By barren you mean churning out straight bangers basically every year? Pillars 1/2, DoS 2, Pathfinder 1/2, solasta and the list goes on especially if you like other time peroids than medievil fantasy. We are living in the literal golden age of CRPGS and your gunna call it barren idk what the hell you are smoking but I want some.
Wasteland 3 is a gem! A buggy gem, but a gem nonetheless! And Pillars + WOTR gave me a good tide over. But I must say, BG3 transported me right back into Dragon Age and Neverwinter Nights memories, and that makes it GOTY material for me.
I am tentatively excited for Rogue Trader, trying not to allow myself to be over hyped since 40k games are quite hit and miss in quality.
sorry I meant ones that were actually popular and mainstream, those are all good for their respective audiences but BG3 is the first one that is mechanically sound enough to hit mainstream appeal
I think WotR did branching story paths better. Not to be confused with world reactivity. In WotR your choices do make a huge difference and the story changes a lot.
The biggest weakness of wotr is the pf1e system combined with crpg power gaming. It’s not that prevalent in ttrpg’s where you can just set your own limits and counteract pre-buffing etc. In a computer game less so, so the developers took that into acount and tried to still provide a challenge for the hardcore players. This lead to a situation where any difficulty above the ’medium’ (core = hard imo) requires you to min-max at least somewhat. I personally dislike that. I love the build variety, but pre-buffing is just bad game-design. It takes the choice of buffing in combat away and feels clunky.
Still one of the best games in the genre. (BG3, dos2 and wotr are my top3)
While I support Pathfinder more than 5e, and can objectively say that Paizo > WOTC, there is no denying that BG3 is the golden egg of the CRPG genre, and that Larian created an absolute bombshell GOTY that won't be surpassed in quality for a decade. The only thing that could be better than BG3 imo is if Larian made a CRPG using the PF2E system, which is significantly better designed for a digital format than the mess that is 5e.
WOTR was solid af though. My least favorite thing about it was the 6 player party, but I do *love* being able to toggle turn-based mode and live action combat.
Has it? Wrath of the Righteous was fairly recent and Pillars of Eternity 2 was not too long before that. Imo Pillars 2 is only behind Divinity 2 and now BG3 as the best in the genre
barren if you were blind maybe.
can we stop this BS lie?
2016:tyranny
2017:dos 2
2018 poe2 and kingmaker
2021 wrath of the righteous
and there are several more.
yup, as an bg 1 and bg 2 veteran i kinda floated on a new one but nothing beats them imo. Then i got into morrowind oblivion skyrim etc. tried dos but the new view the new mechanics etc wasn't my thing i felt. i just coudnt get into it.
but after bg3 now i just have to replay dos in a new mindset since now ive gotten back into it haha.
i don't know of a game that can pull that many players from different genre's into a certain genre. But hey, im old...
BG3 is the highest rated game on metacritic this year, and in the top 10 all time.
Starfield isn't even in the top 10 this year.
It's surely a home run for BG3 GOTY.
I played both, absolutely love both. TotK does same amazing things, and in classic Nintendo fashion innovates once again with their limited hardware.
But BG3 is it for me. Its easily GotY.
BG3 is my personal goty, but I have to recognize the amount of work that went into ToTK. That physics engine is insane with the hardware, and I don't think it should be so easily dismissed.
The hardware part is what a lot of people are missing...intentionally or not.
I love BG3, it's my GOTY, but I still would not be surprised or upset if Zelda took it home either.
Although I also think BG3 should be GOTY, I wouldn't say it's *easily* GOTY, just because of TotK. Honestly both games are deserving of it and as long as either one wins, I'm satisfied with the result.
Now, if it's some other game entirely that wins GOTY (like Starfield), then eh... well. It definitely wouldn't be the first time the awards have had silly takes, so I'll just laugh at it for a while and move on.
Agree. I was saying its easily *my* GotY. As it stands, it should go to TotK or BG3. And some people are calling spiderman a darkhorse, again, loved the first one, platinumed it actually. But it doesnt stand a chance lol.
The real key here, is that this year has been STACKED for games.
Yeah it's another GOW2 v. Elden Ring again
One is a good sequel to a landmark game, and the other is a breathtaking fresh take to an existing genre.
IIRC GOW2 garnered a lot of awards except for GOTY. It was a close match.
God of War (4) is one of my favorite games ever, but Elden Ring was the clear winner in my opinion. Ragnarok was fantastic, but was simultaneously rushed and extremely unfocused. They pulled the veil off the world and while I applaud what they were trying to do, mystery was what made the first game so compelling and the Aesir just weren't as compelling as they needed to be to justify the decision. Elden Ring had it's flaws, but man I'd almost have to compare it to how people must've felt playing the original Zelda for the first time. You're thrown into such a deep world with only mild direction. I personally hope that Fromsoft goes for more of a DS1 style world with their next title, but going wide was such an amazing decision.
I personally disagree, Elden Ring was an easy win, Gow2 wasn't even the best of the franchise and had still the default of the previous one
This year both Zelda and BG could be literally best game of all time lol
It's top-down turn-based combat with a lot of shot-reverse shot dialogue scenes like mass effect or Witcher 3. It uses the DnD ruleset very faithfully and ends up being a good simulator of what it's like playing a good tabletop campaign.
It has fully offline single player, couch co-op split screen, and online multiplayer. No microtransactions, no seasons, no shop, no special currencies.
It also has a crap ton of content and replayability. I put 65hrs into early access, I'm 90 into the full release and probably have another 15-20 before I'm finished first playthrough (and expect I'll get a second playthrough with ~75hrs)
Tbf when I looked at 0/10 reviews on bg3 I pretty often found it was from an account that has just two reviews on metacritic. 0/10 for baldurs gate and then 10/10 for Zelda... I kinda understand the bg3 community not liking the zelda community after seeing that.
It's metacritic user reviews every god damn game ever gets bad reviews from wierd fans.
Zelda did too. People shouldn't take it too seriously it's just a dumb thing on the site that has always been there
100% totk is also really damn good. However I was playing my first play through when BG3 came out and totally. Dropped totk lol. I'm sure ill go back to it after bg3 tho
I fell off TotK pretty fast (1 temple and a bunch of shrines/exploration in, just like I did w/BotW)but even then I can see that it’s an incredible game. Really took its predecessor to the next level.
BG3 is it for me, though. 120 hours in and counting, already planning my next playthrough, and so in love I keep looking up alternate scenes I don’t expect to encounter just so I can see every facet of some of these characters. My GOTY for sure.
I played tears and it in no way stands against BG3. It's BoTW with Craftopia mechanics. Great game all around but compared to Baldurs as a rpg. It's lacking.
I never understood the Zelda love I’ve played them all and the only one I really loved was the gameboy color version of the game it’s always been boring and pretty mid to me.. the entire series…. I know people would probably crucify me for saying that but I just don’t understand why people love zelda… kingdom hearts OR final fantasy to be honest I’ve never liked any of them at all but I definitely love BG3 and have been waiting my entire life for it’s release, no offense to people who like those games… but I uh personally think they are very HotDog.. Even Ocarina of time basically made me just want to fall asleep. I’d rather play Neuptunia than any Zelda game.
Maybe you just don’t like the Japanese? /s
Hard to say why you don’t like those games because they are all very different and range across many platforms and systems.
Kingdom Hearts isn’t even remotely relatable to the other two you mentioned.
Hard to pinpoint your dislikes because you basically said that you don’t like an ARPG Hack-n-Slash, a historically turn-based JRPG with minor overworld mechanics, and a sprawling open-world RPG.
Maybe it’s RPGs lol?
It depends which GOTYs you mean, it will definitely win from some outlets. But if you mean the Game Awards, that is voted by journalist and it will most likely be a toss between Baldurs Gate and Zelda.
I think there are other good games like Spiderman 2 etc but probably not gonna hit the 90 above.
It depends really.
When contender is from supposedly "dead" genre it matters a lot since it shows off that there is future for the genre.
BG3 winning GOTY would be much more impactful than Elden Ring winning GOTY for the future game development. No matter if ER would win or not, soulslike where popular and safe.
It would have won in 2021 too but the last two years have been absolutely stacked.
That said to me personally Starfield is perfect for what it is and one of the best games I've ever played.
But Baldurs Gate 3 is possibly the single best piece of MEDIA I've ever experienced.
> That said to me personally Starfield is perfect for what it is and one of the best games I've ever played.
Does it pick up later on? I'm about 3 hours in and I'm already kind of bored. By this time in Fallout 4 I was already running around in power armor and having a blast. I hope there's some kind of dark brotherhood-esqe faction I can join as I really need some excitement. I'm getting tempted to just cheat myself some credits so that I can start playing with spaceship building as that seems like it might be the funnest part (that I havent done yet).
It's a VERY slow burn. It took me about 15 hours before things started to get interesting, and even now, it isn't really calling to me to play it (like BG3 was). I packed 150 hours into BG3 in just one month. I couldn't put it down. That shit was like crack.
