of there being "too much dialogue."
That's not to say there isn't beauty in those games, but I found it a real struggle to dig for it, and I think this is the reason both games get the perpetual qualifiers, complaints, and sidelined status they do. And that makes sense too: if your game revolves around mechanical and thematic examinations of "utility", it kind of has to exclude beauty, or at least limit itself to understanding beauty in the way an orc would.
BG:3 feels a lot more relatable and natural because it is more relatable and natural: it focuses on characters and the way the players organically feel and relate to those characters. It's implicit rather than explicit, organic rather than mechanical.
Sawyer has a map, but i.m.o the map doesn't matches the players' emotive terrain very well.
100% and I'm a big fan of pillars but BG3 is so much more engaging and fluid
Pentiment proves that he has got great story telling ability. The story is intriguing, the characters charming, and the setting is incredibly evocative. It’s a shame that there is little in the way of gameplay mechanics, but I found the experience engaging nonetheless. And I’m someone who usually plays games for the gameplay and immersion; I’d rather watch movies or read books than play a game that doesn’t provide me with some interesting form of agency.
Romance is and always has been a cool added feature to rpgs but just having solid companion quests is a huge sale. The best rpgs ive enjoyed would be the storyline and the desolate plot threads in Tyranny and the dark morbid reality of children being born without souls in pillar stand at the top for me.
BG3 its about interactivity and posibility, giving people options that normally wont be a option and game recognise that.
Baldur's Gate 3 had a budget of 100 million USD and the lowest estimate of copies sold on PC alone is 5 million. If you did some basic math, you'd know that's far more than it cost to make.
The game sold for between $59.99 and $69.99
At $59.99 they would have made from the 5 million copies sold = $299,950,000 so basically $300,000,000.00
Around a month ago, Larian's Michael Douse revealed that Baldur's Gate 3 had sold 'way over' 10 million units. In a new interview with Gamespot from GDC 2024, Larian CEO Swen Vincke provided an updated sales figure by comparing the studio's latest game from the previous one, Divinity: Original Sin 2.
So if the USA game companies would stop being greedy and take the time to make something good and not over charge for trash and make it fast and then on to the next one, then they would continue to sell the good game over time. The corporate system is ruining games , because those at the top are not gamers and have no understanding of what is wanted. Larian are gamers so they understand.
Agreed.
I think the reason behind BG3 success and Pillars Of Eternity's reception is that despite whatever theme is expressed - BG3 had more of showing the plot instead of telling it. PoE has much more exposition than showing what is going on, and no matter which generation it is - showing the story in visual medium always wins over the exposition. At the end of the day, games are closer to movies than to books as a medium.
Also... I think the whole daring thing is a bit blown out of proportion. It probably was great for marketing, but for the game? I guess that's one of the weakest and less important elements that make is successful.
This. Cinematic cutscenes are the difference. And I'm not gonna lie, I love cinematic cut scenes as well. Even if I do enjoy Pillars games as well. I guess you can say Dragon Age: Origins got me hooked on that style of RPG, and BG3 took a lot of lessons from DA: Origins.
Very smart guy, he understands he is out of touch in some things and that is ok. Personally i loved Pillars 1 & 2 but in my opinion there is definitely a lot of fluff and writing that goes nowhere. I agree with him that romance is not needed, but that is what it is, optional for the people that want that and gives immersion in the end.
If you want 200 grand for your sequel then you have to earn it, just as how Larian went from the Original Sin series to this, and he knows he is not gonna earn it and even if he gets it, his game is not gonna even break even. This is a man who has his feet on earth.
Thanks for this interesting interview.
Yeah, I agree: imho the PoE2 story tried to be grand but ultimately fell flat. Imho its best strength was actually its classes and flexibility to make fun and unique builds.
As a former bookstore manager in the late 90s, I always remember that what we called "category romance," which just means books shelved in the romance section of the store, outsold all other categories of mass market paperback fiction: combined. People like romance. I remember commenting elsewhere that the issue I saw with leaving romance out of RPGs was that it's a huge part of peoples' lives that it's impossible to create a truly deep character without including it. Now, with this argument about philosophy, I can see reasons why people would want to do it. Now I don't think a philosophical approach is bad--I've loved almost everything Sawyer has produced and the only ones I haven't loved I haven't played (Pentiment, Alpha Protocol, and Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows), but I do think it can only succeed in the mass market if it's combined with character depth and romance.
I don't necessarily agree that bg3 doesn't have any deeper themes. I think BG3 does an incredible job of portraying the theme of cycles of abuse and trauma. Pretty much every character in the game can be interpreted as a metaphor for a common type of generational trauma. Shadowheart is religious trauma, gale is relationship power dynamics, astarion is sexual trauma etc..
And I think the dark urge exemplifies this the most being all about this overbearing urge that you don't understand but it controls your actions, and only once you come face to face with your traume can you overcome your urge
BG3 wasn't the horny npcs, or the animations. It was the gameplay with almost limitless replay potential.
If you make a good RPG, regardless of romance being included or how it’s executed, you’ll find an audience.
I agree.
I sort of disagree; it is clear that romance and relationships are the main pull for BG3; what if it had just been the story without romance? Doubt it would have been that succesful.
@@spellandshield it is my opinion it would have still been a massive success but I am sure it would hurt it with some players. My contention is that it would have still been very successful and made lots of money. But sure the romances I am sure brought some in. Romance was not a main pull for me personally. But it also doesn’t bother me the way they did it.
@@spellandshield I think it's not just the romance itself that was the draw, rather it was the excellent writing and voice acting that those characters benefited from.
Shadowheart and Karlach are compelling characters with interesting backstories even without having nude romance scenes with them. At least, that's what I think.
@@spellandshield Imo Sawyer is wrong about anything changing. Bioware made character focused games with romance for decades before BG3, none came close to this level of success, they even tried making them more action focused, still tes games were always more popular (btw not even sure tes has romance). So my take is gameplay sold bg3, not complexity of it, but sandboxy nature, simmilar to tes games, plus coop. Search youtube and tons of most viewed bg3 videos are party of 4 doing some whacky things.
In my view, it all boils down to what kind of writers you have. In the case of BG3, the writers clearly played to their strengths by not focussing on great, overarching thematic progressions (like the TV series 'Babylon 5') or philosophical metanarratives (a really pretentious example being the film 'Inception'), but instead on the character-driven aspects of narrative design. In terms of the traditional writer archetypes of gardener vs. architect, the BG3 writers clearly were of the gardener variety. It's important to know what you do best. If you, during game development, do have access to the architect variety of writer, then sure, that's what you'll get.
Having said that, more often than not, these days, I find myself getting bored by people's attempts at creating big narrative story arcs. But maybe that's my professional deformation as a recovering academic in the humanities - it takes years of academic study to really get into any philosophical problem, and the absence of such effort really shows. I'd rather have a rich character-driven hothouse of flavourful details than a bunch of generic NPCs who exist solely for the purpose of demonstrating the writer's broader philosophical points (looking at you, Asimov).
You can have both, though. Like, B5 broke ground at serialized TV, but it also had incredible character work woven throughout all that revolutionary storytelling, as well. I'd put Katsulas's G'kar up in the top tier, just as I would Newbon's Astarion, for example.
I do agree that I'd rather not be disappointed by a half-measure, though. There's so many examples of showrunners crawling up their own backsides, spoiling everything they touched in the process. Westworld is probably the most striking contrast I can think of in recent memory, but I, and I suspect you, could spend quite a long time listing genre fiction writers that have reached further than they could grasp, so I'll leave that
That's fair and BG3 is a great game but I just feel bad for Josh because the world has sort of passed him by.
Conversely, you can find Asimov very pleasant in it's simple and snappy way to present stories and characters. You can tell also that the quality of it's novels declined when he tried to write more character-driven stories.
I agree. I think guys like Chris Avellone can write some great dialogue but when they get to "THE THEMES", they not only hit you about the noggin with a hammer, but they also actively prevent you from making effective arguments that oppose what is clearly the writers' philosophical position. I'd rather not get a pretentious PHI 101 lecture and get a story where the characters act like real people, not just something you use to make a point.
