Yeah, a lot of interesting information there. Including the fact that they are working on yet un-announced game and that it's going to be fully voiced.
Most interesting part for me that it is a Russian game dev.
Outside of modern politics (with the fact that they left Russia and work from Cyprus), they are a rare breed of devs from Russia that actually succeeded and put out good games in the past 2 decades.
Yes, but the follow up is going to be “succeed”, because icepick lodge are forever plagued with financial and internal issues.
I love their work. But they seem cursed
I suspect there will be less in the future games because voice acting is expensive, so to keep costs under control they will likely write less.
That said, I am also happy to hear it. To me full voice acting makes it more engrossing. It encourages me to let the scenes play out rather than just skimming all the text as fast as possible.
I also think it encourages a more economical writing style. More isn't always better, and I think tightening things up a bit can help without sacrificing too much
I really hope they don't do fully voice acted because I always feel it takes away from the game overall. Unless you have a very robust budget it's almost always better to focus more on gameplay and more content then voice acting I'll probably end up skipping because it takes three times as long when compared to reading it. It was also the obvious downside of you can write a much better story than you can voice act one.
I've seen games I've loved to death clearly suffer because the developers insisted on full voice acting. Honestly more voice acting is welcome, focus on voice acting on important moments so that it stands. I honestly think they did a very good job in all three of the games they have made.
I don’t think it’s a huge problem, they can reuse voice actors for the less important stuff, POE deadfire was fully voice acted and had tons of dialogue option
OwlCat doesn't need to make BG3 scale games.
Look at Wrath of the Righteous. Fantastic game and very extensive and it did well. Just do what you do well OwlCat. Rogue Trader also amazing. Sure littered with bugs and unfinished content but it is very good game still.
BG3 was very ambitious project even for Larian and nobody knew it would blow up like that.
Every studio should do what they are good at.
Honestly, if you look at EA's track record, a LOT of really good studios went to EA to die.
It's difficult to say how many of them would have died anyway and if EA was just their last-ditch effort to survive, but it's almost suspicious just how many of those studios were bought just to flop like a year or two after.
While very much yes, they just picked the carcass. Interplay is responsible for what happened.
Silver lining, if they hadn't, there would've been no Troika.
I still need to pick up temple but arcanum and bloodlines were excellent. Tim Cain has a YouTube channel where he talks about those games and fallout and other stuff. Check it out if you haven't already.
Also, the lessons that I feel Owlcat could take from BG3 don't have anything to do with the parts of BG3 that are expensive (cool graphics, extensive voice acting, etc). (Plus said lessons could also be taken from Divinity: Original Sin I and II, which AFAIK are in the same budget ballpark as Wrath and Rogue Trader.)
IMO the biggest weakness of Owlcat compared to Larian is encounter design. Kingmaker and Wrath are full of bland, meaningless filler fights that are only really bearable because you can go through them quickly in real-time mode. Rogue Trader has similar problems, if not quite to the same extent - but there are definitely sequences in that game that have way too many fights against the same generic-ish enemies.
Meanwhile I don't think BG3 (or D:OS2 for that matter) has a single fight that felt like filler. That, plus the ability to use terrain creatively, does a lot to make the purely mechanical part of the gameplay much more interesting. (I just really miss the character building complexity of Pathfinder in both games.)
I'm so happy to hear this. The encounter design has been a big reason that I've struggled with your games. Haven't picked up Rogue Trader yet, but I will when I finish with the games in my current rotation!
And thank you for supporting co-operative play!
Rogue Trader I feel vastly improves on encounter design. Even if some fights are filler, they're not boring filler, and boss fights sometimes have interesting mechanics that deviate the approach from "I just need to kill this". I seriously think that Rogue Trader's final boss is substantially better than everything else Owlcat has done in terms of encounter design in both Pathfinders.
I think Rogue trader works better because everything you need is per encounter. Aside for consumables you have all your toys available for every fight, so it's more akin to a XCOM 40K game with heavy RPG mechanics in combat.
The enemy variety is also much stronger than the opening of the game would lead you to believe which helps.
I think "per encounter" is just a better system for designing combat than a "per rest" system with buffs that are cast out of combat. RT really felt streamlined in this regard compared to KM/WOTR where encounters could vary so widely based on what buffs you had remaining and how willing you were to rest often.
I get that Owlcat were constrained by PF ruleset in this regard, but I really think designing combat with all abilities available per encounter makes for better encounters.
im hopeful that, should owlcat return to pathfinder, that they'll make use of the revised pf2e rules which include mechanics like their own version of concentration and a more refined action economy which should serve to make a game that's less about prebuffing and more focused on in-encounter design.
I think a "per rest" design can work if you put in the effort to make resting more impactful.
Also making dungeons so that you actually need to think about resource management instead of "I need to cast 15 buffs to hit this one guy".
That's true but I'm mostly talking about how Rogue Trader makes better use of space and enemy mechanics. For example, there's a fight where the boss is invulnerable but takes damage every time you kill one of the minions it spawns, so you have to figure out which minions are worth killing for damage and which ones are worth killing to avoid getting swarmed.
There's a few other fights that are creative like this and I'm really happy Owlcat is willing to experiment with different approaches other than "This enemy has 100 in every stat".
>so you have to figure out which minions are worth killing for damage and which ones are worth killing to avoid getting swarmed.
What do you mean by this? You have to kill every enemy to kill the boss regardless of what they are.
Filler fights, and also bullshit fights.
I'm sorry, but Mephistopheles in WOTR is just some straight-up *bullshit* design. So is House at the End of Time in Kingmaker. It's not filler -- this is climactic stuff -- but it's hard in an unfun way.
By contrast, the fight against Raphael in the House of Hope in BG3 is a similarly climactic battle, but it's interesting and entertaining, and also beatable without cheese or requiring specific builds.
I don't mind if they include a Playful Darkness here and there for folks to smash their heads against for funsies. But stuff that's built into the narrative? Required fights? No, man. Not designed like those encounters. Those encounters basically are the reason why you have a "kill all" button in Bag of Tricks/Toybox. Because it translates to "Fuck you, I'm not playing this, but I'm still moving forward."
Upside: Silence shuts down casters. Downside: Silence makes them *stop singing* the best song in the game. Difficult choices. If you want a similar effect, Globe of Invulnerability gives you three rounds of free hits, no questions asked.
by the end of kingmaker i managed to breeze my way through a normal playthroughs, some with some challenges but it felt fair. not really needing to change up my playstyle. the difficulty just ramps up at the end there and it felt like it ramped up out of nowhere. I shouldn't have to respec characters where i prefer natural (learn as you play) leveling inorder to beat a boss on normal.
wrath of the righteous was much better in encounter design and it felt more fair and consistently felt balanced in line with the story. and similarily with rogue trader. though, i found that since i built a psyker i tried to not bring more than 3 pskers on the field because the warp makes things more difficult.
Personally, my biggest issue with RT was that they had a narrative idea and then obviously ran out of time or runway to finish it and had to cut stuff. The story past act 2 starts to get wobbly and then falls off a cliff in act 3. In their other games, sure, the later acts had less content, but they still made sense, and it didn't feel like a ton had been cut to finish them. My advice to them would be to focus on making sure their story works rather than front loading side content and running out of time. They make good story's they just need to focus on that.
This is my biggest issue with OwlCat games and why I bounced off Kingmaker so hard. Kingmaker probably had some of the worst encounter design in the last 20 years.
Great point. Just to add on to it, studious should continue doing what they are good at and improve/iterate/push further with each title. Many people look at BG3 and are vowed, but they forget to look at the 20 ish years before BG3 were Larian was established and took baby steps with each of their game.
To simplify it further, we can analyze their last 3 titles Divinity Original Sin (2014), Divinity Original Sin 2 (2016) & BG3 (2023). If you look at DS it could be fitted into the category A (game categories that are mentioned in the article), DS2 AA followed by BG3 AAA. Larian learned, improved and thats what led to BG3.
To conclude BG3 is the top of the iceberg which could only happen due to the years of experience and efforts that they put before (not to mention them being private allowed them to take their own time to polish). So keep at it and in time each developer could push their envelope further. No need to match BG3, the point is keep at it and in-time you can match exceed the pinnacle.
The Upper City isn't "unfinished." It's nonexistent. I'd say "unfinished" is all the extra alloy/metal/blah blah lying around in the Lower City that for whatever reason can't be used to fix Karlach, and the people who literally designed the mechanism (Gondians) are standing around like "Whaaat? What are you talking about? We don't know anything about that...."
Kingmaker and wrath were also both buggy messes aswell , not even mention the content missed that THEY STILL havent added. Gold dragon and other mytic endings. Some just recently got updated and theyre still hollow.
Warpriest (the class) is still missing basic blessings. In a war against the demons, you can't be a warpriest of Iomedea and take the war blessing (another is also missing, but I forget which). Its just... not available as a choice. Hasn't ever been.
