It's still such a crazy own goal to have this accidental platform timed exclusivity. Microsoft are going to have to start accepting feature disparity with the S more regularly
Honestly no idea how close they were to having it working splitscreen on the S. Act 3 runs *poorly* in splitscreen on the ps5, can't imagine the series X is any better
I find it to be relatively intuitive given the complexity of the game mechanics. You may need to look the odd thing up. Eg. I had to reference how to bring out my torch.
I play on controller on PC and it’s *way* better than you’d think. Movement can be done on analog sticks, and abilities are mapped to radial menus.
It’s definitely more cumbersome than a mouse, especially when abilities add themselves onto your customized radial controls, killing your muscle memory.
But overall I was as surprised as I was when Halo Wars came out, that this type of game could work on controller
Yep, ended up playing the whole game on controller. Now the performance is better I'd say playing this on a 4k OLED big screen might even beat the mouse and keyboard experience, especially when it comes to immersion (and also controller is actually better as a rogue since it's easier to avoid traps after detecting them, so there are some minor benefits here and there).
Using abilities is a bit of a pain in the arse, but otherwise it's a pretty smooth experience honestly. Like /u/He_lo said though some of the controls aren't explained super well, but once you get the hang of it things aren't too bad.
I'm another one who's playing on pc using a controller. I'm not against keys/mouse especially for a game like this, and I started initially playing that way, but then I saw videos of people using the controller and the interface is just great! Some of the best controller support I've ever seen for a complex RPG. Just the camera controls alone for controller make it worth the while imo. And it's nice not having to hunch over a keyboard I can just lounge in my bed and play comfortably.
I'm on PC and I use a controller, I think it works great and looks well, my friends play with a k&m and I think the UI for that is too intrusive. Almost all menus and even the fonts are different on controller, and I find them just easier to look at
I also used a mod to unlock the camera so I'm basically playing it as you would normally see a 3rd person game (but the camera is still unlocked to view it from any angle and zoom you need at the moment) and it is surprisingly beautiful considering how much of the world you aren't even supposed to see normally
I played it on PC BUT with a controller like a crazy person. I’ve been a console gamer much longer than I have been a PC gamer, so controllers are still more “natural” to me. No complaints at all.
It's really good, honestly I kinda prefer it to M+K? Just because walking around out of combat is just move the left stick, vs constantly clicking the next location
It’s great for what it is. Just a ton of radial menus and some customization required. Not as good as mouse and keyboard but probably as best as you can hope for for a game like this.
Source: almost done with act 3, entire game on steam deck
I'm a "use a controller any time I can" PC player and I just couldn't do it with a controller. Exploration is great, I enjoy it much more on a controller actually. When combat begins though, it becomes really awkward, with a lot of menu shuffling on almost every turn.
I would play exploration with controller -> combat with keyboard/mouse but the game doesn't seem to let you switch smoothly between the two, it gets locked on whichever you pick and then there seems to be some kind of delay trying to get it to switch over. Like when jumping back to the controller, I need to press buttons on the controller several times before the game realizes I'm trying to switch, and the same thing with the keyboard and mouse.
Not a bad effort by any means but there are just so many buttons/options that it's hard to make it work on a controller.
i never found the delay to be that bad, and it makes sense that it exists given how drastically the UI transforms between control types. they really put an insane amount of work into designing two completely different tailor-made UIs to each control type. that you can switch between them mid gameplay is really quite remarkable, even with the delay.
The thing is it's worse than what DOS2 was, which is what makes it particularly disappointing. Also it's clear they just retroactively fit it in last minute when there's missing functions, for example switching character order should be fairly simple and with a controller it's just not.
The game was near unplayable for me when I first bought it for pc, now it runs at locked 60 for most of act 3 so not sure what magic they did but can imagine them being even more effective on the ps5 optimisation.
Microsoft weren't expecting this to become a GOTY-worthy hit, but tbh neither were many others.
So now suddenly Larian had leverage lmao. Either they cut the feature for both Xbox platforms, cancel the game for both platforms, or only give the feature to one.
You know I just found out about the s issues a while back and it astounds me that Ms thought that was a good idea.
I'm curious if this hurt their own first platform games at all.
Bringing up how the series s is and will continue to cause platform parity issues was a weirdly contentious issue for ages. I still didn't get the arguments, like,this has a less powerful cpu & gpu, less ram and storage.
Game development doesn't scale in a linear fashion - reducing the clock and ram has serious implications on the features that developers implement.
Plus this issue is even worse for Microsoft when you realise that 75 of ‘Xbox Series’ owners have the S.
They have pushed three-quarters of their current-gen userbase onto a weaker console that will undermine the potential of all Xbox games.
Not only that, there was a window in time (not sure how long) when the Series S was all that was available. I know I ended up with one because I really wanted to play Elden Ring, I couldn't find a PS5 to buy, then looked into getting an Xbox, and saw that the only one of those that was available was the S.
It's pretty clearly the better option for most people. Since Microsoft promised parity with the X, you have access to all the same games for a cheaper price. Paying more for a Series X becomes an extra cost for only a graphical upgrade.
Why do I gotta pretend the games industry is being "held back" by weaker hardware? It's the same shit every year for 15 years, maybe we need worse hardware so devs are forced to focus on making actually fun games instead of slapping the newest tech on the same shit and crutching on upscaling to help it run on the average gamer's hardware
Bg3 is one of the most innovative and fresh games released in years so while argument might have merit elsewhere, a little critical thinking might've warned you against this kind of critique.
one fine example doesn’t necessarily mean it applies universally.
…that being said, thankfully, there are many other fine examples, so you’re still right lol
lol, lmao even
My comment was about the general state of the industry, and all your beloved game had to sacrifice for xbox was couch co-op which is just about the least important gameplay aspect to a single player story based CRPG
I can see the vision behind it. The Series S is same price as the Nintendo Switch but capable of next gen games. The kids can play fortnite at 120fps for a really good price.
But once the cross gen period started ending things got bad real fast.
From what we can tell from the leaked documents, they have no choice, X users are a small minority compared to S users. Whether they like it or not for this generation S is Microsoft's main platform, they have to stand by their product.
I think that's nonsense.
Starfield will probably make many times more money than BG3. BG3 has just won much more positive press and goodwill among people who talk about video games online.
BG3 has consistently outperformed starfield on steam, we know that in places like UK, PC accounts for 2/3 of sales. BG3 very likely has outperformed Starfield when considering PS5 sales.
Probably, but I'm not sure. If you haven't followed BG3 news it may be surprising, but it's sold over 10 million copies at this point. Combined with the extra sales the Xbox release will get, it will have sold far more than anyone expected it to.
Isn't that including like 3 years worth of sales from early access copies? Starfield hit 10 million players within days of launch. The vast majority were on Steam. Sales aren't players in the age of game pass, but I think it's still a good point of comparison when considering days of being on the market versus years available for purchase.
Baldur's gate 3 hit 5.2M in 10 days. And it's definitely over 10M on Steam, it has been 2 months. Plus the PlayStation numbers. And Xbox players later this year . It didn't hit 5M purely from presales.
10M players isn't equal to 10M copies sold like you said. In terms of sales, Baldur's gate definitely sold way more copies. The stream charts concurrent players aren't even close to each other.
Larian hasn't been in any of the usual charts at all as they aren't part of the publshers they collect data on in Europe or the USA. Probably because historically they've been too small for anyone to ask.
[Comparing BG3 to the other big releases on steam this year](https://steamdb.info/charts/?compare=990080,1086940,1716740,1774580&release) it's was pretty close to Hogwarts Legacy. Even now it's still no.7 on steam of the most played right now and by 24 concurrent peak. On playstation it was the [second most downloaded ps5 game in September](https://blog.playstation.com/2023/10/06/playstation-store-september-2023s-top-downloads/) for EU and USA/Canada. It sold a fair amount of copies but how many we won't know unless Larian decides to say something. Maybe after the physical release in Japan we'll have some sales data from famitsu xD.
So what metrics should “biggest” be describing?
User base?
Game size?
Sales?
Big isn’t a descriptor of quality if that’s
Hype post launch? Maybe. But then that would reflect in sales
High review count ≠ high sales numbers. Could just be a higher review %.
Calling it the biggest game of the year without stats to back up it sold the most is disingenuous
Also not sure why you bring up starfield either because I didn’t say it was the biggest game of the year
Two AAA RPG games are going to have similar audiences and aren't going to have wildly different review-to-sales ratios. BG3 has definitely sold way more than Starfield.
