I mentioned many other great games in this genre which were lucky to have 1/100th of the success of this game. But okay, those didn't have the multiplayer, or the presentation, or the accessibility.
But Larian's previous game was extremely similar to this one in all respects. It's not even that flippant to say BG3 is DOS2 with the lore and rules swapped for DnD ones which isn't that much of a practical difference (I'd argue a slight downgrade). And yet BG3 is on track to be maybe 4x as successful. It's hard to argue the BG and DnD brands didn't play a big part in this.
4 people in my friend group have been rearranging their schedules this weekend to get more BG3 time (after previously planning on playing once a week). It's possible that a DOS3 might've had that happening, at least 2 of the 4 played DOS2 but I am skeptical.
They all have preexisting affection for both D&D and BG. They went into character creation with strong opinions about their favorite races and esp. classes.
The DOS system was great, but the lore and stories were relatively formulaic. I was super, super worried about Larian doing BG3 because of this, but they really do appear to have nailed it.
At least so far, the difficulty curve is much less steep which I suspect put a lot of people off DOS2. I certainly resented needing to kill everyone to remain on track with the XP curve, but that's presumably because Pillars has spoiled me.
I love DOS2, but BG3 is SO much more polished in just about every aspect, better visuals, better writing, better combat, that I expect this accounts for a lot of the difference.
I've never played BG (I did play icewind Dale when I was a kid but it was annoying to read the dialogue without voice acting). I did play all Neverwinter Nights games so I have some background in this genere and DnD rules - but that was always the tedious part for me.
I heard of Divinity but just not into gaming anymore (too much other stuff going on). That said I'll probably find the time to play this on PS5 because it seems like a super polished immersive experience. Just like cyberpunk (although that was a bit disappointing).
My point is there's probably a bunch of "ex" gamers that pick a few games to play occasionally - it's very much down to quality of execution - if this game didn't have the graphics/voice acting/story I've seen from early access and was divinity level I'd just skip this as well.
> I've never played BG (I did play icewind Dale when I was a kid but it was annoying to read the dialogue without voice acting)
I genuinely am surprised that there are people out there who think this way.
I'm the complete opposite. I skip all voice acting, because I read faster than anyone can deliver lines, and frankly I'm not there for the performance or the "experience". I'm there for the game. The voice acting doesn't add anything to the gameplay for me. I wish games that have dialog boxes would let me turn it off entirely, honestly.
But Larian's previous game was extremely similar to this one in all respects. It's not even that flippant to say BG3 is DOS2 with the lore and rules swapped for DnD ones which isn't that much of a practical difference (I'd argue a slight downgrade). And yet BG3 is on track to be maybe 4x as successful. It's hard to argue the BG and DnD brands didn't play a big part in this.