I'm about 90% of the way through my first play of this game, and it has become not only my favorite videogame of all time, but is easily in my top 5 of narrative/storytelling experiences. Forget videogames, there are few books, movies, TV shows, or just stories in general that have the dramatic narrative impact that this game does. It is, at turns, successful at being inspiring, hilarious, tragic, horrific, hells just say whatever adjective you want. It is all of the good ones.
And the amazing thing is that it is essentially a choose-your-own-adventure experience in a way that games can be but no other narrative medium can. The amazing success of BG3 is that it succeeds in this way beyond most other attempts. That little choice you made on day one of your game? Yeah it might come back to impact your story over 100 hours later in a way you just had no way to see coming.
There are experiences here that had me on the brink of tears. And then, a few days later, experiences that had me gobsmacked in disbelief by the reveal that I just was not expecting. I am not experienced in the DnD universe, so maybe some of this is just my naivety, but the game is so deep in its narrative that if you spend the time to really get to know the story, the characters, and the world, it will reward you in ways you probably have never experienced in a narrative medium like this.
And more- you can go back and play the whole game all the way through and make entirely different choices and get an entirely different story.
The capacity to do this, and do it so well, is an incredible achievement. The creators, voice actors, game designers, and animators have just done a tremendous job. The only way I can see this ever being surmounted for its depth and optionality is if you could somehow work AI into creating a truly customized narrative based on your choices. The flowcharts that this game must have relied on boggle my mind. The detail and work they must have put in to script it in the way they did, and then build in such engaging dialogue and settings along with it, must have taken years (granted, it was an 8 year production). I just can't see it ever being topped without some sort of AI mechanism.
I wish that people outside of gaming knew about this. It should be mentioned in the same breath as the true classics of books, movies, and TV. I feel as if most of the people who worked on it will never be known outside of a relatively niche audience, and that is supremely unfortunate given the talent they displayed in creating BG3. It's an incredible achievement.
If any part of you has an interest in this game, get it.
And the amazing thing is that it is essentially a choose-your-own-adventure experience in a way that games can be but no other narrative medium can. The amazing success of BG3 is that it succeeds in this way beyond most other attempts. That little choice you made on day one of your game? Yeah it might come back to impact your story over 100 hours later in a way you just had no way to see coming.
There are experiences here that had me on the brink of tears. And then, a few days later, experiences that had me gobsmacked in disbelief by the reveal that I just was not expecting. I am not experienced in the DnD universe, so maybe some of this is just my naivety, but the game is so deep in its narrative that if you spend the time to really get to know the story, the characters, and the world, it will reward you in ways you probably have never experienced in a narrative medium like this.
And more- you can go back and play the whole game all the way through and make entirely different choices and get an entirely different story.
The capacity to do this, and do it so well, is an incredible achievement. The creators, voice actors, game designers, and animators have just done a tremendous job. The only way I can see this ever being surmounted for its depth and optionality is if you could somehow work AI into creating a truly customized narrative based on your choices. The flowcharts that this game must have relied on boggle my mind. The detail and work they must have put in to script it in the way they did, and then build in such engaging dialogue and settings along with it, must have taken years (granted, it was an 8 year production). I just can't see it ever being topped without some sort of AI mechanism.
I wish that people outside of gaming knew about this. It should be mentioned in the same breath as the true classics of books, movies, and TV. I feel as if most of the people who worked on it will never be known outside of a relatively niche audience, and that is supremely unfortunate given the talent they displayed in creating BG3. It's an incredible achievement.
If any part of you has an interest in this game, get it.
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