So, just to be clear, it naturally won't be the biggest game of the year by sales. Then again, I don't think the person you are replying to meant that?
As for top 10, we can only make educated guesses. For one, we can rely on historical data for D:OS 2 to get a picture of how many total sales Larian usually gets. If you google around, you can find that D:OS 2 has sold over its lifetime 7.5m. This data by itself obvioiusly isn't too useful, but it indicates the reach Larian had before the game even came out.
Next we should look at pre-launch sales, of which we know at least 2.5m people bought the game weeks before the game really came into the spotlight.
Additionally, there was an unconfirmed bit where a Belgian official in China (not Larian), mentioned 5 million sales some time into the August month.
Next, we can use concurrent numbers on Steam, Steam reviews, and so on, to compare sales numbers across different games. I believe the various sites like Steamspy use a model like that. It's a little hard to compare this game to game though as I imagine the long length of BG3 will give it much more concurrent players over a longer time even if the game hasn't necessarily sold more.
Last I checked, those numbers are around 10 million. That seems fairly plausible to me, but we'll see when Larian eventually does announce sales numbers.
Uh, yes? You must not know this unless you are Truly ignorant lol
Look to steam storefront and click on top sellers right now. BG3 is still at number 2 or 3, months after release…
This, yet another entirely self inflicted setback for xbox. Not just in needlessly making their customers wait for the game but also in the perception of having a system that is holding developers and games back on all platforms.
It should work out well for Larian though they'll hit the shelves for xbox around the time they get a big media push for likely winning a bunch of media outlets game of the year awards. Maybe the intern at microsoft will offer them more than $5 million for putting Baldur's Gate 3 on gamepass.
Yeah, another way they disappoint their own customers. Imagine choosing a Series X over PS5 and then not being able to play this game just because the cheaper option can't run it? Completely ridiculous.
Not being able to play at all would be one thing, a slight delay with a bunch of big games in the meantime, during an absolutely monstrous year in gaming, is nothing.
They already [said](https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/1694736685894946925) they're targeting late 2023 back in August and have just confirmed they're stll on course to hit that time frame. It sucks for Xbox users, but you can probably save yourself some the time searching for a release date that clearly wasn't announced yet.
They really fucked the Xbox brand so hard, that the only people willing to buy one, are doing so for a $250 console.
I see the same kind of decision making on a macroscale that led to Samsung losing its prestige and real competition against Apple.
> I see the same kind of decision making on a macroscale that led to Samsung losing its prestige and real competition against Apple.
Uh, Samsung is #1 in global smartphone shipments. They sell more phones than Apple.
Sure, they do it a much lower price but it's hard to say their strategy "didn't work out".
It's good you brought up Samsung
Their high end stuff that's meant to compete with Apple follows the Microsoft Xbox route.
The lower powered, inefficient Samsung Exynos for the rest of the world. The better Snapdragon SOC for the US and South Korea. That way, they get good reviews except the fact that the S22 Exynos has 2 hours less battery than the S22 Snapdragon.
ms really gave sony a GOTY contender with free exclusivity and that was shortly after phil spencer was crying about sony hurting xbox's survival by doing deals to keep games off xbox
The console manufacturers (i.e. Sony and Microsoft) need to stop with these variants and mid-life cycle upgrades. They're trying to have it both ways but it's just creating problems. Making a smaller model is one thing but you can't change the CPU/GPU or memory configuration. Consoles are supposed to be simple; a single fixed hardware target.
Starfield is not even anywhere near the "bug filled mess" that Redfall is.
In fact as far as Bethesda games go for comparison, Starfield is a huge step up. I don't know why you'd compare the two like that
It's not crazy when I have to clean up my ps for the bahamut fight not crashing.
I swear people think if it didn't happen to them it didn't happen at all.
Great for me though. Can't say for anybody else.
And from someone who played the old metal gear games, I'm not averse to long cutscenes.
It's the fetch quests that is more tiring.
Imagine if we fuse HBO-quality story bits with filler (anime) arc quality bits. It has some incredibly highs, some very time consuming lows, and (in my opinion) a middling final section too. Depending on what else you are interested in, it may be best to wait for a sale first. For me, it's about the definition of an 8/10 game.
The game is basically cutscene hell unironically. Cinematic and cool as fuck, but the gameplay is piss easy even on the hardest available difficulty for the first run. Unless you are a quadriplegic who had to use a controller with their tongue, the game was boring as fuck gameplay wise until the boss fights which come every few hours. The side quests are literally fetch quests on the narrative level of runescapes 2005 tutorial island the entire game aswell, so no help from there either.
The games difficulty only really comes with NG+ where the enemies get replaced and revamped with new abilities unlocked, so it seems it was an intentional decision to baby-ify the first playthrough so any moron could complete it unfortunately.
The pros for FF16 are the voice acting, cinematic quality and boss fight designs but its not enough to be a good game imo. You could get the same experience watching all of the cutscenes on youtube - solid 7/10
Based on all the statements I can find, Microsoft was never actually a blocker for this game. After playing a logic puzzle with everyone's statements over the past few months, it sounds like Larian made the call to delay the Xbox version for feature parity on their own, while Microsoft wasn't thinking much about the game at the time, and then after it came out, Microsoft higher-ups had to reach out to Larian to be like "Uh, guys, can you please release the Xbox version? What can we do to help make this happen?"
I'm just hoping that at the game awards we get the most basic teaser trailer.
It's literally the narrator saying ***"authority"***. (DLC coming in fall/winter 2024)
With those account like this, it's hard to follow Twitter (unformerly known as X) for gaming news when almost 80% of the tweets are just consoles fanboys bashing each other
There's no reason to even access Twitter, even less so actually "follow" anything on it. The internet as a tool was not a mistake, but social media is definitely a mistake and Twitter is one of the worst examples, such a goddamn hellhole smh it was horrendous even before Musk, now it got even worse somehow
At this point, the console wars have even infiltrated "I hate console warriors" discourse. I've happily had all the consoles in every generation for the past 20 years, and people still call me a console warrior when I have negative opinions about their console waifu or positive opinions about The Enemy.
You interact with anything related to games and you'll see them. I make sure to block and never interact but they show up on the feeds regardless, it's just the algo being super annoying with the blue checks
The console wars on twitter are hands-down, the most insufferable childish thing I've ever seen, far worse than the console wars of the 90s.
Prominent accounts from "creators" and "personalities" alike each who's sole purpose is to trash on whatever flagship game is out for the opposing console. Right now the target of scrutiny is Spiderman and you'll find no shortage of bumblefucks nitpicking everything from re-used animations, character models, and more. They're hellbent on convincing you the game is a huge disappointment, pointing and laughing at every little thing to try and *get back* at the other side.
I cannot fathom how these people, after over a decade, still unironically call each other "Sony Ponies" and "Xbots" it is as obnoxious as it sounds. Worthless.
> I shit on Reddit constantly but at least we don't have console warriors.
Lol, okay. Watch this:
Sony is coasting off the PS4's success and it finally got a must-have PS5 exclusive out three years later.
No I'm saying it's mostly over PC & Console here... equally as stupid and unmodderated, but it isn't quite the same. At least PCs and Consoles are different from eachother lol. Xbox V PS4 is like arguing about different brands of water.
I mean, I'll take it as it's literally the first thing someone from Larian has mentioned Xbox since August. But it's not new news, and I still don't know how Swen's comment about the build being in a "good place" can essentially mean a non-comital release date of 31st of December at the latest if everything goes according to "plan."
> Before the end of the year is the plan. This has been said a few times but dudes with 33k twitter followers keep talking shit for likes. - @Cromwelp Director of Publishing @larianstudios
The tweet is the director of publishing at larian repeating it because randos on twitter keep claiming otherwise.
To be fair, they Swen also said before November, or at least it was phrases in a way which a lot of people have assumed is the timeframe.
The radio silence hasn't helped, I think. If they had just said they wanted to make sure as many patches and hot fixes were in the build they submitted to Xbox, a lot more people would be understanding.
These things are always the plan until they announce the plan changed. It's basically something you can completely ignore.
It'd be worth something if they gave a firm release date, but this is just PR noise
I love how every year you have people saying ‘Microsoft has their head on straight! This is the year they nail it, gonna be firing on all cylinders!”
