I think the base game will probably end up entertaining for what it is, but the EA will also go down as a cautionary tale about how not to develop a computer role playing game - with the player base looking over your shoulder and breathing down your neck for 2 years. Whether or not it was intended, Larian presents as largely ignoring the people who bought into BG3 early or who signed up for their home feedback boards, with the result that I think their EA telemetry will be rather off and their feedback colored by the fact that half their EA players are holding out, while the other half are going non stop to the Nth degree. It's unclear what sort of feedback they're receiving or taking to heart.
More importantly though I think there are many ways they could have made their EA itself more gameful and the feedback/focus group process more lively and a lot more iterative, or just to somehow feel more Dungeons & Dragons during the downtime. The changes they've made thus far were too small and too infrequent to really engender the sense like "Damn, this is changing all the time and getting cooler by the day! This GM is on hit!!! I better play again so I don't miss out!!!" Instead it's more like "really? that's it? after 4 months?" Maybe it's unfair to expect so much of BG3, but I just can't help it. By not leaning into that that big wave they caught at the start I think they're really running the risk of crashing out here, when it counts most during the final stretch.
It's honestly probably just a really shitty way to have to do creative work on this scale, to open the doors so early like that and then get totally flooded instantly. I'm not sure they fully grasped what having "D&D" in the title would actually entail, just in terms of pulling people out of the woodwork from all quarters, but then again I also get the feeling that the world ending plague might have done a number on them in ways that may just be depressing to read about later with the inevitable post mortem. It's too bad, because for 2 years they've had a quite captive audience that would probably have made for an enduring resource and great word of mouth, but instead they went all radio silence with it, which I think was the wrong call. I also get the sense that the EA was all refinement, with very little experimentation or swings for the fences to try and keep the players amped for the development process. I guess it's possible this may still occur during the remaining year until the full game actually drops, but it's kinda hard to imagine what that looks like now.
People are probably too used to what's there and already in place and too wedded to the idea that everything they're experiencing now is, in-effect, the final product (or at least the first 3rd of it), so to suddenly start changing a lot of stuff around now as 'part of the fun' would just ruffle too many feathers. If they'd made more dramatic changes earlier, then people would instead view the EA itself like an evolving D&D campaign, or an experience unto itself. One that might be sort of ephemeral and transient, but still one for the ages, thus making players want to participate. Rather than just waiting until it's 'all done, and finished,' if that makes sense? They didn't really create that atmosphere though, which would have required many more patches and probably some EA version of the full game, not just it's first act, to actually work. They could have jumped around more too. Like why does it need to start at the beginning and do the same thing constantly, or even follow the same story beats each time? They could have yanked stuff around and let the curtain fall on some sections/aspects, introduced others, changed who was where and what was when, then returned to it later, with yet more changes. Then the whole thing might have felt like a growing evolving project that players could just enjoy without having to take out the critical broadsword to every little aspect. Maybe that's trickery and muddying the waters for the appearance of depth, but I think it would have been a much cooler approach. They didn't keep us guessing enough about what it might become though, so it just sorta devolves into grumbling and impatience and criticism, probably unfair for the most part, but that's just kinda what happens when you show off a rough draft.
I suspect like some others here, I download the latest patch every few months, like I just did for patch 8. I'll play for maybe a dozen hours and then dip, because I don't want to make Act 1 a chore for myself later on. I kick around on their feedback boards, but it feels futile and sort of annoying. And yet I know I'll have to commit to at least one play through of the full game, just purely on general principle, so I linger from time to time. But yeah to that question a few posts up regarding connections to Baldur's Gate, it doesn't feel much like it's predecessors to me right now and it's hard to tell if that's really even a priority. I'm clearly invested in the game or at least the legacy that made it possible, but BG3 feels like the sequel to the pnp campaign module Descent to Avernus, and not to the Tales of the Sword Coast or Throne of Bhaal CRPGs like I was expecting. Not that that's the worst thing I can imagine, but it just feels too much like misdirection to me. That said I do remain hopeful. It's hard to imagine wanting anything with Baldur's Gate in the name to fail, so I'm still pulling for it, but yeah the EA just has me all salty sometimes lol.
Then I remembered this spot existed so had to stop by and chime in right quite! lol
Hope you are all well! Catch ya on the next one!
