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Comment by lylejantzi3rd | Hacker News Reader

> I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate

I think you're trying to put too much of its success on "brand power". Social proof is a thing, but it's not powerful enough to overcome a bad game. Just look at what happened to the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises.

I think it's doing so well because they nailed the execution. The graphics are great. The game hasn't had any opening week disasters despite getting more than 7x the expected numbers. The intro hook of the game really grabs you and keeps you wanting more (which is why everyone's still so excited about it 3 years later). Also, it's FUN to play.

That last one is probably the biggest factor. When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play? It wasn't too long ago that online streamers were publishing videos lamenting the lack of good games to play.

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I mentioned many other great games in this genre which were lucky to have 1/100th of the success of this game. But okay, those didn't have the multiplayer, or the presentation, or the accessibility.

But Larian's previous game was extremely similar to this one in all respects. It's not even that flippant to say BG3 is DOS2 with the lore and rules swapped for DnD ones which isn't that much of a practical difference (I'd argue a slight downgrade). And yet BG3 is on track to be maybe 4x as successful. It's hard to argue the BG and DnD brands didn't play a big part in this.

4 people in my friend group have been rearranging their schedules this weekend to get more BG3 time (after previously planning on playing once a week). It's possible that a DOS3 might've had that happening, at least 2 of the 4 played DOS2 but I am skeptical.

They all have preexisting affection for both D&D and BG. They went into character creation with strong opinions about their favorite races and esp. classes.

The DOS system was great, but the lore and stories were relatively formulaic. I was super, super worried about Larian doing BG3 because of this, but they really do appear to have nailed it.

At least so far, the difficulty curve is much less steep which I suspect put a lot of people off DOS2. I certainly resented needing to kill everyone to remain on track with the XP curve, but that's presumably because Pillars has spoiled me.

> The DOS system was great

What "system"?

I love DOS2, but BG3 is SO much more polished in just about every aspect, better visuals, better writing, better combat, that I expect this accounts for a lot of the difference.

I've never played BG (I did play icewind Dale when I was a kid but it was annoying to read the dialogue without voice acting). I did play all Neverwinter Nights games so I have some background in this genere and DnD rules - but that was always the tedious part for me.

I heard of Divinity but just not into gaming anymore (too much other stuff going on). That said I'll probably find the time to play this on PS5 because it seems like a super polished immersive experience. Just like cyberpunk (although that was a bit disappointing).

My point is there's probably a bunch of "ex" gamers that pick a few games to play occasionally - it's very much down to quality of execution - if this game didn't have the graphics/voice acting/story I've seen from early access and was divinity level I'd just skip this as well.

> I've never played BG (I did play icewind Dale when I was a kid but it was annoying to read the dialogue without voice acting)

I genuinely am surprised that there are people out there who think this way.

I'm the complete opposite. I skip all voice acting, because I read faster than anyone can deliver lines, and frankly I'm not there for the performance or the "experience". I'm there for the game. The voice acting doesn't add anything to the gameplay for me. I wish games that have dialog boxes would let me turn it off entirely, honestly.

> When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play?

Tears of the Kingdom, Resident evil 4, Street Fighter 6

Interest in Tears of the Kingdom dropped off pretty quickly.

Is that all?

edit: I didn't play the other two games. One's a remake of a game I never played (I never owned playstations) and I don't really play fighting games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

edit2: this is getting ridiculous.

If you know nothing of those games, you might want to stop with the gaming critique.

Street Fighter 6 literally gave players something they've been dreaming about for years: the ability to customize a character to one's own liking based off of the moves of the existing characters in the game.

Want to dragon punch like Ryu, throw a sonic boom like Guile, and kick like Chun Li? You can do that now.

Maybe I'm a purist but that sounds awful.. If you want Ryu's moves you have to take his shortcomings. Don't super charge your player into something a backstory can't support

... what are you even talking about?

There's an entire normal arcade mode where the characters are balanced and tiered. All the tournament formats use those presets.

Then there's the open world mode where your own character learns from these characters and creates your own moveset.