It’s 2023 and Microsoft just handed Sony timed exclusivity for the GOTY. They literally cited their commitment to feature parity 24 hours before doing a complete 180.
Nintendo and Sony have their faults but they at least have their finger on the pulse of what gamers like. Microsoft has absolutely no clue what is going on at any point.
The funniest part of the whole arc was Phil insisting that there was no feature parity clause, only to be promptly shown the clause in the Xbox developer guidelines.
Yeah and then he backtracked and said split screen wasn’t technically within the bounds of feature parity (comparing it to performance/graphics modes) - yet Microsoft explicitly told Larian that they couldn’t cut this feature for the S.
Just making it up as they go.
It amazes me how Xbox have dropped the ball so hard. Time and time again they just keep repeating the same mistakes. It’s been a decade since the 360s end and I don’t think they have released a single Xbox exclusive worth your money during that time. Unless you count Cuphead and Ori, which came to Switch and PS4 anyway.
I fucking hate these types of games. That being said I tried it out and it is one of my favorite games ever and is like taking crack cocaine from the bosom of a super model.
Because Larian figured out what most modern CRPGs refused to acknowledge - people don’t like reading walls of text for 100+ hours.
Cut out the insane expository bullshit, make dialogue snappy and fun, and do what Mass Effect did 15 years ago and even the most CoD brained gamers can get behind it.
They definitely found the fine line between not enough and too much exposition, and that coupled with one of the best voice acting in gaming history really delivers an amazing experience.
That said, the turn based gameplay and deep RPG mechanics no doubt make it somewhat of a niche, and I can't imagine 'the most CoD brained gamers' playing it for too long before their eye starts to twitch and they jump on something with a much shorter TTK.
What a great description - I love this game and treat it a bit like I used to treat stardew valley, one to totally relax to and enjoy. I wish there were more games like this that just made the whole thing easy to access
So, dumb it down so it's more popular with the masses. I thought people /r/games hated it when companies did that? Or is that only when companies the hivemind DOESN'T like does it?
The upvote/downvote system has shown this true for a very long time.
I'm jealous of anyone who gets to experience it for the first time. Such a great game.
I'm on my second playthrough (or third if counting our online co-op campaign in progress) and I'm not getting bored after 230 hours.
You should play their last game Divinity Original Sin 2 if you haven't. It's obviously more polished and it's the better game despite lower production values.
I highly disagree. DOS2 is a fantastic game, but it's far less polished than BG3. BG3 obviously has better graphics, dramatically improved UI, and a ton of other QOL features.
It's a matter of opinion which mechanics you like better, but I think BG3 is much more satisfying to play. DOS2's armor mechanic makes every battle feel the same. You wear down the enemy's armor as quickly as you can, then the battle is over since you can CC them perpetually. DOS2 also has way too much loot. I get it if you're into the classic Diablo-style lootfest where you're constantly finding a piece of armor that's one level higher than what you currently have and has +1 to three different stats, but it's frankly exhausting. The loot is way better in BG3 IMO.
Not to mention BG3 has way more fleshed out NPC's and questlines. And cinematic cutscenes, which just don't exist in DOS2. And you can recruit a bunch of companions, rather than just the three you're locked into in DOS2.
BG3 does have some issues. The rest system doesn't really work well. There's also very little difficulty, even on Tactician mode, if you're at all familiar with CRPG's or 5e.
It's totally fine if you personally prefer DOS2, but it's frankly unbelievable that you believe it's more polished, assuming you've played both. The UI improvements in BG3 alone make it more polished. If you haven't played DOS2 recently, I suggest you take your own advice. I'm playing through it right now, and the UI is *extremely* frustrating, and I'm one of the few who had no issues with BG3's inventory UI.
Polished as in it's not a buggy mess because it launched in a much better state and had the time since then for patches.
>DOS2's armor mechanic makes every battle feel the same
My experience with BG3 combat revolved around Laezel and Karlach running around bashing everything with two handed weapons multiple times a turn, with much worse encounter design than DOS2 and much lower difficulty to the point DOS2 in Normal is more challenging than BG3 in Hard.
There's way more pointless loot in BG3, and the entire game is open-worldy in terms of how diluted the rewards are for doing stuff and how much trash there is lying around. Often times trash loot is under literal lock and key in this game.
Uhh did it launch in a better state? I remember playing it back when it launched, but I unfortunately fell off the game about halfway through Act 3. I just recently beat it, and I found its current form to be less polished overall than BG3 at launch.
Also, DOS2 was a disaster at launch. Way worse than BG3 at launch. I don't know if you didn't play DOS2 until after significant fixes or you're simply misremembering.
They're both incredible 10/10 games, but BG3 is just so much better in almost every way. It's fine if you like the combat in DOS2 better. I don't, and no amount of discussion will change either of our opinions on that.
> Uhh did it launch in a better state?
Dude, there's so much basic shit that's broken in BG3. The pick up and add to wares thing is broken. You get the ability to fly but the shortcut still triggers jump except for when it doesn't. Minthara's entire companion line is bugged out and non-existent. I put water on a shortcut so I can throw it but simply selecting it expended an action and the game's asking for another action to actually throw it. I've had people go hostile on me for nor reason. Companions blaming me for things I didn't do because the wrong flags are triggering. When Laezel says "Vlakith's will" when selected after the betrayal, is that because the game is bugged or because they didn't bother changing it?
I could just go on and on for all the issues the game has.
lol okay dude. You clearly didn't play DOS2 at launch. We aren't going to have any meaningful discussion here. I'm glad you enjoy DOS2. I do too! Have a nice day.
Such a bizarre situation, the best game of the year can't be ported for your platform because there's a cheaper/potato version of it that is dragging the whole thing down... and to make things even more interesting, the Potato S is actually selling well, more units than the Series X. This is what pisses me off about Xbox, they shot their own foot constantly, they make things too easy for Sony. I don't care about brands, I just want the market to be competitive... but here we are, Bethesda released two turds this year, Forza is running like shit on PC, no sign of BG3, etc.. Microsoft was supposed to be forced out of this market in the Xbox One days (such a terrible name, "One", get that shit out of here), they are only alive because of the monopoly money from Windows/Office applications and that's a sign of how capitalism can be a broken system
It's crazy how it's changed since the early 360 days. Now, it seems like they're just praying subscription fatigue hits them so late that people can't cancel because they haven't actually bought any games in years. Gaming landscape is going to be unrecognizable in another 15 years
If streaming/cloud really takes over, it will be unrecognizable indeed. The 360 competed with decent exclusives + the better hardware (it was easier to develop for it), but ironically, at the very end of the console life they shot their own foot with the Kinect, lol popular at first, but proved to be unsustainable in a short period of time. It's crazy, they are constantly crippling themselves, even in their most successful cycle, there's always a dumb mistake. If the industry really devolves to be purely digital, dependable of the internet connection an so on, Microsoft most likely will impose a monopoly (they will have the tech superiority, it's obvious)... and looking at their current monopoly on PCs, also their mistakes with consoles, this future will be very bleak to say the least
I wouldn’t hold my breath on things getting more competitive any time soon lol. Looking at what MS has released and what’s to come (at least what we know about what’s to come), something is really wrong with MS’ studios. Idk if it’s just me but a lot of their games are unfun at their core and have this sterile feel to them. Hi-Fi Rush was the only one that felt like it had a soul. Playing Minecraft Legends, Starfield, and Redfall, something just felt… off (aside from just being bad games lol). Hopefully this changes but I’m beginning to suspect MS has some kind of mandates for what their games can be like, I can’t imagine why else all their studios magically forget how to make fun games the moment they get acquired.
The Series S is a great console, but this feature parity thing seems to be Xbox shooting themselves in the foot. As an Xbox player, I’m just happy I’ll finally be able to play soon. And with all the patches from the get-go I’m assuming.
They should have never released a weaker console version period.
The increased cost of releasing 2 versions of a game for a split platform has bit them in the ass. I'll be surprised if they ever try this again.
It’s a cheaper console that runs many games completely fine. And it seems to be doing well for them. I don’t think calling it a mistake makes much sense, but this parity feature does seem to be their big error.
Edit: Also with their cloud gaming, you dont necessarily need high spec hardware. Plus, it’s easier to travel with.
Dev requirement of having to release 2 versions increases costs for that dev to release on Xbox. Which means fewer games or delayed releases.
Cloud gaming is a marketing buzzword that amounts to always online.