I kinda disagree while sure BG3 has less meaningful story as it portraits the world, yet DOS2 had it in spades.
I just think you can't have world shattering debates and questions in a game when you can't actually solve them.
Pillars, DOS2 and many others can do that on a level that BG3 can't, the game world has to remain in balance at the end of the story, it's why the ending feels so abrupt, so inviting for more conclusion, but that's something that can't happen as just in most sitcoms the world has to stay more or less static.
I'm 100% sure any new thing Larian does will have far more deep questions and a more impactful story on the world it is told in.
Not if they cannot replicate the cinematics and dating SIM aspects and still want success.
@@spellandshield One does not exclude the other though. DOS2 has romance too, just not as fleshed out, DOS2 has world ending consequences, easily the scope of Pillars world ending consequences.
BG3 just wasn't their own IP so they couldn't go hogwild with a world impacting story. It's my number 1 reason why I'm glad they aren't doing BG4 or DLC.
Lastly I have to repeat this but one aspect really doesn't exclude the other, but when you work within a set world with set lore with a prefered balance you simply can't deviate enough to make any questions you put forward actually meaningful cause a posed question without any possible resolve is just cheap and pointless.
Characters interaction, motion capture, voice acting is almost entirely different from world interaction, story and quest scope. Sure one impacts the other budget and time wise but BG3 could have easily put more worldshattering questions and different options to solve them. They simply couldn't because of limitations set on them by WotC.
BG3 isn't really on a different level than DOS2. It's the same design philosophy. DOS2 doesn't aspire to be some profoundly philosophical game like Pillars does.
@@rb98769But does Pillars of Eternity do a good job of it? 🤔
@@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842 I don't know about the second one, but the first didn't. I loved a lot of the area art, thought the combat was fun, but the characters left me absolutely cold, and the story was something that I'm sure a Philosophy 101 course would find groovy, but I found the main "dilemma" incredibly dim once it became clear.
Baldur's Gate 3 brought back something that we lost somewhere along the way, something that's quite hard to achieve due to heightened expectations and cultural shift. It did Western RPG whimsy right and in this era that's quite fresh, no one's had more than a sensible chuckle at Western RPG whimsy since 2008.
You make some absolutely fantastic points in this video about how the direction of RPGs is changing, but I disagree with your analysis of BG3's story. I think you are absolutely correct in saying that BG3's narrative does not explore any deep philosophical, social, or political themes but I have seen in a few previous videos that you described BG3's story as not really having a central point or theme and I just cannot disagree more with that statement.
I firmly believe that the core theme of BG3's story is trust, more specifically, learning to trust and learning who to trust. I think this theme is best shown in the player's interactions with the companions, as all of them (with the exception of Karlach) begin in a state of relative hostility toward the player. Even though they are willing to follow you in hopes of a cure, they are either extremely rude, pretentious, or clearly hiding essential details from the player. However, as your travels go on and the player shows their willingness to assist them (giving Gale magic items even when inconvenient, not judging Shadowheart for her association with Shar, backing up Lae'zel in her confrontation with the Gith in act 1, helping with Astarion's bloodwork issues, etc.) Each of these characters, in turn, open up to the player and are willing to trust their guidance during character quests. For me personally, and I think a lot of other players, that was a very rewarding narrative experience that teaches the player that by being a reliable and trustworthy friend to your party members, they will, in turn, reciprocate.
The theme of who to trust is also exemplified by how the character interacts with the villains. Auntie Ethel, The Emperor, and Raphael are introduced in an opposite fashion to the companions; instead of being prickly and rude at the start, they try to come off as hospitable and welcoming, and if you trust them, your party ends up manipulated and screwed. One of my favorite examples of this is when you ask Auntie Ethel to take out the tadpole, and after she fails, you are simply left without an eye while she tells you to fuck off. This was a great way to drive home the idea that putting trust in these shady strangers without building up some sort of companionship can lead to ruin.
So, while it is entirely fair not to like this theme or think that it's overdone or poorly executed, I don't think it fair to say that the story doesn't have a theme or that the story isn’t about anything.
Indeed. There is also the theme of the cost of power. Every party member has a past that tempts them to give up humanity for power. And all of the main companions can easily fall into them. After forsaking their humanity, none of them are better off for it. Also good luck to anyones characters if you romance Ascended Evil Astarion.
But this is the problem I feel, the problem is characters in RPGs becoming a focus over what the world has to offer in most RPGs. Or at least being PRESENTED as the main draw.
Characters should supplement the world, if Deadfire didn't pull you in because you weren't into its' colonial pirate fantasy cool, but it shouldn't be because of the characters in an RPG they are secondary to the core question yyour world is posing. Whether you are writing contemporary fiction or high fantasy, your characters anchors the story and gives your world a point of focus. They are a reference point.
Fae'run can be generic compared to worlds with more focus because it's D&D and all other worlds draw from it, but since we're especially talking about Illithids here the core theme is actually control and the illusion of it. The characters THINK they know who they are at the beginning of the game only to have their preconceptions challenged by the threat of death and control by an outside force, without realizing that the existence they lead and the people that they (and we as audiences are) erodes our freedom. You're not wrong about trust and power, but illusion of autonomy is more succinct and plays into almost every story, "problem" is it's still rooted in the characters who are done well rather than the world. The solution each character has to "solve" this supposed lack of autonomy is to go deeper like with Sharran Shadowheart, Ascended Gale/Astarion, Lae'zel but that doesn't really make them happy because they need to re-evaluate their identity and who they are. Their very motivations are rooted in a lack of understanding of who they are.
Thank you for the wonderful video mate
Just a short personal list about games with character-driven plot and at the same time has a (at least somewhat) deep philosophical question:
KotOR 2 (admittedly the themes of the game were already planted by the first title)
Planescape Torment
Persona 3 (maybe even 4)
Fire Emblem 4-5-6-7-9-10
Deus Ex (the very first game)
Dragon Age Origins (which interestingly, to me at least, pose the same question as of Baldur's Gate 3: up to what level does the mean justify the ends and at what level it all just turns into abuse of power?)
Arcanum and Baldur's Gate 2 (both tackles the same idea as baldur's Gate 3: does the circumstance of a man birth matter more than his blood?)
The main reason BG3 was so successful is the amount of choice or even just perceived choice it provides to the player. So far, no other modern triple-A has done this. It's a bit disappointing to hear that cinematics and romance are the reason while ignoring the main reason the game appealed to so many players. Most players say "hey I wonder if I can do this" and in BG3 the number of times they'll then say "wow, I CAN do this! Can't believe the game accounted for this!" is, compared to any other game, astronomical
I totally agree. I am willing to guarantee nobody who is a fan of BG3 would cite "personal narrative as opposed to asking deep philosophical questions" or "all the romances" as the reason why they like the game. They like it because it allows them the perception of freedom of choice, to explore and try different things, and then rewards them for it.
I'd also add that another aspect not mentioned here that I can see is that BG3 did so well in large part because it almost completely avoids preaching at its audience. I'd argue that the average person is so sick and tired of every single form of relaxation media being so crammed full of ideologically driven pulpit pounding that literally anything that gives them something to do without it will be successful. And let's face it: the preaching is coming pretty well exclusively from one particular worldview, and that worldview is unquestionably spending billions of dollars "consulting" with firms specifically designed to figure out how to cram it into everything. It's gotten so pervasive that people feel like they can't watch a movie, turn on the TV, play a game, or do much of anything without it being rammed in their faces - and they are just tired of it. That would be almost exclusively the reason why Black Myth Wukong is crushing it right now I'd guess - it's a mechanically solid game with a decent story that completely and totally avoids ideological scolding.
@@dananderson6697 yep 100%.
That's the main reason. The romance options are just icing on the cake.
I don't think even if, for example, Microsoft would give Josh BG3's budget he wouldn't be able to create a Pillars 3 on the same level. And this is because his design philosophy is so different than other CRPG developers. He doesn't care about romances, whereas at least in the mainstream part of RPG's, that's where the success of Dragon Age, Mass Effect and pretty much all of Bioware's games have flourished in. Josh would get bogged down by scope creep with POE3 and not focus on the main drive of what made BG3 so amazing: the characters and relationships that the main character has with them.