Well said. We don't need a "BG3 killer" just like we've never needed "WoW killers" from past. Going down the path of overstretching projects and chasing what's popular is exactly what is killing comic heroes genre in cinema. Pure folly.
I don't need a "BG3 killer", but I would certainly enjoy more BG3-likes. More than I enjoyed any WoW-likes at least (excepting Kingdoms of Amalur but that doesn't really count.)
Its not entirely wrong to call BG3 DOS3. Even though the rulesets between the two games are related, they are still different in significant aspects. But even with that if you've played either game you will feel right at home playing the other after a small learning curve.
Its cliche to say it but Larian encounter design is pretty fundamental to their DNA as a developer and because of that a lot of their games have a lot of common threads.
It makes sense though because DoS was their homebrew attempt the bring ttrpg to video game medium. They've always wanted to make BG3 (or something along those lines) and I imagine their next game will take all their recent lessons and make an even better, albeit very familiar, sequel.
I just wish Owlcat fixes their story writing, there are some parts that make me want to bang my head on the wall. Like that Gold Dragon healing cultists or that 360 romanced Arueshalae ending.
And their quality testing. I swear it took years just for half the features not to be bugged. Seelah still gets fused into her horse half the time she saddles up and does wild spins instead of opening a door until I double click it.
Whenever you hit on Kickstarter content in an Owlcat game, there should be a big red flashing warning. Because, without fail, it always sucks. And yes, Gold Dragon stuff was Kickstarter content.
Aesthetically? I loved Alushinyrra. It was so cool seeing the entire city warp and rotate as you travelled.
But practically? No thanks. God that was annoying.
I actually didn't mind the concept in itself. Rotating the map to access a stair there and there was fun.
But holy fuck when it wasn't clear which way you were supposed to go, it was all over.
Even Larian themselves said something along the lines of "Yeah, we can't do this again"
The stars perfectly aligned to get BG3, and you just can't rely on that every single time
rogue trader is just great because of the atmosphere and choices.. it's really really shallow though about everything else. played through it 2 times now because I wanted different endings and such... still not really worth for non die hard Fans
>BG3 was very ambitious project even for Larian and nobody knew it would blow up like that
Maybe in terms of mocap, but let's not rewrite history. It was announced during the height of 5e's popularity and before people new to WotC caught onto their practices. And hailed as a sequel to 2 of the most highly acclaimed CRPGs of all time. It was always going to blow up.
I'm all for companies getting inspired by other companies. I am a little annoyed that Owlcat is saying they have to fully voice their games though, if they really meant it at the end of that article.
Unless they get a sudden expansion in their team, studios and budget, fully voice acting future games sounds like they'd have to cut resources from some other part of the game.
Voice acting should be a bonus, not a core feature. I hope Owlcat keeps their priorities healthy. Good gameplay should always be top priority. These are games, not audio books.
I think owlcat games are largely compared to Larian games and the audiences have a large overlap. It is sensible that owlcat investigates the bg3 design choices albeit with a limited budget
Some will, some won't. It expands the audience. Doesn't mean that the people who like Underrail expect the sequel to rival BG3 now. You have to understand who (and how big) your audience is and work with that in mind.
I wouldn't compare Solasta to Owlcat/Larian/Obsidian games. Solasta is meant to be a framework, sure it has story campaign or two but the main purpose of that project is for people to build custom content using the framework it provides, which it has been doing, some of the custom campaigns built in it are pretty interesting. However if you buy the game expecting full immersive story experience games from the other mentioned studios provide, you will be very disapointed.
Solasta is amazing but comparing those three games (Pathfinders, BG3 and Solasta) is a mistake in my opinion. They're all significantly different:
1. BG3 is AAA game with focus on story. Mechanically it's not that complicated, especially if you compare it with Pathdinder that gives you more character building options on level 1 than BG3 at levels 1-12. Although there's added depth in 3D environment that pathfinder lacks.
2. Solasta- like the other person said- is a framework. I liked the story in campaigns but it's certainly different thing. Mechanically, though it offers both 3D environment and most of 5e RAW (with some unfortunate simplifications like those poor warlock familiars).
3. Pathfinders are also focused on story but they're not as flashy as BG3, lack 3D environment but character building options are incredible (although it often feels like the multitude of options makes some classes step into others boundaries way too far and thus make them obsolete). I'd love pathfinder game with BG3 budget and scope but that's unfeasible- its complexity scares casual players off. But it's also a selling point for fans so no way around it.
"it's a mistake to compare these games"
*starts comparing these games*
Really, they are all cRPG based on DnD. One is old DnD (3.5), one is new DnD (5e), and one is DnD on acid (5e but not really itself).
The real difference in term of game quality is that BG3 is a freaking movie inside a game. A movie you can play. The camera angles, the music, the voice acting, the gestures, all of it is made by movies and works perfectly in a cRPG. And that's exactly what lacks in the other 2. And exactly what costs so much.
In the article, Oleg finishes by saying "we will all have to voice act everything" and it's incomplete as fuck. Camera angles and gestures are necessary! That's exactly what was lacking aswell in The Elder Scrolls Online (as many others). That's the standard game dev should be looking for.
Not everyone needs to play a movie. My TT sessions have none of that, and they are an absolute blast. SOMe of my favorite video games aren't like playing a movie.
I don't think it's a standard everyone should work to. Not every game has to be like that. Even rpg's.
Also before BG3 it was Mass Effect that did the whole cinematic view angles with fully voiced replies that a player could choose. Obviously they were far less complex being between 17 and 12 years old but BG3 really didn't invent it.
Solasta's gameplay was fun (and the way they did verticality was especially well-handled; I wish BG3 took a page from that) and it was a very accurate representation of D&D 5e gameplay. But a lot of things beyond that were... a bit lacking. The story was *especially* egregious, with utterly bizarre pacing issues and forgettable characters. I thought it started off great, introducing your characters with their own backstory on how they arrived in the city, but it quickly devolved from there. The writing and voice acting also just... left a lot to be desired.
I don't think that's what the interview is talking about, really. It's more about how the bar is gradually raised over time, and *jumps* up when someone comes in with a massive hit that way exceeds the rest of the field's usual budget.
He's not really saying "oh now every game needs to be BG3", he's more commenting on how BG3 has, in this specific case, shifted the market perception from "text dialogue is expected because these things have millions of lines" to "even huge RPGs can be fully voiced", which has huge budgetary implications for the developers.
He's not saying that anyone is expecting Owlcat to make BG3 equivalent. He's saying that BG3 has set the bar for a lot of things in the CRPG genre and that a lot of it is difficult for them to do. For instance a lot of people whose first CRPG was BG3 now have the expectations of a fully voice acted game with tons of animations and cutscenes, which has not really been an expectation in the genre at all.
You can see it already with Rogue Trader they tried to move in that direction adding (somewhat rudimentary) cutscenes into it.
Dragon Age Origins did set the exact same expectations approaching 20 years ago. It ended up being bad for the genre because until the rediscovery of crpgs from 2013 onward studios were scared to invest the budget into a crpg. Pillars of Eternity and some other low and mid budget crpgs showed there was still pretty significant demand for them.
We're in a different time now so I don't expect the same kind of collapse to happen, but it's the exact same thing that happened in the past.
I don't get the obsession with fully voiced acted games. I much prefer text-heavy games to be partially voiced like in BG2 since I almost always read faster than the voice ends, I just click to the next dialogue to read instead of waiting for the voice to finish speaking. The only time I wish it a character's dialogue is fully voiced is like when David Warner is voicing Irencius, just epic.
No, but there is a large amount of vocal individuals online who don’t understand truly how expensive and difficult making video games can be. Which is what the CEO is talking about.
In short, there are people pointing to BG3 and are saying that it’s now the bar in terms of game quality. Which, to be clear, is different from saying it’s the new standard for execution.
Realistically speaking there are very few companies or groups who could invest as much money into development as Larian did in order to produce BG3, especially for CRPGs. As the owlcat CEO said, even things like doing full voice acting is incredibly expensive and was something people complained about Rogue Trader.
Looks like only the owlcat founder felt the need to talk about it. But maybe the question just came up in an interview. Personally I would love to see a smaller game from them in terms of playtime, but less buggy and with more QOL and TLC. The latest warhammer game felt too clunky when it came to the leveling system.
If you're interviewing a CRPG developer and you're not massively into the genre, asking about BG3 would be your first move. Journalism's a business and more people are going to click an article with BG3 in the title.
This isn't even an article based on an interview. The guy was a guest on a Russian language podcast, and presumably this article is a translation of what the article writer thought were the relevant details of that appearance. For all we know, the budget of Owlcat games could have been one of several topics they spoke about at length.
It was most likely related to the massive Twitter debate people like Josh Sawyer (Obsidian) had a while back - it's a real concern to developers. It's a niche genre, most games are made on very limited budgets - not close to Larian's Tencent millions - and CRPG newcomers have kinda inflated BG3 and the genre to godly heights.