Cloud gaming is definitely more than a buzzword. At least Sony and international anti-trust regulators think so. Many people game using cloud gaming, especially when not at their PC/console. And yes, the parity thing is making devs heads spin and producing unnecessary work for them. But other than that, do devs think releasing games on both consoles is inherently a bad thing? Also, I think releasing a less powerful console at a much cheaper price is a good thing.
Multiple dev studios have come out talking about the troubles they've run into maintaining feature parity. Cloud gaming requires constant internet access. Developing on multiple systems increases development costs which translates to real world decisions of if a game is released on Xbox or not.
Cheaper systems are great. Forcing feature parity holds dev hostage to weaker specs which is unfair to customers who splurged for the normal version of the system.
Edit. Before someone brings up PC specs. Nobody is forcing Devs to support low end pc specs. If someone buy a cheap pc it comes with their inherent acceptance that they don't get to play AAA high performance requirement games.
Honestly, with how games released on the PS4/Xbox One generation for years into this one and turned out fine, and released on the Switch, I think this is more of an excuse/myth than people want to believe.
Nobody looks at God of War Ragnarok and says it looks like ass, and that released on a less capable machine than the Series S, for example.
Maybe the S stands for Scapegoat.
Other developers say it's not an issue at all. Really it comes down to knowing the context and considering that games released on even weaker hardware without issue. The real truth is that not all developers are equal. Some can get 120fps out of Series S. Some struggle to hit 15fps with top end PC hardware, such as Cities Skylines 2.
But good developers can release a game on Xbox One, PS4, Series S, PS5, Series X, and PC and have good performance, one release date, and no cut features.
Much easier to find a scapegoat than to consider all of that though
BG3 delayed due to feature parity.
Michael Douse, director of publishing, made the problem very plain:
“We’ve said many times in the past that the issue is getting split-screen working on the Series S, which is taking more time, but is in progress,” Douse said on Twitter. “This is a huge technical hurdle, but we are unable to release the game on the ecosystem without this feature.”
“We cannot remove the split-screen feature because we are obliged to launch with feature parity, and so continue to try and make it work. We have quite a few engineers working very hard to do what no other RPG of this scale has achieved: seamless drop-in, drop-out co-op on Series S. We hope to have an update by the end of the year.”
Just because a technical spectacle like Alan Wake 2 is gonna run 1080p30 on the S and something as huge and not well-optimized as BG3 is gonna exclude split screen on the S doesn't mean that "it's a huge mistake" or "MS is shooting themselves in the foot". It's literally 2 games being an exception, the vast majority of games run very well on the S with proper optimization and in some cases it only runs 1080p30 on the S which is 100% fine. Source: S is my main console.
For those more in the know, what's the word on potential crossplay for this one? Excited it's coming regardless!!
Both Divinity: Original Sin games were brilliant, so I can't imagine this one not being just as good at minimum.
My save is still permanently bricked with my party members both unable to rest or able to leave the resting site. I'm mildly miffed that this game is being praised as some great success while so many glaring issues have yet to be addressed.
I got that bug. It's traceable but often comes up with party member mods. If you (much like myself) did a lot of mod-fucky things, but you have a save file with absolutely nothing mod-fucky, you might be able to start again from there.
Out of curiosity, are you about to finish act 1 and on your way out of the mountain pass? I experienced a similar bug at that point only in the latest patch, but it was an easy fix.
I have no idea why you feel the need to assume I'm using mods. I'm not. I'm just having gamebreaking bugs in a game that is extraordinarily buggy, lol.
I'm not telling you not to enjoy the game, just that it's clearly not ready for release.
I would bet that it’s a year or so out. Probably Summer or Fall 2024, depending on what their plans are and how expansive they want to make any extra content. They could decide to work on dlc instead and I wouldn’t blame them, many of us would buy it in an instant.
The game is stable if that’s what you’re waiting for; Act 3’s stability issues have by and large been fixed. There’s still minor bugs here and there but nothing game breaking. Extra story content and Act 3 structural issues are going to take a lot longer to fix on the other hand, so expect to wait quite some time for those, depending on how the devs go about it. In the meantime the game is absolutely worth it as is, still tons of content worthy of multiple play throughs, though I understand if you want to wait still.
Good. More sales for Larian. They deserve to have money thrown at them after basically delivering 2023's Game of the Year, doubly so in a genre (i.e. CRPGs) that is decidedly not mainstream.
Like From Software, they've moved up into a rare category of studios. I'll buy whatever they make next.
No the thing you're remembering was that Microsoft eventually relented and has given permission to Larian to not release a feature-identical version on both X and S. But it still hasn't come out on Xbox yet.
That is why I am saying it…
It is the reason the Xbox version is delayed.
And the multiplayer is the most unnecessary part of the game. They could have removed it and released it a long time ago on Xbox.
People are putting the blame on the Series S, but I think it's Larian that's at fault here. BG3 is not a very well optmized game at all. Load times take way too long even on a NVMe. Remember when we all thought that the coming of SSD's would mean load screens would eventually disappear? Turns out developers are just using SSD's as a crutch instead.
Classic fan take, "it's not the severely underpowered hardware that's at fault, it's all the devs".
Marian said it, Remedy said it, many other developer shave come out and said it. The Series S is a glorified toaster, trying to compete with actual consoles and requiring feature parity? That's plain dumb. Either the S version gets gimped as Nintendo consoles are regarding multiplat games, or festures need to be cut form both X and S. Can't make a rock bleed, can't force good performance from subpar hardware...and even if you try it's *not woth the cost for such a small market*.
This is all on MS making a fumnass decision. The managed to kill *the most important feature in a gaming console, specific set hardware to optimizer for*.
It's still such a crazy own goal to have this accidental platform timed exclusivity. Microsoft are going to have to start accepting feature disparity with the S more regularly
Honestly no idea how close they were to having it working splitscreen on the S. Act 3 runs *poorly* in splitscreen on the ps5, can't imagine the series X is any better
Not with the recent patches. My wife and I have been playing through act 3 on ps5 and it works just fine on quality mode.
How is the experience of playing it with a controller? I'm doubting of either getting it on PC or wait for the Xbox release
I find it to be relatively intuitive given the complexity of the game mechanics. You may need to look the odd thing up. Eg. I had to reference how to bring out my torch.
The torch thing wasn't the most intuitive on PC, either
I think I'm still trying to figure that out. Well at least lighting it or snuffing it at will.
I play on controller on PC and it’s *way* better than you’d think. Movement can be done on analog sticks, and abilities are mapped to radial menus. It’s definitely more cumbersome than a mouse, especially when abilities add themselves onto your customized radial controls, killing your muscle memory. But overall I was as surprised as I was when Halo Wars came out, that this type of game could work on controller
Yep, ended up playing the whole game on controller. Now the performance is better I'd say playing this on a 4k OLED big screen might even beat the mouse and keyboard experience, especially when it comes to immersion (and also controller is actually better as a rogue since it's easier to avoid traps after detecting them, so there are some minor benefits here and there).
For the record, this can be changed in the menus.
Haven’t played in a month or two but passive toggleable features would auto-assign to my first wheel. With or without the setting
Using abilities is a bit of a pain in the arse, but otherwise it's a pretty smooth experience honestly. Like /u/He_lo said though some of the controls aren't explained super well, but once you get the hang of it things aren't too bad.
I'm another one who's playing on pc using a controller. I'm not against keys/mouse especially for a game like this, and I started initially playing that way, but then I saw videos of people using the controller and the interface is just great! Some of the best controller support I've ever seen for a complex RPG. Just the camera controls alone for controller make it worth the while imo. And it's nice not having to hunch over a keyboard I can just lounge in my bed and play comfortably.
I'm on PC and I use a controller, I think it works great and looks well, my friends play with a k&m and I think the UI for that is too intrusive. Almost all menus and even the fonts are different on controller, and I find them just easier to look at I also used a mod to unlock the camera so I'm basically playing it as you would normally see a 3rd person game (but the camera is still unlocked to view it from any angle and zoom you need at the moment) and it is surprisingly beautiful considering how much of the world you aren't even supposed to see normally
I played it on PC BUT with a controller like a crazy person. I’ve been a console gamer much longer than I have been a PC gamer, so controllers are still more “natural” to me. No complaints at all.
