I don't expect every game to be Baldur's Gate 3... but I will expect every game to treat me like Baldur's Gate 3 does. I mean respecting my time, providing the full experience up front, not immediately begging me to open my wallet again 5 minutes after I bought the game and every 5 minutes of gameplay thereafter, and just being made with passion and a goal of entertaining, not a goal of maximum wallets milked per hour.

"People are saying [blank] and it turns out those are four people" Couldn't have hit the nail on the head any more, the amount of news stories I see on my news feed that are like "people are angry about X" you read the article and they show like five tweets of people being mildly miffed.

I haven't finished watching yet but Day9's opinion better be the same as mine or I might have to give him my prime sub to change his mind

Sean, you have not covered Zerg in your Day9 Dailies enough lately.

I've been a game dev for a long time, and game devs LOVE this game. Love to play it, love that it exists, want our games to be this good. That's it.

This is such a general problem that people arent nearly conscious enough of. Like I know some people in a Subset X of Group A who are scared other Group A people hate them because they can find like 5 shitty tweets on all of twitter per month about Subset X of Group A even though that's a tiny tiny fraction and is completely outnumbered by the opposite attitude. Twitter makes it trivial to not only find shitty stuff but to have it shoved in your face due to engagement-fiending algorithms. This gives people a really warped perception of various groups and of twitter's population itself. Obviously all groups have problems but people need to be very aware of a sense of scale when they run into problems. The structural negativity bias in "What kinds of news will get reported and will get paid attention to?" is very related too.

I think the concern was the perceived strength of the pushback which implied big studios didn’t want to learn anything… Especially when focused down to statements like “feature complete” rather than “we patch in endgame later but here is a cosmetics store” they still pushed back as if they knew better and were not interested in feedback

This makes me wonder who was actual complaining about BG3, because every other take I've heard was less about devs worrying about being over worked and more about greedy corporations trying to get away with releasing unfinished overpriced games riddled with mtx which we've seen a lot of lately. Might just be a conspiracy theory I suppose, they're still making plenty of money so why would they complain.

I think the crux of the issue is that while it's understandable some devs are worried about increased crunch, them saying "pls buyers don't have too high expectations it's just not possible" comes across as a defense of the publishers that impose these strict dev cycles in the pursuit of maximizing profit. While it might not be a large number of people having this take, some people being ppl from big studios that have a less than stellar track record does feel a bit telling. It does come across like some are just in damage control mode because they're afraid games like BG3 will ruin their ability to milk their playerbase while providing less and less.

The ironic thing is that Larian pretty much made the Baldur's Gate 3 that Bioware could have been making by now if they didn't sell themselves to EA, which was already known at the time to be the creative death of any studio they took over. I guess Bioware does not like this look in the mirror at their past selves. This used to be them. They where innovating the RPG genre, pushing boundaries, trying new things, finding new ways to tell stories with a true passion for it. Heck, I still would say that the only D&D game ever made that's better than Baldur's Gate 3 is Neverwinter Nights 1. Because it has the toolset and DM client as well. If Larian made a good Neverwinter Nights 3 using 5e rules, no one would ever need Roll20 or other online D&D platforms ever again, it would be obsolete.

Thank you being so level headed. I hate the drama farming "DEVS BAD UPBOATS TO THE LEFT" people are doing and I hate how much it's working on the overall gaming population.

BG3 is a 10/10 game and my 1st playthrough was 111 hours and I loved every minute of it. in like 4 days, Sea of Stars is going to come out. It has the tiniest fraction of ambition and production quality and was made by like 20 people.... yet I'm still going to love the hell out of it.

Once again, Day9 having sane, rational takes. How are you so consistent?

I am a game dev. I work in a studio with a couple hundred game devs. I can confirm no one here is upset by BG3. It's pretty universally admired.

I actually think there have been a lot of absolutely stellar games lately. I just think the ratio of stellar games to the total amount of games is lesser than it used to be, simply because of how accessible game dev has become. I would also say that AAA has become kinda stagnant in the last 10 years so you see less great AAA games than we used to. A lot of the studios who would make AAA now make micro-buy crap (thanks EA, Activision/Blizzard/King, Microsoft and Ubisoft :D). Some incredible games in the last two years off the top of my head (of all sorts of genres): - Elden Ring - Signalis - Street Fighter 6 - Vampire Survivors - Dredge - Neon White - Inscryption - Hi-Fi Rush - Tunic - I can't believe Disco Elysium is 4 years old now but I was also going to include that.