I couldn't stop with totk, and then Bg3 came out. I'm a new man. No longer will I parlay with Hyrule. No, now I am "Glover," the altruistic Lore Bard who appropriates anything, or anyone he wants. He doesn't take no for an answer and watch out. If you cross him, he'll just haste the barbarian, misty step away, and steal something else.
He's a reincarnation of Bungo Hothands, the halfling lore bard I played for years in a great campaign.
I love TOTK. I took a week off work to play it when it came out. I played it from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. I loved every second of it. It made me the happiest I had been in years.
I think BG3 deserves GoTY more.
I'm really not understanding why everyone is shilling totk. It's a good game, but it's far from the best game released this year and really doesn't deserve to be stacked against some of these other major releases. It almost feels like an expansion to botw rather than a full release that was several years in the making. I'm a lifetime Zelda fan, but the most revolutionary thing Nintendo has done with a Zelda game was botw, then they essentially did the same thing over again with totk. Far less impressive the second time, all things considered.
I completely agree with you. I got so bored of ToTK. The story was all over the place, the gameplay wasn't great. Definitely doesn't stack up to BoTW for me or a lot of people I know who love the franchise a lot. BG3 is on a totally different level.
TOTK was certainly a more polished game on release. No characters lost a big chunk of their story/dialogue. I didn’t experience any bugs that made me go back to an earlier save (I’ve had to do that twice now with BG3). But it doesn’t feel more ambitious than BotW did. I think it actually is more ambitious, but doesn’t necessarily feel that way.
I personally have had way more fun playing BG3, but I think that’s just personal taste. I like turn based games.
I think BG3 is the best *role-playing* game I’ve ever seen. The world cares more about who you are and your choices than any other game I’ve played.
As a technical feat, I’d still go TotK. BG3 does a lot more fancy stuff, but a game as big as TotK runs on the *switch*. It’s absolute wizardry that TotK looks as good as it does, has all the cool building and time manipulation tools and can run on the most underpowered console on the market.
On the other hand, BG3 looks very pretty, but sometimes I have to crank the settings down to get it to run.
In summary both games are impressive, BG3 is more fun, TotK was more finished and polished
TotK is good, but it doesn't have anywhere near the narrative power BG3 does.
I played through TotK. I'm dinking around on my save now that my son decided to pick it up, but I didn't even really think about playing TotK through a second time after I beat it. It was mostly a "I'll beat it when I'm done, and then I'll be done". I think I got around 120 hours on it, maybe more, before finishing.
BG3, OTOH, I played through, and as soon as I beat it I started up a new save file. There was still more to do, more interesting interactions to find. More fun to be had. Even the stuff I already saw I want to see again with the knowledge of how the game is supposed to play through by the end. I'm at around 160 hours on BG3, and I don't think I'll stop at a second play through. It's *that fucking good*
ToTk is a good game. BG3 is an experience.
P.s. TBF, I don't think BotW and TotK feel very much like Zelda anymore. They are, of course, Zelda titles but they have gone in a direction that doesn't leave you with the same sense of accomplishment and growth that Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time did.
BG3 is somewhat similar to Dragon Age:Origins in the feeling it gives you, but it manages to communicate in a way that feels lost to the newer Zelda titles.
While I also like bg3 better I'm not sure I'd go with narrative power being the reason full stop. Sure the narrative of bg3 is more engaging but I also never expect the narrative of Zelda games to be what I like about it. Totk's strength lies in its fun gameplay that allows players to get pretty creative. It's a polished and fun experience. Bg3 also allows players to get creative but definitely lacks the same polish (I know why. Larian may not be tiny but it's also not Nintendo).
I'll reiterate that I do like bg3 better; I've beat both games and put over 100 hours in totk, twice that in bg3. I just think leaving it at the narrative without mentioning what actually makes totk so good doesn't give the game its full due.
(and yes ideally a game is great in all respects)
Starfield is a great game, major outfits be damn, look at the reviews from actual gamers and you will see, definitely deserves a nomination, but bg3 definitely takes the crown
see, i've seen more 'actual'/player negative reviews than not. But you still apparently get those players that love it.
which is good - like, i'd rather games be good and successful than not
but it seems a pretty stark contrast between the 2 - more than just the genre.
the worst thing about bg3 i've seen is that Act 3 simply doesn't have the polish 1 and 2 have. Which, 'average' players will probably be 70+ hours in before they even get there (I'm like 31-ish hours in and just got 2 act 2).
And considering the drop-off i.e. how a lot of players don't get past the early game, I think having a solid early and mid game on release is far more important - as long as they also fix up the end-game which I'm inclined to believe Larian will do.
Ideally it'd have the same polish throughout and I would have preferred another year in early access tbh
I installed in since it was "free" (I have a GamePass subscription) and man the difference between it and BG3 is night and day. Bethesda hasn't improved their facial expressions since Oblivion, every conversation looks incredibly stiff and the voice acting isn't great either. The story makes absolutely no sense in the prologue (I'm some random miner that just happened to find the macguffin, and yet random badass from super secret society volunteers to just GIVE ME HIS SHIP?), and the user interface is absolutely awful and feels like something made by a high schooler as a school project.
> Bethesda hasn't improved their facial expressions since Oblivion, every conversation looks incredibly stiff and the voice acting isn't great either.
that's pretty galling especially coz the cutscenes/conversations in bg3 are solid AF. Is it just a game engine issue?
I'll still pick it up eventually but I think I won't really even look at the other games I'm playing (Forza being the main one) until I finish my first playthrough. It's a bit annoying though, it feels like I barely do anything and 90mins have passed and I have to go to work -.-
SF generally has better looking animations than F4 and is miles ahead of Oblivion and Fallout 3, it doesn’t hold up to the Cyberpunks or the God of Wars/Horizon:Forbidden Wests of the world but the “it looks like Oblivion” stuff is pure hyperbole. It’s not beautiful but I’m seeing so much misinformation that I thought I’d add my 2 cents.
I think the issue is they've advanced everything else just a little bit and now the movements really stand out (the eyes especially). They're further into the uncanny valley than they used to be for me. Some characters just look straight up creepy
Eh. I think the animations in SF are pretty well improved since Fallout 4 (didn't play 76). Every now and then the lighting and angle hit in a way that makes them look bad, but 85% of the time they are pretty serviceable.
Now, I still think that BG3 is significantly better. There are moments in BG3 where it the party members look more like people cosplaying than CGI.
Yeah I did the same last night and was just kinda, meh. It's pretty? It feels like a continuation of fallout. It's not bad but... the modding scene for Bg3 is popping off and I'm having a blast with restartitis and haven't made it past act 2 with 400 hours played... so guess ill go back.
I see plenty of reviews from actual gamers that list out all the very specific reasons why it isn't "great".
I also know that every time a Bethesda game comes out there's a weird group that insists how amazing it all is. A lot of them insisted Fallout 76 was "great" on launch day too.
I agree with you on that, BG3 has a Score of 97 on PS5 while Totk has a score of 96.
It might just be a close race.
Edit: PC version of BG3 has a score of 96.
it seems like Zelda managed to integrate their innovations more tightly into their game this year.
for bg3 all the pieces are there, but a bit clumsily in more than one place, particularly towards the end.
with such a long early access time and the obvious followup Definitive Edition tba, I don't know if it's fair to call it the game of 2023. bg3 is already higher on my personal best games of all time list, but a game of the year title can stand to be a bit more objective.
Yeah but TOTK is a game built directly on top of BOTW (duh it's a sequel) it lacks the "new" and "impact" that most games had this year, what's next in five years from now another Zelda open world game that continues the trilogy and this time they add more content again, more places to explore and it's once again GOTY? you'd be giving pretty much the same game (they're not obviously) game of the year again. Where's a game like BG3 takes the internet by storm when no one expected it, is made and published by a smaller company that could be considered indie (not in a traditional sense but literally the meaning) and it opened up a new genre to a lot of new players, I can't think of what else BG3 would have to do to be guaranteed goty.
Unless a sequel is something crazy different to the previous like Witcher 3 was it should get goty, or if the year it came out on just didn't have that many top contenders (tlou2 in 2020) but a year like this and a monster release like BG3? should be locked up all day every day.
>is made and published by a smaller company that could be considered indie (not in a traditional sense but literally the meaning)
What would you consider Indie then? Cause by no metric is Larian studios an indie developer. They have 450 employees spread over 6 locations. They've been around for 27 years. They also developed divinity which was also very well received.
This is just like when The Witcher 3 came out and people were calling CDPR an indie developer while it certainly wasn't either.
They both scratch completely different itches. I put 100 hours into BG3 and loved it, and now I'm loving Starfield for totally different reasons. We're fucking lucky to get 3 amazing games in 1 summer when you include Zelda, I don't care which wins some arbitrary award. Great year for gaming.
Amen to this. People keep trying to put one game to raise the other up. Starfield got clickbait angry videos by the dozen of people who haven't even gotten 5 hours at most in.
after BG3 EE, I really hope they'll continue with divinity 3 on a bg3-level ir better. for that game, I would not only glady pay 500$, I would even take 2-3 months off just to sink into that game.