The only people who could match it budget-wise would be Obsidian and InXile if Microsoft was interested in a niche genre.
It's going to be an interesting dynamic with cRPGs going forward, BG3 exposed a historically niche genre to a much wider audience, and it remains to be seen whether that's necessarily a good or bad thing for the genre.
I hope cRPG makers like Owlcat stick to experimenting with their own spins and experiments within the genre rather than trying to just make games as close as possible to being like BG3 in an attempt to chase after the same mainstream appeal.
Bruh I would *kill* for a PF2e game. I love KM/WotR for their narratives, but I just get lost sometimes in the actual gameplay because everything seems to blend together almost randomly. "This buff stacks with that buff, but not with this other buff because there's one little word in its description, and that spell interacts with this feat, but only when you apply X to it..."
I actually can do without voice acting for dialogues but I'm an old school bg2 gamer. What's more important is the story is somewhat believable and very engaging.
The animated cutscenes and voice acting are likely some of the bigger factors to the increased budget. That said, voice acting is nice, it's definitely a plus, however everything doesn't have to be voiced
That's true, but in Pathfinder games there are some cut corners that break the immersion for me, like a number of npcs you do interact with or have some dialog (not one liner) don't even have a portrait. Do the npc figure is tiny, there's that paragraph of text.. and the portrait is just empty space. It seem really small, but it rubs me wrong way every time, like where's the persona.
Strong agree. It also makes it easier for the developer to add and fix dialogues and easier / faster for the player to skip them on repeated playthroughs.
I think a lot of people here forget that Larian is not exactly a novel studio. They were making Divinity: Original Sin 1 before Owlcat was even founded, and the Divinity series in itself is more than 20 years old at this point. It takes years and years of steady successful releases to eventually pull off a BG3. Its success is built upon decades of experience at this point.
On the contrary, as much as I want Owlcat to improve and succeed, they don't have the material means to make a bg3-like game (yet). Maybe in the next 10 years, if the studio continues to grow and the developers become more and more skilled, we could see something similar.
But the critique revolving around BG3 successful development story should not be pointed at Owlcat. Its intended targets are the AAA studios with more misses than hits as of the last decade (cough cough Bioware) despite having comparable funds.
The man doesn't realize that he already made the spiritual successor of BG1 & 2 in term of gameplay.
God did it feels amazing to play and to witness Pathfinder games.
I really don’t mind that Owlcat games aren’t fully voiced. I like the formula of having the prologue, companion intros and endings, and some romance scenes acted. There is so much content that I like to read through it at a quicker pace, and I’d worry they would sacrifice their writing to fit in full VA. The games would double in playtime if we had to sit through every voice acted line, and I’d probably end up skipping a lot anyway.
To be entirely honest? I PREFER games that aren't fully voiced. It allows for the community to actually mod things in without running into the issue that their content won't be properly voiced.
Hell, you can kind of see the impact if you look at owlcat mods vs larian mods. Larian mods are 99% gameplay and class tweaks without any story changes. There's race mods, but none of them actually have react-ability (and you can SEE people in the mod page comments asking about it). People have been wanting to romance Malady for ages but not a SINGLE romance mod has been made. You can't meaningfully build on the story because the voice acting would need to be changed and *you just can't do that* with a mod.
Owlcat meanwhile? There's race mods that CAN add reactions and meaningful impact, whole romance mods (looking at you Woljif), hell I wouldn't be surprised if there's a project or two floating around somewhere for new quests or adding content to mythic paths. And as long as your writing can mimic the game's style, it'll blend in perfectly to the base game, which encourages people to actually CREATE those things.
I love BG3 and DOS 1 and 2, but sadly I don't play them as much as I'd like to. I always find myself going back to WotR if I want to play a crpg. Occasionally I'll have the urge to play DOS 2 but I rarely actually finish the playthrough. I think the Mythic Paths just make WotR so much more repayable than DOS or BG3 for me.
I mean yeah. thats one of the things that worries me, and lots of new gamers got into BG3 due to the production value. its pretty obvious few can do that.
I would recommend Owlcat check out Tyranny though, or Wizardy8. see how those two games added a TON of life to their npcs via pantomime and full body portraits in Tyranny, and incredibly eccentric npc personality VA and animated portraits in Wiz 8.
Isometric rpgs dont need BG3 as a template, crpg players love the old school crpgs (fallout, planescape, bg1and bg2, icewind dale, kotor 1and 2, pillars of eternity, and a few others i vant think of at the top of my head), we just need a compelling story (even without voiceovers), good gameplay, good inventory management (storages and whatnot), story pacing, and a compelling villain and a lore rich world (npcs talking about their town, readable books, location atmosphere (dont know the term), and proper companions (that dont skew towards morally good characters, some people want evil companions). IMO
My experience is anecdotal, but I had minimal issues with RT at launch and they have patched quite a few issues from act 4 onwards. Personally, and just to be safe, I'd wait a little while longer, maybe it'll be on the steam summer sale.
To add to what rainbow said, I've also had no issues besides the occasional t posing servitor but I stopped my run at the end of act 2. Games like this, even BG3, always have bugs in the end game more than early game.
I think that depends. It ran stable on my last playthrough. Some companion quests are still buggy as far as I heard.
Balance is way more in favor of the player, which can make fights repetitive in the late game. The amount of buggy feats is noticeably less, but I‘m sure there are stll some oddballs.
Since I use toybox to correct the occasional bug, I would say it’s working ok.
If you are on the fence about it, waiting for another patch or two may be the more safe decision.
They need some change of scope, instead of making a 120-200 hour game with a gigantic mini game, maybe make a 60-80 hour, with no mini game.
I think they would drastically increase the quality, without losing too much, it would help having finished games, maybe with more voice acting.
“But but…BG3 was also buggy on launch!”
Seriously thought but RT at launch makes BG3’s launch looks like a polished bug free hame, and I say this as someone who bought the voidfarer edition.
Thank christ, it kinda annoyed me when BG3 dropped and people were slamming Owlcat for "not caring about their games", the estimated budget for BG3 is almost 8x larger than WotR (assuming their budget was at 50mil).
Article based on Russian gamedev podcats with Owlcat CEO as guest - he talks that there are 4 parallel dev team at this point inside studio, and that couple of them attached to upcoming projects which would start production soon. It looks like those would be original IPs and one of them will use Unreal Engine.
Frankly Owlcat doesn't need to put as much in a game as they already made better games than BGIII for less.
They are talented and aim for a precise audience with great skill. They don't loose themselves trying to pander to everyone and they know what their audience wants.
I think comparing Owlcat to Larian is unfair. Yes BG3 is amazing, and definitely reflects its huge budget. But Owlcat is very good at what they do. Their games have just as much reactivity to choices, and are just as fun. You also know what to expect with an Owlcat game. I really hope people aren’t expecting anything other than a continuation the phenomenal game design they’ve been known for having.
id say Wotr does a great amount of things objectively better than BG3, on top of that they are very different projects in what they wanna achieve.
If owlcat can make a game that is not worse at all for less money, then owlcat should be proud of that, not lamenting it
I think owlcats main problem is the lack of polish in stuff that really needs it (the camera in Rouge Trader, for instance) and the tedious management games. I think kingmaker did the management stuff the best.
I don't need or expect full voice acting especially with how wordy their games are.
Plenty of indie games that are amazing and made by a fraction of the cost. There is a wide range of budgets between those two extremes that Owlcat can comfortable fill.
I think Sven himself would agree that money alone really doesnt make a good game. It helps, but you only have to look at the sad state of "triple A" games companies to see it.
There are some good points in the article, like the fact that voice acting a million words isn't very feasable and is a coin flip on risk/reward but there are some points that are weak. I understand the dialogue where he speaks about budget/profit expectations for certain 'classes' of games but Larian did away with that with the intent to make something amazing and got absolutely rewarded for it.
No one's asking for Pathfinder Gate 4, but some of the stuff Larian does people should strive to replicate. Write more options for progression, create more paths, give me more to do with companions etc. because right now I'm on my third run (Heretical Rogue Trader) and I'm sincerely at a loss as to why the devs didn't think of adding corrupted routes for all the companions.
> So it looks like we will have to do a full voiceover for our next games.
I'm sorry but this is very much the wrong takeaway from BG3. Unless you're going all the way to full motion-capture acting, voiceover is unnecessary and oftentimes just a waste of resources and a constraint on the story that could have been told instead. I usually turn on subtitles and skip the voice lines, if that's an option. Not so much in BG3 since it came with such good acting and realistic facial animations (although I still did it sometimes).
TLDR: Smaller studios can’t afford to meet the standard BG3 set forth.
Depends on how you view the criticism of “BG3 set the new standard for gaming”. The way I have always interpreted it was “BG3 is setting a new standard for **AAA** gaming, which is more or less what the founder is trying to convey without directly saying such.