5:30 the cat is staring directly into our souls

Hi Sean, I always love a good rant, and I hope you're having a great day!

I feel like the only expectations I have for a game is for it to work and not be broken at launch. To many games trying to be Rainbow Six Siege where they sell a broken game hoping to fix it. I feel publishers need to take more time with games, ethically make games, and complete games

Really good take Sean. Appreciate your thoughts on this topic 👍

Where can I get that shirt!?

I think there is several things at play here, first is that big corporations seem to be more focused than ever on quarter growth, time to first dollar and recurring profits. Second as the game industry has grown as a whole a lot of game developers are now being run by or as big corporations, and that shows in their games. All companies want to make money, but when that is all they care about it really shows. Do they make games, and that’s how they make money, or do they want to make money so they make games? Baldurs gate 3 runs opposite all the current trends in gaming. Like all of them. Not games as service. Classic isometric RPG. Developed for PC first. Massive content but no padding. I agree that the “dev outrage” is overblown but in many ways BG3 has really reminded me what new games used to be 15 years ago when it felt like studios wanted to make great games, not make great financial quarters.

DayJ being the level-headed voice of reason, as always. Thanks my man. This discussion has been so utterly nonsensical. That IGN video poisoned the well on this discussion and many "big name" youtubers only made it worse

We aren't rotten or spoiled, our expectations never changed, we just enjoy games that are complete from the beginning and you can just tell Baldur's Gate 3 is made with passion.

Man... that Leonardo da Vinci did such a good job he ruined art for all time! How dare he!?

What do you think about the new Cyclone changes in SC2?

"Because There Will Be Blood exists, it creates unreasonable expectations to future filmmakers." "Because Bohemian Rhapsody exists, it creates unreasonable expectations to future songwriters." "Because Breaking Bad exists, it creates unreasonable expectations to future television shows." Baldur's Gate 3 creates a new high bar, that much is true. And even then, it creates a high bar in relation to the RPG genre. But it doesn't create "unrealistic expectations" at all. That's the kind of hyperbole that's easy to spout and difficult to reason with.

7:51 completely agree. That's the reason why 7/10 games kinda bacame the new 5/10 games for me, mechanically and gameplay wise they are good games, they just fuck it up by lacking content, that content being to repetitive and thus overstaying it's welcome or they want more of your money forr shit that feels like it was sliced out of the original game.

Hi day 9 , great analysis could you list 10/10 game that you would recommand.

3:47 cat Also I think the difference between bg3 and other games is that larian has an executive and a development team that are very aligned on the goals of the game. This is something that a lot of studios don't have, and their games end up as a bag of compromises between the management and the developers.

anyone notice how well the music timed up with the rant?

This is why i have been slowly developing an automatic response to the statement "people are saying X" into "what people" by knowing the situations behind a response we are more likely to understand what is ment.

also so much lifted hats for the fact that they have been working at patching the miniscule issues people have like having a week long company paid trip to the salt mines. They respect their customers and that is rare today.

Sean, you can't be so reasonable... Get angry! Feed the flames, post nonsense! Logical argument? Ain't nobody got time for that.

Considering the distribution cost of games is near Zero. Publishers need to to be doing more than just squeezing devs.

4:52 The cat's expression says "actually it was all day9 viewers and he's just coping really hard now".

I don't think the problem is down the chain. Its the designers and corporate that are trying to figure out how to make everyone spend money in the shop instead of enjoy the game.

The problem isn't even that some dev's points may be accurate, the problem is why are they making that argument at all after a game comes out to critical acclaim? Like, just don't say anything... people have way higher expectations now because random developers decided a successful game coming out was the perfect time to say "hey, don't expect this of us pretty pleaseeee". Just congratulate the game, and do your best to make the best game you can.

Diablo 4 was in production for as long as Baldurs Gate 3... Had a team of 9000 people... had a larger budget... Is a full priced AAA game... And also includes a Battlepass, Microtransactions, the devs are actively nerfing the fun out of the next patches, the story is bland, and post story there is no content... All this after making over a billion dollars off the garbage that was Immortal Developers are doing fine without Larian ruining their own reputations and image...

Imagine being a tripple A dev who essentially admits that shareholder run business is bad business, and then has the gal to make it our problem and not their problem. No one cares that you decided to work for a soulless mega corporation. If you dont like it, organize and create some standards.