No other company (besides CDPR) would actually invest so much time and money into the mocap, voice acting and make the narrator one of the "main NPC" characters of the game.
This is why I don't think even as good as a dev and director as Josh is, would be able to create a game where it appeals to anyone other than the hardcore CRPG crowd (because he cares too much about gameplay systems as a priority over the others).
Don't get me wrong..I LOVE all kinds of RPG's of all shapes and sizes and I do love me a proper hardcore CRPG, but the reality is those are few and far between and it's gonna be a long time until the next Pathfinder game from Owlcat to get me that "fix" again. But, unfortunately, those games don't appeal to the mass audience so they can't sell or breakout from their shell and they are extremely high risk of investment.
You act like Baldur's Gate 3 is the only game ever made that had romance in it. Both Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 had romance in it. I could have sworn remembering hooking up with Jaheira and Viconia in BG2. The Dragon Age and Mass Effect games all have had romance in them and are very popular to this day. To me romance is the least thing I look forward to in rpg's I prefer philosophical crpg's. My two favorite crpg's of all time are Planescape: Torment and KOTOR 2 both philosophical games and written by Chris Avellone who was a fellow alumni of Sawyer. I am also Gen X and have beem playing video games for 40+ years and can say that Baldur's Gate 3 is up there on my list of best rpg's of all time. Next to both the aforemnetioned Planescape: Torment and KOTOR 2 plus Dragon Age: Origins.
I was under the impression that Chris Avellone write most if not all of the games Sawyer is famous for working on.
I must be mistaken and Avellone doesn't exist anymore. His writing credits should definitely be given to someone who has admitted multiple times that he didn't write those games.
I see your irony here but on the flip side Avellone was credited(by the audience) for everything Obsidian made over the years. Avellone wrote only 1 companion for NV main game for example but most people are under the impression that "Avellone wrote most if not all of it" for some reason. There are two games that "he wrote most if not all of it" and those are Planescape Torment(25 years ago) and KotOR 2(20 years ago).
No one made NV single handedly, Obsidian was writing powerhouse back then and they lost almost all of them including Avellone. The Outer Worlds by the og fallout creators was a big disappointment for anyone who knew their previous games(Fallout1, Arcanum, Bloodlines) so while Josh should get the biggest credit for NV its not a guarantee a Sawyer directed sequel to Fallout will be success/good/great game.
@@NEKASABA I love Chris. He is one of if not the best writer in the history of the gaming industry and it’s a fucking disgrace that he has essentially been blacklisted from the industry, but I will say John Gonzalez also deserves a lot of love as he was very important in the writing department. Too
People oversell and undersell how much Avellone work.
He didn't do much when came to New Vegas base game for example , but it was the lead designer for Old World Blues , Dead Money and Lonesome road.
John González and Sawywer were the "main guys" behind Base and Honest Hearts.
Avellone was the one of leads during Planescape Torment and Kotor 2 , also worker on Mask of the betrayer. He wrote Durance and Griving Mother in Pillars of eternity 1. Also one of the main leads with Chris Parker , a often forgetting key member of Obisidan, in Alpha protocol.
But Sawyer was the director and did a lore of the lore for Pillars of eternity , also wrote Pallegina.
@@NEKASABA The Outer Worlds is only a "disappointment" when you compare it to New Vegas. And honestly, every game is a disappointment when you start comparing it to one of the greatest RPGs ever made. However, it is a very solid RPG on it's own and reminds me a lot of KotOR.
@@theobell2002 The Outer Worlds is a failure of premise.
fair points but to give bg3 credit where it's due it maintains a strong theme about submission and control. the illithid crisis overall and the personal stories all share a throughline about this and say different things about it
Thank you for the Seneca quote, mate. As for a character driven vs. deeply philosophical RPGs: I do not think this is an either-or dichotomy at all. KotOR (especially the second game) showed us, that a melange of both is possible, and - frankly speaking - quite awesome. Furthermore, although not as obvious as in games like the Pillars of Eternity series, BG3 raised quite a few profound philosophical questions as well, IMO. For example, the fundamental lure of power: is it acceptable to embrace your inner (Ilithid) shadow, in order to fight the darkness in the world, despite the real possibility of becoming another, potentially more devastating darkness yourself? Fritz Nietzsche would have loved this thought experiment I guess.
Warning, Long Comment Ahead:
I disagree. Here's the thing; I get where you're coming from. And you aren't entirely wrong about anything you said in this video. But I do think there is more curmudgeon-y, "Oh these youths of today" energy here than you realize. So let me be upfront with my biases. I am 27. Exactly within the demographic you mentioned. I have vastly less life experience than you and will not purport otherwise. That said, I am also a writer and someone who passionately studies literature. I bring this up not to say that you are wrong in your assessments, but rather that there is more nuance than you are acknowledging.
You are right to say that Baldur's Gate 3 is character-driven, but it also absolutely has overarching narrative themes. It approaches topics related to subjugation, whether by religion (Shadowheart), abusers (Astarion), oppressive government (Gortash), hierarchical militaristic structures, including forced inscription (Lae'zel and Karlach), selling one's soul for the "greater good" (Wyll), hiveminds and cultish manipulation of large swaths of people (The mind flayers and the entire concept of the Absolute, honestly this is reinforced basically everywhere in the game), and even, ultimately, the subjugation to our own mortality and impending doom (Karlach again, but also the entire idea of turning into mind flayers). Throughout the story, we consistently see recurring themes of the abuse of power, along with the idea of whether power inherently corrupts and is prone to abuse, even when good-natured people with initially good intentions come to that power (Ketheric). The game even subverts this idea with Gale's relationship with Mystra, where he literally had a romantic relationship with the god he worshipped.
These characters each have various endings, usually related to whether they escape these oppressive forces, fall victim to them, or become the oppressors themselves (Astarion is the best example of this). Yes, the game is character-driven, but that is because the characters *are* the story. Every disparate aspect of the game's narrative is tied to this overarching theme, and they all work together to inform the player of what the creators' beliefs and intentions are, while also leaving room for the player to bring their own beliefs into the themes. We can debate how *effective* the game is at conveying these themes, and in my opinion, it sometimes falters. But the themes are there, and they aren't hidden. You have to want to engage with the game in that way, though. You have to take what it is offering seriously.
Story and character are not truly separable. You can emphasize one more than the other, but there is no story without agents of action, which is what characters are. They are the subjects of the story. Their level of depth, and how they relate to the overarching themes of the story, can vary of course. But they are essential to a narrative. And likewise, what the characters do, the struggles they face, both internal and external, and the choices they make in response to those struggles - that becomes the story. Storytelling is holistic in that way. Each disparate element informs all others, working together to form a cohesive whole.
That includes romance. I personally love romance. I also think it is rarely, if ever, handled well in games. Honestly, I think Cyberpunk has the most realistic, natural-feeling romances through Panam and Judy, and that game uses your romance with them to enforce its own themes of mortality and seizing the life you have while you have it, along with the stronger emphasis on family and community through Panam. I think BG3 doesn't reach that same level of effectiveness. But its romances do play a role in these larger themes. Astarion in particular, despite being someone I so fundamentally am not interested in romantically, really highlights this. If you look at vampirism as analogous to sexual coercion and abuse (which absolutely has always been part of the vampire mythos historically), then you can see the value in him working through his trauma individually while also along with a partner who comes along and shows him he is worthy of love and that he deserves better treatment than he experienced in the past. There is value there, and it is value I would not get if I were self-inserting, because if I were doing that, I would just romance Shadowheart every time.
And finally, on the topic of self-inserting. Once again, it's nuanced. You say you've never done it in your fifty-something years, but you absolutely have. What we take and give to a character we create comes from us. Even if we use it as a tool of empathy, of exploring another perspective or another person's shoes, we still take our own preconceived notions and inherent biases and preferences into that exploration. We can never totally separate ourselves from the characters we envision and inhabit. That is the beauty of roleplaying, in my opinion. That we may explore not just alternative lifestyles and perspectives, but also our own beliefs through another lens. That is the beauty of all art, if I'm honest. Art is a tool of human empathy. It begs the reader, viewer, etc. to engage with it and invest in other people's lives and struggles. BG3 absolutely does that, even if it doesn't always do it effectively.