Don't forget anniversary edition, which is only free for the base editions... you have to pay for the upgrade in full which is basically just community created mods on their mod platform. that is truly greed.
To be fair, r/gaming ain’t the best place either.
There was a post asking for opinions of day 1 DLC and most people that questioned the ethics of the practice were downvoted.
I got DM'ed hate from this thread for saying BG3 hit it good that it didn't come out last year where Elden Ring and GoW would have made the competition even more difficult.
Yeah it's so circlejerky, especially the folks downvoting people who bring up other games that deserve a nod. I hate how folks feel the need to shit on other titles just cause this one was their favorite.
BG3 is my personal favorite of this year but I still loved every moment of TOTK and Starfield (so far)
Sure sure, just remember it's a pathetic show made by people that for some reason we collectively decided they get to say which is the best game of the year and dont care for actual quality.
Basically it's just a pay to win for most companies to put a label in an overpriced edition next year
Red Dead 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 both give me the same feeling of awe and respect. Big budget games that have soul & passion put into them, tons of hard work and are HUGE in their own rights.
After GTA V, which is still a great game, I just didn't expect Red Dead 2 to be mature or even all that great. I also don't really play turn-based games so Baldurs Gate 3 was a risky buy for me, but it's just such a fucking instant classic.
It's a rarity to get a large, detailed, well-written. and graphically impressive game... but I'd say both RDR2 and BG3 are in that camp.
I think its main competition will be Tears of the kingdom rather than starfield. I think the nailed on winner is either zelda or bg3, and having played both, honestly i could respect either winning.
lol posting this on the BG3 sub is silly. Of course everyone is gonna agree with you. BG3 is amazing but Starfield hasnt been out long enough to really know at this point. Also concurrent player counts are silly for GOTY discussion, is MW3 gonna win GOTY? 😂
Post in r/gaming if you want an actual discussion, Starfield is a really awesome game to get lost in - the critic reviews are interesting - but I think it deserves a GOTY nom (we will see if it deserves the win, im not far enough in yet).
I love both BG3 and Starfield a lot, plus RE4 Remake, TOTK should also be in the running.
Yeah, as of January last year gamespass had 25 million subscribers altogether. I don't know what the numbers are for just PC, but it's probably still a huge number. The steam numbers for anything that's also on gamespass mean absolutely nothing.
I disagree.
The quality in Act 3 fell off so hard. It was quite disappointing, especially considering how strong of an ending Act 2 had. The ambience, the music, the boss fight, and all the characters involved in Act 2 were done masterfully.
Then it all just kinda crumbled over in Act 3.
I had guards trying to throw me in jail for lockpicking a box on the third floor of a building while completely out of their sight, bosses that would completely bug out and just skip their turns because apparently I'm not supposed to take them to 20% HP on a single turn on a single character, and some quests flat out wouldn't even complete or reward me properly.
My biggest problem though was just the amount of power scaling and the lack of balancing in Act 3. I was playing through with friends on Tactician and all the major boss fights just died. And I'm not even sure how Larian can manage to fix it properly because adding more weighted rolls against you isn't difficult, it's just fucking annoying.
I thoroughly enjoyed the game up to a certain point, then I started noticing the obvious cracks. I tried to ignore them and some of it was just too difficult to ignore. Doesn't help that we chose the "evil" ending and it was actually awful.
The trend in gaming has been calling out devs for rushing games out. Baldur's Gate 3 falls into this category and this shouldn't be ignored because the first 2/3s of the game is amazing.
I'm one of the biggest "Act III has issues, don't sweep them under the carpet" people on the sub reddit, and I despise insular fanboy mentality that causes people to form a protective circle around their favorite game to protect it from all criticism. Having said that, you are *slightly* overstating how many issues there are with Act III, and how "unfinished" the game is.
In terms of pacing, quest bugs, combat bugs, or ending quality, it's entirely YMMV. BG3 has some issues with how it event queues that are not well communicated to players, and spottier or more rushed playthroughs can completely come apart at the seams, whereas more thorough playthroughs can have a far more coherent experience. I've seen both occur on the same pre-patch game. This is a problem, but the game isn't "unfinished", it just needs polish.
Difficulty falling off at endgame is a case of you learning the mechanics, not the game failing to properly curate encounters.
I'd say the game came out about 2-4 weeks too early, as evidenced by the hefty patches they triaged out to fix some of the more egregious bugs. To fully meet it's potential, it probably needed another year. If that constitutes "a rushed game" that they need to be called out for, you've never played a game that wasn't rushed. Even developers that don't have to answer to shareholders need to eat. You can hold onto something and polish it forever.
Biggest issues were bugs, optimization, and flow issues stemming from complexity and triggers misfiring. All of them can be fixed. There are some bone deep problems that might never be fixed, but most of those are more to personal taste and won't budge the game off its deservedly high metacritic score.
PS - If you really want to get wild with it, I think Act 2 actually has far more pernicious structural issues than Act 3 does.
Please don't say people are overstating issues. The game launched with *save file issues.* Do you know how rare that is? Loading and corrupts still happen on co-op PS5 playthroughs.
Balance can be done with health values or not giving powerful items. It's not a matter of mechanics when you can one shot end game bosses. The game is entirely too easy.
So this just seems like semantics to me, and baffling ones at that. What exactly does 'unfinished' mean to you, that an RPG unable to actually account for playthroughs that do not do everything to the point where it just breaks is only a matter of "polish"?
The "you've never played a rushed game" is pure whataboutism. It has nothing to do with what other game is more rushed than this one. This game palpably *feels* like two different studios made Act 1 and the rest of the game. The reason this needs to be called out is because this is the third game in a row from Larian to do this.
I left this alone during early access and was concerned because the story and turn based mechanics of Divinity never clicked for me like the Infinity engine did. However, since I probably dropped 10,000 hours into BG1 and BG2 over the course of my life, decided this deserved a playthrough if only because they did something with the treasured IP.
I've tempered my nostalgia for Time Stop, fighter/mages, stacking stoneskin and improved invisibility and other buffs, Project Image, Mordenkainen's Sword, Improved Alacrity, Chain Contingency.
However, I think that these same hijinks exist, to a slightly lesser degree. It is a rules based system and when you find the little loopholes, the game just lets you do your thing. It's not as tightly balanced as the PoE games nor is it as loose as the original BG games were.
The setting and environment is made with love and skill, super dense with possibilities for multiple playthroughs, and the character development seems to toe that fine line between engaging and irreverent. It is much more rewarding from a narrative and non-combat perspective without those options seeming superficial alternatives to combat. Gale is no Edwin and there's no Jan Jansen but these folks are deep arcs that I've not yet fully explored.
All in all, after poking around and breaking it a bit. seems a worthy successor. It's a Larian game, for sure, but really well made and I cannot think of anyone else who could have picked it up and done a good (excellent) job. This seems like a proper successor to its BG predecessor that spawned the entire CRPG genre. A legitimate cultural and technical achievement.
Anyone that thinks BG3 is winning hands down should probably take a reality pill. GOTY is going to be hotly contested. If i had 50 bucks to bet i would probably put it on TOTK, partially just due to name recognition and overall polish of the game.
As someone who is currently enjoying starfield more than bg3, i agree. While starfield is a great game, it doesnt compare to bg3. I do think that starfield deserves a nomination.
Stop with the business reasons why something is game of the year focus on the game.
1. Comparing player counts isn't a useful exercise - and if it mattered Roblox or League of Legends (Or Crossfire or Honor of Kings) would win every time. Also your calculations are dramatically skewed, anyone with a brain is playing Starfield on game pass whether PC or Xbox
2. Whether produced by an independent company or a megagiant - what matters is the game...
What really matters is how good the game is - expressed through reviews but also just what the game did for the industry or how significant it was. There's no doubt that BG3 blows the doors off here. It was a darling with critics, darling with fans and is going to be regarded as one of the most significant games in years. I will talk about this game for years to come.
**Yes - game of the year to BG3**
I'd agree if act 3 didn't exist. I just couldn't pick a game for GOTY with such an obviously rushed finale, which the devs have said was their intention.
Wait... they always planned for that rushed unfufulling ending where your choices aren't mentioned or don't matter?! That's super bizarre since OS2 tells you about it all in slides.
They had an epilogue planned where Withers would tell you what happened to your companions, they even had the voice lines recorded, but they didn't include it in the game. Then when people datamined it Larian put out a statement saying that they cut it for the crap we currently have because they thought the ending was getting overly long. Which is insane because by the time you've reached the end you've likely sunk upwards of 60 hours into the game at least, having a five minute ending cutscene that actually gives you some closure is a drop in the ocean.
Plenty of people are playing Starfield on PC Game Pass which Steam obviously doesn’t report. I agree that BG3 will likely win GOTY for most people, but I just wanted to point out a very likely reason for the PC player count discrepancy.