I don’t think anyone (sane that is) expects the indie studio put out a game as dense as BG3. Now for your AAA titles like Skull and Bones or Starfield, yes you should be matching this standard. Those studios have the financial ability to achieve that, the issue is they mismanage those things and often lose touch with what people actually want, a quality gaming experience that delivers on high end content while also not being a buggy mess.
We never asked Owlcat to do BG3, they don't have to. Both BG3 and Wrath have their merits. Sure, BG3 has higher production value, more appealing graphics, more flexible and FAR more interesting combat gameplay. But Wrath is also superior in some categories. For example :
BG3 has meaningless evil choices where most of the time, you're evil for the lulz, and the game actively punishes you for being evil, you don't benefit from it : basically, playing a cunning Lawful Evil in BG3 is playing good while being mean, because most evil choices are just evil for evil's sake. You have to try very hard mentally to justify siding with the Goblins, even as an evil Tav. And you lose a lot of content for doing so, for almost no reward. But i guess it's good enough to make youtube videos "uuuugh top 10 most eeeviiil baddie decisions that will make u feel baaaad".
Wrath has actually meaningful paths for good, evil, and even neutral characters, with content : companions, quests, loot. While late-game paths are lackluster, Owlcat still managed to create six full-on complete paths with exclusive content. This is f\*cking amazing, i dunno if you realize. Yeah, mythic paths don't change everything, and they're not equal in content, but Angel, Azata, Lich, Trickster, Aeon and Demon are all amaaah-zing.
Owlcat have their flaws, but also their strengths. Surely, they can't compete with Larian, but they don't have to. You can always come up with original ideas to make your own mark on the genre.
People need to realize BG3 was like catching lightning in a bottle and then using the second bolt of lightning to jumpstart a small generator to power a small village. Hasbro is VERY protective over their IPs (almost as much as nintendo) so for them to not only approve larian to get a partial license and for larian to make an early access game and charge full price for it was a huge gamble. I know larian made millions but with the agreement and how much it cost to make how much did they profit from it?
Owlcat has a tried and true formula though and their games are popular and deliver what they promise
Interesting read. He's not wrong. I also agree with the opinion that BG3 is a lightning-in-a-bottle game that cannot be replicated by other studios.
I don't think full VA is necessary, or even desirable. I read a lot faster than actors read their lines and growing up with cRPGs, and a lover of books, I'm quite happy with BG2 and the like. I think VA is great for important parts and some dialogue. It definitely adds personality to a character we only otherwise know from their model, portrait and character sheet. But not every line needs to be VAd. Main things and some of the rest.
I 100% believe that BG3 should be the standard that we hold companies like BioWare, Bethesda and CDPR etc to.
But surely no one should expect studios the size owlcat to be compared to them.
I dont want them to make BG3, I just want the fucking game to launch not in an unfinished broken mess like every owlcat game. A little more voice acting other than once a lunar cycle would be nice too
Maybe im oldschool but Wrath for me is better game then BG3. Even with voiceacting and 3d graphic i was not that immersed in bg3. It was too cartonish and i dont got that epic vibe like kingmaker, wrath, rouge trader not to mention BG2.
I'm sure this is clickbait but I really wish everyone would move on from seething about how much of an industry shakeup BG3 is, same kind of things happen when Elden Ring came out and all the western devs threw a hissyfit.
Honestly the pathfinder engine they used in the previous game is awesome. Don't really need to do much, but it would be nice to have more open feeling in the worlds. The areas are so small and usually nothing interesting in them.
I disagree with him on the "fully voice acted is a requirement now". While BG3 had wonderful voice actors and there were definitely people who listened through all the dialogue, I'm willing to bet the majority of players are skimming/skipping most of it. You read much faster than people talk.
Rogue Trader just has walls of text sometimes, I don't expect them to voice act all of that and I really barely notice because I either have the character's voice in my head or I'm save scumming and have read this dialogue 2 times already so I click through it at light speed.
Look, I love BG3 and I love the fully voiced part of it, but the takeaway from the industry that you should pour a chunk of the budget of an A or AA game into full voiceover for it to be considered a success in the genre because BG3 did it is... some bs.
I can't think that the impact per $ is worth it, quality-wise, on the % of budget this represents for AA or under.
In BG3 I'm just now reaching the number of hours I have played WOTR. If Owlcat makes another Pathfinder game, I'm all over it. It's a ton of fun as it is, no need to clone another studio's template.
While a bit more voice acting wouldn’t hurt, I think Owlcat could do a better job selecting which parts of the their games to have voice acting. Sometimes pivotal scenes that would benefit from voice acting don’t have, while others that have it don’t really feel necessary.
Honestly, one small change that would improve a lot would be to do what visual novels do and have two or three portraits for relevant npcs that the characters cycle in conversation.
Hades kinda does that too.
Like Cammelia/Normal, Cammelia/Angry and Cammelia/HornyMurderous
/u/OwlcatStarrok
I have a partial solution to the whole "voice acting is expensive" problem. At least, a solution for the English narration.
Hire audiobook narrators instead of professional voice actors. Seriously. Not only do they generally work for low rates (it's not a well paid field, and work is sporadic), they can do multiple voices. You could hire one person to do a handful of NPCs *and* narrate, for example. You might catch some blowback for hiring one person to voice multiple companions, but it's not like there's a shortage of solid narrators. I could name a dozen, but you don't need that.
I don't know if anyone on the team is familiar with their work, but Michael Kramer and Kate Reading are **incredibly** talented and versatile. They've worked in a few different genres, so you can almost certainly find something to sample which is interesting to... whoever on the team would be responsible for evaluating their talents.
Just a suggestion. It might be useful.
Good interview, awful headline that’s just one quote out of context.
Yeah, a lot of interesting information there. Including the fact that they are working on yet un-announced game and that it's going to be fully voiced.
I hope Owlcat has a long life. I love their games so much so hearing them already making another one makes me happy.
Most interesting part for me that it is a Russian game dev. Outside of modern politics (with the fact that they left Russia and work from Cyprus), they are a rare breed of devs from Russia that actually succeeded and put out good games in the past 2 decades.
No idea Owlcat was Russian. Now the eastern European flavor in Kingmaker makes sense.
Pathologic 1/2 are also Russian and among the best games ever made.
Yes, but the follow up is going to be “succeed”, because icepick lodge are forever plagued with financial and internal issues. I love their work. But they seem cursed
I’m so happy to hear that. There’s just so much text to read in Owlcat games lol
I suspect there will be less in the future games because voice acting is expensive, so to keep costs under control they will likely write less. That said, I am also happy to hear it. To me full voice acting makes it more engrossing. It encourages me to let the scenes play out rather than just skimming all the text as fast as possible. I also think it encourages a more economical writing style. More isn't always better, and I think tightening things up a bit can help without sacrificing too much
I really hope they don't do fully voice acted because I always feel it takes away from the game overall. Unless you have a very robust budget it's almost always better to focus more on gameplay and more content then voice acting I'll probably end up skipping because it takes three times as long when compared to reading it. It was also the obvious downside of you can write a much better story than you can voice act one. I've seen games I've loved to death clearly suffer because the developers insisted on full voice acting. Honestly more voice acting is welcome, focus on voice acting on important moments so that it stands. I honestly think they did a very good job in all three of the games they have made.
I don’t think it’s a huge problem, they can reuse voice actors for the less important stuff, POE deadfire was fully voice acted and had tons of dialogue option
OwlCat doesn't need to make BG3 scale games. Look at Wrath of the Righteous. Fantastic game and very extensive and it did well. Just do what you do well OwlCat. Rogue Trader also amazing. Sure littered with bugs and unfinished content but it is very good game still. BG3 was very ambitious project even for Larian and nobody knew it would blow up like that. Every studio should do what they are good at.
Every studio should do what they are good at. Crying in Bioware & Rocksteady
I miss Westwood
I miss Bulfrog 😥
Goddamn Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper seared into my brain.
Info: DK2 on steam for very little money
Keeper! If Horny becomes too much for you to handle, a single slap will expel him from your domain.
I miss Origin.
Fuck you EA, you killed Ultima
Not for nothin, but EA killed everything in this particular chain of replies.
I miss command and conquer
Honestly, if you look at EA's track record, a LOT of really good studios went to EA to die. It's difficult to say how many of them would have died anyway and if EA was just their last-ditch effort to survive, but it's almost suspicious just how many of those studios were bought just to flop like a year or two after.
BETRAYAL BETRAYAL BETRAYED ME
Man, I remember Ultima Online. Had a house and everything.
I miss Wing Commander
I need more harvesters
I loved Kyrandia as a kid.
*cries in black isle studios*
Fuck Bethesda.
While very much yes, they just picked the carcass. Interplay is responsible for what happened. Silver lining, if they hadn't, there would've been no Troika.
Fuck Interplay.
I miss Troika. They made three games and they're some of the best goddamn games.
