Gaming

My understanding is that it is a complete game with no microtransactions to shove along with it. After that I believe it is because it is really really good and not a common genre to get the spot light. Mainly the first part.

It's a perfect digitization of D&D 5th edition - it's like having an automatic dungeon master using the rules and regulations we've been playing with on paper for ages.

It has a massive plot that can vary wildly on playthroughs depending on how rolls go, just like the real version.

It's four-player co-op with PVE in an age where cooperation is increasingly rare outside of competitive team games.

It's a well designed, properly built, finished product that can be expanded on with DLC, rather than using them to address core gameplay issues. (looking at you Paradox)

It's just a quality Western RPG, the like of which we haven't seen since Bioware was bought.

Good products create buzz; I really think is is simply that.

The short version:

• Game is good, came out at the right time, had a lot of hype and lived up to the hype

Longer details:

• The game is just really well made. It's extremely fun, very polished (except for a few weird bugs), and complete
• It has a massive IP tied to it. This game had impossible levels of hype and it met those expectations somehow
• The recent D&D movie was a large success, and D&D in general has been the most popular it has ever been lately
• Divinity OS 2 Definitive Edition was very well received, people trust Larian to deliver a good product
• People are sharing this game with their friends. They had a strong marketing push as well as really strong word of mouth
• Final Fantasy 16 left a lot of us wanting a more traditional RPG after FF16 was anything but traditional
• We currently live in an era of games like Diablo 4 which ask for a $70 price tag, and then also have a paid battle pass and paid cosmetics. This game came out at $60 content complete with no additional microtransactions. Ultimately that makes this game much easier to reccomend to people.

Game is good. People like to talk about stuff they like.

It's not perfect or anything, but it feels like a release with very pure intentions and people seem to resonate with that. No micro transactions, no lootboxes, no DRM (not even Steam's is implemented), no release day DLC, fast hotfixing, and maybe with the promise of classic expansion packs. The sort of practices that people want to encourage, packaged with a formidable and generally well put together game.

When bigger, more corporate dev studios come out and give it free marketing by saying how unrealistic it is to make games like it... that's free, excellent publicity.

No in-game store

The game isn't shit

People are beyond bored of 95% of the absolute trash that's being pumped out by the asinine asshole accountants. (AAA Studios)

It's nice seeing something that isn't even close to trash be released.

I don't think I have a lot to add to what was already said here.

But I will say that the Baldurs Gate series already had a pretty big following. It had an established fan-base, like Fallout. But unlike Fallout, Larian chose to stick with what people liked about the originals and expand upon that.

So there's another tiny reason to add to the collective.

I’m a crpg fan, and a D&D/PF fan. For me, the thing that makes this game so fun is it feels like a streamlined D&D session. Sure, you can’t do as much as you would like in a D&D session, but you can do 99% of what you would typically want to do.

The other thing is the game is extremely polished. So many recent games have been underproduced, unpolished garbage with DLC/MTX shoved in and a $70 price tag. BG3 is a breath of fresh air. It’s not perfect, but the care and dedication that went into it clearly shows.

I feel what makes this game so popular is the fact that the game is just really well made. The story is great, the classes are much better balanced than 5e, and the amount of interesting solutions you can use to solve any problem is just fun. Add co-op, and the game becomes a blast to play with friends.

Considering the recent rise in trrpg popularity and fans of older titles in the franchise, Larian’s existing fans, and an early access that showed off the game as being fun and promising, I’m not surprised it ended up attracting a lot of players. If you have a large enough player base at launch, and an amazing game, I don’t think it is a surprise the game is lighting the world on fire.

I think what isn't being discussed enough is how many fans of games like Dragon Age Origins this game is pulling in.

What this game does is straddles the difference between classic CRPGs like the original Baldurs Gate and modern, cinematic RPGs like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, whose games began to veer into very action-oriented cinematic style as opposed to classic three-quarter-overhead-view turn-based style. It also brings the cinematic aspect to romancing companions as well, something that was also pioneered in DAO and ME. Other games had ability to romance as well, but not deeply like DAO and ME made it, with their cinematic style allusion-to-sex scenes.

This game does both and so it is grabbing the attention of people who loved classic CRPGs like Baldurs Gate, Fallout and Neverwinter Nights, but it's also grabbing the attention of more "normie(?)" players who cut their teeth on Dragon Age Origins through Inquisition.

It's a "best of both worlds" approach that has solidified success because it appeals to the people who loved classic CRPGs as well as the people who wanted the cinematic beauty as well as ability to cinematically romance companions. It has beautiful cinematic detail as well as a fully fleshed out CRPG system and non-linear CRPG story. It's giving players of all types what they wanted out of an RPG.

Also, excellent console controls directly help this. Old CRPGs required a mouse and keyboard, but I can play this game split-screen with my SO who only ever played the Dragon Age games and who I struggled to get into D&D previously.

My SO fucking loves this game, and she wouldn't have ever been opened up to such a style of game without the excellent cinematic graphics alongside the top tier classic CRPG gameplay. There is no way in hell I could get her to play a strictly top-down no-cinematics classic CRPG. This game opened her up to the genre. It's essentially the perfect modernization of a classic CRPG.

