The lead designer of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has discussed the difference in design philosophy between Bethesda games and Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3.
Larian/BG3 is bold enough to make player choices matter to the extent that several paths and entire storylines in the game get locked out based on your decisions. Bethesda (and literally any other developer) is not. They’d rather you not miss everything they’ve taken the effort of building in the game.
Its easy to miss entire zones and dozens of bosses in a playthrough. You can kill an npc or make a dialogue choice and miss their entire questline in Elden Ring/dark souls. They intentionally hide these things so you could never even know you’re missing huge chunks of content.
Thank god for Fromsoft. So many unique moments you don’t find in other games because others are too worried about people missing anything.
I could name a half dozen of those moments just off the top of my head. The recent favorite was jumping into a fairly obscure well and watching as that tiny sewer suddenly opens up to the massive Subterranean Shunning Grounds. I have a hard time finding that well when I’m looking for it.
Or Dark Souls when they hide an entire area behind a sneaky series of hidden walls and chests - IE it is a fairly innocuous place anyway and easy to assume the chest was the point of the hidden room and not look for more secrets behind it.
It’s such a relief to see Larian/BG3 and Fromsoft/ER succeed because you know other studios are watching. I just hope they learn the right lessons from that success instead of trying to clone those games. Those two studios built a foundation of expertise and assets over the years, honed in on what they were good at, and created very unique experiences. Hopefully we get more and more of that in the coming years.
Larian are far from the only studio that’s willing to do this. The Witcher 2 features a choice after the first act that locks off one pathway in its entirety. It’s probably 5-10 hours of content that’s locked out until you play the game again (or load and make another choice I guess).
That said, I agree with your point, I wish we had more developers that are willing to take that risk.
TL;DR
Larian/BG3 is bold enough to make player choices matter to the extent that several paths and entire storylines in the game get locked out based on your decisions. Bethesda (and literally any other developer) is not. They’d rather you not miss everything they’ve taken the effort of building in the game.
Ever hear of FromSoft?
Its easy to miss entire zones and dozens of bosses in a playthrough. You can kill an npc or make a dialogue choice and miss their entire questline in Elden Ring/dark souls. They intentionally hide these things so you could never even know you’re missing huge chunks of content.
Thank god for Fromsoft. So many unique moments you don’t find in other games because others are too worried about people missing anything.
I could name a half dozen of those moments just off the top of my head. The recent favorite was jumping into a fairly obscure well and watching as that tiny sewer suddenly opens up to the massive Subterranean Shunning Grounds. I have a hard time finding that well when I’m looking for it.
Or Dark Souls when they hide an entire area behind a sneaky series of hidden walls and chests - IE it is a fairly innocuous place anyway and easy to assume the chest was the point of the hidden room and not look for more secrets behind it.
It’s such a relief to see Larian/BG3 and Fromsoft/ER succeed because you know other studios are watching. I just hope they learn the right lessons from that success instead of trying to clone those games. Those two studios built a foundation of expertise and assets over the years, honed in on what they were good at, and created very unique experiences. Hopefully we get more and more of that in the coming years.
Stuff like that is awesome, really brings the world to life
And makes for great replayability by doing things differently!
Larian are far from the only studio that’s willing to do this. The Witcher 2 features a choice after the first act that locks off one pathway in its entirety. It’s probably 5-10 hours of content that’s locked out until you play the game again (or load and make another choice I guess).
That said, I agree with your point, I wish we had more developers that are willing to take that risk.
You can lock yourself out of the entire expansion in cyberpunk
Am I confused - Starfield does have this? Not to this extent. There’s a few scenarios where your persuasion check bypasses a quest or two.
But – I seriously think this is the wrong takeaway. BG3 made a stronger game because it went a mile deep. Starfield is extremely shallow.
Not to this extent is the key here. He explained it better in the article.