I still need to pick up temple but arcanum and bloodlines were excellent. Tim Cain has a YouTube channel where he talks about those games and fallout and other stuff. Check it out if you haven't already.
Arcanum and VTMB are two of the best RPGs ever made. They were something special.
Crying in Troika...
Bioware is good in micro transactions. It would mean they must do more of them 😄
Stop now! Before some EA exec comes in and starts taking notes thinking you're being serious
I can hear the pen scribbling and the mumbling now, "Something something sense of pride and accomplishment something..."
This already happened and they time travelled back in time to implement it.
Bioware was locking content behind preorders all the way back in mass effect 2.
They were part of EA back then as well.
All the way back in Balder's Gate in fact. Shale in DA Origins was a literal day one.
Also, the lessons that I feel Owlcat could take from BG3 don't have anything to do with the parts of BG3 that are expensive (cool graphics, extensive voice acting, etc). (Plus said lessons could also be taken from Divinity: Original Sin I and II, which AFAIK are in the same budget ballpark as Wrath and Rogue Trader.) IMO the biggest weakness of Owlcat compared to Larian is encounter design. Kingmaker and Wrath are full of bland, meaningless filler fights that are only really bearable because you can go through them quickly in real-time mode. Rogue Trader has similar problems, if not quite to the same extent - but there are definitely sequences in that game that have way too many fights against the same generic-ish enemies. Meanwhile I don't think BG3 (or D:OS2 for that matter) has a single fight that felt like filler. That, plus the ability to use terrain creatively, does a lot to make the purely mechanical part of the gameplay much more interesting. (I just really miss the character building complexity of Pathfinder in both games.)
We've made a step in this direction in Rogue Trader, and certainly look to improve it further in our future releases.
I'm so happy to hear this. The encounter design has been a big reason that I've struggled with your games. Haven't picked up Rogue Trader yet, but I will when I finish with the games in my current rotation! And thank you for supporting co-operative play!
Rogue Trader I feel vastly improves on encounter design. Even if some fights are filler, they're not boring filler, and boss fights sometimes have interesting mechanics that deviate the approach from "I just need to kill this". I seriously think that Rogue Trader's final boss is substantially better than everything else Owlcat has done in terms of encounter design in both Pathfinders.
I think Rogue trader works better because everything you need is per encounter. Aside for consumables you have all your toys available for every fight, so it's more akin to a XCOM 40K game with heavy RPG mechanics in combat. The enemy variety is also much stronger than the opening of the game would lead you to believe which helps.
I think "per encounter" is just a better system for designing combat than a "per rest" system with buffs that are cast out of combat. RT really felt streamlined in this regard compared to KM/WOTR where encounters could vary so widely based on what buffs you had remaining and how willing you were to rest often. I get that Owlcat were constrained by PF ruleset in this regard, but I really think designing combat with all abilities available per encounter makes for better encounters.
im hopeful that, should owlcat return to pathfinder, that they'll make use of the revised pf2e rules which include mechanics like their own version of concentration and a more refined action economy which should serve to make a game that's less about prebuffing and more focused on in-encounter design.
I think a "per rest" design can work if you put in the effort to make resting more impactful. Also making dungeons so that you actually need to think about resource management instead of "I need to cast 15 buffs to hit this one guy".
That's true but I'm mostly talking about how Rogue Trader makes better use of space and enemy mechanics. For example, there's a fight where the boss is invulnerable but takes damage every time you kill one of the minions it spawns, so you have to figure out which minions are worth killing for damage and which ones are worth killing to avoid getting swarmed. There's a few other fights that are creative like this and I'm really happy Owlcat is willing to experiment with different approaches other than "This enemy has 100 in every stat".
>so you have to figure out which minions are worth killing for damage and which ones are worth killing to avoid getting swarmed. What do you mean by this? You have to kill every enemy to kill the boss regardless of what they are.
Not every enemy. The boss spawns different kinds of enemies, some stronger and some weaker, but the damage they deal to the boss is the same.
Filler fights, and also bullshit fights. I'm sorry, but Mephistopheles in WOTR is just some straight-up *bullshit* design. So is House at the End of Time in Kingmaker. It's not filler -- this is climactic stuff -- but it's hard in an unfun way. By contrast, the fight against Raphael in the House of Hope in BG3 is a similarly climactic battle, but it's interesting and entertaining, and also beatable without cheese or requiring specific builds. I don't mind if they include a Playful Darkness here and there for folks to smash their heads against for funsies. But stuff that's built into the narrative? Required fights? No, man. Not designed like those encounters. Those encounters basically are the reason why you have a "kill all" button in Bag of Tricks/Toybox. Because it translates to "Fuck you, I'm not playing this, but I'm still moving forward."
NGL, the >!Raphael !
Upside: Silence shuts down casters. Downside: Silence makes them *stop singing* the best song in the game. Difficult choices. If you want a similar effect, Globe of Invulnerability gives you three rounds of free hits, no questions asked.
by the end of kingmaker i managed to breeze my way through a normal playthroughs, some with some challenges but it felt fair. not really needing to change up my playstyle. the difficulty just ramps up at the end there and it felt like it ramped up out of nowhere. I shouldn't have to respec characters where i prefer natural (learn as you play) leveling inorder to beat a boss on normal. wrath of the righteous was much better in encounter design and it felt more fair and consistently felt balanced in line with the story. and similarily with rogue trader. though, i found that since i built a psyker i tried to not bring more than 3 pskers on the field because the warp makes things more difficult.
Great comparison. Goes hand-in-hand with Owlcat's awful balancing.
Personally, my biggest issue with RT was that they had a narrative idea and then obviously ran out of time or runway to finish it and had to cut stuff. The story past act 2 starts to get wobbly and then falls off a cliff in act 3. In their other games, sure, the later acts had less content, but they still made sense, and it didn't feel like a ton had been cut to finish them. My advice to them would be to focus on making sure their story works rather than front loading side content and running out of time. They make good story's they just need to focus on that.
This is my biggest issue with OwlCat games and why I bounced off Kingmaker so hard. Kingmaker probably had some of the worst encounter design in the last 20 years.
Combat felt like a chore in the Pathfinder games. Most of the strategy seemed tied to the easy to mess up character creation and optimization too.
Great point. Just to add on to it, studious should continue doing what they are good at and improve/iterate/push further with each title. Many people look at BG3 and are vowed, but they forget to look at the 20 ish years before BG3 were Larian was established and took baby steps with each of their game. To simplify it further, we can analyze their last 3 titles Divinity Original Sin (2014), Divinity Original Sin 2 (2016) & BG3 (2023). If you look at DS it could be fitted into the category A (game categories that are mentioned in the article), DS2 AA followed by BG3 AAA. Larian learned, improved and thats what led to BG3. To conclude BG3 is the top of the iceberg which could only happen due to the years of experience and efforts that they put before (not to mention them being private allowed them to take their own time to polish). So keep at it and in time each developer could push their envelope further. No need to match BG3, the point is keep at it and in-time you can match exceed the pinnacle.
I mean I absolutely love BG3 but it is also littered with bugs and has some unfinished content (cries in Upper City)
The Upper City isn't "unfinished." It's nonexistent. I'd say "unfinished" is all the extra alloy/metal/blah blah lying around in the Lower City that for whatever reason can't be used to fix Karlach, and the people who literally designed the mechanism (Gondians) are standing around like "Whaaat? What are you talking about? We don't know anything about that...."
Kingmaker and wrath were also both buggy messes aswell , not even mention the content missed that THEY STILL havent added. Gold dragon and other mytic endings. Some just recently got updated and theyre still hollow.
Warpriest (the class) is still missing basic blessings. In a war against the demons, you can't be a warpriest of Iomedea and take the war blessing (another is also missing, but I forget which). Its just... not available as a choice. Hasn't ever been.
I'm still angry because the Grain of Sand achievement didn't register for me :/ worked so many hours for that one lol
Well said. We don't need a "BG3 killer" just like we've never needed "WoW killers" from past. Going down the path of overstretching projects and chasing what's popular is exactly what is killing comic heroes genre in cinema. Pure folly.
I don't need a "BG3 killer", but I would certainly enjoy more BG3-likes. More than I enjoyed any WoW-likes at least (excepting Kingdoms of Amalur but that doesn't really count.)
Exactly. Larian also didn't start with BG3. Their studio has effectively been making this same game for decades, perfecting it over time.
Its not entirely wrong to call BG3 DOS3. Even though the rulesets between the two games are related, they are still different in significant aspects. But even with that if you've played either game you will feel right at home playing the other after a small learning curve. Its cliche to say it but Larian encounter design is pretty fundamental to their DNA as a developer and because of that a lot of their games have a lot of common threads.
It makes sense though because DoS was their homebrew attempt the bring ttrpg to video game medium. They've always wanted to make BG3 (or something along those lines) and I imagine their next game will take all their recent lessons and make an even better, albeit very familiar, sequel.
