Baldur's Gate 3: Larian Is The New "Old" Bioware And Better

you might remember a developer by the name of BioWare they were responsible for the creation of some of the greatest RPGs of all time including the predecessors of Baldur's Gate 3 baller's gate Baldur's Gate 2 and Throne of ball above all they forged a legacy of legendary games such as Neverwinter Knights Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Jade Empire Dragon Age Origins Mass Effect and others some people nostalgically refer to this Epoch as the Golden Age of BioWare on his team were such luminaries as David Gator Drew carpition and many others most people of a certain age remember that in many ways BioWare set a new standard for RPGs between the years of 1998 and 2009 on multiple fronts dialogue storytelling alternative paths and choices companions among other things and it was truly a glorious time even the titles that were objectively less are pg-ish such as Mass Effect 2 and to a greater extent Mass Effect 3 have etched themselves into our memory for other reasons I always look back with great fondness and wistfulness at the ever loyal and competent Sharpshooter Garris and think that is what a friend ought to be like both in games and Beyond independent of whatever faux pas might have been committed in the larger story but all good things must come to an end and so too did the Golden Era of BioWare increasingly their games resembled RPGs with diminished choice and meaningfulness in those choices as the once legendary RPG makers began to disassemble the very elements in their games that the player base appreciated so much the last halfway decent game although deeply flawed was Dragon Age Inquisition released in the year 2014 and even then it seemed to lack much of what most of us fondly remember about Dragon Age Origins the causes of this would require a video of its own and exceed the scope of this video suffice to say that many lay blame at the feet of the greedy corpos at Electronic Arts or EA the publisher that bought BioWare in the year 2008 suffocating in the vice-like grip of their EA overlords it is speculated and subjected to insane crunch time and expectations antithetical to the RPG genre whatever the ultimate truth behind the claims of EA's influence on BioWare after the acquisition BioWare slowly began to wither and eventually they came to be as we know them today a shattered wizard husk of their former selves still bearing the name of their forebears yet wholly lacking in anything of the qualities that made BioWare the renowned name it once was and he perfectly honest the ultimate cause of this might not matter after all what does it matter if a man has died of cardiac arrest or cancer as regardless he shall forever remain dead perhaps one can think of an analogy to bioware's current Incarnation as that of a deceased bear expertly stuffed by a taxidermist appropriate for display at a natural history museum perhaps but lacking any of the attributes we commonly ascribe to Bears it looks like a bear but it is dead and does not stir bereft of life and vital essence BioWare of the current age is much the same the victim of multiple taxidermists eviscerating and stuffing it to at least appear Like It Is What It pretends to be a state of neither life nor death not unlike undeath and if the rumor should be proven true about Dragon Age dread wolf this will only serve to further cement this state and reputation when thinking of BioWare these days I'm reminded of the words they themselves wrote many Winters ago for their antagonist John arenicus when confronted by his former Queen he says to her I do not remember your love Elohim I've tried I've tried to recreate it to spark it Anew In My Memory but it is gone a hollow dead thing for years I clung to the memory of it then the memory of the memory and then nothing I look upon you and feel nothing I remember nothing but you turning your back on me along with all the others and so it is with BioWare Hollow dead thing that leaves us with not but ashes in our mouths but now on to more cheerful topics namely the Ascension of larion in many ways larion not only embodies the principles of golden age BioWare but does so much more with some of it due to the intangible qualities of svenbinka and his team and some of it due to new modern Innovations and technology that are born of the era we live in a joining of skill passion and Kismet as it were and I'm going to claim in much the way a game is sometimes referred to as a spiritual successor to a prior game that larion is a developer is a spiritual successor to BioWare but they are far more than just that one of the RPG aspects that BioWare revolutionized was the concept of choice and impact of choice meaning decisions you make actually have consequences and the BioWare game I see with the most parallels with respect to Ballers Gate 3 is unquestionably Dragon Age Origins right off the bat when you consider that Dragon Age Origins was the defining game of this generation in terms of the character you chose to play and story this becomes very clear although the choices for your player character were far fewer they were all meaningful meaning that whether you chose to play a commoner or Noble dwarf Noble human dalish Elf or alienage Elf or Mage these choices all had a major impact on the game as you went about your quests as a gray Warden being a dwarf for example whether Noble or common returning to orzamar you can see that your origin matters and that there is unresolved business to be taken care of and the same applies to all the other Origins stories now Baldur's Gate 3 is a different game and Origins play a