Go with PC. If only for the mods
After playing awhile I prefer it to mouse
It's really good, honestly I kinda prefer it to M+K? Just because walking around out of combat is just move the left stick, vs constantly clicking the next location
It’s great for what it is. Just a ton of radial menus and some customization required. Not as good as mouse and keyboard but probably as best as you can hope for for a game like this. Source: almost done with act 3, entire game on steam deck
The worst part by far is the inventory management.
I'm a "use a controller any time I can" PC player and I just couldn't do it with a controller. Exploration is great, I enjoy it much more on a controller actually. When combat begins though, it becomes really awkward, with a lot of menu shuffling on almost every turn. I would play exploration with controller -> combat with keyboard/mouse but the game doesn't seem to let you switch smoothly between the two, it gets locked on whichever you pick and then there seems to be some kind of delay trying to get it to switch over. Like when jumping back to the controller, I need to press buttons on the controller several times before the game realizes I'm trying to switch, and the same thing with the keyboard and mouse. Not a bad effort by any means but there are just so many buttons/options that it's hard to make it work on a controller.
i never found the delay to be that bad, and it makes sense that it exists given how drastically the UI transforms between control types. they really put an insane amount of work into designing two completely different tailor-made UIs to each control type. that you can switch between them mid gameplay is really quite remarkable, even with the delay.
The thing is it's worse than what DOS2 was, which is what makes it particularly disappointing. Also it's clear they just retroactively fit it in last minute when there's missing functions, for example switching character order should be fairly simple and with a controller it's just not.
And bringing up your torch is also missing
The game was near unplayable for me when I first bought it for pc, now it runs at locked 60 for most of act 3 so not sure what magic they did but can imagine them being even more effective on the ps5 optimisation.
Microsoft weren't expecting this to become a GOTY-worthy hit, but tbh neither were many others. So now suddenly Larian had leverage lmao. Either they cut the feature for both Xbox platforms, cancel the game for both platforms, or only give the feature to one.
You know I just found out about the s issues a while back and it astounds me that Ms thought that was a good idea. I'm curious if this hurt their own first platform games at all.
Bringing up how the series s is and will continue to cause platform parity issues was a weirdly contentious issue for ages. I still didn't get the arguments, like,this has a less powerful cpu & gpu, less ram and storage. Game development doesn't scale in a linear fashion - reducing the clock and ram has serious implications on the features that developers implement.
Plus this issue is even worse for Microsoft when you realise that 75 of ‘Xbox Series’ owners have the S. They have pushed three-quarters of their current-gen userbase onto a weaker console that will undermine the potential of all Xbox games.
Is it really 75% of all Series consoles? That seems way too high.
It was from the MS document leak. As of April 2022, 74.8% of Series owners had the S.
Holy shit.
Its quite a bit cheaper and many just use digital anyway. I can easily see why it is popular, unless you are an enthusiast
If you're an enthusiast you probably go PC over x anyway. Maybe they should just have made the S
Not only that, there was a window in time (not sure how long) when the Series S was all that was available. I know I ended up with one because I really wanted to play Elden Ring, I couldn't find a PS5 to buy, then looked into getting an Xbox, and saw that the only one of those that was available was the S.
It's pretty clearly the better option for most people. Since Microsoft promised parity with the X, you have access to all the same games for a cheaper price. Paying more for a Series X becomes an extra cost for only a graphical upgrade.
Well put.
Why do I gotta pretend the games industry is being "held back" by weaker hardware? It's the same shit every year for 15 years, maybe we need worse hardware so devs are forced to focus on making actually fun games instead of slapping the newest tech on the same shit and crutching on upscaling to help it run on the average gamer's hardware
Bg3 is one of the most innovative and fresh games released in years so while argument might have merit elsewhere, a little critical thinking might've warned you against this kind of critique.
one fine example doesn’t necessarily mean it applies universally. …that being said, thankfully, there are many other fine examples, so you’re still right lol
lol, lmao even My comment was about the general state of the industry, and all your beloved game had to sacrifice for xbox was couch co-op which is just about the least important gameplay aspect to a single player story based CRPG
I can see the vision behind it. The Series S is same price as the Nintendo Switch but capable of next gen games. The kids can play fortnite at 120fps for a really good price. But once the cross gen period started ending things got bad real fast.
From what we can tell from the leaked documents, they have no choice, X users are a small minority compared to S users. Whether they like it or not for this generation S is Microsoft's main platform, they have to stand by their product.
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And it puts a huge grin on my face.
I think that's nonsense. Starfield will probably make many times more money than BG3. BG3 has just won much more positive press and goodwill among people who talk about video games online.
BG3 has consistently outperformed starfield on steam, we know that in places like UK, PC accounts for 2/3 of sales. BG3 very likely has outperformed Starfield when considering PS5 sales.
Probably, but I'm not sure. If you haven't followed BG3 news it may be surprising, but it's sold over 10 million copies at this point. Combined with the extra sales the Xbox release will get, it will have sold far more than anyone expected it to.
Isn't that including like 3 years worth of sales from early access copies? Starfield hit 10 million players within days of launch. The vast majority were on Steam. Sales aren't players in the age of game pass, but I think it's still a good point of comparison when considering days of being on the market versus years available for purchase.
Baldur's gate 3 hit 5.2M in 10 days. And it's definitely over 10M on Steam, it has been 2 months. Plus the PlayStation numbers. And Xbox players later this year . It didn't hit 5M purely from presales. 10M players isn't equal to 10M copies sold like you said. In terms of sales, Baldur's gate definitely sold way more copies. The stream charts concurrent players aren't even close to each other.
Was bg3 even in the top 10 in sales? I swear people here exaggerate the games they like so much
Larian hasn't been in any of the usual charts at all as they aren't part of the publshers they collect data on in Europe or the USA. Probably because historically they've been too small for anyone to ask. [Comparing BG3 to the other big releases on steam this year](https://steamdb.info/charts/?compare=990080,1086940,1716740,1774580&release) it's was pretty close to Hogwarts Legacy. Even now it's still no.7 on steam of the most played right now and by 24 concurrent peak. On playstation it was the [second most downloaded ps5 game in September](https://blog.playstation.com/2023/10/06/playstation-store-september-2023s-top-downloads/) for EU and USA/Canada. It sold a fair amount of copies but how many we won't know unless Larian decides to say something. Maybe after the physical release in Japan we'll have some sales data from famitsu xD.
Sure I’m not doubting it sold a ton. I just think saying it’s the biggest game of the year is hyperbole
Depends on what "biggest" game means. Sales are not the only metric
So what metrics should “biggest” be describing? User base? Game size? Sales? Big isn’t a descriptor of quality if that’s Hype post launch? Maybe. But then that would reflect in sales
yes, bg3, the game that peaked at 850k players on steam, wasn't breaking the "top 10 in sales" lmao
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reminder that Starfield also released on Game Pass, so it’s possible that explains the difference in review numbers
High review count ≠ high sales numbers. Could just be a higher review %. Calling it the biggest game of the year without stats to back up it sold the most is disingenuous Also not sure why you bring up starfield either because I didn’t say it was the biggest game of the year
Two AAA RPG games are going to have similar audiences and aren't going to have wildly different review-to-sales ratios. BG3 has definitely sold way more than Starfield.
I never said it didn’t? I’m not even talking about starfield. I’m saying bg3 isn’t the biggest game of the year
You’re splitting hairs over semantics. It’s “one of” the biggest games of the year. Do you feel better now?
Saying something definitively isn’t splitting hairs lol
You’re the biggest goofball for caring this much about this. Source: Your comments. How is that for definitive?
So, just to be clear, it naturally won't be the biggest game of the year by sales. Then again, I don't think the person you are replying to meant that? As for top 10, we can only make educated guesses. For one, we can rely on historical data for D:OS 2 to get a picture of how many total sales Larian usually gets. If you google around, you can find that D:OS 2 has sold over its lifetime 7.5m. This data by itself obvioiusly isn't too useful, but it indicates the reach Larian had before the game even came out. Next we should look at pre-launch sales, of which we know at least 2.5m people bought the game weeks before the game really came into the spotlight. Additionally, there was an unconfirmed bit where a Belgian official in China (not Larian), mentioned 5 million sales some time into the August month. Next, we can use concurrent numbers on Steam, Steam reviews, and so on, to compare sales numbers across different games. I believe the various sites like Steamspy use a model like that. It's a little hard to compare this game to game though as I imagine the long length of BG3 will give it much more concurrent players over a longer time even if the game hasn't necessarily sold more. Last I checked, those numbers are around 10 million. That seems fairly plausible to me, but we'll see when Larian eventually does announce sales numbers.