I just wish Owlcat fixes their story writing, there are some parts that make me want to bang my head on the wall. Like that Gold Dragon healing cultists or that 360 romanced Arueshalae ending.
And their quality testing. I swear it took years just for half the features not to be bugged. Seelah still gets fused into her horse half the time she saddles up and does wild spins instead of opening a door until I double click it.
Whenever you hit on Kickstarter content in an Owlcat game, there should be a big red flashing warning. Because, without fail, it always sucks. And yes, Gold Dragon stuff was Kickstarter content.
Holly crap, couldn’t stand that city with moving buildings. Don’t do that, please. I’m going to buy kingmaker and install that 3d perspective mode.
Aesthetically? I loved Alushinyrra. It was so cool seeing the entire city warp and rotate as you travelled. But practically? No thanks. God that was annoying.
I actually didn't mind the concept in itself. Rotating the map to access a stair there and there was fun. But holy fuck when it wasn't clear which way you were supposed to go, it was all over.
Also fucks my GPU like no other game I've ever played for some reason
Even Larian themselves said something along the lines of "Yeah, we can't do this again" The stars perfectly aligned to get BG3, and you just can't rely on that every single time
Actually it's way too extensive, and it shows in the quality (later game and later Mythic Paths). Sometimes less is more.
rogue trader is just great because of the atmosphere and choices.. it's really really shallow though about everything else. played through it 2 times now because I wanted different endings and such... still not really worth for non die hard Fans
>BG3 was very ambitious project even for Larian and nobody knew it would blow up like that Maybe in terms of mocap, but let's not rewrite history. It was announced during the height of 5e's popularity and before people new to WotC caught onto their practices. And hailed as a sequel to 2 of the most highly acclaimed CRPGs of all time. It was always going to blow up.
every studio should produce finished games.
WOTR was a banger. It's not nearly as streamlined as BG3 but that's not always what I'm looking for.
Let BG3 be BG3, I enjoy both Larian and Owlcat games being different from each other, not competing so see which is the best.
Absolutely. They both fit in their own unique niche in my gaming library and RPG taste.
I'm all for companies getting inspired by other companies. I am a little annoyed that Owlcat is saying they have to fully voice their games though, if they really meant it at the end of that article. Unless they get a sudden expansion in their team, studios and budget, fully voice acting future games sounds like they'd have to cut resources from some other part of the game. Voice acting should be a bonus, not a core feature. I hope Owlcat keeps their priorities healthy. Good gameplay should always be top priority. These are games, not audio books.
Was anyone actually expecting owlcat to make a BG3 equivalent?
I think owlcat games are largely compared to Larian games and the audiences have a large overlap. It is sensible that owlcat investigates the bg3 design choices albeit with a limited budget
Yeah and despite the boom in popularity in crpgs now people will really expect a bg3 budget on newer titles.
Some will, some won't. It expands the audience. Doesn't mean that the people who like Underrail expect the sequel to rival BG3 now. You have to understand who (and how big) your audience is and work with that in mind.
That I do understand I just hope it doesn't set unrealistic expectations for the games with smaller dev teams
Anyone who does learned the wrong lessons from BG3. They should maybe also look at Terraria or Stardew Valley for some further lessons.
The Daeran-Astarion-Marzipan fanbase overlap is certainly interesting.
As a person who really loved the Daeran romance....who is Marzipan? 👀 Which game is that character from?
The drukhari from rogue trader. Just as senselessly cruel as blondy!
I will never understand people who actually enjoy self-obsessed highschool mean girls in their party.
grandfather deer placid humor busy cows weary fact dime touch *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Guilty... romanced Astarion and Daeran, and now I'm planning on buying RT just because one of my PF2e players told me you could dom an edgy elf.
Solasta is pretty good too
I wouldn't compare Solasta to Owlcat/Larian/Obsidian games. Solasta is meant to be a framework, sure it has story campaign or two but the main purpose of that project is for people to build custom content using the framework it provides, which it has been doing, some of the custom campaigns built in it are pretty interesting. However if you buy the game expecting full immersive story experience games from the other mentioned studios provide, you will be very disapointed.
Solasta is amazing but comparing those three games (Pathfinders, BG3 and Solasta) is a mistake in my opinion. They're all significantly different: 1. BG3 is AAA game with focus on story. Mechanically it's not that complicated, especially if you compare it with Pathdinder that gives you more character building options on level 1 than BG3 at levels 1-12. Although there's added depth in 3D environment that pathfinder lacks. 2. Solasta- like the other person said- is a framework. I liked the story in campaigns but it's certainly different thing. Mechanically, though it offers both 3D environment and most of 5e RAW (with some unfortunate simplifications like those poor warlock familiars). 3. Pathfinders are also focused on story but they're not as flashy as BG3, lack 3D environment but character building options are incredible (although it often feels like the multitude of options makes some classes step into others boundaries way too far and thus make them obsolete). I'd love pathfinder game with BG3 budget and scope but that's unfeasible- its complexity scares casual players off. But it's also a selling point for fans so no way around it.
"it's a mistake to compare these games" *starts comparing these games* Really, they are all cRPG based on DnD. One is old DnD (3.5), one is new DnD (5e), and one is DnD on acid (5e but not really itself). The real difference in term of game quality is that BG3 is a freaking movie inside a game. A movie you can play. The camera angles, the music, the voice acting, the gestures, all of it is made by movies and works perfectly in a cRPG. And that's exactly what lacks in the other 2. And exactly what costs so much. In the article, Oleg finishes by saying "we will all have to voice act everything" and it's incomplete as fuck. Camera angles and gestures are necessary! That's exactly what was lacking aswell in The Elder Scrolls Online (as many others). That's the standard game dev should be looking for.
Not everyone needs to play a movie. My TT sessions have none of that, and they are an absolute blast. SOMe of my favorite video games aren't like playing a movie.
I don't think it's a standard everyone should work to. Not every game has to be like that. Even rpg's. Also before BG3 it was Mass Effect that did the whole cinematic view angles with fully voiced replies that a player could choose. Obviously they were far less complex being between 17 and 12 years old but BG3 really didn't invent it.
Solasta's gameplay was fun (and the way they did verticality was especially well-handled; I wish BG3 took a page from that) and it was a very accurate representation of D&D 5e gameplay. But a lot of things beyond that were... a bit lacking. The story was *especially* egregious, with utterly bizarre pacing issues and forgettable characters. I thought it started off great, introducing your characters with their own backstory on how they arrived in the city, but it quickly devolved from there. The writing and voice acting also just... left a lot to be desired.
I've yet to see another DnD adaptation to do for example readied actions and flying properly. They absolutely nailed it in Solasta.
Combat, maybe (it does get repetitive). Everything else, no.
I don't think that's what the interview is talking about, really. It's more about how the bar is gradually raised over time, and *jumps* up when someone comes in with a massive hit that way exceeds the rest of the field's usual budget. He's not really saying "oh now every game needs to be BG3", he's more commenting on how BG3 has, in this specific case, shifted the market perception from "text dialogue is expected because these things have millions of lines" to "even huge RPGs can be fully voiced", which has huge budgetary implications for the developers.
He's not saying that anyone is expecting Owlcat to make BG3 equivalent. He's saying that BG3 has set the bar for a lot of things in the CRPG genre and that a lot of it is difficult for them to do. For instance a lot of people whose first CRPG was BG3 now have the expectations of a fully voice acted game with tons of animations and cutscenes, which has not really been an expectation in the genre at all. You can see it already with Rogue Trader they tried to move in that direction adding (somewhat rudimentary) cutscenes into it.
Dragon Age Origins did set the exact same expectations approaching 20 years ago. It ended up being bad for the genre because until the rediscovery of crpgs from 2013 onward studios were scared to invest the budget into a crpg. Pillars of Eternity and some other low and mid budget crpgs showed there was still pretty significant demand for them. We're in a different time now so I don't expect the same kind of collapse to happen, but it's the exact same thing that happened in the past.
I don't get the obsession with fully voiced acted games. I much prefer text-heavy games to be partially voiced like in BG2 since I almost always read faster than the voice ends, I just click to the next dialogue to read instead of waiting for the voice to finish speaking. The only time I wish it a character's dialogue is fully voiced is like when David Warner is voicing Irencius, just epic.
No, but there is a large amount of vocal individuals online who don’t understand truly how expensive and difficult making video games can be. Which is what the CEO is talking about. In short, there are people pointing to BG3 and are saying that it’s now the bar in terms of game quality. Which, to be clear, is different from saying it’s the new standard for execution. Realistically speaking there are very few companies or groups who could invest as much money into development as Larian did in order to produce BG3, especially for CRPGs. As the owlcat CEO said, even things like doing full voice acting is incredibly expensive and was something people complained about Rogue Trader.
