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this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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While this headline is true, I don't think it's the fundamental reason for the game's success. Having characters that feel alive is awesome, and part of what elevates BG3 over D:OS 1 and 2 for me. But what makes it great is the amount of control you have over the narrative; how the game responds to your choices. There is nuance. There are permutations. It ain't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than any rpg Bethesda ever put out (fite me).
A lot of Bethesda content is quasi-procedural. TES and FO maps are littered dungeons/encampments that are pretty formulaic. Re-used passage & room artwork, generic antagonists, just little opportunities to engage in combat mechanics. And they respawn periodically, so you can go back and get your mechanics fix.
Everything in BG3 is scripted. There are no random encounters, wandering mobs, or replayable dungeons. Everything in the game is there intentionally, and everything in the game has been hand crafted.
Yeah, this is true. I think Bethesda games have just felt really empty and lifeless to me for a long time. I enjoyed Morrowind a lot. Oblivion I played for a while, but never finished the story. Don't even remember if I ever finished Skyrim, which was obviously massively popular. Same with their Fallout games, it's just been diminishing returns for me. Different strokes, and all that, obviously, they just don't have that secret sauce I crave.
I think part of it is that your character doesn't have any personality; you're some total cipher of a Chosen One, which makes it difficult to form an emotional connection to them, and by extension to any of the NPC's. Some of their NPC's have well-written dialogue, but I sure don't remember any of them.
Bethesda's "good stories" have always been moreso the player's stories of cobbled together mechanics as a a result of their playstyle/current abilities, gear, and motivation.
Most of the time it might be rote open world questing with some enjoyable grind loop, but there are a lot of particular memories I love, like robbing the Red Diamond jewelry store in Oblivion's Imperial City, "casing" the place by day as a customer and purchasing a necklace, purely to experience the joy of breaking in at 3 AM and robbing it blind.
The joy and hilarity I felt when I came back the day after I'll always remember. Entering the store to see the shopkeep, beaming at his new customer, all of his shelves and cases completely fucking empty, as he vacantly grinned at me, buck naked as id stolen the clothes right out of his sleeping pockets.
I've stolen a lot of shit in that game, but that one was good. It's incredibly rare for me to remember Bethesda's actual character moments that fondly, as they've always come off plastic and rehearsed in some combination of writing, voice acting, and rigid animation. Sometimes they almost reach a good story, like some popular side quest chains, or Paladin Danse's personal quests.
So, I think these two games tell their best culminational "stories" in different fundamental ways, and I think it's neat how each one's best potential narrative, whether written or otherwise, is a marriage of the game's possibilities and the player's motivation and intent. But you're probably right, BG3 can tell a lot more, better stories than my idiotic repetitive Bethesda adventures, but I do like some pulp.
Yeah, I think you're right, and maybe my waning enjoyment of that style of rpg says as much about my lack of imagination as anything else. I'm just a sucker for a story I can get caught up in, with characters that I can somehow relate to, and I've nearly always felt let down by Bethesda games in that regard.