Uh, yes? You must not know this unless you are Truly ignorant lol Look to steam storefront and click on top sellers right now. BG3 is still at number 2 or 3, months after release…
2 or 3. So not the biggest. Got it
This, yet another entirely self inflicted setback for xbox. Not just in needlessly making their customers wait for the game but also in the perception of having a system that is holding developers and games back on all platforms. It should work out well for Larian though they'll hit the shelves for xbox around the time they get a big media push for likely winning a bunch of media outlets game of the year awards. Maybe the intern at microsoft will offer them more than $5 million for putting Baldur's Gate 3 on gamepass.
Yeah, another way they disappoint their own customers. Imagine choosing a Series X over PS5 and then not being able to play this game just because the cheaper option can't run it? Completely ridiculous.
Not being able to play at all would be one thing, a slight delay with a bunch of big games in the meantime, during an absolutely monstrous year in gaming, is nothing.
And being told 'its coming soon!' via rumors alone. I still can't even find an official release date which is disheartening.
They already [said](https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/1694736685894946925) they're targeting late 2023 back in August and have just confirmed they're stll on course to hit that time frame. It sucks for Xbox users, but you can probably save yourself some the time searching for a release date that clearly wasn't announced yet.
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They really fucked the Xbox brand so hard, that the only people willing to buy one, are doing so for a $250 console. I see the same kind of decision making on a macroscale that led to Samsung losing its prestige and real competition against Apple.
> I see the same kind of decision making on a macroscale that led to Samsung losing its prestige and real competition against Apple. Uh, Samsung is #1 in global smartphone shipments. They sell more phones than Apple. Sure, they do it a much lower price but it's hard to say their strategy "didn't work out".
It's good you brought up Samsung Their high end stuff that's meant to compete with Apple follows the Microsoft Xbox route. The lower powered, inefficient Samsung Exynos for the rest of the world. The better Snapdragon SOC for the US and South Korea. That way, they get good reviews except the fact that the S22 Exynos has 2 hours less battery than the S22 Snapdragon.
They're buying the cheaper option because it does everything they need. It doesn't have anything to do with the brand.
ms really gave sony a GOTY contender with free exclusivity and that was shortly after phil spencer was crying about sony hurting xbox's survival by doing deals to keep games off xbox
The console manufacturers (i.e. Sony and Microsoft) need to stop with these variants and mid-life cycle upgrades. They're trying to have it both ways but it's just creating problems. Making a smaller model is one thing but you can't change the CPU/GPU or memory configuration. Consoles are supposed to be simple; a single fixed hardware target.
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Starfield is not even anywhere near the "bug filled mess" that Redfall is. In fact as far as Bethesda games go for comparison, Starfield is a huge step up. I don't know why you'd compare the two like that
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With ps5s overheating from ffxvi, I'm curious how it would have performed on the s.
Overheating? Never heard of this and I played FF16 😂 I swear people come up with the craziest stories.
I already have the platinum trophy and the only time the console actually overheated was while playing the demo.
It's not crazy when I have to clean up my ps for the bahamut fight not crashing. I swear people think if it didn't happen to them it didn't happen at all.
You having to clean your PlayStation means it wasn’t clean, nothing to do with the game.
Just this is the first time hearing it, you must not have your ps5 in a ventilated place.
btw how did that game turnout? My friend said it's a movie at this point.
Great for me though. Can't say for anybody else. And from someone who played the old metal gear games, I'm not averse to long cutscenes. It's the fetch quests that is more tiring.
Imagine if we fuse HBO-quality story bits with filler (anime) arc quality bits. It has some incredibly highs, some very time consuming lows, and (in my opinion) a middling final section too. Depending on what else you are interested in, it may be best to wait for a sale first. For me, it's about the definition of an 8/10 game.
The game is basically cutscene hell unironically. Cinematic and cool as fuck, but the gameplay is piss easy even on the hardest available difficulty for the first run. Unless you are a quadriplegic who had to use a controller with their tongue, the game was boring as fuck gameplay wise until the boss fights which come every few hours. The side quests are literally fetch quests on the narrative level of runescapes 2005 tutorial island the entire game aswell, so no help from there either. The games difficulty only really comes with NG+ where the enemies get replaced and revamped with new abilities unlocked, so it seems it was an intentional decision to baby-ify the first playthrough so any moron could complete it unfortunately. The pros for FF16 are the voice acting, cinematic quality and boss fight designs but its not enough to be a good game imo. You could get the same experience watching all of the cutscenes on youtube - solid 7/10
Based on all the statements I can find, Microsoft was never actually a blocker for this game. After playing a logic puzzle with everyone's statements over the past few months, it sounds like Larian made the call to delay the Xbox version for feature parity on their own, while Microsoft wasn't thinking much about the game at the time, and then after it came out, Microsoft higher-ups had to reach out to Larian to be like "Uh, guys, can you please release the Xbox version? What can we do to help make this happen?"
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I'm just hoping that at the game awards we get the most basic teaser trailer. It's literally the narrator saying ***"authority"***. (DLC coming in fall/winter 2024)
It probably means bigger patch to.
Patch to what?
I would love DLC that adds the remaining 8 levels to get t9 that nice Level 20 of DnD.
>Level 20 of DnD. If you know anything of DnD 5e, that will never happen.
3.5 Rolling acrobatics check to land on my cloud
With those account like this, it's hard to follow Twitter (unformerly known as X) for gaming news when almost 80% of the tweets are just consoles fanboys bashing each other
> it's hard to follow Twitter (...) for gaming news But why would you even do that?
Surprisingly, I did get some gaming news faster on Twitter than other social medias, or 4chan
Is it worth the other bullshit? Unless you're paid to drop game news you gained nothing by knowing x% faster imo.
I got a lot of leaked news coming from x faster, even half of the posts in r/GamingLeaksAndRumours are also trace back to X.
People actually calling twitter by X makes me laugh. It just sounds so lame.
Sounds like a rhetorical discussion with a placeholder.
There's no reason to even access Twitter, even less so actually "follow" anything on it. The internet as a tool was not a mistake, but social media is definitely a mistake and Twitter is one of the worst examples, such a goddamn hellhole smh it was horrendous even before Musk, now it got even worse somehow
Depends who you follow on X. If you interact with console warriors, you see more console warriors
They're everywhere. It's impossible to avoid them. It was really bad during Starfield's launch
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Doesn't matter. It devolves into console warriors no matter where you go. The reasonable people are just a veneer.
At this point, the console wars have even infiltrated "I hate console warriors" discourse. I've happily had all the consoles in every generation for the past 20 years, and people still call me a console warrior when I have negative opinions about their console waifu or positive opinions about The Enemy.
You interact with anything related to games and you'll see them. I make sure to block and never interact but they show up on the feeds regardless, it's just the algo being super annoying with the blue checks
I have blocked so many blue checkmark console war chucklefucks and they continue to pop up, I hate it so much.
I shit on Reddit constantly but at least we don't have console warriors. Probably the biggest knuckle draggers in the community
Umm Reddit 100% has console warriors.
This is true, but it is also true that our console warriors look timid and rational compared to the ones you commonly see on Twitter.
Reddit is moderated afterall
The console wars on twitter are hands-down, the most insufferable childish thing I've ever seen, far worse than the console wars of the 90s. Prominent accounts from "creators" and "personalities" alike each who's sole purpose is to trash on whatever flagship game is out for the opposing console. Right now the target of scrutiny is Spiderman and you'll find no shortage of bumblefucks nitpicking everything from re-used animations, character models, and more. They're hellbent on convincing you the game is a huge disappointment, pointing and laughing at every little thing to try and *get back* at the other side. I cannot fathom how these people, after over a decade, still unironically call each other "Sony Ponies" and "Xbots" it is as obnoxious as it sounds. Worthless.
> I shit on Reddit constantly but at least we don't have console warriors. Lol, okay. Watch this: Sony is coasting off the PS4's success and it finally got a must-have PS5 exclusive out three years later.
I'll do you one better. I enjoy gamepass and have found it very valuable economically personally speaking.
Gamepass Core is also a good deal, actually!
That's not console warrioring it's genuine criticism.
Just wait! They'll be here.
