Divinity Original Sin II has almost certainly outsold everything Obsidian has made since New Vegas and the financial rough ride precipitated by Deadfire selling poorly definitely helped push them towards being acquired by Microsoft. Larian have managed to remain independent and continuously make bigger and better games since Divinity: Original Sin. Their consistent profitability makes them an outlier in the modern CRPG scene, a big one. However much like their contemporaries they're probably only one failed title away from needing a corporate bailout. You can lose a *lot* of money as a midsize developer.
I feel like Pillars type games aren't very viable nowadays. The writing is really really dense and I don't think people like real-time and pause combat from the old-school days, I never have. Even Nick mentioned how he doesn't care for that style of combat either in one of the Escapist podcasts/streams on BG3. Divinity OS1 would've bankrupted Larian if it wasn't successful.
You can make like a 20 hour RPG if you don't have the funding or capital, you don't need to make something as big as BG3. You can make a Disco Elysium.
LARIAN GROUP HOLDINGS LIMITED is located at 17A NEW BRIDE STREET, Ireland and is a Private limited company (Ltd.) company. The company began trading on 27 September 2018 and has 4 employees. LARIAN GROUP HOLDINGS LIMITED’s status is Active. The company is registered with the registration number...
ie.globaldatabase.com
Check out the last investor. If accurate they own about 30% of Larian Group’s shares. Pretty significant chunk.
Found from this discussion on the topic -
Just read a report that Tencent owns 30% of Larian Studio now? Haven’t heard any announcment on the matter. Is this recent?
forums.larian.com
Apparently the resorted to equity funding after they nearly went bankrupt.
Tencent owns shares in tons of video game companies.
And here's a fun Polygon article gleefully hurling herself into BG3 discourse
Even before Baldur’s Gate 3, I’ve always F5-ed my way through RPGs — particularly in Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim and narrative-driven ones like Disco Elysium.
www.polygon.com
Personally, the idea of save scumming as part of playing a video game sounds miserable. How is this fun for anybody?!
But if the "right" way to play is to not save scum and accept consequences, why do so many people play it "wrong?" But then conventional gamer wisdom is "there is no wrong way to play, play how you like etc."
I'm having fun with this game I'm not playing lol
I totally accept any decisions unless it's a misclick or it was something I quite didn't understand fully.
Also there are no social restrictions on the rest of the table's time, so if you want to get really tedious by stealing everything not nailed down or investigate pointless corners you can do that. As a result the pacing of the actual game itself can be hurt if you have no self control in that regard. Which leads me to the other point of having too much to poke and pick at. Too many little pointless baubles of bullshit to look at and fuck with mean that trying to be through in an area is annoying but also can lead to burn out in later areas of the game.
Does anybody else do this? Where you start a game being super explorative, or hype focused on trying to do every quest and loot every chest, but then by the mid to late game you're like, "OMG just be over already!?" It's happened to me on a lot of games I've tried to 100% and i fear that over potential to poke at a bunch of nothing can lead to that later in BG3 especially when you're 150 hours deep and ready to see the credits.
There are also come issues with spells especially cantrips that don't let you cast them outside of combat when you should be able to. Things like Mage Hand can only be cast once outside of combat per long rest, when that isn't how cantrips work. So I don't really understand why that's an issue. Mostly though the issues are simply limited to being a video game and unlike D&D IRL where the imagination is the limit, there are only so many things the game can have in them. Luckily those limits are quite wide for being a video game for sure.
I'm exploring every section of the map but not really caring about looting since it's DnD and loot doesn't matter too much. We started our Pathfinder 2E campaign at like level 1 or 2 and I've only switched my weapon ONCE and we're level 17 now and I still have the same armor on since level 1, just added some runes to it. I'm still pretty low level in my DnD 5E campaign, started level 2 and we're level 5 now IIRC, and only got one thing to up my AC a bit so far. Video game RPGs with their loot systems are just adding pointless busy work for really no reason, I played with a mod for Divinity OS2 so I didn't have to partake in the loot system in that game either.
Quick question with magic and concentration. I'm really early still and I have no clue how concentration works (even though I know how it does work in DnD). I tried casting witch bolt which is supposed to last 10 rounds and it hits the first round and it's still active the 2nd round. I'm playing with a controller and when I cursor over the enemy that has witch bolt on him on that 2nd turn, it's says press A to activate witch bolt, which I do but nothing happens (I assume the trigger is maybe at the end of my turn then but no damage is done). Then, I'll go to cast a basic cantrip like ray of frost (that doesn't require or break concentration) and then Gale ends concentration of witch bolt right after his turn as shown in the combat log (and he didn't get hit or anything).
I keep thinking that too but then I count the ways it turns me off:
- turn-based combat
- save-scumming
- early difficulty + huge game = probable mass frustration
So I'm interested in it as a piece of art more than something I actually want to play right now.
If I do ever play it, it'll be when I've kind of run out of games AND TV shows. The former isn't happening till after Thanksgiving probably? and the latter likely sooner
-Few video game RPGs do good turn-based combat. You should think of it more like XCOM style combat (which is basically DnD combat with guns) vs standard RPG turn-based combat (if that is what you're thinking of)
-You really don't need to save scum
-I haven't had any issues with early difficulty (playing on the balanced/default difficulty) and don't really know the ins and outs of the game (like I don't even get how concentration completely works in-game vs DnD and I have 2 full spellcasters in my party) and no party wipes or anything.
