For context, Larian Studio founder Swen Vincke predicted that the game could reach 100,000 peak concurrent users during its debut period, and that was a fairly optimistic prediction. I work in IT, and really feel for those folks. I hope they designed their infrastructure to scale!
And that’s only Steam, not including GOG, or the influx of PS5 users next month. Let’s take it to 1 million!
Why would it want to be more than a good DnD campaign? That’s exactly what Larian hoped it would be, and pretty much what it is. It’s not as open-ended as a real campaign can be, but given the scale and quality of the content, it’s really something special. It’s only the best dnd game ever made.
I don’t question the quality of the game, I just don’t feel that just doing Baldur’s Gate again, twenty years later, really warrants ALL of the hype. Like the games from that time people still talk about, like Planescape Torment, Arcanum, even something like Fallout 2 or somewhat later Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines are games that are just a bit more “out there”. Baldur’s Gate feels comparably more vanilla compared to those. It’s full of tropes and it does them well, but as far as I’ve played it doesn’t always manage to rise above them and even from a design standpoint it is not that much different from original Baldurs Gate games.
I guess this is more of a lament about the state of the industry right now, but the fact that twenty years of gaming evolution leads to just doing the same types of games again but doesn’t really fill me with that much excitement.