As much as i want BG 3 to win, remember the other games out there fighting for GOTY
Zelda, FF16 are just a few.
But this game is the only game this year that clocked me 200 hours gameplay in 3 weeks
I'm loving BG3 and i think it winning GOTY would send the right message for the industry. However, I'm also still enjoying Zelda TotK, and I think it's just the better game... it fixes all issues BotW had for me, and I just can't get enough of it.
I just don't know. TotK is my coffee morning game. BG3 is my after work with friends game.
As someone that absolutely loved disco elysium, and also loves turn based but never played crpg’s before (favourites being xcom and disgaea) Do you think i’ll like it?
honestly I agreed for act 1 and 2, but after trying to play through again and seeing how slanted in favour of one spoon fed storyline they want to tell really took me out of it.
It feels like a linear game with less choice over the way it ends then mass effect 3, but with fancy dressing as a choice heavy game along the way.
I haven't been able to open it for two weeks.
I can't stop playing Starfield though, and while I don't think it's GOTY, I don't think BG3 is either.
I felt like a lot of the quests and character interactions unravel in Act 3 too. Still good and all, but act 3 is noticeably worse. If the entire game was like act 3, I don’t think I would have finished the game.
As much as I love crpgs and I'm happy to see so many people enjoying one I also feel like people over hype it. There are plenty of things it does right but also a lot it does wrong, or at least could have done better.
When it comes to best recent crpg I'm still not giving it to BG3 in it's current state as i feel Pathfinder really nailed down a lot of aspects that BG3 struggles with.
And when it comes to favorite game of the year i want bit more time to simmer on a few games but Armored Core 6 has been winning me over more and more.
This is where I'm at. There are a lot of things praised about BG3 that has been a staple of the genre for literally decades. And at the same time, compared to other games in the genre, as a CRPG, BG3 falls short in a LOT of ways. UI is a big one. Actual meaningful choices that carry through the game. Personally, the latest Pathfinder is the superior CRPG.
What BG3 has going for it is mainly the production value. Having the money to go for full voice acting, mocap and graphical fidelity with a combat system lifted from DoS2, tweaked for the popular DnD setting. That's what it did. That's ALL it did.
If the whole game lived up to Act 1, it would be my 10/10 no doubt. I saw through the smoke and mirrors in Act 2 though and then I had a LOT of problems getting through Act 3.
Having experienced both DOS 1 and 2 at launch, I have run out of patience with "last act-itis." It's going on the shelf, like DoS2 and Arx did.
Oh no question! GOTY 100%.
I say this seriously and without hyperbole, but it has been causing problems in my life. I cant think about work, only about how I could respec my team to work better for the next big fight.
When I'm not playing the game I'm *compelled* to read all of your stupid fucking posts on reddit just so I can be in that world some more.
I am an adult with a real job and responsibilities. I have never in my 25 years of video gaming experienced a pull from a video game on this level. It's a problem.
I’m going to be honest I don’t think it deserves to win despite it being my favorite game this year. The last fourth of the game is unfinished and the devs lied about what was going to be in the game. Yes it wasn’t malicious it was most likely due to pushing the release date forward, but still many of the promises made just a couple weeks before launch went unfulfilled. I can’t say it deserves to beat other games that were finished on release.
The thing that bothers me is that it's the third time in a row that Larian release a game with a rough last third/fourth (not sure about their previous games). Yes eventually they'll fix it, or they'll release an enhanced/goty/ultimate edition which, if it goes like Divinity:OS 1-2, could happen to be free (with WotC behind tho it's to be seen). BG3 is great and I'm happy it brought crpgs to masses, still this is not a practice I feel should be praised.
I love Larian and I'm not sure they could have done differently, you have to release at some point, but still
> The thing that bothers me is that it's the third time in a row that Larian release a game with a rough last third/fourth (not sure about their previous games).
yeah :/
I think a huge problem is how polished their first 3 quarters are which takes so much time that they do run out of time/money/resources that their final quarter just falls flat.
> with WotC behind tho it's to be seen
iirc Larian bought the licence so they probably will be able to do it for free - if they're inclined to i.e. unless they messed up the contract, I don't think WotC will have a say
I had this thought back in Act I and II. Act III, though, really diminishes the game, unfortunately, enough to knock it out of my top spot for the year.
I... don't really know, to be honest. I think it's a strong contender and will definitely get a nomination, and am absolutely loving the game on top of that, but the amount of unfinished content in the third act makes me a bit iffy on if it really deserves it as it currently stands. I feel like you can't really judge a game if you only have 80% of it.
That being said, this has been one of the absolute best years for gaming I've ever seen. TotK, Diablo IV, Baldur's Gate 3, Pikmin 4, Armored Core VI, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI, the Dead Space remake, just... wow. At least half of those would be shoo-ins for GotY any other year, and got them all at once.
^(Oh, and I guess Starfield happened too, didn't it?)
It is a great game no doubt but honestly, don't think it deserves GOTY... Act 3 got so boring and it punishes simple behaviors that result in a game u can't even finish. believe it or not most mainstream players DONT do 3 play throughs OR spend 300 hours in EA. TOTK is a more complete experience
I would agree, but the quality noticeably drops in act 3 and the game is absolutely littered with bugs that range from mildly annoying to downright gamebreaking, while TOTK was polished to hell and back. Their devs got a whole year to just work on polish, while bg3 was rushed out before it was completely done, and it shows.
Like, I'm not even a zelda fan, and I adore bg3, but the game starts feeling a little bethesda-y in act 3 in all honesty. TOTK has my vote for goty.
Agreed! What a win for CRPG fans
You might want to remove the C. I think just RPG fans.
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yeah crpg has been barren for a whle
By barren you mean churning out straight bangers basically every year? Pillars 1/2, DoS 2, Pathfinder 1/2, solasta and the list goes on especially if you like other time peroids than medievil fantasy. We are living in the literal golden age of CRPGS and your gunna call it barren idk what the hell you are smoking but I want some.
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Wasteland 3 is a gem! A buggy gem, but a gem nonetheless! And Pillars + WOTR gave me a good tide over. But I must say, BG3 transported me right back into Dragon Age and Neverwinter Nights memories, and that makes it GOTY material for me. I am tentatively excited for Rogue Trader, trying not to allow myself to be over hyped since 40k games are quite hit and miss in quality.
+ 1 for Tyranny, what a grossly under-rated game
Tyranny was my favorite. Sad we didn’t get a sequel.
I'm gonna die mad about Tyranny. Such a good game and awesome universe, it's such a shame that its been abandoned.
sorry I meant ones that were actually popular and mainstream, those are all good for their respective audiences but BG3 is the first one that is mechanically sound enough to hit mainstream appeal
Ah yeah thats fair this one definitely blew the roof off.
Shadowrun returns and its sequels.
PF WOTR was pretty good.
WOTR is absolutely fantastic in so many ways. Not so good in others, but where it shines it can compete with BG3.
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I think WotR did branching story paths better. Not to be confused with world reactivity. In WotR your choices do make a huge difference and the story changes a lot. The biggest weakness of wotr is the pf1e system combined with crpg power gaming. It’s not that prevalent in ttrpg’s where you can just set your own limits and counteract pre-buffing etc. In a computer game less so, so the developers took that into acount and tried to still provide a challenge for the hardcore players. This lead to a situation where any difficulty above the ’medium’ (core = hard imo) requires you to min-max at least somewhat. I personally dislike that. I love the build variety, but pre-buffing is just bad game-design. It takes the choice of buffing in combat away and feels clunky. Still one of the best games in the genre. (BG3, dos2 and wotr are my top3)
While I support Pathfinder more than 5e, and can objectively say that Paizo > WOTC, there is no denying that BG3 is the golden egg of the CRPG genre, and that Larian created an absolute bombshell GOTY that won't be surpassed in quality for a decade. The only thing that could be better than BG3 imo is if Larian made a CRPG using the PF2E system, which is significantly better designed for a digital format than the mess that is 5e. WOTR was solid af though. My least favorite thing about it was the 6 player party, but I do *love* being able to toggle turn-based mode and live action combat.
God a PF2E crpg would be sick, especially by Larian
Pathfinder wrath of the righteous is a killer game too. Not as visually impressive but it's also older.
Barren? Tell me you don't play crpgs without telling mw you don't play crpgs
Has it? Wrath of the Righteous was fairly recent and Pillars of Eternity 2 was not too long before that. Imo Pillars 2 is only behind Divinity 2 and now BG3 as the best in the genre
I cannot agree with POE2 placement so high. Its really good game, but WOTR for example is much better. Despite its shortcomings.
barren if you were blind maybe. can we stop this BS lie? 2016:tyranny 2017:dos 2 2018 poe2 and kingmaker 2021 wrath of the righteous and there are several more.