I think you have to separate production value and and quality of gameplay or writing. You can't do superexpensive things like fully voiced characters without money, but you can still deliver a great game. As an example in the CRPG genre, personally i like Owlcat's "Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous" even better than i do BG3. Being a Kickstarter project it has a more spartan presentation but it shows what focusing resources to the important parts of a game can achieve.

man is there anyone else like day9? someone who has extremely succinct and important videos like this that he just makes off the cuff while streaming? I dunno day9 is such a treasure

why we feel the internet is full of haters is because haters shout and the rest just live our life in silence so all you hear is shouting all the time.

Sean's opinion on this makes me feel so comforted that his game studio will be prosperous.

This is just making me more excited to finally play that game, it’s _that_ good?! I loved the first one, thought it was kinda niche, surprised this one is making such waves, I guess DnD in general is a lot more popular now as well, that helps. It’s ruffling someone’s feathers that’s for sure.

I don't expect games to all be BG3 level of quality. I do expect more games, however, that let me buy the game and enjoy it without forcing me to open my wallet to get the "full" experience. All games used to be this way. Larian proved that it can still be done.

Manufactured drama, it is what the internet is best for.

I agree broadly with his point that it's not right to say or imply all devs feel this way about BG3 or really any issue. I also agree it's very easy to give too much credence to what "people are saying" on twitter or otherwise. But it does seem to me like its a greater share of devs who have this "BG3 sets the bar too high" concern than just a tiny minority. All game devs is already a smaller population than all Day9TV Viewers. But even smaller still is all game devs of at least modest notoriety (which is to say most game developers are faceless and nameless to all but their team). So within the population of known game devs who had this concern it appears to me to be an appreciable percentage of that population. Certainly enough to warrant the discussion, though probably not enough to justify the hyperbole of implying a monolithic viewpoint within the industry.

I'm just here to see if Funday Monday is back

I get it, BG3 is a good game. But it suffers from the problems that literally every other game suffers from. It was in early access for 3-4 fuckin years. "Released in a complete state", uh, no, sorry, when you sell the product that's the release. If it was a beta, free demo, stress test, sure, but no, you bought the game 3 years ago, and now you can play it all. Future DLC not withstanding. There are countless bugs. My Shadowheart's hot bar was broken from level 4 until the end of the game. When playing with my buddy half the time one of us didn't see the cutscenes or conversations or we didn't have conversation options. We even tested some of them, I would have 6 options on my screen to choose, but he initiated the conversation and had only "1. Continue". I reloaded the conversation when I was alone, I used his character to initiate the same conversation and it had all 6 options. Same character, same convo, same party members. The conversations don't feel natural at all. Laezel hated me, but after 1 event in game she had "urges to sate." A normal conversation with gale turned out to be what I imagine a hot girl complimenting a twitch chatter feets like, bro calm down I just said you had nice shoes, I don't want to bang you. It's a game, programmed like every other game. If x = y then z. It's not even the first of it's kind. Divinity, Dragon Age, Mass Effect. People just need to calm their tits. I like the game, but it's by no means the best game ever. I just prefer to shame the games/companies that fail to meet basic expectations, rather than to cream myself over a game/company that meets them. Remember, this is what games used to be. It's not Larions fault that gamers collectively have just accepted that games have predatory monetization with bare bones content. Those companies know you'll still buy their slop, because you're addicted. But Larion are also not the heroes for giving us what we expected from a game 5, 10, 15, years ago.

4:20 CAT

It started with a tweet from an indie dev, and it's fair to not expect BG3 from an indie studio... and then a few "big name devs" chimed in, but I feel they were just confirming that indies won't make a new BG3... and a misunderstanding happened thinking "look at all the AAAs saying they can't do this"... That's my hot take at least...

You tangent about majority versus vocal minority is very good and something people should be aware of for their own mental health!

My boss calls it the silent army. People love to say something like "well, if this person doesn't like it, then how many more?" More often than not, it's maybe a handfull more, and almost never the thousands they're envisioning

Looking at the discourse amongst gamers on social media, they're not saying "every game now needs to be as big & as complex as BG3". What they are doing is holding up BG3 & saying "see, this is the kind of game you get if you give your developers the space to make a game they're truly passionate about, rather than making games to satisfy some publisher mandate that is driven by trend chasing and maximizing shareholder value". More story, fewer Skinner Boxes. Not a crazy demand. Also, most gamers I speak to are well aware that ite publishers & investors, not developers, who are the biggest source of the current malaise in AAA gaming.