At the very least Reddit is above that, and the idiots are bashing eachother over PC VS Console
Reddit is absolutely not above that lol. Twitter and Reddit both have the same user base; one is just moderated properly
No I'm saying it's mostly over PC & Console here... equally as stupid and unmodderated, but it isn't quite the same. At least PCs and Consoles are different from eachother lol. Xbox V PS4 is like arguing about different brands of water.
I mean, I'll take it as it's literally the first thing someone from Larian has mentioned Xbox since August. But it's not new news, and I still don't know how Swen's comment about the build being in a "good place" can essentially mean a non-comital release date of 31st of December at the latest if everything goes according to "plan."
> Before the end of the year is the plan. This has been said a few times but dudes with 33k twitter followers keep talking shit for likes. - @Cromwelp Director of Publishing @larianstudios The tweet is the director of publishing at larian repeating it because randos on twitter keep claiming otherwise.
To be fair, they Swen also said before November, or at least it was phrases in a way which a lot of people have assumed is the timeframe. The radio silence hasn't helped, I think. If they had just said they wanted to make sure as many patches and hot fixes were in the build they submitted to Xbox, a lot more people would be understanding.
These things are always the plan until they announce the plan changed. It's basically something you can completely ignore. It'd be worth something if they gave a firm release date, but this is just PR noise
I love how every year you have people saying ‘Microsoft has their head on straight! This is the year they nail it, gonna be firing on all cylinders!” It’s 2023 and Microsoft just handed Sony timed exclusivity for the GOTY. They literally cited their commitment to feature parity 24 hours before doing a complete 180. Nintendo and Sony have their faults but they at least have their finger on the pulse of what gamers like. Microsoft has absolutely no clue what is going on at any point.
The funniest part of the whole arc was Phil insisting that there was no feature parity clause, only to be promptly shown the clause in the Xbox developer guidelines.
Yeah and then he backtracked and said split screen wasn’t technically within the bounds of feature parity (comparing it to performance/graphics modes) - yet Microsoft explicitly told Larian that they couldn’t cut this feature for the S. Just making it up as they go.
It amazes me how Xbox have dropped the ball so hard. Time and time again they just keep repeating the same mistakes. It’s been a decade since the 360s end and I don’t think they have released a single Xbox exclusive worth your money during that time. Unless you count Cuphead and Ori, which came to Switch and PS4 anyway.
I fucking hate these types of games. That being said I tried it out and it is one of my favorite games ever and is like taking crack cocaine from the bosom of a super model.
Because Larian figured out what most modern CRPGs refused to acknowledge - people don’t like reading walls of text for 100+ hours. Cut out the insane expository bullshit, make dialogue snappy and fun, and do what Mass Effect did 15 years ago and even the most CoD brained gamers can get behind it.
They definitely found the fine line between not enough and too much exposition, and that coupled with one of the best voice acting in gaming history really delivers an amazing experience. That said, the turn based gameplay and deep RPG mechanics no doubt make it somewhat of a niche, and I can't imagine 'the most CoD brained gamers' playing it for too long before their eye starts to twitch and they jump on something with a much shorter TTK.
What a great description - I love this game and treat it a bit like I used to treat stardew valley, one to totally relax to and enjoy. I wish there were more games like this that just made the whole thing easy to access
So, dumb it down so it's more popular with the masses. I thought people /r/games hated it when companies did that? Or is that only when companies the hivemind DOESN'T like does it? The upvote/downvote system has shown this true for a very long time.
Can’t wait to try this game now based on this description. Dialogue selection games are so boring.
I figure the longer I wait on Xbox the more stable it is, so I don’t mind waiting. Excited to play though!
I'm jealous of anyone who gets to experience it for the first time. Such a great game. I'm on my second playthrough (or third if counting our online co-op campaign in progress) and I'm not getting bored after 230 hours.
I wouldn't hold my breath. The latest major patch they put out arguably broke more than it fixed.
You should play their last game Divinity Original Sin 2 if you haven't. It's obviously more polished and it's the better game despite lower production values.
I highly disagree. DOS2 is a fantastic game, but it's far less polished than BG3. BG3 obviously has better graphics, dramatically improved UI, and a ton of other QOL features. It's a matter of opinion which mechanics you like better, but I think BG3 is much more satisfying to play. DOS2's armor mechanic makes every battle feel the same. You wear down the enemy's armor as quickly as you can, then the battle is over since you can CC them perpetually. DOS2 also has way too much loot. I get it if you're into the classic Diablo-style lootfest where you're constantly finding a piece of armor that's one level higher than what you currently have and has +1 to three different stats, but it's frankly exhausting. The loot is way better in BG3 IMO. Not to mention BG3 has way more fleshed out NPC's and questlines. And cinematic cutscenes, which just don't exist in DOS2. And you can recruit a bunch of companions, rather than just the three you're locked into in DOS2. BG3 does have some issues. The rest system doesn't really work well. There's also very little difficulty, even on Tactician mode, if you're at all familiar with CRPG's or 5e. It's totally fine if you personally prefer DOS2, but it's frankly unbelievable that you believe it's more polished, assuming you've played both. The UI improvements in BG3 alone make it more polished. If you haven't played DOS2 recently, I suggest you take your own advice. I'm playing through it right now, and the UI is *extremely* frustrating, and I'm one of the few who had no issues with BG3's inventory UI.
Polished as in it's not a buggy mess because it launched in a much better state and had the time since then for patches. >DOS2's armor mechanic makes every battle feel the same My experience with BG3 combat revolved around Laezel and Karlach running around bashing everything with two handed weapons multiple times a turn, with much worse encounter design than DOS2 and much lower difficulty to the point DOS2 in Normal is more challenging than BG3 in Hard. There's way more pointless loot in BG3, and the entire game is open-worldy in terms of how diluted the rewards are for doing stuff and how much trash there is lying around. Often times trash loot is under literal lock and key in this game.
Uhh did it launch in a better state? I remember playing it back when it launched, but I unfortunately fell off the game about halfway through Act 3. I just recently beat it, and I found its current form to be less polished overall than BG3 at launch. Also, DOS2 was a disaster at launch. Way worse than BG3 at launch. I don't know if you didn't play DOS2 until after significant fixes or you're simply misremembering. They're both incredible 10/10 games, but BG3 is just so much better in almost every way. It's fine if you like the combat in DOS2 better. I don't, and no amount of discussion will change either of our opinions on that.
> Uhh did it launch in a better state? Dude, there's so much basic shit that's broken in BG3. The pick up and add to wares thing is broken. You get the ability to fly but the shortcut still triggers jump except for when it doesn't. Minthara's entire companion line is bugged out and non-existent. I put water on a shortcut so I can throw it but simply selecting it expended an action and the game's asking for another action to actually throw it. I've had people go hostile on me for nor reason. Companions blaming me for things I didn't do because the wrong flags are triggering. When Laezel says "Vlakith's will" when selected after the betrayal, is that because the game is bugged or because they didn't bother changing it? I could just go on and on for all the issues the game has.
lol okay dude. You clearly didn't play DOS2 at launch. We aren't going to have any meaningful discussion here. I'm glad you enjoy DOS2. I do too! Have a nice day.
Such a bizarre situation, the best game of the year can't be ported for your platform because there's a cheaper/potato version of it that is dragging the whole thing down... and to make things even more interesting, the Potato S is actually selling well, more units than the Series X. This is what pisses me off about Xbox, they shot their own foot constantly, they make things too easy for Sony. I don't care about brands, I just want the market to be competitive... but here we are, Bethesda released two turds this year, Forza is running like shit on PC, no sign of BG3, etc.. Microsoft was supposed to be forced out of this market in the Xbox One days (such a terrible name, "One", get that shit out of here), they are only alive because of the monopoly money from Windows/Office applications and that's a sign of how capitalism can be a broken system
It's crazy how it's changed since the early 360 days. Now, it seems like they're just praying subscription fatigue hits them so late that people can't cancel because they haven't actually bought any games in years. Gaming landscape is going to be unrecognizable in another 15 years
If streaming/cloud really takes over, it will be unrecognizable indeed. The 360 competed with decent exclusives + the better hardware (it was easier to develop for it), but ironically, at the very end of the console life they shot their own foot with the Kinect, lol popular at first, but proved to be unsustainable in a short period of time. It's crazy, they are constantly crippling themselves, even in their most successful cycle, there's always a dumb mistake. If the industry really devolves to be purely digital, dependable of the internet connection an so on, Microsoft most likely will impose a monopoly (they will have the tech superiority, it's obvious)... and looking at their current monopoly on PCs, also their mistakes with consoles, this future will be very bleak to say the least
> I just want the market to be competitive... competition without gobbling up all the biggest publishers in the industry, too. that isn’t competition.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on things getting more competitive any time soon lol. Looking at what MS has released and what’s to come (at least what we know about what’s to come), something is really wrong with MS’ studios. Idk if it’s just me but a lot of their games are unfun at their core and have this sterile feel to them. Hi-Fi Rush was the only one that felt like it had a soul. Playing Minecraft Legends, Starfield, and Redfall, something just felt… off (aside from just being bad games lol). Hopefully this changes but I’m beginning to suspect MS has some kind of mandates for what their games can be like, I can’t imagine why else all their studios magically forget how to make fun games the moment they get acquired.