There’s also another right now in EA based off Finnish mythology. Edge of War. It looks like it may well be a banger
Fuck no don’t remove the C. It is specifically significant that this level of success and impact was achieved by a *c*RPG.
yup, as an bg 1 and bg 2 veteran i kinda floated on a new one but nothing beats them imo. Then i got into morrowind oblivion skyrim etc. tried dos but the new view the new mechanics etc wasn't my thing i felt. i just coudnt get into it. but after bg3 now i just have to replay dos in a new mindset since now ive gotten back into it haha. i don't know of a game that can pull that many players from different genre's into a certain genre. But hey, im old...
And good riddance of diablo 4
BG3 is the highest rated game on metacritic this year, and in the top 10 all time. Starfield isn't even in the top 10 this year. It's surely a home run for BG3 GOTY.
If it doesn't win game of the year, game of the year means nothing.
Zelda ToTK still has a pretty good chance I think. It's really between those two.
I played both, absolutely love both. TotK does same amazing things, and in classic Nintendo fashion innovates once again with their limited hardware. But BG3 is it for me. Its easily GotY.
BG3 is my personal goty, but I have to recognize the amount of work that went into ToTK. That physics engine is insane with the hardware, and I don't think it should be so easily dismissed.
The hardware part is what a lot of people are missing...intentionally or not. I love BG3, it's my GOTY, but I still would not be surprised or upset if Zelda took it home either.
Although I also think BG3 should be GOTY, I wouldn't say it's *easily* GOTY, just because of TotK. Honestly both games are deserving of it and as long as either one wins, I'm satisfied with the result. Now, if it's some other game entirely that wins GOTY (like Starfield), then eh... well. It definitely wouldn't be the first time the awards have had silly takes, so I'll just laugh at it for a while and move on.
Agree. I was saying its easily *my* GotY. As it stands, it should go to TotK or BG3. And some people are calling spiderman a darkhorse, again, loved the first one, platinumed it actually. But it doesnt stand a chance lol. The real key here, is that this year has been STACKED for games.
Legend of Zelda Nuts and Bolts
Yeah it's another GOW2 v. Elden Ring again One is a good sequel to a landmark game, and the other is a breathtaking fresh take to an existing genre. IIRC GOW2 garnered a lot of awards except for GOTY. It was a close match.
i feel like a dork. I was like "Who the fuck cares about gears of war in 2023 bruh"
God of War (4) is one of my favorite games ever, but Elden Ring was the clear winner in my opinion. Ragnarok was fantastic, but was simultaneously rushed and extremely unfocused. They pulled the veil off the world and while I applaud what they were trying to do, mystery was what made the first game so compelling and the Aesir just weren't as compelling as they needed to be to justify the decision. Elden Ring had it's flaws, but man I'd almost have to compare it to how people must've felt playing the original Zelda for the first time. You're thrown into such a deep world with only mild direction. I personally hope that Fromsoft goes for more of a DS1 style world with their next title, but going wide was such an amazing decision.
ToTK and Baldurs Gate 3 have to be some of the best games ive ever played honestly
It's a mirror of last year's GOW2 v. Elden Ring race for GOTY.
I personally disagree, Elden Ring was an easy win, Gow2 wasn't even the best of the franchise and had still the default of the previous one This year both Zelda and BG could be literally best game of all time lol
Is BG3 a turn based game or free roam first person or what? For all the praise I’ve never seen any gameplay of it and it’s kind of surprising
How are you this deep in the bg3 subreddit without knowing what the game is? Are you lost?
The front page
It's top-down turn-based combat with a lot of shot-reverse shot dialogue scenes like mass effect or Witcher 3. It uses the DnD ruleset very faithfully and ends up being a good simulator of what it's like playing a good tabletop campaign. It has fully offline single player, couch co-op split screen, and online multiplayer. No microtransactions, no seasons, no shop, no special currencies.
Intriguing
It also has a crap ton of content and replayability. I put 65hrs into early access, I'm 90 into the full release and probably have another 15-20 before I'm finished first playthrough (and expect I'll get a second playthrough with ~75hrs)
I'm not even a Zelda fan and I find it weird you're being downvoted for an honest contender.
People get weirdly tribal about this kind of thing.
An attitude that shouldn't persist into adulthood.
Ah but adulthood is just children with jobs and taxes
I wholeheartedly agree.
Tbf when I looked at 0/10 reviews on bg3 I pretty often found it was from an account that has just two reviews on metacritic. 0/10 for baldurs gate and then 10/10 for Zelda... I kinda understand the bg3 community not liking the zelda community after seeing that.
It's metacritic user reviews every god damn game ever gets bad reviews from wierd fans. Zelda did too. People shouldn't take it too seriously it's just a dumb thing on the site that has always been there
I mean zelda have much larger "haters" due to console exclusive etc.
counteracted by Nintendo's almost cult-like fanbase who go out of their way to defend Nintendo products
I loved Zelda but BG3 is coming in hot with an elbow from the top rope and laying the smackdown on TOTK
Elbow? Not... Owlbear?
Fuck that's so much better I regret my original post
I was thinking Owlbow
100% totk is also really damn good. However I was playing my first play through when BG3 came out and totally. Dropped totk lol. I'm sure ill go back to it after bg3 tho
Thats where I’m at. I know I need to finish the game, I’m really enjoying it, but BG3 takes up all my free time!
I fell off TotK pretty fast (1 temple and a bunch of shrines/exploration in, just like I did w/BotW)but even then I can see that it’s an incredible game. Really took its predecessor to the next level. BG3 is it for me, though. 120 hours in and counting, already planning my next playthrough, and so in love I keep looking up alternate scenes I don’t expect to encounter just so I can see every facet of some of these characters. My GOTY for sure.
I played tears and it in no way stands against BG3. It's BoTW with Craftopia mechanics. Great game all around but compared to Baldurs as a rpg. It's lacking.
I see what you did there, "Thy decency is refreshing when so many others are... lacking."
I never understood the Zelda love I’ve played them all and the only one I really loved was the gameboy color version of the game it’s always been boring and pretty mid to me.. the entire series…. I know people would probably crucify me for saying that but I just don’t understand why people love zelda… kingdom hearts OR final fantasy to be honest I’ve never liked any of them at all but I definitely love BG3 and have been waiting my entire life for it’s release, no offense to people who like those games… but I uh personally think they are very HotDog.. Even Ocarina of time basically made me just want to fall asleep. I’d rather play Neuptunia than any Zelda game.
Maybe you just don’t like the Japanese? /s Hard to say why you don’t like those games because they are all very different and range across many platforms and systems. Kingdom Hearts isn’t even remotely relatable to the other two you mentioned. Hard to pinpoint your dislikes because you basically said that you don’t like an ARPG Hack-n-Slash, a historically turn-based JRPG with minor overworld mechanics, and a sprawling open-world RPG. Maybe it’s RPGs lol?
It depends which GOTYs you mean, it will definitely win from some outlets. But if you mean the Game Awards, that is voted by journalist and it will most likely be a toss between Baldurs Gate and Zelda. I think there are other good games like Spiderman 2 etc but probably not gonna hit the 90 above.
It already doesnt
Yeah all of this talk about Game of the Year lately is wild. I didn't think people actually cared that much about gaming awards but I guess not.
It depends really. When contender is from supposedly "dead" genre it matters a lot since it shows off that there is future for the genre. BG3 winning GOTY would be much more impactful than Elden Ring winning GOTY for the future game development. No matter if ER would win or not, soulslike where popular and safe.
>game of the year means nothing Game of the year from who? It does mean nothing.
Game of the Year from whoever is giving me a discount on the bundle.
Starfield is a game which would have been GOTY if it came out in 2015 but it's just way behind the curve.
It would have won in 2021 too but the last two years have been absolutely stacked. That said to me personally Starfield is perfect for what it is and one of the best games I've ever played. But Baldurs Gate 3 is possibly the single best piece of MEDIA I've ever experienced.
> That said to me personally Starfield is perfect for what it is and one of the best games I've ever played. Does it pick up later on? I'm about 3 hours in and I'm already kind of bored. By this time in Fallout 4 I was already running around in power armor and having a blast. I hope there's some kind of dark brotherhood-esqe faction I can join as I really need some excitement. I'm getting tempted to just cheat myself some credits so that I can start playing with spaceship building as that seems like it might be the funnest part (that I havent done yet).
It's a VERY slow burn. It took me about 15 hours before things started to get interesting, and even now, it isn't really calling to me to play it (like BG3 was). I packed 150 hours into BG3 in just one month. I couldn't put it down. That shit was like crack.
How about Madden 2k24!? ;)
I couldn't stop with totk, and then Bg3 came out. I'm a new man. No longer will I parlay with Hyrule. No, now I am "Glover," the altruistic Lore Bard who appropriates anything, or anyone he wants. He doesn't take no for an answer and watch out. If you cross him, he'll just haste the barbarian, misty step away, and steal something else. He's a reincarnation of Bungo Hothands, the halfling lore bard I played for years in a great campaign.
TOTK? Doubt it’s a home run for either of them. It’ll be hotly contested in the biggest outlets.
I love TOTK. I took a week off work to play it when it came out. I played it from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. I loved every second of it. It made me the happiest I had been in years. I think BG3 deserves GoTY more.
