Owlcat Games knows not to expect Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader to be as successful as Baldur’s Gate 3
The Owlcat Games lead doesn’t point to any one specific asset, but given the broader tone of the interview-fueled article, it can fairly safely be assumed that he’s referring to the collective whole of Larian’s unique access to funding through more than three years of paid Early Access, a veteran team of developers with decades of experience in RPG development, license access, a technical foundation, and probably more factors we aren’t privy to or that I’m not thinking of.
The irony is that some development companies have access to a large part of those resources and they’ve been fumbling for a number of reasons. Bioware is a prime example, with ME:Andromeda and Anthem pretty much killing them. Blizzard is another, just look at Diablo 4, Overwatch 2 and World of Warcraft.
Management doing the job they’re actually supposed to (making the vision of the final product clear to everyone, keeping annoying stakeholders off the workers’ back, etc) can make or break many projects. One success case of that is actually No Man’s Sky after release, where Sean Murray dealt with the shitstorm while the team worked on patching the game.
Also most people won’t play past the first act. The first act was well worth the price of admission, and now I just kind of want it to be over.
Click bait title designed to cause division and working as intended it seems.
If you actually read the article, Owlcat have nothing but positive sentiment for BG3 success.
How is the title counter to that? This reads more like a “temper your expectations for our game, we cant build something that big.”
It’s weird how aggressive everyone in here is being. As if attacked. Like the assumptions of knowing how things are and having the answer to everything is par the course, but the aggro is really strange. I hope ya’ll get some hugs this holiday.
Well you’re not wrong but I think you also are ignoring why people are frustrated with an industry that is largely profit focused and marketing forward leaving consumers with underwhelming experiences sold as premium product.
My dude the game developers are even more frustrated by this. You think we take pride in releasing unpolished products too early then letting them die a slow death by not supporting them because our corporate overlords only care about their bottom line and next quarter’s results ?
I feel that but there are also so many great games. It’s an old tired horse to bring out, so forgive me, but the indie world is very cool right now.
I was more commenting on why people are so aggro to this comment by the Owl peeps though. I could see why they feel they can’t accomplish as much, Larian has probably done well for themselves with good game, before better game, prior to glorious game. No doubt though that Larian also took a swing they couldn’t afford to miss and that is to be commended, if mostly so I can go without seeing more gaming-related layoffs in my feed.
I honestly prefer the rules and fight mechanics of their pathfinder games over BG3, and would argue they’re better RPG games, just not as visually pleasing thanks to unity. But hopefully they feel inspired when it comes to fleshing out their gameplay interactivity and NPCs. Even the main villains and your companions aren’t fully voiced in their games.