Sure but self-insert I mean I have never consciously done it so it is relatable to me but that we cannot escape ourselves is a given.
@@spellandshield In my experience it isn't a given. I meet some weird people who sincerely believe in objectivity around storytelling and what makes art "good." But I get where you're coming from and I'm glad to know we're on the same page there :)
@@charismacaster2429 We don't WANT to be ourself in fantasy worlds but rather the idealised comic book version where boring things we do in our real life don't happen in the fantasy world. The reason? We play these games for entertainment not as a life simulator.
A lot of you guys that want self insert see Role Playing Games as Life Simulators in Fantasy worlds like Animal Crossing or The Sims. Some of us don't want to LIVE inside the world as ourselves. Rather we are escaping the boring real world to enter into a fantasy world which is like going on a vacation where we can be someone else for a while and kick back and do adventurous things that have nothing to do with our real world which is depressing, boring and too risky to be a hero.
Think back to when you were a kick dressing p as Batman or Superman and role playing these characters. You chose to be these characters because they have things you don't: high intellect, bravery, super human strength and speed, fighting skills etc. That's what Role Playing Games are at the CORE.
However over the years RPG have turned into life simulation games by adding in more player-driven additions like base building, the ability to customise your face, the ability to go fishing, the ability to romance people, the ability to buy a pet and feed it, etc which are just extras that are added to help immerse you into the world a bit more.
But these are not the reason why you play a RPG. You play it because you want to be those cool characters and not be yourself. Some would strongly disagree with me on this and I would wager it's mostly women since a study was conducted by the Toy company Lego that girls when they play with dolls self insert themselves into the dolls rather than role play as Barbie or the cartoon characters. Whereas when boys play with Gi Joe or superhoeroes they role play those heroes instead of self insert.
This is the reason Josh Sawyer probably doesn't want to make those romance games. That's not his thing. I agree with him. It's a genre that guys don't typicall care much for historically. (its just a novelty to most of us old timers) If you like dating simulators or pet simulators and want to see more of that in games in the RPG genre I don't want to stop you from enjoying that. But lets us be honest: you are here to escape the real world to enter a more interesting fantasy world and that is the core audience for RPG since the start. Nerds were the core audience for RPG and over time it's trying to expand to the normies for big $. You like the idea of RPG expanding that is fine but it cannot be denied that the hobby has been hijacked by normies and those normies simetimes bring negative effects to the genre (like the obsession of needing to be represented all the time. See Kingdom Come Deliverance's recent problems of being attacked by the SJW who insist that they add more black people in the game which is trying to be historically accurate. This didn't happen in the 1980s and 90s. The normies are destroying the nerds hobbies.
I feel a part of roleplaying that Pillars is missing is connecting with your own character, ie the roleplay part. Eg I can be excited about the amusing circumstances my class/race may cause in BG3 and the story I create around their path. Eg my dark urge warlock who becomes a vengeance paladin feels as close to canon as I could imagine, so it feels like a personalised story
Not gonna lie, while there are things I appreciate in Pillars 1 and Deadfire, the characters there are their weakest link. There are a few exceptions, but most of them are just boring and few of those are barely relatable as human beings, let alone people. If we go all the way back to Planescape: Torment it didn't really compromise characters for the sake of its story and neither it did compromise its big themes for the sake of its characters. It is a very personal game and it has ideas to discuss.
Disco Elysium didn't compromise it'd characters nor its ideas. There are very believable people in this game and yet I wouldn't call the game or its story shallow or simple-minded or subordinate to the charactee development.
Owlcat games exist and romance is small part of them, important only if it is important for you.
Now, whether do you value media that teaches you ideas or media that teaches you emotions is gonna to depend on many things. I personally don't believe one is better than another.
Do most companies choose the path of least resistance, when it comes to money and meny other dubious things? Yes.
But if you want to complain, that your competition undercuts by making a product that easier to market and sell, you gotta step up your game, man. If nobody wants to buy your games about ideas, you gotta package those ideas better. You gotta make better games. There is no other way, but to get good. 🤷♀️😐
Otherwise you might as well start yelling at clouds.
p.s. Fallout: New Vegas is a bit shallow.. when it comes to its ideas. It's all visible from miles away, it doesn't say much new about those ideas.
Heck, I've seen RUclips videos more articulate and more in-depth about those same ideas. I get that a lot of people value F:NV for putting these ideas forward (definitely did a better job, than F3 ever tried), but it's just so heavy-handed and sloppy. The biggest value of the New Vegas for me is that it tells me a story of a belieavable world and believable cultures, of believable people with believable problems. The quests don't all warp the people and the world around them for the entertainment value. That I appreciate.
Pillars 1 and Pillars 2 are not that much better it terms of discussing its ideas wirh you as a player. Admit it, Josh Sawyer is not the best rerpesentation for the 'idea game designer'. He's passionate about it, true, but that alone doesn't make him a good storyteller.
BG3 also had a lot of marketing that made sure everyone knew of it, even those like me that doesn't "follow" the genre (or game releases in general) closely.
Hadn't heard about the pillars games so thanks for that tip. Been playing games since early 90s, love RPGs like icewind dale, NWN, BG etc, so pillars should be perfect for me after my current BG3 honor run is done!
Hmmmmm interesting take, I have to say myself I definitely prefer a greater focus on characters but I still like Pillars and FNV. I think you make a strong point though.
A big mistake often made is people want one thing and one thing only.
Hi. I found your channel recently and I enjoyed your opinion about your favourites modern crpgs. In fact, when you talk about the narrative of Pillars of Eternity made me wonder, what are your favourites crpgs in storytelling of all time. Those games which had such an incredible narrative that with the pass of the years you still remenber.
I would love to know your choices for play them in the future. Would you consider to make a video about this topic?
Excuse me if i made some mistake, english is not my native language.
Thanks you and sorry for the off topic.
I find Josh Sawyer a very frustrating dev. I miss the times when people actually made the games they wanted to make without being affected by it being a massive success or not. And listen, I understand we live in a capitalist world and that money is crucial, the thing is... Obsidian relied on crowd funding for both Pillars 1 and 2 and surpassed what they asked for in a single day for both games. The problem with capitalism here (and most places) is that people don't just want to live a humble, comfortable life, they want oceans of money and they want to be recognized by the mainstream public/media.
When I look at the CRPG "landscape" I see studios like Owlcat, InXile, Iron Tower, Spiderweb Software, Logic Artists, and even Larian, who went through a lot and was actually a "well kept secret" of the RPG genre not too long ago until BG3. All of these studios make passionate games, all of them are either AA or straight up indie. None of them cries about Baldur's Gate 3 like Josh does. I can't help but feel that he's more focused on becoming the next Todd Howard rather than making games his fans love.
It sucks that a guy that made so many games we love and is a huge name in this genre has succumbed to these defeatist thoughts. Baldur's Gate 3 might look like it but it ISN'T a "Baldur's Gate 1 and 2-like". People that like BG3 does not like old school CRPGs by "approximation". Josh thinks he doesn't get the audience anymore because 80% of the BG3 audience isn't the Pillars of Eternity audience, obviously. The frustrating part is that he feels like he NEEDS to make a game for that audience while the other 5 studios I mentioned don't, because they know who their audience actually are and most important of all, they are satisfied with their market share, with their place in this industry. At this point Josh should just apply for a job in Activision and be another cog developing the next Call of Duty, since he seems to desperately want to be part of something "larger than life", with massive mainstream appeal.
BG3 is my second favorite CRPG, just behind Planescape Torment! Both have fun and creative character, great story and great combat! Releasing the "bear" scene really caught peoples attention and made people want to find out about the game! Even some people that don't like CRPG's love BG3!