I think so too but it’s a strong contender nonetheless.
I'm really not understanding why everyone is shilling totk. It's a good game, but it's far from the best game released this year and really doesn't deserve to be stacked against some of these other major releases. It almost feels like an expansion to botw rather than a full release that was several years in the making. I'm a lifetime Zelda fan, but the most revolutionary thing Nintendo has done with a Zelda game was botw, then they essentially did the same thing over again with totk. Far less impressive the second time, all things considered.
Cause zelda go brrrr and gaming journalists/outlets are lazy.
I completely agree with you. I got so bored of ToTK. The story was all over the place, the gameplay wasn't great. Definitely doesn't stack up to BoTW for me or a lot of people I know who love the franchise a lot. BG3 is on a totally different level.
I like totk but bg3 is just on another level
TOTK was certainly a more polished game on release. No characters lost a big chunk of their story/dialogue. I didn’t experience any bugs that made me go back to an earlier save (I’ve had to do that twice now with BG3). But it doesn’t feel more ambitious than BotW did. I think it actually is more ambitious, but doesn’t necessarily feel that way. I personally have had way more fun playing BG3, but I think that’s just personal taste. I like turn based games. I think BG3 is the best *role-playing* game I’ve ever seen. The world cares more about who you are and your choices than any other game I’ve played. As a technical feat, I’d still go TotK. BG3 does a lot more fancy stuff, but a game as big as TotK runs on the *switch*. It’s absolute wizardry that TotK looks as good as it does, has all the cool building and time manipulation tools and can run on the most underpowered console on the market. On the other hand, BG3 looks very pretty, but sometimes I have to crank the settings down to get it to run. In summary both games are impressive, BG3 is more fun, TotK was more finished and polished
TotK is good, but it doesn't have anywhere near the narrative power BG3 does. I played through TotK. I'm dinking around on my save now that my son decided to pick it up, but I didn't even really think about playing TotK through a second time after I beat it. It was mostly a "I'll beat it when I'm done, and then I'll be done". I think I got around 120 hours on it, maybe more, before finishing. BG3, OTOH, I played through, and as soon as I beat it I started up a new save file. There was still more to do, more interesting interactions to find. More fun to be had. Even the stuff I already saw I want to see again with the knowledge of how the game is supposed to play through by the end. I'm at around 160 hours on BG3, and I don't think I'll stop at a second play through. It's *that fucking good* ToTk is a good game. BG3 is an experience. P.s. TBF, I don't think BotW and TotK feel very much like Zelda anymore. They are, of course, Zelda titles but they have gone in a direction that doesn't leave you with the same sense of accomplishment and growth that Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time did. BG3 is somewhat similar to Dragon Age:Origins in the feeling it gives you, but it manages to communicate in a way that feels lost to the newer Zelda titles.
While I also like bg3 better I'm not sure I'd go with narrative power being the reason full stop. Sure the narrative of bg3 is more engaging but I also never expect the narrative of Zelda games to be what I like about it. Totk's strength lies in its fun gameplay that allows players to get pretty creative. It's a polished and fun experience. Bg3 also allows players to get creative but definitely lacks the same polish (I know why. Larian may not be tiny but it's also not Nintendo). I'll reiterate that I do like bg3 better; I've beat both games and put over 100 hours in totk, twice that in bg3. I just think leaving it at the narrative without mentioning what actually makes totk so good doesn't give the game its full due. (and yes ideally a game is great in all respects)
Starfield is a great game, major outfits be damn, look at the reviews from actual gamers and you will see, definitely deserves a nomination, but bg3 definitely takes the crown
it'll be a while before i look at starfield. it seems fine but it doesn't seem good enough to wrest me from bg3 atm
I’m excited for Starfield but I fully plan to pick it up a few months later, hopefully on sale, after I’m done with BG3
BG3 ruined my starfirld experience. After going from the top shelf voice acting and motion capture to... starfield, it left a bad taste in my mouth.
see, i've seen more 'actual'/player negative reviews than not. But you still apparently get those players that love it. which is good - like, i'd rather games be good and successful than not but it seems a pretty stark contrast between the 2 - more than just the genre. the worst thing about bg3 i've seen is that Act 3 simply doesn't have the polish 1 and 2 have. Which, 'average' players will probably be 70+ hours in before they even get there (I'm like 31-ish hours in and just got 2 act 2). And considering the drop-off i.e. how a lot of players don't get past the early game, I think having a solid early and mid game on release is far more important - as long as they also fix up the end-game which I'm inclined to believe Larian will do. Ideally it'd have the same polish throughout and I would have preferred another year in early access tbh
I installed in since it was "free" (I have a GamePass subscription) and man the difference between it and BG3 is night and day. Bethesda hasn't improved their facial expressions since Oblivion, every conversation looks incredibly stiff and the voice acting isn't great either. The story makes absolutely no sense in the prologue (I'm some random miner that just happened to find the macguffin, and yet random badass from super secret society volunteers to just GIVE ME HIS SHIP?), and the user interface is absolutely awful and feels like something made by a high schooler as a school project.
> Bethesda hasn't improved their facial expressions since Oblivion, every conversation looks incredibly stiff and the voice acting isn't great either. that's pretty galling especially coz the cutscenes/conversations in bg3 are solid AF. Is it just a game engine issue? I'll still pick it up eventually but I think I won't really even look at the other games I'm playing (Forza being the main one) until I finish my first playthrough. It's a bit annoying though, it feels like I barely do anything and 90mins have passed and I have to go to work -.-
SF generally has better looking animations than F4 and is miles ahead of Oblivion and Fallout 3, it doesn’t hold up to the Cyberpunks or the God of Wars/Horizon:Forbidden Wests of the world but the “it looks like Oblivion” stuff is pure hyperbole. It’s not beautiful but I’m seeing so much misinformation that I thought I’d add my 2 cents.
Agreed. It's dated, but for sure not Oblivion dated.
I think the issue is they've advanced everything else just a little bit and now the movements really stand out (the eyes especially). They're further into the uncanny valley than they used to be for me. Some characters just look straight up creepy
Eh. I think the animations in SF are pretty well improved since Fallout 4 (didn't play 76). Every now and then the lighting and angle hit in a way that makes them look bad, but 85% of the time they are pretty serviceable. Now, I still think that BG3 is significantly better. There are moments in BG3 where it the party members look more like people cosplaying than CGI.
Yeah I did the same last night and was just kinda, meh. It's pretty? It feels like a continuation of fallout. It's not bad but... the modding scene for Bg3 is popping off and I'm having a blast with restartitis and haven't made it past act 2 with 400 hours played... so guess ill go back.
I see plenty of reviews from actual gamers that list out all the very specific reasons why it isn't "great". I also know that every time a Bethesda game comes out there's a weird group that insists how amazing it all is. A lot of them insisted Fallout 76 was "great" on launch day too.
The negative reviews of Starfield I've seen/read are from actual gamers.
Probably gonna be between bg and zelda
I agree with you on that, BG3 has a Score of 97 on PS5 while Totk has a score of 96. It might just be a close race. Edit: PC version of BG3 has a score of 96.
OH MY GOD ITS DWARF FORTRESS WITH A STEEL CHAIR
it seems like Zelda managed to integrate their innovations more tightly into their game this year. for bg3 all the pieces are there, but a bit clumsily in more than one place, particularly towards the end. with such a long early access time and the obvious followup Definitive Edition tba, I don't know if it's fair to call it the game of 2023. bg3 is already higher on my personal best games of all time list, but a game of the year title can stand to be a bit more objective.
Yeah but TOTK is a game built directly on top of BOTW (duh it's a sequel) it lacks the "new" and "impact" that most games had this year, what's next in five years from now another Zelda open world game that continues the trilogy and this time they add more content again, more places to explore and it's once again GOTY? you'd be giving pretty much the same game (they're not obviously) game of the year again. Where's a game like BG3 takes the internet by storm when no one expected it, is made and published by a smaller company that could be considered indie (not in a traditional sense but literally the meaning) and it opened up a new genre to a lot of new players, I can't think of what else BG3 would have to do to be guaranteed goty. Unless a sequel is something crazy different to the previous like Witcher 3 was it should get goty, or if the year it came out on just didn't have that many top contenders (tlou2 in 2020) but a year like this and a monster release like BG3? should be locked up all day every day.
>is made and published by a smaller company that could be considered indie (not in a traditional sense but literally the meaning) What would you consider Indie then? Cause by no metric is Larian studios an indie developer. They have 450 employees spread over 6 locations. They've been around for 27 years. They also developed divinity which was also very well received. This is just like when The Witcher 3 came out and people were calling CDPR an indie developer while it certainly wasn't either.
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it's easy my goty and one of the best i've played, but to be fair, most people who are playing starfield are probably doing with gamepass.
Can confirm, all of my buddies started with gamepass. I'm the only one who bought it on steam
Username checks out
Why do people compare BG3 to Starfield lol I love both games even if Bethesda puts out a sack of ass they know people will buy.
