this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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I also question how much that bar has truly been raised. I've not played Baldur's Gate but I have seen people treat games like generation-defining games for them to just kind of not exist outside of their bubble. Like Uncharted 4, Last of Us, Spiderman, and God Of War. I just finished Uncharted 4 and it was truly amazing but for a lot of people, it did not raise their standards for the entire industry. I feel like, if anything, Baldur's Gate 3 will raise standards for AAA RPGs. Then again, it might have just preemptively killed Starfield.
They're pretty different games. They're both RPGs, and there's some overlap, but turn based is ultimately very different gameplay than action, and one isn't going to scratch the itch for the other to a lot of us.
Yeah, honestly, I doubt BG3 is going to cover the same ground for a lot of players. I don't think people are going to play BG3 and expect more from Starfield. People will understand that they are far different games and BG3's influence is probably going to stay in turn-based CRPGs rather than being an industry-wide influential game.
I'm fully expecting to go pretty hard at both, and BG3 might have me engaged enough to not jump straight into Starfield at launch, but I need immersive 3D games, too, and except Elden Ring which is it's own thing (even if it does pretty comfortably check the boxes of ARPG), I've been waiting for something of comparable scope to Skyrim that doesn't have a fatal flaw for a long time. Even as old and janky as it is now, it's still a scale that's only matched by a handful of games in the decade since.
The beauty of Bethesda's flagship titles (namely Fallout and TES) is even if they end up as buggy messes upon release, or have empty maps, the modding community corrects those flaws relatively quickly.
It's one of the reasons that I, a long-time veteran of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., am not worried if GSC Game World fucks up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. Today, the best part of the first titles is the mods that fix, improve, and add content to the games. It'll be the same with this one, and I'm excited to see what people do with A-Life 2.0.
Then go play it and then judge it. This game is a seismic as Mass Effect 1 or even Doom.
See, that's what I am talking about. Mass Effect 1 didn't have a huge impact on the industry as a whole. Doom only had a huge impact on the industry because it was very small and they started licensing out their engine with groundbreaking tech. The industry is huge now.
I remember a lot of people were saying Half-Life: Alyx was a huge industry changer and that it would prove that games are far more enjoyable in VR. It is the best-reviewed VR game on Steam. Yet, now, VR is essentially dead.
I remember when people were saying PUBG just changed the entire industry and we'd never look at it the same again. Which honestly, PUBG did have a large but temporary impact on the games industry. A lot of battle royals came out after. Now though, you'd be lucky to find a successful battle royal release in the last 2 years.
I'll certainly play it when I can but a 20+ hour game commitment is not what I am honestly looking for anymore. I like far shorter experiences. So overall, it feels like counting the chickens before they hatch. Is Baldur's Gate 3 really going to stay in people's minds? Is it going to influence the next games that come out? Are AAA studios building more classic isometric-inspired RPGs because of it?
That was a very fringe take by VR enthusiasts, and to say ME1 didn't have a huge impact on the industry is incredibly bizarre to me. Here's a very short piece that gives a decent overview
Let's say that didn't have a big impact though, to say Doom didn't? I don't even know where to begin. Doom + Quake basically shaped the next 20 years of FPS's with goldeneye being one of the other major iterators on how MP was handled.
Doom did have a significant impact on the industry but only because the industry was small. Doom 2016 was released and people said it was "industry" changing but realistically counter-strike, valorant, and other FPSs are the same as before. I am just cautious between the whole industry changing and realistically only transforming a small subset.
True industry-changing games can be felt today. I will say that Doom is industry changing but again because it was so small. Half-Life 2, was that industry changing? Frankly, between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, the first feels far more influential to me. I'd say Doom's offshoots are more influential than actual Doom at this point. Minecraft feels industry changing and was around that time indie game development got huge. In part, because of Minecraft's success. Mass Effect though? I remember it being called a fine RPG with terrible combat mechanics. I think people far remember more about Mass Effect 2 and 3 rather than Mass Effect in 2007. Your article was written in 2021 and the only other one I found was written in 2012 and talked about Mass Effect 3's ending and how it changed the industry because Bioware listened to fans and caved to change it.