You might be right about the character-based stories being a significant factor in BG3’s success, but I’m not so sure about the romance being a big of a factor as it is made out to be. As someone who liked both series, I vastly preferred Pillars 1 over Deadfire because it felt like the characters were more tightly written. Even the player character had a personal stake in seeing the adventure through, as they had personal history with Thaos/Iovara (that the player could dictate in the various memory sequences about Thaos) in addition to needing to confront Thaos to avoid going insane. Even the characters I liked the best (Eder, Aloth, Durance, Zahua, Devil of Carroc) had their own character arcs that either had strong themes that could stand on their own, or were adjacent to the Watcher’s own character arc.
Overall, I felt that the character writing in Deadfire felt shallower and less well written compared to Pillars 1, even when it comes to the returning party members from the first game. Eder lacks the dark humor that he had in the first game, and Aloth’s entire character arc was undone for who knows why. The gods are turned into bickering powerful people instead of monolithic and titanic spiritual entities who, despite being created by humans, feel like something much more than human. The political factions in Deadfire were still interesting, but the story overall felt much less personal and thus harder to get invested in.
It felt like the writing team threw out all of the mystery and development in the first game in order to dumb things down and make it more “relatable” for the average gamer, and the game suffered for it.
I think the analysis here is flawed and I don't understand this focus and obsession on romances and self-insertion. I am Gen X, 54 years old, and I have been playing games since the Atari 2600. I have experienced a wide variety of stories and methods of storytelling, and I cherish them all.
Over the course of my life I have had discussions about games with a great many people including children as young as 8 years old. Not once, ever, has anyone said that they want to be themselves in a game. If you are playing a character in a CRPG, you either want to be that character to experience life in that particular fictional universe through their eyes, or you will create a character that is not yourself because it literally cannot be yourself. It's a spell casting mage in medieval times or a super soldier in the future. Everyone I've ever spoken to plays these games because they want to be someone else for a little while, never themselves. Character driven stories give you the opportunity to do that. It's not inherently better or worse than stories that tell things in a different way.
As far as romances are concerned, games don't revolve around romances, and if that is your perception, that is skewed from what is actually going on because you have a certain way of feeling about romances in games. Romances in Baldur's Gate 3 or DA:O or Mass Effect or whatever are not great because they're romances, but because they're ways for you to learn more about a character. There are things that any game with romance has that you will never learn unless you engage in the romance. It's a way of gating information. Another way is locational. In Elden Ring, Melina will only tell you certain things if you are in certain locations. Otherwise, you will never learn these things. Romance is a way to create more depth in a character and to gate information. It's not a simulator and no one legitimately thinks that they personally are boning Alistair or Morrigan.
Stories told in different ways give you new avenues for appreciating a story that cannot be garnered if told from a different perspective. This is why we need different kinds of storytelling methods to enable us to get the most value from these stories.
Well, allow me to introduce you to someone who DOES want to play themself in a game...sort of...I'm 53 and for decades I've wanted to be able to not just make myself in a game, but of course, my idealized self. The Self I wish I could be in real life, but that I'm not. And I think in some ways that's what a lot of people do. Sure, some people (myself included) will often make characters that are nothing like themselves (as much as possible), but I think generally, a lot of people want to be themselves, but better. Or at least some imagined version of themselves. Whether they're aware of it, or not.
@@DavesChaoticBrain Those are outliers. RPG fantasy is about playing hero that defeats evil by correcting the mistakes of the past by righting wrongs. It's not really about your player character but what it takes to conquer demons and overcome your flaws as a person so you can eliminate the obstacles that brought the fall of the land around you to begin with. If it's not about that I have no real interest in the main protagonist. Why should I care about a random guy that is just like millions of other people who don't get off their butt and take a risk to slay the dragon that is threat to survival of the world? Games are games, and story is story. A game iwth a good story is better than a game wth no story but the gam's core is the chalenge you the player overcome and not the characters. I don't play RPG thinking I am the character but that I the player must make the decisions necessary to overcome the problems. There is a correct way to do it and an incorrect way to do it just like there is a correct way to win a game of sports and incorrect way. RPG is a sport that rewards your knowledge of the rules and how to exploit those rules to always be on top of the problem. Without the game I may as well just read a novel. The reason Star Wars is popular is it doesn't give you the random nobody as the protagonist. He is the son of the most powerful knight in the lore of the story. But his flaw is lack of discipline to control himself (impatience) and to think carefully before acting. It's the overcoming of the flaws of the character that makes him strong and defeat evil since he senses the good in the bad guy to be able to manipulate the bad guy to turn against the threat (sith lord is the red dragon that is slain). Stories have to have moral behind them or else nobody will care about your characters. Nobody cares about Han Solo because he is cool. They care that he turned himself into a hero when he shot Darth Vader so Luke could destroy the Death Star which in turn saved the peaceful people enslaved by the evil empire.
If I were Luke I would just continue to be a farm boy and fly civilian ships and not be adventurous. I am boring. I have no real story. But Luke Skywalker isn't boring. If I am role playing I don't want to control boring people.
Vast majority of people want to be interesting people.
Josh's games are ones where there is a lot of dialogue I find myself wanting to read and understand the reasoning and argument set up.
To have good cRPG you can't overfocus on one aspect of story/character-driven scale. Video games are an interactive medium, and in games like BG3 or PoE, players will always find it easier to experience overall narrative through more personal and character-driven interactions.
BG3 main narrative explore themes like power, control and manipulation, but in ironic twist of fate, has so well written companions, that most people reduce main story as just another "kill bad guys" story. IMO Dragon Age Orgins is best example of having perfect balance of both types of storytelling.
Josh prefers telling story through philosophical questions and overarching themes, and thinks characters are of secondary importance - thats is why I think he "dosen't get" BG3 audience. If we ever get PoE3, Josh just needs to find one or more co-author who specializes in character-driven stories.
Sadly a lot of people are mixing between '' we want a good game '' and '' we want a similar game''. I don't want to play another Baldurs Gate 3 and I LOVE the game. As a gen X too, working in the gaming industry, i can relate to so many points of view you are talking about. I think this youtube channel is the best embodiment of gen X hhhh. Nice video again!!
Appreciate it fellow Gen Xer!
I don't think that the romances are a key element to the success but it makes sense to have them in a RPG. One have to take into account that Baldur's Gate is a strong name, BG3 has a splendid presentation and gives the player a lot of opportunities. Also people like me like the tactical combat system far more than the traditional real time with pause (at which I really suck). Can't speak for Pillars of Eternity 2 but the first one were a rather stiff experience in my eyes and the target audience were fans of the golden era of CRPGs and no one more.
It would be interesting to poll BG3 players and find out how many actually cared about the romance in the game, versus how many cared about the romance as portrayed on Reddit, Tiktok and RUclips. Because my feeling is far more people cared for the social media exploration of that romance versus the game.
However, maybe I'm totally off-base. For me, BG3's romance interludes were a distraction and kind of annoying. I far prefer character interludes that invite us into their world and their mind than their bed, but that's just me I guess.
I'm not sure I agree with your relatability point, or maybe I'm just misunderstanding it.
Like, Shadowheart is the most romanced companion. I don't think that's the case because lots of people can relate to the experience of dating someone who's part of a cult. In fact, I think people with direct experience on that front would be less likely to go for Shadowheart.
I don't think it's about modern vs older audiences, it's about mass appeal. If you made BG3 10 years ago it still would have made alot of money. Godard said it best: "All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun". I prefer if you put the girl and the gun into a rich political, sociological setting that tackles niche themes and philosophies I never heard about but I can't deny the power of deeply personal relationships. BG3 story didn't set the world on fire but it sure tackled alot of mature, intimate and personal themes. The horniness was acutally a breath of fresh air, even if I didn't find it that appealing.
Pentiment was my favorite game I played in the past year.
Love BG3, loved Pillars 1 and 2. Over 50 years old. I can enjoy both types. I am sure many others can as well. I think there are enough players to support both. Create a Pillars game with the quality of BG3 and I think it sells amazingly well, with little or no romance and a deeper main story. Hate that he seems to feel he is out of touch. JMO.