Larian has the advantage of being a privately held company that can actually take the time to put out a good game. It's not out until it's ready. Blizzard used to do this before Activision bought them out. Make money by making a quality product that sells. Once publicly traded it's about cranking out trash annually like Call of Duty or Madden, or in your face monetization on every screen. I don't blame the workers, I blame the C-suite.

I have been watching Day9 at least on and off since Chill vs. Combat-Ex and I can confidently say there's only one thing he's ever said that made me upset. It was when he said we can't be sure about dinosaurs lololol.

Day9 has been popping up in my feed a lot recently(probably because of BG3). I haven't heard a take from him that hasn't been 100% spot on yet.

I used to think it was always petty to call devs "lazy." Ever since I started doing my own development, I've gotten comfortable and even confident in calling devs lazy.

6:45 There's a huge disconnect between players and devs if this is indeed the "devs" true quarrel with the state of BG3 and player expectation, because I haven't seen or heard anyone say that every game should be like BG3 in scope but it's rather the feature complete mindset from Larian and their unwavering opposition to gameplay compromises and boring loops to accommodate microtransactions on games that are releasing in blatant alpha stage as if it were "complete", I don't think players want huge scope and content out of every game, they want feature complete games at a time where it seems AAA gaming with the resources they have should be generating revolutionary games, not the half baked milking cash cows they are releasing nowadays.

Accurate. Also, cool shirt.

I mean if every AAA release decides to spend 3 years in early access then yeah it will ruin other games lmao

Immortals of aveum is an great example in this month, nothing special no meaning for it to be released but asks 70 euro compared to bg3 with it being 60 and having x10 the content. Also 2023 has been banger year for gaming

no because of the following issues: - Bugs and performance issues - black screens - blue screens - Graphical issues - T-posing, duplicate npcs, UI disappearance, loss of world collision, graphical world boxes vanishing loss of control of character , stuck in dialogue. - music is largely the same track but repeated in different tempos. Game play issues: - max lvl only half way through the game so no progression if 100% play through, that's around 70 hours of game play where you literally stop any type of rpging outside of dialogue. - often quest logic fails and choices are seemingly ignored or mismatched (especially act3) - companion dialogue-event miss-match -a lot of skills and effects are useless , such as bleeds and dots in general, Most combat is often over within 1-2 turns. -Repetitive maps and game play set pieces which involve repeated versions of: - prison breaks - A decision to sacrifice 1 thing in order to save another thing (all companion quests are pretty much the same and have the same endings with different bits of flavour text.) - Almost all events devolve into kill everything

Good games with essentially full experiences are what they are even with bugs. Skyrim, The Souls games, and many more popular titles have been giving us that for years, and they were all actually MORE complete than BG3. BG3 didnt do anything other than be yet another good example of what good games used to look like in an era where bar for big titles is very very low.

Just had a sudden realisation. Take how good other people are saying it is and then understand that it’s even better than that. I’m serious! It’s such a personal game, it’s so personal to the gamer. It’s the essence of role playing. It’s fantastic. You will like it more than me, and I will like it more than you. Because it’s our own game, yours and mine. Everyone plays and gets their own totally unique game, every time.

Ever since the internet allowed games to be "patches", quality of games at release has been declining. Back when you needed to blow in an NES cartrige to make it work, the game was "feature complete", polished and awesome. Now, games come out half complete, full of big patches to fix bugs and they sell us expansions that only feel like they are finishing the actual end game that should have been sold with the game.

thank you! You just summarized the social media effect.

"That was not the end of his rant."

Remember when lord of the rings came out and hollywood was like; we can never uphold to these standards, this is bad for the movie industry, now every movie has to be a 12h trilogy worthy of 30 oscars...

This video won’t stop me because I can’t do math!

He has a lot of good points that apply generally. I agree with him about how easy it is to overgeneralize a small sample that may or may not be representative. On the other hand, I think I disagree with him and believe there is a problem of developers either becoming out of touch or, at worst, contemptuous of their audience. Experiential, I see this in my position in the tech industry. It is super easy to fall into the terrible mindset of thinking your users are stupid. That mindset ultimately ends up manifesting in not meeting the needs of the people that pay your bills over the long term.

Publishers know that high-quality, single player focused games are successful. Elden Ring, Zelda, Witcher 3 and many more examples of this exist. However, publishers also know that one can have just as financially successful games with way less effort - Call of Duty, FIFA, to an extent the latest Pokemon games... Nobody is "afraid" of Baldurs Gate 3. Developers applaud its success and wish they'd be working for a company that allowed them to make a project like this. Publishers will ignore it since a huge project like this is way too much of an investment. What I really like though is, that we as players got the chance to make ourselves heard what we want in games by supporting BG3. However, as long as ppl spend money on Diablo 4 Horse Armor and Battlepass, I fear the industry is not going to change.