Are you aware of what a big deal Baldurs Gate series, especially 2, were when they launched back at the millennium?

It’s a combination of good timing, a perfect product and going against the direction of most AAA-studios.

Though BG2 is more than two decades old, a lot of us still considers it one of the best games ever. I think quite a few of us have been eager to return to forgotten realms. That’s one group.

Then there’s a group of Divinity fans (some overlapping the old BG group) waiting for Larians next RPG.

Those two groups would be the critical mass for creating hype. Would the game live up to the old games? Would it be as good as Divinty?

Then comes the first reviews and people get to play the beta, and though the first few months were rough, once we got close to release it was clear, that BG3 would not only live up to its expectations, it would smash through the roof.

Now you have your core fan base talking about how good this game is, how do you sell this to people who normally don’t play this type of game?

Well, talk to them in a language they understand. This game is complete from day 1. No DLC. No ingame shop. Just a complete game that you can play over and over again with new ways of completing it… oh, and you can co-op with your friends. Even on the couch in split screen.

There are simply not anything of major significance to criticize about this game. You may not like it, or the genre is not for you, but as a complete product it’s simply perfect.

As a player you get the feeling that Larian focus on the game first where others focus on money first. That may not be the whole truth, but it’s the feeling this is creating, and hopefully other studios will acknowledge that there are other ways to do things.

On top of some of the commentary here, I'd like to add that I think there's a real chance that WoTC's put some money behind getting it heavily reviewed/boosted, and so more articles about it and wider attention. That is not to undercut its quality, just that I think its layers of support. (I'll admit there's more than a little bit of my distrust of WoTC in that. Like after all their other scandals they need a win to try and suck newbies into the game after so much messing up. And I don't even mean in the last year or something, their release quality for 5e has been abysmal for a long time.)

Additionally Larian played the early access thing very well. Not only did they listen to their ongoing players, and even netted some "tried it didn't like it" people back, it gave time for everyone who was perhaps too into the older isometric BG1&2 titles (like me) to realize the game didn't seem quite like it was for them and not pick it up. So you get clear, mostly good(if outdated) information out there for people to use in researching if they wanted to buy it, helping to avoid a lot of the knee-jerk hate that stuff like Fallout 4 and 76 got from misplaced expectations that could dull the release.

As I see it, it's a confluence of things which have captured the zeitgeist:

• Larian D:OS games have been very well received.
• Baldur's Gate and the Infinity Engine games are beloved.
• Final Fantasy XVI, the big JRPG for the year, is squarely an action game and some view that as off-kilter. Baldur's Gate 3, the big CRPG for the year, is squarely an RPG.
• D&D is a big property and new D&D games often gain a fair bit of attention.
• People seem to appreciate having no in-game purchases.

These five things, in my opinion, have pushed Baldur's Gate 3 to the front of media outlets and, in turn, to the forefront of conversations.

I think there are three vectors going on:

1. It's apparently a super good game. I'm just basing it on reviews, I won't be playing it until the PS5 version launches.

2. It has nudity and is being described as "super horny", so, you know, clickbait.

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-the-horniest-rpg-ive-ever-played-and-i-love-it/

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-a-relentlessly-horny-video-game

3. They are having problems getting it running on the Xbox Series S, and that's blocking it from being released on the fully capable Xbox Series X. So nerdrage/console war clickbait.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-a-relentlessly-horny-video-game

I played but did not get very far into Divinity: Original Sin, mostly because I tried twice to play them co-op, and coordinating adults' schedules is hard. I love how systemic those games are, but the presentation is limited to what you'd expect from an old-school CRPG. Shortly before release, I saw that this game retains all of that creativity while upping the presentation to the level of something like a Mass Effect, which makes it much more appealing. I hear that Ralph of SkillUp had exactly the same reaction to BG3. So, deep systems + finally catching up in production value and presentation.

I've played the Divinity games, which are very good CRPGs, but in my opinion, Baldur's Gate 3 is in another league compared to those. The amount of choices and possibilities the game offers and its sheer vastness are amazing. Add to that the many fully voiced and well directed cutscenes and you have an awesome game that manages to appeal not only to hardcore CRPG fans.

The Baldur's Gate IP has a solid fanbase, D&D is really popular now, and also Larian knocked this one out of the park.

It's also refreshingly consumer-friendly, like others have said.

It's a great game, but so was Divinity: Original Sin 2. The main difference, besides the rules swap, is the cutscenes and dialogue animations.

I think BG3 is riding on the D&D brand and marketing campaign. In my mind there isn't a massive difference between BG3 and D:OS2 (or other titles they've done) from a pure gameplay perspective.

Regardless, I'm for it. Hopefully we'll see more innovative and high budget CRPGs.

That seems like a good question.

I guess the marketing team did a really good job?

Michael Bell from Bellular Studios just did a video about it if you want something to listen to. It is pretty much all of it that was said here.
How Baldur's Gate 3 Humbled AAA