Bruh that clip at the beginning hurt for real because pillars 2 is one of my favorite games despite the flaws it has. The actual writing and interactions as well as the combat were all immersive and fun. My main issue was just the menuing aspects. I think a pillars 3 could be an equal to wrath of the righteous if they had the right amount of freedom
That's an odd sentiment I didn't expect from Josh. I like the honesty that he can't lead design a game exactly like BG3, but it's a bit defeatist attitude to believe the BG3 model is the only way to have critical and commercial success. I've played every game Josh has had a major hand in and have enjoyed/Loved them all. If he was given the budget/time BG3 had, I'd love to see his vision.
This interview shed a light on why some developers are successful and why others aren’t. I like pillars. Played 1 and beat 2 several times. The ship battles were atrocious and several things that fans clamored for were begrudgingly added. I think Sawyer is brilliant in some respects but I wouldn’t want him to lead a project in the modern age. If you can’t connect with a modern audience then you shouldn’t lead projects that companies hope will have mass appeal such as pillars II when it was released.
I'm also a gen-x gamer and I can't agree with you. I've always enjoyed stories that made me feel for the characters, whether or not there was romance. POE was not as popular because the characters didn't seem to fit the story and there was no effort to make me feel for them. You had to ignore the characters and focus entirely on the narrative, which is only half the story to me.
The best games find a way to do both, to give just enough of each aspect that both itches get scratched.
I deep respect your opinion and you are one of my favourite RUclipsrs but I don't agree 100%.
I don't think BG3 is a dating simulation, I had a playthrough and my character didn't romance anyone.
I understand and agree BG3 has loads of focus in romance but is 100% optional.
I had an internship in Larian studios as part of my games design course and what they tried in BG3 was make everyone happy, people like me fan of old CRPGs and also the new audience.
In my application for Larian I deeply criticised them and they still invited me to experience BG3 and give my opinion as an old school player and games design student.
Anyway after my experience in Larian and more than 700h playing BG3 I understand unfortunately at the end of the day they needed to have all the money back and for it make the old and new audience happy.
And just an observation for me pillars of eternity is a fantastic franchise and I definitely love it and yes it is not for the same audience as BG3 but that's ok.
I'm 31 now.
When I was in my late teens / early 20's, I was a sucker for RPG romance.
Nowadays, I wish BG3 was a bit less of a dating sim honestly, even though I find it to be an enjoyable part of the experience.
I think you’re overstating the impact romance had on drawing the large audience. I think it’s the presentation factor, the high quality cutscenes and voice acting. Most people would rather have these high quality cutscenes than have to read through a bunch of text or hear a faceless voice. Dnd 5e is also quite simple so that helped too.
I have grown to dislike the CRPG overreliance on combat. Think about BG1/2/POE. Imagine you enter the Charred woods from the south - there is the Wolven glade to the east, spider infested caves to the west, a goblin/kobold/bandit camp to the center/north area. Combat feels like a chore (at the lower difficulties) and just a time padding. I really liked Disco Elysium's approach - tons of dialogue trues, fun and useful skills, ability to RP rather than slaughter the world on your way to the next boss battle, just to get a +1 armor/weapon that does not FEEL better. My RPG fix is to switch to storytelling and character interaction. Treat combat as sex after a date- it should be meaningful, short, but climactic exclamation mark after many question marks and full stops.
Full voice acting would have made all the difference to POE2. Just give Josh enough budget to add voices. That would do it. The romance crowd and the cosplay crowd is small but vocal. Romances don't make millions and millions of difference. That said - I always felt Mass Effect 2 was the best compromise between and interesting story and a wonderful characters.
Relatability and deeper meaning don't have to be mutually exclusive. Classic bioware like dao and kotor are good examples of this
but in general you know what else is character driven? tabletop RPGs which heavily influenced bg3 and crpgs
What a question heh?
We are all standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. And there will be a generation of Devs building on what Larian has done today.
I hate seeing Sawyer be so hard on himself. Screw the reception to Deadfire by the vocal minority. Deadfire is one of my favorite games of all times and I've been gaming for over 35 years. Look at the Steam numbers at 87% that is by no means a weak game. It didn't pull the numbers like BG3 but it had a fraction of the marketing and virality. The only areas Deadfire lacked in where definitely related to Obsidian's much smaller budgets.
I understand your point, but I feel like the stories i prefer the most are character driven in nature. even games done by josh sawyer had this kind of character driven writing for sure. Cass, Raul, Veronica, you CAN tell character driven stories in the kind of themes josh likes. I just feel like your story has to be good to sell the themes you want to explore. That's what really matters to me, the romance people will find a way to write it in their minds. just look at souls games and the romanticizing of the lore on that game.
A Fallout New Vegas successor without Chris Avellone is the ultimate potential "monkey's paw" in gaming.
He should be reinstated but I think he left Obsidian on bad terms.
@@spellandshieldI can’t blame him after reading his reasons for his departure which paints obsidian in an awful light.
@@spellandshield Yeah. Bridges were burned, and I don't see things going back to how they were. And it's probably for the best if his allegations are true. I just hope he can find his place in the industry after all of the stuff he's had to deal with.
I think Avellone is overrated, with a mixed record at best. His writing for Kreia was awful, but far worse was the fact the player was never given a good riposte to her, you either agreed or were "a fool". Avellone wanted to deconstruct Star Wars, he just did a piss-poor job of it, and rather than let the player point out that his cat's paw had garbage arguments, he just stuffed you by not allowing you to mount any sort of real defense. Ulysses in NV wasn't even a character, he was simply a machine that endlessly pontificated some nonsense on nationalism, history, and behaving in a way literally no one would in a post-nuclear apocalypse. His endless monologues can be summed up as "NO ONE IS AS SMART AS ME, EVERYONE WILL FAIL!" without putting forth a single idea on how better to build a nation in the post-apocalypse.
On the other hand, I thought Mask of the Betrayer was great, and a huge step up from the original Neverwinter Nights 2, so I don't know if he just had better supervision or had been reducing the amount of TED Talks he was watching. Old World Blues was also a heck of a lot of fun, and an unbelievable contrast to Lonesome Road's pedantic, self-important nonsense.
BG3's success has very little to do with characters and romances or anything like that. It was super successful because it was the first CRPG to come close to nailing the feeling of freedom you have in a "real" game of D&D. The sheer amount of different options Larian managed to bake into game is what made it so compelling. It was that vibe - "what if I do this crazy thing? holy crap, they actually thought of that!" Both when it comes to the gameplay and the story.
BG3's story and companions are not particularly strong, to be honest. And part of that is precisely because it is so open in terms of what you can do. The sheer amount of eventualities they covered mean that a lot of the story feels....well, just like your DM in a normal game of D&D making stuff up on the spot does. The attraction is that it is responsive to the player's actions, not that it is true on some deep psychological level. You can't have a "choose your adventure" book - which is essentially what BG3 is at its heart - that is also great literature that feels like the work of a singular genius. You can't write a character or a situation that can turn out in many different, polar opposite ways and have them all feel equally true and accurate to the character or the situation. There's a large element of fudging that simply has to occur.
But again...that's exactly how tabletop D&D is. It prioritizes responsiveness to player actions over coherent and cohesive stories. So it's no surprise that BG3 taking that approach with a D&D computer game was so wildly successful. It's a perfect overlap with the IP.
The two types of RPG's are not mutually exclusive. Persona 3 has a character-driven plot and at the same time has a deep philosophical question, the meaning of life in face of death. Oh, and also have romances.
Exactly!
You seem to have completely missed out on quite a few games that were absolutely able to make you think, have that grand storytelling thing with the philosophical and political questions behind it, while still ALSO focusing on character development and story and be relatable. You can absolutely do both. And I agree that BG3 or previously DOS 2, even though great games, failed at this. But others like early Bioware games or Kingdom Come: Deliverance for instance, didn't. They weren't perfect but we still saw a glimpse of what could be possible, if they pumped more of that money in the part that matter most when those things are concerned: writing, a good and solid writing and narrative design team. But what the industry does nowadays is thinking those most creative parts in games can be simply replaced with AI, when it cannot.
Problem with the "do anything you want" type RPG in 2024+, is that people will want to delve into subjects or actions that as a director you would never want to touch. That's why it's better to begin design as a vilain (GTA style) and work your way to the good guy mechanics. Mayhem is much more popular than normal behaviour in video games. Anytime you can destroy, romance, steal, burglarize, intimidate, scare, trap, lie in a video game it will be cool. This is where BG3 shined where other more standard RPG's failed.