Really cute cat you got!

Sean, I did an interview with roughly 30 developers, who play BG3, and not a single one is upset or how IGN would put it "in panic". All of them love the game, all of them started analysing why it works so well, all of them encountered bugs and inconsistencies, all of them encountered parts, they think could be done better. That's our daily job, we do that for a living. Just another Tuesday.

I enjoyed Pathfinder Kingmaker more tbh. So no, it didn't ruin other games. However... if BG3 being a really nice and polished game is something that one should not expect from other games I don't know what they want us to expect. 60$ for a buggy mess and labeling it AAA? I don't think so. I get that the industry is different, and that their priorities aren't the same, but a finished game is not too much to ask for, nor is fixing that same buggy mess instead of powerpushing close to a hundred cosmetics for 9,99$ in the time that it could have been fixed. I remember an Apex Legends pro conveying a dev saying: "Fixing servers doesn't make money". I guess letting your game die does? After thinking about it a bit I guess I'd have to agree with your take. "The quality of games is going up, but the avg quality is getting lower". When you think about the fact that: Warcraft 3, GTA 3, Neverwinter Nights, HOMM4, THPS 3, Star Wars: Jedi Outcast II, Morrowind, Age of Mythology, Medieval TW, Mafia, UT 2003, and at least 10 more titles most gamers who were gaming then heard of were ALL released in the same year, and every single one of them I would replay to death, and look at what's out now, what more do you need?

Indie dev says yeah there no way we can have this level of quality and then the tripple stooge chime in like they on the same level as the indie dev.

IMO you can just feel if developers put not only work but love into a game. I don't care how big or complex a game is. A "little" game can be a lot of fun too. The Problem is that most games in the same "league" as BG3 don't seem to put in as much effort.

I'd also point out that buying the rights to make a Baldurs Gate game was no guarantee of success for Larian. In the 6 years the game was in development, the interest in D&D might have waned (& boy did WotC seem determined to create that loss of support this year). Not that having a strong IP is a guarantee of success. The recent Dark Alliance game bombed hard, despite havjng the Baldur's Gate name...because it was trash. Honour Amongst Thieves, despite being a great film carrying the D&D title, barely broke even due to the behaviour of WotC & the film being wedged in between two other blockbuster films. Gollum also had the LotR brand behind it & it died off in less than a month and caused the death of the studio.

As a more outside observer, I find the whole discussion around BG3 kinda strange. We finally have a game that is surpassing everyone's (already high) expectations, delivering on a franchise that was already popular and doing it with enough polish and detail that is unheard of in the current videogame climate. For its succes, it is getting attacked by various media outlets and haters. It is criticized for it's PG nature, it is criticized for being too good (I mean ... what?) or the worst of all: It is being criticized for not screwing over the players by actually having a normal buy to play method. How strange are the times that people even bring up this kind of nonsense. The game does exactly what it's supposed to do and apart from (what I have heard, but not experienced myself) a bit weaker endgame in act 3, does not have many flaws. Gamers are fed up with all the 'games as live-service' ridiculousness, the 'always-online' and the 'microtransactions' and 'in-game store' that try to milk us for as much money as possible. We are fed up with being fed half finished games that we have to pay full price for, to do a beta test with numerous fixes and patches coming later. (sometimes even as DLC) It would greatly help if players would stop throwing away their money at those garbage projects, time wasters and lootbox filled crazyness and only buy stuff that is actually worth something. At some point, the only things that would be made is good games like BG3 and the industry will be all the better for it.

Looking forward to Rogue Trader

It's probably true that most other devs wouldn't be able to accomplish something on the scale of BG3, but it isn't because other game devs are lazy or whatever. If you're a publicly traded company, you gotta make shareholders happy, and that usually means a bias towards short term thinking and pushing to get things done as quickly as possible. Larian isn't publicly traded, is a pretty big studio, and the owner is invested in the success of their games as works of art and not exclusively as a way to make money (though you do still have to make money). Much more oppurtunity to slow down, add polish, and avoid crunch.

Thank you

Most excellent take.

Well. The original review where this was said was taken out of context.