If you don’t know anything about large franchises such as street fighter and resident evil then you’re probably not well positioned to make sweeping comments about the state of AAA games.

That's a mighty fine gate you're keeping. Well, you're trying to keep it, anyway. A for effort!

I don’t think it’s gate keeping to suggest you should be familiar with the biggest titles of the year if you want to make confident statements about the state of games.

It's not a gate, it's recognition of your lack of knowledge

So in order to have an opinion, you must play every game that ever comes out, regardless of whether you enjoy the genre, the franchise, or even have the console required to play it? And you think that's not gatekeeping?

In order to have a credible opinion about things you should be familiar with the things.

Why are you building a strawman? No one said anything about "playing every game that ever comes out" in order to have am opinion, just that it's useful to have some knowledge of a topic before forming said opinion lest they be dismissed as yours seem to be currently.

It just kind of puts everything else you said into question when you make a statement which is easily disproved by anyone vaguely familiar with the subject.

If you're wrong about the one sentence in your comment that I have knowledge of, what other bits are wrong? Why should I assume the one sentence I can relate to is wrong but the other sentences are not?

Not the parent, but the gate keeping is coming from you. Your question, assuming good faith, was simple:

"When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play?"

The comment in reply answer the question.

You then preceded to gatekeep by redefining what "AAA game" meant but dismissing the ones listed out of ignorance.

I can think of numerous AAA games that are fun to play. the first one that came to mind was Elden Ring. I know others that while I didn't play, others loved, such as God of War.

Rather than ask a question and start dismissing answers, gate keeping what "AAA game" means, instead accept the fact that there are numerous AAA games that have been released this year alone that people are having lots of fun with. That doesn't take away from smaller, indy titles, nor does it mean AAA is without fault.

tl;dr: Stop gatekeeping with ignorance.

Not going to go all doom and gloom but resident evil was a(completely unnecessary, in my opinion) remaster of a game from the ps2 era, and I'd wager the vast majority of people that play AAA games don't really play fighting games.

I do think the AAA market is recovering a little however in the last few years, pretty much exclusively thanks to japan.

Most people don’t get over 50 to 100 hours in any game, regardless of how fun the game is, so players dropping off playing a single player game after they’ve finished the story is pretty much normal, even on highly replayable games.

According to Metacritic, in addition to the already mentioned people had fun with

Metroid Prime Remastered

Diablo IV

Persona 4 Golden

Dead Space Remake

Final Fanatasy XVI

Pikmin 4

Star Wars Jedi Survivor

Hogwarts Legacy

Remnant II

So this year actually seems to be pretty great w.r.t. AAA games, and the next months will be pretty ridiculous, with Armored Core VI, Starfield, Mortal Kombat 1, Forza Motorsport, Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2, Cities: Skylines 2, Super Mario RPG... all still being released.

So if anything, there's probably too much AAA games worth playing out there.

> Diablo IV

You must have missed the 2.2 score that it currently has after being review bombed due to recent development decisions.

On a personal level, I will say that they got the campaign right, but the rest of the game is incomplete. This game should have been released as a public beta — it’s currently not close to being a complete experience, imho.

User scores are completely broken, and probably beyond repair.

The low score is not completely unwarranted, though. The game itself is pretty wonderful. But the balancing and QOL decisions made by the developers has been; abysmal, and getting worse with each patch. It sounds like 1.1.1 is going to help a bit, but every the game started with serious issues, and each patch since release has made it worse. Add to the fact that many of the issues have been know since before release, and you get players getting really made about the game.

If you actively make decisions to upset the players, then don't act confused when your player rating tanks.

I don't play Diablo IV (I just don't have the time), so I cannot judge if these scores are warranted. Seeing that it currently sits between Lego Drive 2K and Gollum, I'd go out on a limb here and say that this score seems a tiny bit harsh to me.

Games get review-bombed for the silliest reasons nowadays. Often times, a fundamentalist minority of gamers feels overly protective about "their" franchise, reacting to even the tiniest disturbance with maniacal anger. If a game has a high score from critics and a low score from users, to me that's actually a good sign that the game might even try something interesting (Last of Us II would be an example here). Of course, the critics score for Diablo IV was the post-release score, not including these new patches, so it might very well be that it really is worse now...