I don't think it is necessarily a generational issue or an old vs modern issue. This is more of an Obsidian issue. Obsidian specifically has always been more about the philosophical side of things, even for games back in the day. Compare Kotor 1 (Bioware) to Kotor 2 (Obsidian).
My take on why POE did not do well and then BG3 comes along and smashes with furor is the system its designed around. Pillars is a new system built from ground up by the pillars team and BG3 uses a system that has been tweaked and played and tweaked ad nauseam for decades. This to me is the main reason why pillars did not do well. You can say it was the hyper sexuality of BG3 or the crisp highly detailed world and character models but for me it was the system it was built around. I just don't seem to vibe with POE series. As a long time nerd with a fondness of D&D I have always cherished the feel of the mighty +1. Its clean and it invokes a feeling in me that I just don't get from the POE systems. As example +35% critical hit damage. This does nothing at all for my nerd brain. Or I took a perk in POE2 that had me attacking a hurt person with 55% more damage. Then there is the might stat causing wizards to be just as strong as a barbarian etc. To me its just workarounds to make this complicated system work that detracts from decades and decades of tweaking to the D&D formula.
You're in for a treat when you play pentiment. Also if you haven't played Disco Elysium you really should give it a try. It's a game where, while there's no way to self insert, it's a character driven story with massive narrative ideas. Really fun.
I dont think the difference between BG3's and PoE 2's commercial succes has much to do with generational contrasts. I think BG3 was just an amazing RPG with amazing presentation that was easy to relate to and hit a chord. If you're going to make art or games about difficult topics like politics or religion, especially if you challenge the powerful, and that's your passion, you should a accept that you may not be as widely relatable, and that's okay.
No, he might not get the budget of a BG3. No, he may not get the commercial success, but not every game should be compared in that way.
Making something you are so passionate about that doesnt get the reception you know it deserves is about the toughest thing an artist og gamemaker can experience. The absolute worst reception being indifference. I feel Sawyers pain, but at least I know... I love PoE 2. He isn't out of touch, that's actually not how you make games. He should take a little bit of lessons from commercial successes such as BG3, and he should go his own way.
Younger players also prefer a more sandbox experience. They’re used to using their own creativity to, for example, do something insane with an exploding truck, record it, and post it for likes and comments. This is totally different from the kind of narrative Sawyer likes. (Pentiment is a fantastic game btw, play it!)
He say it himself he is out of touch, if you dont get how that is possible take the total amount of gamers from 2002 minus the total amount in 2018 and the negative number you will get is the amount this great dev is out of sync, its not entirely his fault, times changes, but he sees he is lacking something vital, I only hope he overcome it and give us POE3 sooner than later IMO. Also BG3 is great no ifs, no buts, no coconuts.
Oi, what do you have against coconuts!? 🤪
Most of the time, I don't like the limits Josh sets for himself when he makes games.
I really like the design and ideas.
The games I like from him that you mentioned in your video are PoE2 and IWD2.
PoE2 seems to be taking the fans' criticisms voiced in PoE1 seriously, and IWD2 seems to be a godsend, since they were desperate when they developed the game.
In general, I understand him too, even if I don't belong to his or your generation (I'm a little younger).
Still, his approach is flawed because if you have problems with some topics like romance, you should contact someone who has a lot of experience in this regard, such as: e.g. successful book author. Don't work alone.
I agree with the philosophical theme of PoE which gives it more depth, but such themes don't stop it from also making it a personal story like in BG3.
That's what bothers me about Josh, he restricts himself too much and, in my opinion, puts those restrictions in the wrong places.
As I mentioned before, he makes games very well when he listens to the players and the fan base.
I mean, think about it. If he combined a character-driven story AND deep philosophical storytelling, it could be the next step in the evolution of role-playing games.
The hard part would be finding the right point to transition between these two, but that's where he needs to stop limiting himself with his logic.
I mean seriously, his answer was based on money not being an issue. Come on Josh, you can do better.
So sad deadfire was such a commercial disappointment. Especially compared to how good it was. It was a way better game than how it was received. My shallow thought on the matter of why it was a flop was the setting. Most people aren't that interested in pirate themed rpgs. I know I wasn't at first. It was a hurdle I had to get over but fortunately I got over it once I made it to Neketaka
The lukewarm reception that the Pillars games got still weighs pretty hard on Josh. He would never admit to it of course but he's still wrestling with the reasons why BG3 was such a smash hit and the Pillars games sold bad enough that Pillars 3 is almost impossible to pitch. I still believe that hardly anyone would have touched BG3 if loads of people weren't intimately familiar with D&D through Critical Role etc. and also the ankle deep milktoast fantasy world of Eora didn't help.
100% D&D was absolutely a huge factor that many people discount, wrongly so.
I always thought the world of Eora had a lot of depth.
BG3 does absolutely pose deep questions of faith through the character arcs and stories. Not sure why you don't consider the story of Vlaakith or Shar and the their worshippers to be a meaningful philosophical concept.
Honestly weird take from you.
These religious fanatics kidnap kids and brainwash them. They are simply bad people. Was there anything deep about it?
The two different ways you're talked about represents two ways to play the game: one you play on the hardest setting and the other on story mode.
Mmmmm... I actually (shockingly, because I usually agree wholeheartedly with your vids) disagree with almost all of this. I'm GenX as well, and truly don't understand how it could be a generational thing. It's *absolutely* a trend/personal taste thing. It's also a "yes he's a veteran, but he's also a condescending #$$ to his customers when they have ANY kind of criticism, and was incredibly dismissive and bullying to his customers who *actually enjoy romance in games* " thing. He created a game that somehow managed to draw in a bunch of female and queer players, but has NO idea how to relate to them, or their desire to see representation in games. So... when he made the sequel he tried to please everyone doing something he hated and had a dummy spit when he had to live up to his promises.
I think how political and "outside the box" BG3 is, very much depends on your choices during the game. I've had almost every playthrough I've done in BG3 seeing Astarion and the Emperor as *extremely* sympathetic and honest. Others have literally abused the crap out of me for being "ignorant" because *their* experience was the complete opposite. Different writing style yes, but absolutely still political and far less 'on the rails' than POE was.
I also f$cking HATE when people pull the "dating sim" card on BG3. It's absolutely not. Again, it's your choices that make the characters react. Seriously, go do a "dating sim" search on Steam, BG3 is just... not.
Josh, however, at least knows his weaknesses as a dev and writer. He's terrible at writing romance, and he should stay far, FAR away from them. Deadfire was pushed into uncanny valley territory because he didn't want to write romance, he convinced himself he HAD to for the game to be received well, and he then rubbed his disdain for his own game in his customers faces, while making it clear he felt the SAME way about those customers. His game would have been far better, and received far, FAR less flack if he'd had some integrity and not sold a product he resented.
BG3 did not even have good romance, merely passable. Every NPC was extremely aggressive trying to bed the player by the end of act 1. I concluded in my playthrough that I did not want to get together with any of them. Larian studios can do excellent and succesful RPGs that focus on the world as well as characters, just check Divinity: Original Sin 2. It has some of the best old school writing that Josh is looking for, with a focus on gods and dilemmas similar to PoE. The problem is selling a game based solely on one aspect while lacking in everything else. I have a very good memory but I cannot remember anything from PoE aside from the one big philosophical plot point because the characters are forgettable and combat is bad, which prevents repeat playthroughs from being fun.
Then I tried PoE 2 Deadfire, and I could not get past the beginning. Combat was still abysmal by the standards set by Larian and the writing sucked. The stupidest thing is to take the fully leveled player character from first game, remove all levels and send the epic hero back to doing random fetch quests while there is a literal god trashing cities out there. NPC dialog was garbage as none of them took the situation seriously. It would have been epic if we kept our power level from the first game so we could go full steam after the god while trying to sort out diplomacy with the locals as we enter their territory.
@@user-pi4qo3zc2e I'm getting REALLY bored of saying "you not liking it didn't make it bad"... but here we are...