different role but the reactivity that I've addressed in a previous video is very much a mirror and echo of those features in Dragon Age Origins if you choose to play a particular race people will notice in addition to whatever basic ratios there might be and Beyond this if you choose to play An Origin character such as Carlock you have a whole world laid out before you brimming with unique interactions then there's the matter of the multitude of decisions you make one of the more distinct parallels that exist between Dragon Age Origins and Baldur's Gate 3 is for example the decision you can make seeking after dealer's support in order to fight the blight as a great Warden to either side with the dalish and specifically their leader zathrian or turn on the dalish by supporting the werewolves and witherfang which is a long convoluted story in itself although hardly a perfect one-to-one parallel it does remind you of the possibility of siding with either the Goblins in mythara or Houston and The Druids thereby saving the chieflands and this is what I mean by spiritual successor choices have an impact and in Baldur's Gate 3 these are two very different choices that are reflective of two very different moral perspectives which both quests the nature of the Beast and Dragon Age Origins and the decision to side with the absolute versus siding with The Druids and T flames in body but of all the RPG systems out there one system that BioWare probably contributed more to than any other developer out there in the history of gaming until now is the companion system as well as the notion of approval and disapproval no other developer has put that much energy into the members of your party until larion and it would be virtually impossible to say that BioWare did not influence larion in this regard what differentiates this approach to party members from so many other games is the degree of interactivity and reactivity so the player character's decisions in the world starting with the original Ballers gate games which had party banter and companion quests as well as reputational gain and loss and still later being best embodied in Dragon Age Origins with the combination of both interesting party banter approval and disapproval cab dialogue and exchange some companions like each other and others do not satisfying one does not necessarily mean satisfying another an excellent example of this in Dragon Age Origins is the quest to acquire the urn of sacred ashes which you can choose to defile and should you choose to do so some of your companions will actually turn on you for committing this heinous deed whereas others will in fact approve of this act Morgan and Liliana do not particularly like each other and choosing a certain companion during the course of the game can lead to the outright loss of another although BioWare pioneered this type of system of interaction and further refined it I will argue that it is in bothers Gate 3 that this system of approval disapproval and deep companion interaction will reach its apogee in modern gaming and this is already apparent in Early Access which barely scratches the surface of what we will experience come the full release of the game it is for example quite clear that shadow heart and lizelle bear little love for each other and that gaining the approval of both whilst they are in your party will be no simple matter Beyond this we know there are inherent conflicts of interest baked into the game on multiple levels say with Gail's incessant needs to devour powerful magical items at your expense or the simple fact that shadowheart must carry around a gift Yankee artifact that lizelle could gain great Renown for if she were to acquire it for herself and bring it to her people and last but not least the inherent conflict of interest between will and karlak as we have been informed by larion since he has been tasked a hunter and take her head it might be the case that laryn was inspired by BioWare in some of its design decisions but inspiration can only take you so far and larian stands on the precipice of not only inheriting the mantle of king of RPGs from the BioWare of the days of yore but far surpassing it in every respect the depth of the RPG systems whether story race class based or environmentally will truly be something to behold and will supersede anything we've seen from BioWare for other RPG makers in the past the specific reasons as to why this is the case in terms of History development and Studio Independence would take a separate video to understand and such a video is warranted however for the time being we can be confident that with Baldur's Gate 3 a new age of RPGs will be ushered in and the fears and concerns expressed by developers attest to this whether or not Ballers Gate 3 turns out to be a once in a lifetime anomaly some have spoken of or an industry Benchmark for decades to come I enjoin you all to no longer shed tears for the loss of the long dead BioWare and instead rejoice and bask in the warmth of the new king of RPGs larion long live the king and long may he Reign before I go I'd like to invite you to my Discord server where you can discuss Ballers Gate 3 with like-minded people as well as other RPGs as always thank you for tuning in and if you like my content you can leave a like comment share and subscribe and hit the Bell icon to be informed of my videos it'd be much appreciated as it really helps out with Channel growth and I will check you out next time take care

Channel: Spell&Shield

Views: 39,830

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Id: 67fYcMZcLoE

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023