I hope some smaller games can take the lessons of content density and meaningful decision making from BG3 more than anything else. The incredible conversation cutscenes are super cool, but definitely where a lot of budget went, and I think you could make a really great rpg with a similar feeling of depth without that costly element.
Well good thing Larian already made BG3, now Owlcat doesn’t need to!
II know things doesn’t scale but I would love a AA cRPG at BG3 standard but a fifth of the length. Then I may actually finish it. 20-30h experience would be just great.
I have like 300 hours in BG3 and have not even finished the main quest yet
As I barely have managed to squeeze in 5-10 hours of gaming per week this winter season the thought of spending 300+ hours in a single game is overwhelmingly daunting. A year with a single game. Ugh…
My best gaming experience this last year was with a short game that I knocked out in a weekend. Got a good satisfying experience and a conclusion to it. Git me rethinking things.
I think BG3s success bodes well for Owlcat, since it brings more fans to the niche genre, that just went mainstream.
Also - Owlcat makes fantastic games. Kingmaker and its sequel, wrath of the righteous are some of the best CRPGs ever made. Pathfinder rules are a little crazy, there are redundant classes, but the character building and customization are a blast. In wrath of the righteous, you get a hero class that you can make completely broken, which is just a ton of fun. Especially considering the lower budget, they accomplished a ton and I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into their CRPGs.
Overall it greatly expands the number of players though, even for niche games.
Like I found out about Shadow Empire after playing Stellaris a lot and then finding Dominions 6 as another 4X game, and eventually Shadow Empire.
Shadow Empire (and Dominions for that matter) have a much smaller budget than Stellaris, but they are excellent games that I only found out about after enjoying the genre.