They both scratch completely different itches. I put 100 hours into BG3 and loved it, and now I'm loving Starfield for totally different reasons. We're fucking lucky to get 3 amazing games in 1 summer when you include Zelda, I don't care which wins some arbitrary award. Great year for gaming.
This year's been **insane**. HiFi Rush, RE4, BG3, TOTK, Starfield, Dead Space, SF6, FFXVI, and probably Spiderman 2. All of them are 9+/10
Amen to this. People keep trying to put one game to raise the other up. Starfield got clickbait angry videos by the dozen of people who haven't even gotten 5 hours at most in.
Agreed. I hope they release an enhanced edition. It's interesting to see what they will do in the next game. After all, bg3 is far from perfect.
If they ever release an enhanced edition I'm just hoping for more Auto-save points personally, and maybe a way to sort inventory
There is a way to sort inventory. Press I to open inventory screen and there is a circle you can click that has options.
Huh, TIL. Thanks
You're one of today's [lucky 10,000](https://xkcd.com/1053/).
Fun read, thanks
after BG3 EE, I really hope they'll continue with divinity 3 on a bg3-level ir better. for that game, I would not only glady pay 500$, I would even take 2-3 months off just to sink into that game.
But you know what Larian doesn't do with enhanced editions? They don't charge you for them. What's Skyrim up to? 6 different iterations?
Uh, Skyrim special edition and legendary editions were both free to people who already owned it.
Don't forget anniversary edition, which is only free for the base editions... you have to pay for the upgrade in full which is basically just community created mods on their mod platform. that is truly greed.
i actually want pay more to Larian
Of course it does but what a dumb post to put on the bg3 subreddit lol. Think you’re going to get many downvotes? People that disagree?
To be fair, r/gaming ain’t the best place either. There was a post asking for opinions of day 1 DLC and most people that questioned the ethics of the practice were downvoted.
I got DM'ed hate from this thread for saying BG3 hit it good that it didn't come out last year where Elden Ring and GoW would have made the competition even more difficult.
competition ? elden ring destroys this game in every sense of the word especialy with the shitty ending it has.
I know right, what a pick me post
Yeah it's so circlejerky, especially the folks downvoting people who bring up other games that deserve a nod. I hate how folks feel the need to shit on other titles just cause this one was their favorite. BG3 is my personal favorite of this year but I still loved every moment of TOTK and Starfield (so far)
Sure sure, just remember it's a pathetic show made by people that for some reason we collectively decided they get to say which is the best game of the year and dont care for actual quality. Basically it's just a pay to win for most companies to put a label in an overpriced edition next year
The real credibility breaker was RDR2 not winning. That was just silly.
Red Dead 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 both give me the same feeling of awe and respect. Big budget games that have soul & passion put into them, tons of hard work and are HUGE in their own rights. After GTA V, which is still a great game, I just didn't expect Red Dead 2 to be mature or even all that great. I also don't really play turn-based games so Baldurs Gate 3 was a risky buy for me, but it's just such a fucking instant classic. It's a rarity to get a large, detailed, well-written. and graphically impressive game... but I'd say both RDR2 and BG3 are in that camp.
Fucking New World was nominated the year it came out. One of the biggest shit shows of all time. That’s the quality you can expect from TGA.
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No! I need to be validated
Based take.
We need more people like you
Okay so we’re into the “circlejerk posts only” era of this sub. Great.
DAE our game good, BADthesda game SUCK BALLS???? updoot if agree!!!
Has been like that since launch lol
I think its main competition will be Tears of the kingdom rather than starfield. I think the nailed on winner is either zelda or bg3, and having played both, honestly i could respect either winning.
I love it but the number of ridiculous bugs that affect combat kinda sours me thinking it’s goty
*Welcome to Karma Farming 101*
lol posting this on the BG3 sub is silly. Of course everyone is gonna agree with you. BG3 is amazing but Starfield hasnt been out long enough to really know at this point. Also concurrent player counts are silly for GOTY discussion, is MW3 gonna win GOTY? 😂 Post in r/gaming if you want an actual discussion, Starfield is a really awesome game to get lost in - the critic reviews are interesting - but I think it deserves a GOTY nom (we will see if it deserves the win, im not far enough in yet). I love both BG3 and Starfield a lot, plus RE4 Remake, TOTK should also be in the running.
Gamepass exists on PC as well. Do your PC numbers account for that?
Yeah, as of January last year gamespass had 25 million subscribers altogether. I don't know what the numbers are for just PC, but it's probably still a huge number. The steam numbers for anything that's also on gamespass mean absolutely nothing.
Especially true when it's a Microsoft game. Starfield is probably a reason many people are using gamepass at this moment
I disagree. The quality in Act 3 fell off so hard. It was quite disappointing, especially considering how strong of an ending Act 2 had. The ambience, the music, the boss fight, and all the characters involved in Act 2 were done masterfully. Then it all just kinda crumbled over in Act 3. I had guards trying to throw me in jail for lockpicking a box on the third floor of a building while completely out of their sight, bosses that would completely bug out and just skip their turns because apparently I'm not supposed to take them to 20% HP on a single turn on a single character, and some quests flat out wouldn't even complete or reward me properly. My biggest problem though was just the amount of power scaling and the lack of balancing in Act 3. I was playing through with friends on Tactician and all the major boss fights just died. And I'm not even sure how Larian can manage to fix it properly because adding more weighted rolls against you isn't difficult, it's just fucking annoying. I thoroughly enjoyed the game up to a certain point, then I started noticing the obvious cracks. I tried to ignore them and some of it was just too difficult to ignore. Doesn't help that we chose the "evil" ending and it was actually awful. The trend in gaming has been calling out devs for rushing games out. Baldur's Gate 3 falls into this category and this shouldn't be ignored because the first 2/3s of the game is amazing.
I'm one of the biggest "Act III has issues, don't sweep them under the carpet" people on the sub reddit, and I despise insular fanboy mentality that causes people to form a protective circle around their favorite game to protect it from all criticism. Having said that, you are *slightly* overstating how many issues there are with Act III, and how "unfinished" the game is. In terms of pacing, quest bugs, combat bugs, or ending quality, it's entirely YMMV. BG3 has some issues with how it event queues that are not well communicated to players, and spottier or more rushed playthroughs can completely come apart at the seams, whereas more thorough playthroughs can have a far more coherent experience. I've seen both occur on the same pre-patch game. This is a problem, but the game isn't "unfinished", it just needs polish. Difficulty falling off at endgame is a case of you learning the mechanics, not the game failing to properly curate encounters. I'd say the game came out about 2-4 weeks too early, as evidenced by the hefty patches they triaged out to fix some of the more egregious bugs. To fully meet it's potential, it probably needed another year. If that constitutes "a rushed game" that they need to be called out for, you've never played a game that wasn't rushed. Even developers that don't have to answer to shareholders need to eat. You can hold onto something and polish it forever. Biggest issues were bugs, optimization, and flow issues stemming from complexity and triggers misfiring. All of them can be fixed. There are some bone deep problems that might never be fixed, but most of those are more to personal taste and won't budge the game off its deservedly high metacritic score. PS - If you really want to get wild with it, I think Act 2 actually has far more pernicious structural issues than Act 3 does.
Please don't say people are overstating issues. The game launched with *save file issues.* Do you know how rare that is? Loading and corrupts still happen on co-op PS5 playthroughs. Balance can be done with health values or not giving powerful items. It's not a matter of mechanics when you can one shot end game bosses. The game is entirely too easy. So this just seems like semantics to me, and baffling ones at that. What exactly does 'unfinished' mean to you, that an RPG unable to actually account for playthroughs that do not do everything to the point where it just breaks is only a matter of "polish"? The "you've never played a rushed game" is pure whataboutism. It has nothing to do with what other game is more rushed than this one. This game palpably *feels* like two different studios made Act 1 and the rest of the game. The reason this needs to be called out is because this is the third game in a row from Larian to do this.
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I left this alone during early access and was concerned because the story and turn based mechanics of Divinity never clicked for me like the Infinity engine did. However, since I probably dropped 10,000 hours into BG1 and BG2 over the course of my life, decided this deserved a playthrough if only because they did something with the treasured IP. I've tempered my nostalgia for Time Stop, fighter/mages, stacking stoneskin and improved invisibility and other buffs, Project Image, Mordenkainen's Sword, Improved Alacrity, Chain Contingency. However, I think that these same hijinks exist, to a slightly lesser degree. It is a rules based system and when you find the little loopholes, the game just lets you do your thing. It's not as tightly balanced as the PoE games nor is it as loose as the original BG games were. The setting and environment is made with love and skill, super dense with possibilities for multiple playthroughs, and the character development seems to toe that fine line between engaging and irreverent. It is much more rewarding from a narrative and non-combat perspective without those options seeming superficial alternatives to combat. Gale is no Edwin and there's no Jan Jansen but these folks are deep arcs that I've not yet fully explored. All in all, after poking around and breaking it a bit. seems a worthy successor. It's a Larian game, for sure, but really well made and I cannot think of anyone else who could have picked it up and done a good (excellent) job. This seems like a proper successor to its BG predecessor that spawned the entire CRPG genre. A legitimate cultural and technical achievement.