Yeah, it turns out no one review bombs unpopular games that they've never heard of.

I'm not a fan of review bombing, and I think it's current player score (2.2 / 1-) is an unfair result of that; the over the top backlash to the changes. That being said, I certainly wouldn't say the 86 / 100 critics view isn't reasonable either. It had issues at release, and it's gotten worse since then. My recommendation would be to give it a few seasons to get into a better shape before picking it up.

It's worth noting that Diablo 3 went through similar pains upon release; though with less "read the room" type issues like they're having now.

That's just cuz a recent patch nerfed some things

Noooo you don't get it, only niche pixel indie games can be FUN!!! /s

That has actually been my experience for about ten years now. I've tried TOTK, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, BG3, and quite a few more and found them not engaging at all. It's not quite as bad as the movies yet, but still bad enough as to not warrant simply playing older or more indie titles.

> Pikmin 4

As a long-time Pikmin fan it is absolutely wild to me to see Pikmin 4 in a list of AAA games.

There's nothing else like that series in terms of aesthetics, in-game lore or gameplay. It's always been its own singular sub-genre which screams "indy game", and the mediocre sales reflected that. Except that it just happens to also be a first-party Nintendo game that Shigeru Miyamoto is personally invested in.

And now Pikmin 4 suddenly blows everyone's expectations away.

edit2: help I am getting blown the fuck out with concrete examples of AAA games that have been fun to play in the last years

Resident Evil 4 first came out on Gamecube, later on it also came out on PS2 and PC. Then there was an HD re-release on every single console and PC/Steam. And now the remake on PC and consoles.

oh and the original is regarded as one of the best games of all time

I'm not sure if I trust your opinion on anything if you so confidently spread misinformation and then deflect with "oh but little me don't know that!! emoji"

What do you mean by "interest" for ToTK? People are still playing it who got it on launch day. I know I am.

I know I stopped after two days.

Zelda was a massive hit in sales and social media-reception for months. Interest did not dropped quickly, it was just at instant peak from the beginning, and now everyone is done with it. Which is more a proof of how much fun people had with it.

> Interest in Tears of the Kingdom dropped off pretty quickly. So are you now talking about what AAA games are fun to play or how big the interest is in them? Tears of the Kingdom is definitely an AAA game that is really fun to play and was also very successful. Elden Ring last year was also great. Your perception of fun AAA games is just warped. Baldurs Gate 3 is the first fun AAA game for years in its own genre, but if you include all genres there are actually quite good and fun AAA games that came out recently.

I did start putting time into other games besides Tears of the Kingdom....after I put over 100 hours into the game (still not done with it, just want to be able to return to it later and still have more I can do, savor it a bit). I'll still watch a TOTK video whenever one gets suggested to me on Youtube or Facebook.

Even 100+ hours (without getting sick of it) is insane for a modern game for me. Like I put 35 hours into God of War Ragnarok and did most of the things (left maybe 10-15 hours worth of samey boring or overly difficult side activities) and I felt that overly padded that game out, I would have been happier with that game if it were about 20 hours long, I think. Still a great game though. One of the small handful of games I've completed the story for in the past five years.

Persona is the only other series I can usually get close to that many hours in without getting sick of it (I think I put 80 into Persona 5).

Zeldas.

Red Dead 2 would be my answer.

>When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play? Tears of the Kingdom just recently is hella fun to play. Elden Ring last year was also great. You make it sound the last fun AAA game is decades ago, but the truth is that most years have 1-2 really fun AAA games. But Baldurs Gate 3 is definitely the first fun AAA game for years in its genre. Pillars of Eternity was great, but lacked the AAA production values/

> You make it sound the last fun AAA game is decades ago

That wasn't my intention. My intention was to point to the fact that production of fun AAA games is much lower than it was a decade ago. As a result, the few big hits hit even bigger.

FWIW, whatever issues the BF franchise had in the past, BF42 is super fun today, and stole me away from multiplayer Halo Infinite, which is also pretty great.

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