Veteran RPG developers have weighed in on how Baldur’s Gate 3 has (or hasn’t) affected how they approach their own games.
In PC Gamer’s RPG roundtable, senior developers from across the industry were asked about whether the record-breaking Baldur’s Gate 3 set a new standard for the genre. Larian Studios boss and the game’s creative director Swen Vincke had a very easy response – “I can’t answer that” – but the rest of the panel was somewhat split.
Carrie Patel, the game director behind Avowed and a senior narrative designer behind many of Obsidian’s RPGs, said the game “reinforced” a philosophy that her studio has long had, “which is that creating a collaborative relationship with your players” is “always worthwhile.”
Patel explains that that relationship comes by giving players “options that pay off and trusting in their creativity to find those options and engage with them.” Patel continues that developers will “never lose if you find ways to reward your players, find things for them to discover, and trust them to do so” – something that connects Baldur’s Gate 3 with Obsidian’s gems, from Pillars of Eternity to The Outer Worlds.
Adrienne Bazir, the solo developer behind last year’s excellent time-looping indie In Stars and Time, had a similar response but also pointed to drunk amnesiac detective sim Disco Elysium as another example of a game that doesn’t give you choices rooted in a moral binary – the choices move past simple good/heroic versus bad/villainous ones.
Something that Disco Elysium and Baldur’s Gate 3 both did, according to Bazir, is give players “choices that were straight up weird… what if I was just a bear right now?” Bazir explains that moving past that binary allows players to “kind of play with the medium a little” and hopes devs big and small will adopt a similar thinking.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty’s acting lead quest designer Sarah Gruemmer had a more muted response because “Baldur’s Gate is a D&D game, right? So we’re not going to start rolling in the games that we make.” Cyberpunk 2 isn’t going to start deciding headshots based on a dice roll, “but there are still a lot of nice things you can take inspiration from and integrate into your own stuff,” Gruemmer says.
Across the board, it seems like Baldur’s Gate 3 has emboldened RPG developers to keep doing what they’ve been doing for decades, just with a little more funk this time around.
Cyberpunk 2077’s lead also revealed how its most unique quest was made with smoke and mirror’s.