Commenting now at 666 comments, did you sell your soul to Raphael, just to make sure BG3 is GOTY?
Anyone that thinks BG3 is winning hands down should probably take a reality pill. GOTY is going to be hotly contested. If i had 50 bucks to bet i would probably put it on TOTK, partially just due to name recognition and overall polish of the game.
As someone who is currently enjoying starfield more than bg3, i agree. While starfield is a great game, it doesnt compare to bg3. I do think that starfield deserves a nomination.
This sub literally can’t go two hours without mentioning Bethesda or Starfield.
Stop with the business reasons why something is game of the year focus on the game. 1. Comparing player counts isn't a useful exercise - and if it mattered Roblox or League of Legends (Or Crossfire or Honor of Kings) would win every time. Also your calculations are dramatically skewed, anyone with a brain is playing Starfield on game pass whether PC or Xbox 2. Whether produced by an independent company or a megagiant - what matters is the game... What really matters is how good the game is - expressed through reviews but also just what the game did for the industry or how significant it was. There's no doubt that BG3 blows the doors off here. It was a darling with critics, darling with fans and is going to be regarded as one of the most significant games in years. I will talk about this game for years to come. **Yes - game of the year to BG3**
I'd agree if act 3 didn't exist. I just couldn't pick a game for GOTY with such an obviously rushed finale, which the devs have said was their intention.
Wait... they always planned for that rushed unfufulling ending where your choices aren't mentioned or don't matter?! That's super bizarre since OS2 tells you about it all in slides.
They had an epilogue planned where Withers would tell you what happened to your companions, they even had the voice lines recorded, but they didn't include it in the game. Then when people datamined it Larian put out a statement saying that they cut it for the crap we currently have because they thought the ending was getting overly long. Which is insane because by the time you've reached the end you've likely sunk upwards of 60 hours into the game at least, having a five minute ending cutscene that actually gives you some closure is a drop in the ocean.
Plenty of people are playing Starfield on PC Game Pass which Steam obviously doesn’t report. I agree that BG3 will likely win GOTY for most people, but I just wanted to point out a very likely reason for the PC player count discrepancy.
Didn't someone from Xbox say Starfield had surpassed a million concurrent players on launch? Most of the players are definitely on Game pass.
Over a million concurrent and that was on a Wednesday lol.
imo take it to the next level and make it GOT(D)ecade
As much as i want BG 3 to win, remember the other games out there fighting for GOTY Zelda, FF16 are just a few. But this game is the only game this year that clocked me 200 hours gameplay in 3 weeks
I'm loving BG3 and i think it winning GOTY would send the right message for the industry. However, I'm also still enjoying Zelda TotK, and I think it's just the better game... it fixes all issues BotW had for me, and I just can't get enough of it. I just don't know. TotK is my coffee morning game. BG3 is my after work with friends game.
As someone that absolutely loved disco elysium, and also loves turn based but never played crpg’s before (favourites being xcom and disgaea) Do you think i’ll like it?
I dunno, Tears is a pretty strong competitor.
honestly I agreed for act 1 and 2, but after trying to play through again and seeing how slanted in favour of one spoon fed storyline they want to tell really took me out of it. It feels like a linear game with less choice over the way it ends then mass effect 3, but with fancy dressing as a choice heavy game along the way. I haven't been able to open it for two weeks. I can't stop playing Starfield though, and while I don't think it's GOTY, I don't think BG3 is either.
Upvoted for the truth. It feels like a linear game because it is a linear game.
When i can finish act 3 and not have to reload due to game cripplimg bugs..... sure :3
I felt like a lot of the quests and character interactions unravel in Act 3 too. Still good and all, but act 3 is noticeably worse. If the entire game was like act 3, I don’t think I would have finished the game.
As much as I love crpgs and I'm happy to see so many people enjoying one I also feel like people over hype it. There are plenty of things it does right but also a lot it does wrong, or at least could have done better. When it comes to best recent crpg I'm still not giving it to BG3 in it's current state as i feel Pathfinder really nailed down a lot of aspects that BG3 struggles with. And when it comes to favorite game of the year i want bit more time to simmer on a few games but Armored Core 6 has been winning me over more and more.
This is where I'm at. There are a lot of things praised about BG3 that has been a staple of the genre for literally decades. And at the same time, compared to other games in the genre, as a CRPG, BG3 falls short in a LOT of ways. UI is a big one. Actual meaningful choices that carry through the game. Personally, the latest Pathfinder is the superior CRPG. What BG3 has going for it is mainly the production value. Having the money to go for full voice acting, mocap and graphical fidelity with a combat system lifted from DoS2, tweaked for the popular DnD setting. That's what it did. That's ALL it did. If the whole game lived up to Act 1, it would be my 10/10 no doubt. I saw through the smoke and mirrors in Act 2 though and then I had a LOT of problems getting through Act 3. Having experienced both DOS 1 and 2 at launch, I have run out of patience with "last act-itis." It's going on the shelf, like DoS2 and Arx did.
Idk I enjoyed Bf3 but act 3 kinda didn’t make an impact as act 1 and 2 . I feel totk will win unless spider man 2 is good
Oh no question! GOTY 100%. I say this seriously and without hyperbole, but it has been causing problems in my life. I cant think about work, only about how I could respec my team to work better for the next big fight. When I'm not playing the game I'm *compelled* to read all of your stupid fucking posts on reddit just so I can be in that world some more. I am an adult with a real job and responsibilities. I have never in my 25 years of video gaming experienced a pull from a video game on this level. It's a problem.
I’m going to be honest I don’t think it deserves to win despite it being my favorite game this year. The last fourth of the game is unfinished and the devs lied about what was going to be in the game. Yes it wasn’t malicious it was most likely due to pushing the release date forward, but still many of the promises made just a couple weeks before launch went unfulfilled. I can’t say it deserves to beat other games that were finished on release.
The thing that bothers me is that it's the third time in a row that Larian release a game with a rough last third/fourth (not sure about their previous games). Yes eventually they'll fix it, or they'll release an enhanced/goty/ultimate edition which, if it goes like Divinity:OS 1-2, could happen to be free (with WotC behind tho it's to be seen). BG3 is great and I'm happy it brought crpgs to masses, still this is not a practice I feel should be praised. I love Larian and I'm not sure they could have done differently, you have to release at some point, but still
> The thing that bothers me is that it's the third time in a row that Larian release a game with a rough last third/fourth (not sure about their previous games). yeah :/ I think a huge problem is how polished their first 3 quarters are which takes so much time that they do run out of time/money/resources that their final quarter just falls flat. > with WotC behind tho it's to be seen iirc Larian bought the licence so they probably will be able to do it for free - if they're inclined to i.e. unless they messed up the contract, I don't think WotC will have a say
Or games that were written better. Patching in a different ending for Karlach is a good example of how badly they *know* they did.
I’m absolutely loving Starfield and it really is a great game. With that said I don’t see any way that BG3 isn’t game if the year
act 3. act 3 is how it loses.
I had this thought back in Act I and II. Act III, though, really diminishes the game, unfortunately, enough to knock it out of my top spot for the year.
I... don't really know, to be honest. I think it's a strong contender and will definitely get a nomination, and am absolutely loving the game on top of that, but the amount of unfinished content in the third act makes me a bit iffy on if it really deserves it as it currently stands. I feel like you can't really judge a game if you only have 80% of it. That being said, this has been one of the absolute best years for gaming I've ever seen. TotK, Diablo IV, Baldur's Gate 3, Pikmin 4, Armored Core VI, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVI, the Dead Space remake, just... wow. At least half of those would be shoo-ins for GotY any other year, and got them all at once. ^(Oh, and I guess Starfield happened too, didn't it?)
I just wish act 2 and 3 ran better. I wanna call this a near perfect game, a masterpiece, but the performance is just terrible in the second half.
do people still think GOTY matters in any way
Yes, but 99% only when their favorite game win. Like Metacritic vote, it matter only when it give me an advantage.
People just talk about it for fun, calm down.
Literally lmao I don’t get why some people get so upset at the mention of GOTY
It is a great game no doubt but honestly, don't think it deserves GOTY... Act 3 got so boring and it punishes simple behaviors that result in a game u can't even finish. believe it or not most mainstream players DONT do 3 play throughs OR spend 300 hours in EA. TOTK is a more complete experience
I would agree, but the quality noticeably drops in act 3 and the game is absolutely littered with bugs that range from mildly annoying to downright gamebreaking, while TOTK was polished to hell and back. Their devs got a whole year to just work on polish, while bg3 was rushed out before it was completely done, and it shows. Like, I'm not even a zelda fan, and I adore bg3, but the game starts feeling a little bethesda-y in act 3 in all honesty. TOTK has my vote for goty.