So, to be clear, I didn't say doom didn't change the industry. I just said the industry was small and easy to affect the whole thing. It influenced games that at this point define the industry more than doom. It changed the industry at the time. Mass Effect doesn't seem like it did. I don't see a lot of Mass Effect's influence. I feel like of any, Mass Effect 2 is most influential because of how they wrote the characters and tied them into the story but not as an industry-wide influencer. GTA 3, World Of Warcraft, CoD 4, Minecraft, and Portal, these games feel like they truly changed the industry. Not just the genre they were in but influenced things outside of their genre.
I'm literally not disagreeing that Doom was industry-changing. I said it multiple times. You seem to be just reaching through any hole to continue to argue about something we both agree on.
Are you kidding? Do you need me to actually quote the parts back to you?
Yes. I said:
So I said 1) doom had a huge impact on the industry because it, (the industry) was small and they started licensing out their engine. Now that the industry is bigger it's not really a good comparison to any game.
You then said:
I literally said the opposite and said Doom had a huge impact on the industry.
So I made that clear:
This is absolutely true and you agreed by saying:
We agree Doom was industry-changing, but Doom is currently not as directly influential to the industry today. We both agree and you state that's somehow a point of disagreement.
So I fail to see why you are pulling at this small nitpick part that we both agree on when I've made a slew of points in the comments above that you ignored. If you want to engage, try to do so in terms of having a conversation rather than just trying to point out something you feel is wrong. Take into context the things I've said, don't just focus on one little thing you think you disagree with. If you actually disagree with what I said, please be clear in how you think I've said something because it might just be a point of clarity rather than actual disagreement.
When did I ever say that?
When you said we wouldn't have the games that influence the industry today. The argument only works as a point if you don't think the argument that doom directly influences the industry today. Otherwise you would have argued that which is a stronger point.
This feels like I'm back on reddit with these pedantic arguments but fine I'll break it down.
If I said "Hitchcock had a big impact on cinema" would you say "well not anymore in 2023"? Of course not, because you know exactly what I mean. In the moment he was making waves and those waves rippled out to today because of what he influenced and changed and then what they subsequently influenced and changed. He was influential and inspired other filmmakers that would not have otherwise done what they did without his works existing. Doom inspired other devs who made stuff that would never have happened had Doom not existed, then you follow those waves into modern gaming. All of it is a dialogue, all of it is influencing each other, and some games had an outsized impact. Doom is one of them. It was an inflection point for gaming on so many fronts.
You are clearly intelligent/knowledgeable about video games. However, this feels you are being incredibly narrow in your interpretation. You are acting like any other possible meaning is so far afield of what was said in a strange way and I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and not assume you're just going to disagree no matter what because it's the internet, but having to write the above makes me unsure.
Fair enough, I see your point.
Thank you, sorry for the intensity.
Not even close. I'm playing it right now, well into act 2, and while it is THE ultimate example of what a cRPG should be, that doesn't necessarily mean the breadth and scope would work in other genres. You're WAY overestimating the impact this is having on the gaming industry, and that's evidenced by how other developers are responding to it.
Also. I've played through all the Mass Effects (even Andromeda, which I actually enjoyed more) and to say that it was industry-defining is a fanboy take. Full stop. From where I'm sitting ME1 did not introduce anything groundbreaking that hadn't been done already by that point, and to be honest the early Fallout games had way more gravity when it came to choices and decision-making. I'd say of games in that era, the original Borderlands was more ground-breaking given it kind of kickstarted the looter-shooter genre, and that's a stretch.
You are free to disagree, but to hand wave me away as having “fan boy takes” is pretty shitty and does not make me want to engage further. Thanks and have a great weekend.