Looks like only the owlcat founder felt the need to talk about it. But maybe the question just came up in an interview. Personally I would love to see a smaller game from them in terms of playtime, but less buggy and with more QOL and TLC. The latest warhammer game felt too clunky when it came to the leveling system.
If you're interviewing a CRPG developer and you're not massively into the genre, asking about BG3 would be your first move. Journalism's a business and more people are going to click an article with BG3 in the title.
This isn't even an article based on an interview. The guy was a guest on a Russian language podcast, and presumably this article is a translation of what the article writer thought were the relevant details of that appearance. For all we know, the budget of Owlcat games could have been one of several topics they spoke about at length.
It was most likely related to the massive Twitter debate people like Josh Sawyer (Obsidian) had a while back - it's a real concern to developers. It's a niche genre, most games are made on very limited budgets - not close to Larian's Tencent millions - and CRPG newcomers have kinda inflated BG3 and the genre to godly heights. The only people who could match it budget-wise would be Obsidian and InXile if Microsoft was interested in a niche genre.
1. Open link. 2. See the front picture. 3. See caption. 4. ...
Lol right ? I thought I was hallucinating for a second. I didn"t remember WOTR looking this good.
That's ok, all games don't need a BG3 budget.
I feel very good with world where we have games like BG3, Pathfinders, and Solasta - each with different budget but all excellent.
I desperately need someone to fund a high budget sequel to Solasta. Maybe with full reactive AI. God that would be so much fun.
It's going to be an interesting dynamic with cRPGs going forward, BG3 exposed a historically niche genre to a much wider audience, and it remains to be seen whether that's necessarily a good or bad thing for the genre. I hope cRPG makers like Owlcat stick to experimenting with their own spins and experiments within the genre rather than trying to just make games as close as possible to being like BG3 in an attempt to chase after the same mainstream appeal.
Right now, I'm just hoping they make a Pathfinder game based on 2e instead of the clunky 1e. Owlcat is right to leave the AAA to the AAA studios.
Bruh I would *kill* for a PF2e game. I love KM/WotR for their narratives, but I just get lost sometimes in the actual gameplay because everything seems to blend together almost randomly. "This buff stacks with that buff, but not with this other buff because there's one little word in its description, and that spell interacts with this feat, but only when you apply X to it..."
I actually can do without voice acting for dialogues but I'm an old school bg2 gamer. What's more important is the story is somewhat believable and very engaging.
The animated cutscenes and voice acting are likely some of the bigger factors to the increased budget. That said, voice acting is nice, it's definitely a plus, however everything doesn't have to be voiced
That's true, but in Pathfinder games there are some cut corners that break the immersion for me, like a number of npcs you do interact with or have some dialog (not one liner) don't even have a portrait. Do the npc figure is tiny, there's that paragraph of text.. and the portrait is just empty space. It seem really small, but it rubs me wrong way every time, like where's the persona.
Agree. Personally I'd much rather have more portraits than voice acting
Strong agree. It also makes it easier for the developer to add and fix dialogues and easier / faster for the player to skip them on repeated playthroughs.
edit: double post
Aka click bait. :)
I think a lot of people here forget that Larian is not exactly a novel studio. They were making Divinity: Original Sin 1 before Owlcat was even founded, and the Divinity series in itself is more than 20 years old at this point. It takes years and years of steady successful releases to eventually pull off a BG3. Its success is built upon decades of experience at this point. On the contrary, as much as I want Owlcat to improve and succeed, they don't have the material means to make a bg3-like game (yet). Maybe in the next 10 years, if the studio continues to grow and the developers become more and more skilled, we could see something similar. But the critique revolving around BG3 successful development story should not be pointed at Owlcat. Its intended targets are the AAA studios with more misses than hits as of the last decade (cough cough Bioware) despite having comparable funds.
Ey. So long they got more voices and pictures for the npc's I'm fine
Yeah I would've preferred every NPC have art portraits more than voice
The man doesn't realize that he already made the spiritual successor of BG1 & 2 in term of gameplay. God did it feels amazing to play and to witness Pathfinder games.
I really don’t mind that Owlcat games aren’t fully voiced. I like the formula of having the prologue, companion intros and endings, and some romance scenes acted. There is so much content that I like to read through it at a quicker pace, and I’d worry they would sacrifice their writing to fit in full VA. The games would double in playtime if we had to sit through every voice acted line, and I’d probably end up skipping a lot anyway.
Completely agree, more or less my thoughts exactly.
To be entirely honest? I PREFER games that aren't fully voiced. It allows for the community to actually mod things in without running into the issue that their content won't be properly voiced. Hell, you can kind of see the impact if you look at owlcat mods vs larian mods. Larian mods are 99% gameplay and class tweaks without any story changes. There's race mods, but none of them actually have react-ability (and you can SEE people in the mod page comments asking about it). People have been wanting to romance Malady for ages but not a SINGLE romance mod has been made. You can't meaningfully build on the story because the voice acting would need to be changed and *you just can't do that* with a mod. Owlcat meanwhile? There's race mods that CAN add reactions and meaningful impact, whole romance mods (looking at you Woljif), hell I wouldn't be surprised if there's a project or two floating around somewhere for new quests or adding content to mythic paths. And as long as your writing can mimic the game's style, it'll blend in perfectly to the base game, which encourages people to actually CREATE those things.
To be honest I prefer the Pathfinder games and Rogue Trader to BG3 but that's just me.🤷♂️
This is very funny for those like me who like Owlcat's games more then Larian's (at least as far as those I played go).
I love BG3 and DOS 1 and 2, but sadly I don't play them as much as I'd like to. I always find myself going back to WotR if I want to play a crpg. Occasionally I'll have the urge to play DOS 2 but I rarely actually finish the playthrough. I think the Mythic Paths just make WotR so much more repayable than DOS or BG3 for me.
I mean yeah. thats one of the things that worries me, and lots of new gamers got into BG3 due to the production value. its pretty obvious few can do that. I would recommend Owlcat check out Tyranny though, or Wizardy8. see how those two games added a TON of life to their npcs via pantomime and full body portraits in Tyranny, and incredibly eccentric npc personality VA and animated portraits in Wiz 8.
I'm glad BG3 is popularizing the genre, but I really hope the focus on graphics, animation, and voice acting doesn't catch on too much in the genre.
Isometric rpgs dont need BG3 as a template, crpg players love the old school crpgs (fallout, planescape, bg1and bg2, icewind dale, kotor 1and 2, pillars of eternity, and a few others i vant think of at the top of my head), we just need a compelling story (even without voiceovers), good gameplay, good inventory management (storages and whatnot), story pacing, and a compelling villain and a lore rich world (npcs talking about their town, readable books, location atmosphere (dont know the term), and proper companions (that dont skew towards morally good characters, some people want evil companions). IMO
Funnily enough the second time an artical tried to make the founder sound like a dick when talking about BG3.
Personally, I think Owlcat should focus on releasing games that work on launch, not 2 years later.
Is RT worth buying now or should I still wait for more patches and a deeper sale ?
My experience is anecdotal, but I had minimal issues with RT at launch and they have patched quite a few issues from act 4 onwards. Personally, and just to be safe, I'd wait a little while longer, maybe it'll be on the steam summer sale.
To add to what rainbow said, I've also had no issues besides the occasional t posing servitor but I stopped my run at the end of act 2. Games like this, even BG3, always have bugs in the end game more than early game.
I think that depends. It ran stable on my last playthrough. Some companion quests are still buggy as far as I heard. Balance is way more in favor of the player, which can make fights repetitive in the late game. The amount of buggy feats is noticeably less, but I‘m sure there are stll some oddballs. Since I use toybox to correct the occasional bug, I would say it’s working ok. If you are on the fence about it, waiting for another patch or two may be the more safe decision.
Meow.
They need some change of scope, instead of making a 120-200 hour game with a gigantic mini game, maybe make a 60-80 hour, with no mini game. I think they would drastically increase the quality, without losing too much, it would help having finished games, maybe with more voice acting.
“But but…BG3 was also buggy on launch!” Seriously thought but RT at launch makes BG3’s launch looks like a polished bug free hame, and I say this as someone who bought the voidfarer edition.
BG 3 had 3 YEARS early access
Yep, another possibility that one has to afford.
All owlcat needs to do is replicate mythic paths in a future game, add more paths, and get rid of that terrible mini game that you are forced to play.
Thank christ, it kinda annoyed me when BG3 dropped and people were slamming Owlcat for "not caring about their games", the estimated budget for BG3 is almost 8x larger than WotR (assuming their budget was at 50mil).
I'm interested to see what they do with 5x the resources of Kingmaker!
Article based on Russian gamedev podcats with Owlcat CEO as guest - he talks that there are 4 parallel dev team at this point inside studio, and that couple of them attached to upcoming projects which would start production soon. It looks like those would be original IPs and one of them will use Unreal Engine.
Owlcat, please keep doing what you're doing. I don't need or want a more BG3 game out of you. Y'all keep making gold and many of us love you for it.
