A number of developers have voiced concerns about Baldur’s Gate 3 being seen as the new standard for RPGs, prompting Larian Studios to respond. The conversation was sparked by a Twitter thread in which a developer argued that Baldur’s Gate 3 should be seen as an anomaly for a number of reasons, and other industry veterans agreed.
Has Baldur’s Gate 3 set the bar too high?
The Twitter thread in question came from developer Xalavier Nelson Jr., who argued that Larian took a massive risk and the process it used to build the game can’t necessarily be replicated by other studios — even big companies. He expressed concerns that players will expect all studios to follow the same route regardless of feasibility and circumstances.
“Trying to do the same thing in the same way, especially without the same advantages, could kill an entire GROUP of studios,” Nelson cautioned. Numerous developers from studios like Obsidian, Blizzard, and Insomniac Games agreed with him.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Larian founder Swen Vincke expressed his confusion over the debate. He’s of the view that in the games industry, “standards die every day.”
New things appear all the time. When I was starting out in the industry, Assassin’s Creed set the new standard. It was over—nobody could make games like Assassin’s Creed, there was too much budget behind it, that was going to be the future, everybody had to consolidate, blah blah blah. That didn’t materialize. In video games there’s so much free space to explore, still, in the creative tree.
Baldur’s Gate 3 certainly has set the bar high. The game has been a huge success right out of the gate, with its aggregate score surpassing that of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