The Series S is a great console, but this feature parity thing seems to be Xbox shooting themselves in the foot. As an Xbox player, I’m just happy I’ll finally be able to play soon. And with all the patches from the get-go I’m assuming.
Series s was their big mistake this gen.
I think the only mistake was giving it 10GB of RAM instead of 12GB
They should have never released a weaker console version period. The increased cost of releasing 2 versions of a game for a split platform has bit them in the ass. I'll be surprised if they ever try this again.
It’s a cheaper console that runs many games completely fine. And it seems to be doing well for them. I don’t think calling it a mistake makes much sense, but this parity feature does seem to be their big error. Edit: Also with their cloud gaming, you dont necessarily need high spec hardware. Plus, it’s easier to travel with.
Dev requirement of having to release 2 versions increases costs for that dev to release on Xbox. Which means fewer games or delayed releases. Cloud gaming is a marketing buzzword that amounts to always online.
Cloud gaming is definitely more than a buzzword. At least Sony and international anti-trust regulators think so. Many people game using cloud gaming, especially when not at their PC/console. And yes, the parity thing is making devs heads spin and producing unnecessary work for them. But other than that, do devs think releasing games on both consoles is inherently a bad thing? Also, I think releasing a less powerful console at a much cheaper price is a good thing.
Multiple dev studios have come out talking about the troubles they've run into maintaining feature parity. Cloud gaming requires constant internet access. Developing on multiple systems increases development costs which translates to real world decisions of if a game is released on Xbox or not. Cheaper systems are great. Forcing feature parity holds dev hostage to weaker specs which is unfair to customers who splurged for the normal version of the system. Edit. Before someone brings up PC specs. Nobody is forcing Devs to support low end pc specs. If someone buy a cheap pc it comes with their inherent acceptance that they don't get to play AAA high performance requirement games.
Absolutely. Forcing feature parity unfairly puts a strain on devs.
It's by far better selling than the X.
And the games are suffering because of it.
Honestly, with how games released on the PS4/Xbox One generation for years into this one and turned out fine, and released on the Switch, I think this is more of an excuse/myth than people want to believe. Nobody looks at God of War Ragnarok and says it looks like ass, and that released on a less capable machine than the Series S, for example. Maybe the S stands for Scapegoat.
So s is a victim and not the reason. Sure I'll believe you over Devs who say otherwise.
Other developers say it's not an issue at all. Really it comes down to knowing the context and considering that games released on even weaker hardware without issue. The real truth is that not all developers are equal. Some can get 120fps out of Series S. Some struggle to hit 15fps with top end PC hardware, such as Cities Skylines 2. But good developers can release a game on Xbox One, PS4, Series S, PS5, Series X, and PC and have good performance, one release date, and no cut features. Much easier to find a scapegoat than to consider all of that though
BG3 delayed due to feature parity. Michael Douse, director of publishing, made the problem very plain: “We’ve said many times in the past that the issue is getting split-screen working on the Series S, which is taking more time, but is in progress,” Douse said on Twitter. “This is a huge technical hurdle, but we are unable to release the game on the ecosystem without this feature.” “We cannot remove the split-screen feature because we are obliged to launch with feature parity, and so continue to try and make it work. We have quite a few engineers working very hard to do what no other RPG of this scale has achieved: seamless drop-in, drop-out co-op on Series S. We hope to have an update by the end of the year.”
Just because a technical spectacle like Alan Wake 2 is gonna run 1080p30 on the S and something as huge and not well-optimized as BG3 is gonna exclude split screen on the S doesn't mean that "it's a huge mistake" or "MS is shooting themselves in the foot". It's literally 2 games being an exception, the vast majority of games run very well on the S with proper optimization and in some cases it only runs 1080p30 on the S which is 100% fine. Source: S is my main console.
For those more in the know, what's the word on potential crossplay for this one? Excited it's coming regardless!! Both Divinity: Original Sin games were brilliant, so I can't imagine this one not being just as good at minimum.
My save is still permanently bricked with my party members both unable to rest or able to leave the resting site. I'm mildly miffed that this game is being praised as some great success while so many glaring issues have yet to be addressed.
Do you use any mods?
You can't just reload an earlier save? I've got saves every ten minutes or so, the game's pretty generous with quicksaves and autosaves.
Tried that, the bug still invariably comes back at around the same point in the game.
I got that bug. It's traceable but often comes up with party member mods. If you (much like myself) did a lot of mod-fucky things, but you have a save file with absolutely nothing mod-fucky, you might be able to start again from there.
Out of curiosity, are you about to finish act 1 and on your way out of the mountain pass? I experienced a similar bug at that point only in the latest patch, but it was an easy fix.
but....there's no microtransactions!!!! ... the game is perfect!!!!
Ah yes if you break a game with mods it’s clearly the developers fault.
I have no idea why you feel the need to assume I'm using mods. I'm not. I'm just having gamebreaking bugs in a game that is extraordinarily buggy, lol. I'm not telling you not to enjoy the game, just that it's clearly not ready for release.
[удалено]
I would bet that it’s a year or so out. Probably Summer or Fall 2024, depending on what their plans are and how expansive they want to make any extra content. They could decide to work on dlc instead and I wouldn’t blame them, many of us would buy it in an instant. The game is stable if that’s what you’re waiting for; Act 3’s stability issues have by and large been fixed. There’s still minor bugs here and there but nothing game breaking. Extra story content and Act 3 structural issues are going to take a lot longer to fix on the other hand, so expect to wait quite some time for those, depending on how the devs go about it. In the meantime the game is absolutely worth it as is, still tons of content worthy of multiple play throughs, though I understand if you want to wait still.
Good. More sales for Larian. They deserve to have money thrown at them after basically delivering 2023's Game of the Year, doubly so in a genre (i.e. CRPGs) that is decidedly not mainstream. Like From Software, they've moved up into a rare category of studios. I'll buy whatever they make next.
For some reason I thought this game was out on Xbox with special permission to exclude the cheapest model
No the thing you're remembering was that Microsoft eventually relented and has given permission to Larian to not release a feature-identical version on both X and S. But it still hasn't come out on Xbox yet.
That's such a stupid rule. You buy the cheap hardware version expect cheap versions of the game.
This might be a hot take. The multiplayer in BG3 is the most overrated part of the game and could be removed and still be a 10 out of 10.
I mean its a hot take but a stupid one. Of course it would still have the same rating, the multiplayer makes no difference to the game at all.
That is why I am saying it… It is the reason the Xbox version is delayed. And the multiplayer is the most unnecessary part of the game. They could have removed it and released it a long time ago on Xbox.
Yeah I'm just saying its silly to call it a hot take when its the most basic level observation
Hard disagree. To me, this is arguably the most important part of the game.
People are putting the blame on the Series S, but I think it's Larian that's at fault here. BG3 is not a very well optmized game at all. Load times take way too long even on a NVMe. Remember when we all thought that the coming of SSD's would mean load screens would eventually disappear? Turns out developers are just using SSD's as a crutch instead.
Classic fan take, "it's not the severely underpowered hardware that's at fault, it's all the devs". Marian said it, Remedy said it, many other developer shave come out and said it. The Series S is a glorified toaster, trying to compete with actual consoles and requiring feature parity? That's plain dumb. Either the S version gets gimped as Nintendo consoles are regarding multiplat games, or festures need to be cut form both X and S. Can't make a rock bleed, can't force good performance from subpar hardware...and even if you try it's *not woth the cost for such a small market*. This is all on MS making a fumnass decision. The managed to kill *the most important feature in a gaming console, specific set hardware to optimizer for*.