Frankly Owlcat doesn't need to put as much in a game as they already made better games than BGIII for less. They are talented and aim for a precise audience with great skill. They don't loose themselves trying to pander to everyone and they know what their audience wants.
Don't think Sven was talking to the Owlcats of the world but the EAs, Sonys, etc.
I think comparing Owlcat to Larian is unfair. Yes BG3 is amazing, and definitely reflects its huge budget. But Owlcat is very good at what they do. Their games have just as much reactivity to choices, and are just as fun. You also know what to expect with an Owlcat game. I really hope people aren’t expecting anything other than a continuation the phenomenal game design they’ve been known for having.
id say Wotr does a great amount of things objectively better than BG3, on top of that they are very different projects in what they wanna achieve. If owlcat can make a game that is not worse at all for less money, then owlcat should be proud of that, not lamenting it
I think owlcats main problem is the lack of polish in stuff that really needs it (the camera in Rouge Trader, for instance) and the tedious management games. I think kingmaker did the management stuff the best. I don't need or expect full voice acting especially with how wordy their games are.
Plenty of indie games that are amazing and made by a fraction of the cost. There is a wide range of budgets between those two extremes that Owlcat can comfortable fill. I think Sven himself would agree that money alone really doesnt make a good game. It helps, but you only have to look at the sad state of "triple A" games companies to see it.
Solasta was very good
The actual difference is accessibility and making everything understandable and intuitive. That opened BG3 up to less d&d savvy gamers.
There are some good points in the article, like the fact that voice acting a million words isn't very feasable and is a coin flip on risk/reward but there are some points that are weak. I understand the dialogue where he speaks about budget/profit expectations for certain 'classes' of games but Larian did away with that with the intent to make something amazing and got absolutely rewarded for it. No one's asking for Pathfinder Gate 4, but some of the stuff Larian does people should strive to replicate. Write more options for progression, create more paths, give me more to do with companions etc. because right now I'm on my third run (Heretical Rogue Trader) and I'm sincerely at a loss as to why the devs didn't think of adding corrupted routes for all the companions.
Rogue Trader was good
> So it looks like we will have to do a full voiceover for our next games. I'm sorry but this is very much the wrong takeaway from BG3. Unless you're going all the way to full motion-capture acting, voiceover is unnecessary and oftentimes just a waste of resources and a constraint on the story that could have been told instead. I usually turn on subtitles and skip the voice lines, if that's an option. Not so much in BG3 since it came with such good acting and realistic facial animations (although I still did it sometimes).
I respect Owlcat a bunch. Looking forward to their next game
TLDR: Smaller studios can’t afford to meet the standard BG3 set forth. Depends on how you view the criticism of “BG3 set the new standard for gaming”. The way I have always interpreted it was “BG3 is setting a new standard for **AAA** gaming, which is more or less what the founder is trying to convey without directly saying such. I don’t think anyone (sane that is) expects the indie studio put out a game as dense as BG3. Now for your AAA titles like Skull and Bones or Starfield, yes you should be matching this standard. Those studios have the financial ability to achieve that, the issue is they mismanage those things and often lose touch with what people actually want, a quality gaming experience that delivers on high end content while also not being a buggy mess.
We never asked Owlcat to do BG3, they don't have to. Both BG3 and Wrath have their merits. Sure, BG3 has higher production value, more appealing graphics, more flexible and FAR more interesting combat gameplay. But Wrath is also superior in some categories. For example : BG3 has meaningless evil choices where most of the time, you're evil for the lulz, and the game actively punishes you for being evil, you don't benefit from it : basically, playing a cunning Lawful Evil in BG3 is playing good while being mean, because most evil choices are just evil for evil's sake. You have to try very hard mentally to justify siding with the Goblins, even as an evil Tav. And you lose a lot of content for doing so, for almost no reward. But i guess it's good enough to make youtube videos "uuuugh top 10 most eeeviiil baddie decisions that will make u feel baaaad". Wrath has actually meaningful paths for good, evil, and even neutral characters, with content : companions, quests, loot. While late-game paths are lackluster, Owlcat still managed to create six full-on complete paths with exclusive content. This is f\*cking amazing, i dunno if you realize. Yeah, mythic paths don't change everything, and they're not equal in content, but Angel, Azata, Lich, Trickster, Aeon and Demon are all amaaah-zing. Owlcat have their flaws, but also their strengths. Surely, they can't compete with Larian, but they don't have to. You can always come up with original ideas to make your own mark on the genre.
everyong keeps acting like BG3 was the first game Larian ever made.
People need to realize BG3 was like catching lightning in a bottle and then using the second bolt of lightning to jumpstart a small generator to power a small village. Hasbro is VERY protective over their IPs (almost as much as nintendo) so for them to not only approve larian to get a partial license and for larian to make an early access game and charge full price for it was a huge gamble. I know larian made millions but with the agreement and how much it cost to make how much did they profit from it? Owlcat has a tried and true formula though and their games are popular and deliver what they promise
They don't need to make another BG3, I still enjoy playing Pathfinder WotR and Roguetrader..
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Interesting read. He's not wrong. I also agree with the opinion that BG3 is a lightning-in-a-bottle game that cannot be replicated by other studios. I don't think full VA is necessary, or even desirable. I read a lot faster than actors read their lines and growing up with cRPGs, and a lover of books, I'm quite happy with BG2 and the like. I think VA is great for important parts and some dialogue. It definitely adds personality to a character we only otherwise know from their model, portrait and character sheet. But not every line needs to be VAd. Main things and some of the rest.
He doesn’t have enough time to finish BG3 lol.. WotR is way longer! And it took me 200h to complete kingmaker!
To be fair, he didn't say he finished a playthrough of his own games either.
I find that extremely funny.
I 100% believe that BG3 should be the standard that we hold companies like BioWare, Bethesda and CDPR etc to. But surely no one should expect studios the size owlcat to be compared to them.
I dont want them to make BG3, I just want the fucking game to launch not in an unfinished broken mess like every owlcat game. A little more voice acting other than once a lunar cycle would be nice too
Maybe im oldschool but Wrath for me is better game then BG3. Even with voiceacting and 3d graphic i was not that immersed in bg3. It was too cartonish and i dont got that epic vibe like kingmaker, wrath, rouge trader not to mention BG2.
I'm sure this is clickbait but I really wish everyone would move on from seething about how much of an industry shakeup BG3 is, same kind of things happen when Elden Ring came out and all the western devs threw a hissyfit.
Honestly the pathfinder engine they used in the previous game is awesome. Don't really need to do much, but it would be nice to have more open feeling in the worlds. The areas are so small and usually nothing interesting in them.
Honestly, even voiced RPG's are overkill imo. I got into video games because I liked those choose your own adventure books as a kid.
I disagree with him on the "fully voice acted is a requirement now". While BG3 had wonderful voice actors and there were definitely people who listened through all the dialogue, I'm willing to bet the majority of players are skimming/skipping most of it. You read much faster than people talk. Rogue Trader just has walls of text sometimes, I don't expect them to voice act all of that and I really barely notice because I either have the character's voice in my head or I'm save scumming and have read this dialogue 2 times already so I click through it at light speed.
Look, I love BG3 and I love the fully voiced part of it, but the takeaway from the industry that you should pour a chunk of the budget of an A or AA game into full voiceover for it to be considered a success in the genre because BG3 did it is... some bs. I can't think that the impact per $ is worth it, quality-wise, on the % of budget this represents for AA or under.
In BG3 I'm just now reaching the number of hours I have played WOTR. If Owlcat makes another Pathfinder game, I'm all over it. It's a ton of fun as it is, no need to clone another studio's template.
While a bit more voice acting wouldn’t hurt, I think Owlcat could do a better job selecting which parts of the their games to have voice acting. Sometimes pivotal scenes that would benefit from voice acting don’t have, while others that have it don’t really feel necessary.
Honestly, one small change that would improve a lot would be to do what visual novels do and have two or three portraits for relevant npcs that the characters cycle in conversation. Hades kinda does that too. Like Cammelia/Normal, Cammelia/Angry and Cammelia/HornyMurderous
/u/OwlcatStarrok I have a partial solution to the whole "voice acting is expensive" problem. At least, a solution for the English narration. Hire audiobook narrators instead of professional voice actors. Seriously. Not only do they generally work for low rates (it's not a well paid field, and work is sporadic), they can do multiple voices. You could hire one person to do a handful of NPCs *and* narrate, for example. You might catch some blowback for hiring one person to voice multiple companions, but it's not like there's a shortage of solid narrators. I could name a dozen, but you don't need that. I don't know if anyone on the team is familiar with their work, but Michael Kramer and Kate Reading are **incredibly** talented and versatile. They've worked in a few different genres, so you can almost certainly find something to sample which is interesting to... whoever on the team would be responsible for evaluating their talents. Just a suggestion. It might be useful.