Baldur’s Gate 3 (2)?
And the plot can be figuring out what happened in the hypothetical 4 through 8 to figure out how we got here
Oh good, you escaped reddit. Not sure how I remember your user name, though.
BG3 is my personal best game played in 25 years of gaming. There are very few developers that I would trust to perform on the same level as Larian, who really have set a new high bar for the industry.
- FromSoftware (makers of Dark Souls/Elden Ring/Armored Core) consistently puts out bangers although I don’t know if their ARPG experience would translate well.
- CDPR (Witcher games, Cyberpunk 2077) if they’ve learned their lesson from the 2077 launch. Maybe I’m too hopeful, but I think they have and Phantom Liberty/2077 is really good now.
- Owlcat (Pathfinder games, Rogue Trader 40k) if they are given the resources to keep the game in development until bugs are ironed out. Owlcat makes games that are rough on launch and amazing two years later. Mechanically the games are unbalanced (although usually in a fun, ridiculous way) but the writing is top-notch.
Of course this is just opinion (and it’s been a long time since I played DOS:2) but what I noticed were mainly refinements (facial expressions, voice acting, graphics) and scope. There’s also the sheer amount of content variation in BG3 in that you can play a handful of times and see a lot of completely new reactions, dialogue, and quests depending on decisions and party composition. For instance just picking a Dark Urge character or not can make the game feel different.
I think CDPR has always been what it is now. Just that nowadays people enthusiastically jump on the internet bandwagon, whatever direction it might be, positive or negative.
That is to say, it’s the same as Owlcat. Initially buggy, but amazing and GOTY after patches. People always forget that Witcher 3 was a mess when it came out, as was Witcher 1. There was a big deal about the fact that CDPR made their big content/bug fixes updates for free with Witcher 1.
I honestly don’t remember how witcher 2 did on this spectrum, though.
Any sequel to Baldur’s Gate 3 is going to have to be better than any developer will be able to deliver with Hasbro sticking their nose in the development process. (which you know they will because of how well BG3 did)
I don’t have high hopes.
There are so many D&D locations even within the Forgotten Realms, and a ton of other settings with their own cool stuff. Why do another Baldur’s Gate so soon? Taking a different direction might also blunt some of the inevitable criticism that it “isn’t as good as BG3.”
This is my biggest gripe with pretty much all official D&D stuff; it’s always just somewhere along the Sword Coast. Explore one of the other thousand regions of Faerun that have some interesting premises. And not just Thay, either!
I’d love an open world Icewind Dale. A really, really complicated, dense open world with true mountain exploring and ice plain pain. Or, shoot, let’s have an occult mystery in the city of Brass (Bronze? It’s been too long, don’t judge me).
I’d love to have another campaign set in the Planescape setting of DnD, or the equivalent planar cosmology of Paizo’s Pathfinder. Both are packed with unique and interesting places, races, and individuals. The cool thing about a planar campaign is that you can include a visit to the Prime Material (aka “normal fantasy”) areas anytime you want.
woohoo. larian please talk with paizo!