For me personally, I stopped enjoying RPGs about the same time they started adding the romance feature.
I know it was an overwhelmingly popular game, but Mass Effect, in my opinion, started the downwards trend in RPG quality.
I preferred video game back when they were made 100% for an audience of teenage boys.
I think this is where I landed on BG3 as well. I really do love the game, because I'm an RPG nerd who loves character builds, turn-based combat, and lore, especially in a setting that was my introduction to fantasy in general, with the Avatar Trilogy of books when I was young. Larian did a great job with those things, and that was my hook. But when I look at fan communities for the game, it's as if all the Twilight shippers from Tumblr gravitated to this game, and probably wouldn't care if it had been a visual novel with zero RPG mechanics instead. And I don't think the game would have been half as popular if it hadn't catered to those fans. They want to cosplay and write erotic fanfic and self-insert and daydream about Astarion's abs, whereas I want to see how much damage I can squeeze out of my Lockadin with gear synergies , or if I can solo honor mode with my bard.
To Larian's great credit, they built a game for both of those audiences, and made it satisfying for both of them, and included a lot of deep lore and references for longtime fans of the setting who would have immediately recognized who Withers was, for example. They deserve a lot of praise for that
I also think that a bigger problem with the pillars series as a zoomer fan, is the fact that turn based is more approchable than real time with pause. Also the ship combat in PoE2 sucked. In my opinion gameplay and the game engine is a bigger problem than the story of the PoE series. I hope Josh Sawyer gives CRPGS another try with a turn based rpg, and more modern gameplay, because as a zoomer myself i love his storytelling.
In my opinion those deep philosophical stories are the issue. Its sort of like when most people like juice even the best made tea just isn't going to hit the same. Some mid level or light philosophical narrative is fine in my book. However, the whole story being an examination of a philosophical point in game form is a bit offputting.
Shut up and make more games Josh ;)
Playing PoE2 right now (after playing BG3 for a year) and having a blast!!
Yeah, this pattern has been clear for a while now and it is a simple fact that romance sells but other things sell well too...like you said, there is also a market for other stuff.
💯
If you look at the past 20 years of evolution of RPG the "pattern" is not clear at all. The pattern also tell that turn based RPGs should not sell at all. The same BG3 it's outside any pattern.
I feel like he thinks that a small portion of the audience is bigger than what it is.
I firmly believe, the reason why BG3 was so successful was the cinematic approach.
It just let’s you connect differently with characters.
He’s probably in a circle with thirsty journalists who only care about shipping characters and who’s gay.
💯!!! I would kill for a cinematic Pillars.
I think the "smaller than it appears" element is part of it. Whether minority or not, the vocal ones are essentially free advertising.
When the mainstream market doesn't cater to MY interests how could I not feel entitled?
That is why there is a huge fanbase of old games. Recently a patreon project by Pyrdacor made a remake of a very good old RPG Ambermoon, a trilogy by Thalion Software which consist of Amberstar (PC/Amiga) Ambermoon (Amiga) and later Albion by BlueByte (1996 PC). Personaly I hope for more dungeon crawlers, since games like Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master or Ishar were the games of my childhood but also very good games even with the simple graphics of those old times.
I'd disagree with you that character study vs analytical stories are an either/or scenario; Disco Elysium is extremely strong in both character writing and in its political worldbuilding that is clearly much larger than your personal story. Now, its probably very difficult to marry the two, but I think there is a way BG3 could have improved its worldbuilding, and Josh Sawyer could make another Pillars that goes wild critically and commercially.
There is wisdom in the OG's words...but I also think you are right; come on Microsoft give him 200 million to make Fallout NYC!
Josh sounds bitter, honestly. He doesn't seem to be willing to change for the sake of making profitable and popular games that will strike a chord with audience. We wants to tell his stories and have people appreciate his vision, and there's nothing wrong with that. But that interview left a bad taste in my mouth, honeslty. He comes across as a person who looks down upon the audience he wants to connect with. That's bizarre
As for the shallowness of BG3, I have to disagree. The main quest basically tells a story of indoctrination VS freedom (at least that's how I interpret it) and companions' quests play really well into that overarching narrative of opression and people fighting against it. It it done perfectly? No, no way. But it is there, at least I see it. Hsd they been given more liberties by WOTC, I sure they would've explored these themes much better.
Josh has been complaining about these things since the 2000s. He doesn't like player-serving aspects of cRPGs and it's the main gripe he's had about the genre for that long, as far as I can tell. It's also why he doesn't like romance in these games, it's ultimately player-serving in a way or another. He doesn't want to adapt the games to sell more because it compromises his vision for these games. It's a fairly stubborn way of thinking, but he's been pretty consistent about it over the years at least.
BG3 (and Larian's games in general) are very deliberately about giving things players can have the most fun with and not necessarily some philosophical message. There is probably a message to be found there, but it's definitely not as concrete as in a game where everything is subordinate to a philosophically consistent vision. Personally I'm fine with that, but different strokes for different folks.
@@rb98769 I mean, I totally get why a creator wouldn't like to compromise their vision and sacrifice it for the sake of profit. But to me he sounds as if really WANTED to make popular games, just not at the expense of his ideas and aspirations. I don't think it's possible. You either cater to bigger audiences or you don't and keep making niche games (which is totally fine, I loved Pentiment). The only people who's gonna be hurt by this are himself and devs who he works with anyway.
@@katarinakremberg1319 He should make JRPGs and see if eastern audience likes it.
What is the last high production game that had some big overarching idea larger then the chatacters?
How can we be sure that people wouldn't love it. Before BG3 we didnt know that people would like game like that. The other games by Larian prove that
I think Josh is being WAY too hard on himself. In any medium a writer needs to play by their strengths and this includes RPGs and there's a lot of RPGs out there that doesn't have romance in it, but they have other things that make them just as good. Fallout 1 and 2 don't have romance but they have such good worldbuilding it's the best part about them!
Or VTM Bloodlines! So many good characters and no romance but it immerses you in this amazing world of vampire politics and treachery!
I think romance in RPGs works better when it's a more character driven story instead of a world or plot driven one. BG 3 works as well as it does because a lot of the conflict is character driven. Got to get that tadpole out! Gotta help Karlach! And Wyll! And all the others! Which also makes returning characters such a fun thing! But it's more about the journey with your virtual friends and less about THE FATE OF FORGOTEN REALMS!
So you know its all relative.
Actually it's very easy to miss the romances in this game completely. Not all of them, but depending on your gameplay you might get all of them triggered or just one. And then you can tell them to fuck 0ff. What's left are their personal stories. If you gonna tell me BG2 or Planescape didn't have those I'd laugh in your face.
Hate to break it to you, but the majority of Gen X rpg players are also into relatability. One of the reasons Baldur's Gate 2 was received better than Baldur's Gate 1 (from a commercial point of view) is because of romance, etc. And you trying to do something as 'highbrow' is no different than older generations like baby boomers who said playing any video game was a waste of time, etc.
I'll always say story wise, setting, and even characters personal story was far better in Pillars 1 then it was in 2.
2 just felt boring and i couldnt get into like i did the dirst game.
I don't think romance is a must in a video game, that said like many other features if well executed I believe romance can also add value to a story in a videogame like it does in book or a movie.
In a game you are basically experiencing a story that could be writen in a book and there are great romances in books so why shouldn't it exist as well in a game.
its natural like npc who have same mind like some players have
So there's one huge flaw I see in your argument as a whole. What you attribute to Baldur's Gate 3, i.e. character-driven with a generally superficial story without greater, wider philosophical questions or challenges, were true of Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 as well. They were also more character-driven, and didn't really challenge you philosophically. Baldur's Gate 2 even got big into romance as well.
The difference in the kind of storytelling is valid, but this doesn't demonstrate that it's a generational difference. There are RPGs today that still go for the wide philosophic explorations, such as Disco Elysium and, as you pointed out, Pillars of Eternity. Let's not pretend their audiences don't exist today and such games are impossible to sell to a new generation.
The audience for the latter is much smaller than for the former.
@@spellandshield And BG1 and 2 had larger audiences than Icewind Dale.