Buddy it’s been that way since {checks notes} Elden ring. I believe there are passionate people at Blizzard {Yes} But I feel that they get drowned out in the hunt for profits. And while you’re probably right on the GOTY duel { Between Hogwarts and Baldur’s} I don’t think that creative freedom exists at Blizzard right now.
Strongly disagree, act 3 ( the nameless isle) is just a mess imo. The story starts to go off the rails and yeah there is some insane difficulty spikes… also it’s way you to easy break encounters/story points by doing things in another order than the devs intended… up until that point it was one of the best part of game, you could pretty much do whatever you like and some how the game was always able to respond to it, that isn’t the case anymore! By the time I got to act 4 ( the city) I was just burnt out on the game and really didn’t feel like doing another city section with a billion quests again…
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. The other shoe being the eventual stories about how hard they had to crunch to get the final release out the door.
Every RPG should be breakable, breaking the game is part of the fun. 
Imagine wanting a D&D game without the possibility of going full munchkin on it.
Great thing about the Divinity games were that the game actually was able to respond to all the cheeshing/breaking you could do for the first couple of acts, not so in the last bit!
Wattages.
Compatibility.
Sure, if someone were to buy my mom all the parts I’m sure she could figure it out. (she’d screw up seating the processor and have no clue about thermal paste)
But getting all the parts is the real trick.
Despite all the rage about console wars you can still be spending 600-1000$ to get thr out the box performance of a 400$ ps5.
Like i built ny rig and shopped wise for parts but still 100$ for the cpu, 130-160$ for motherboard, 80$ power supply, 55$ 2 fan solid metal good ventilation case, 70$ for a 2 tb ssd, 60$ for 32 gb ram, 0-10$ to 100$ for windows 10, etc.
You can spend 400-500$ on parts and windows alone before you even have the 300-500$ gpu and then games might still be optimized.
But it runs at some superfast speeds. But i got mine as a purchase for ai my old rig wouldn’t cut it.
If you just want 60-120 fps gaming for 400$ out the box without spending 2-4 hours to check part compatability and first time assembly, consoles would get laughed on by any pre gpu shortage generation.
But nvidia’s greed for ai chips is bad. And 1000$ on a open box store computer might only get you 16 gb of 27$ ram with a 512 gb ssd worth 20$. And no card to speak of. And lets not bring up the people buying 1000-2000$ macs with 15$ 256 gb ssd sizes in them…
Where 15$ of storage is a 200-400$ upcharge for a machine with 20$ parts in it.
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Would you rank it above RDR2?
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I have to finish BG3 first but if it continues the course yes. RDR2 was crazy good though. They are certainly top 5.
BG3
RDR2
Fallout
Skyrim
They all belong at the top.
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Considering they finished before schedule makes me think there was very little crunch. But to be fair, they did hit a “delay” a few years back, so that did give them some more time.
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I am seeing nothing but praise for the working environment at Larian. They’re completely independent, they are self-publishing, they are private and not publicly traded and they reject every buyout offer. They can release games whenever they want.
Here is a former Blizzard/Activision employee now working at Larian.
https://twitter.com/KiraKiraCosmo/status/1681054194692763649
Kira
Production @ LarianStudios. Formally Lucasfilm, Blizzard, Carbine, Disney, Hulu & Activision.
I’m not gonna comment on this whole BaldursGate3 & Larian is an “anomaly” discourse but I will say that I’ve worked at 7+ AAA companies and this is the best studio I’ve worked at! The Dublin studio has cultivated an environment where I can 100% be myself and not ever be ashamed. It completely rejuvenated my love for working in this industry and I’ll be forever grateful.
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They have DLC, game looks like 4 pixels.
But,
WoW alone funds all games for blizzard, if you play WoW latest expansion and pay monthly sub , Hearthstone with all bundles should be free for you.
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Man the ending of RDR2 was insane. I got so attached to that character i felt true sadness in the end. I never thought a video game could make me feel that way.
I still place the Witcher 3 at the top of RPG games like that but CRPG games Larian has them all locked up.
I never finished the original Pathfinder game from owlbear, but I played a decent chunk of hours maybe 40ish.
My take on Pathfinder is I don’t know how they could mess an otherwise beautiful game up so much. There were essentially decisions you had no way of knowing about if by chance you didn’t stumble across a certain npc at exactly the right time through the playthrough.
But the thing that really got me to stop playing their games was that you would literally go months in game without anything to do, no objective, which translated to hours of bored play. Then they inundated you with 20 tasks within one week of which you could maybe do 3. Total BS.
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That’s exactly what it felt like. I thought I was losing my mind and doing something wrong. Went to search the internet to see if other players had the same experience and all you read is how incredibly difficult the game was if you don’t let it control your kingdom for you.
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Thanks. I’m not a big console game fan, but play Wow for many years and loved it. Then when I came across RDR2 last year, I bought a used copy for like $15, and it was, without question, the best video game I’ve ever played in my life (and I’m old). I will definitely check out Baldur’s Gate 3. What is your objection to a console version vs a PC version? RDR2 was great on my old XBox One. (Although I see that BG3 is only on PS5, not Xbox One).
I tried Witcher 3 to help fill the void after my second playthrough of RDR2, but I’ve found it a bit too difficult (again, I’m old). I was playing in the default (normal?) mode, but I might try it again in the story mode.
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either this is sarcastic or you are completely out of touch with what gamers want from the games they play. Yes, I’m speaking for everyone.
so your version of gamers want other players to not be able to spend money on cosmetics even if they want to ??? those you call gamers are weird
you mean cosmetics that, at one time, were already part of the game that you didn’t need to pay extra for? yes.
the idea that what you call gamers are raging because someone somewhere is going to spend money on cosmetics for a single player game like tales of arise is ridiculous and games like tales do have some cosmetics to unlock while playing they just add more as dlc