I also think that when people say 'expectations' for games. You also have to realize, valerian literally makes there bread and butter with turn by turn rpgs, they are very specialized in what they do. And thats good. Great even. A valerian studios RPG is significantly different in play and feel to a Bethesda one. And further more there is all the other games out there that arent RPGs at all, or its a side part of the main game which is primarily a shooter for example. So 'Developers' (which is incredibly broad) being upset about the bar being set high are a little overblown about their concern I think. If you arent making RPGs I dont think you have a whole lot to worry about. But if you are say EA management that chocks your game full up with micro transactions and side stores and other additional paid content, and use that to make your money and you are concerned about Valarian, you should be, because they made a better product then you could, and didnt have to play dirty to make their money. Get good EA.

While in general you are on the money here Sean, the Baldur's Gate 3 case is a little different. Sure there have been some devs saying this, the biggest culprits have been the major players in the gaming industry. The companies that release a lot of games and they are whining because their games can't touch what BG3 is offering and are upset because this will likely hit their sales numbers... And this is why this has become a thing. Major publishers are drumming it up. They all want their own BG3, but done with a 2 man team and 50$ budget in 6 months...

I don't think developers are 'worried' anymore after the thousands of bugs it has. It is nothing special and had a terrible launch.

Sean, in reflecting on the potential influence of a high-quality game like Baldur's Gate 3 on the industry and gamers' expectations, wouldn't you agree that the artistic pursuits often set new benchmarks and thereby push the boundaries of what is considered the norm? And if so, doesn't developers have a responsibility to recognize these shifts and innovate accordingly, while also acknowledging the varied and sometimes impossible expectations of their audience? How can one balance the pursuit of artistic excellence with the reality of business demands and audience expectations in such a dynamic industry?

I don't have a bad memory so i remember a lot of amazing games from the past, my expectations have always been high for what i consider a good game and balder's gate didn't effect that one little bit.

Good rant, I don't watch Day9 or anyone actually game. But I will always tune in to things like this because Day9 has a lot of good insight as to how things should be perceived.

Honestly the inciting incident felt like a shot from the wrong side of the ship. most of those things that dev said are valid, but also frankly, it's none of our concern. In an alternate timeline the dev could've gone "I really hope execs aren't going start demanding this from all their studios" and the general public would've went "yeah that wouldn't end well I can see where that goes wrong". But the shot went towards the fanbase who rightfully called it a bruh moment.

It would be like me saying the Lord of the Rings trilogy ruined all other movies and expectations of movies for the next 20 years after.

I think that twitter is a pretty terrible platform for pepper detailed discussion in general. And if the intended audience for a tweet is the management team of your own company then that is double true

Not only was it probably only a handful of actual developers, but people are probably misrepresenting what they are saying.

I feel like the only ones who are truly upset are big corp executives whose leverage to output bullshit content got reduced. I feel like this sort of thing should give hope to all indie devs, at least it does for me.

I think there's a conflation between saying "game devs" when you're talking about "game dev companies". I think people hear these complaints, and think of them coming from triple A game studios who are shoving out unfun games with terrible monetization, and they are now freaking out because Larian just pushed out one of the best games ever made with not a micro transaction in sight.

Not all games are held to the same expectations. But there are games being made with bigger teams, time spans and budgets than Baldur's Gate 3, that have no excuses for not making good games, yet they shill out crap every year. Why the hell wasn't diablo 4 a good game, it had the legacy, over 20x the developers and blizzard can front a budget as big as the 100mil of larion, so why was that game crap in comparison?

I mean they released an unfinished game but in comparison to bf2042 for example they released it as early acces or whatever so players knew they were buying a game that would be finished some time later, if i however buy a game (bf2042) at launch i would expect the game to work and be finished and not be in a somewhat playable state only after 2 years or whatever Most companies dont respect the consumer and lately it shows how little they care. cdproject red, ea and blizzard are all guilty of predatory marketing and a game like baldurs gate which has something to offer stands out (gameplay put aside) massively because they communicate clearly in what state the gamr is and when to expect a full release while also keeping their promises

I expect every AAA game to be at minimum as good as BG3. Granted, I do not play AAA games because they are shite, although a few outliers exists. As for titles created by gamers I do not require much. For RPGs the graphics are not important and as long as the style is good or easily comprehendable its fine, but I still require a well polished RPG system. For all other genres I just care about how entertaining it is versus pricepoint. But yes, in order for me to buy an AAA rpg it must be praised by a lot of completed game reviewers as a massive and transformative product and be guaranteed to be without microtransactions, except later DLCs if they are clearly made after the original game. That way I dont have to waste my time and money buying AAA shite.

I agree 100%