this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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BG3 isnt even a deep RPG. Im really glad it's popular, but as an rpg it doesn't even have half the options final fantasy 7 had.
Kingdom Come is a much richer experience, imo. Even though the options are even fewer on paper.
I'll just sit over here rocking in place and muttering Owlcat Games over and over
You're going to have to elaborate on those first two sentences, because that's a wild thing to say.
Youve never played the original FF 7?
I have. I don't know which options you're referring to. Materia selection? I guess, but there are fewer permutations of those than there are spells/feats/stats in D&D 5e, and that's before we even get to all the stuff that makes BG3 stand out, like its emergent design. FF7 is a great game, but it is not emergent, and emergent design will nearly always be deeper than the finite stuff.
No you're right. Oil puddles are amazing emergent designs. My bad.
There are challenge runners who've beaten the entire game with only salami for weapons. Oil puddles are just a small part of it. There was a part in act 3 where I was denied entry to a place by failing a speech check. I could have possibly brute forced my way in and murdered everyone, but instead I found a back door that was three stories up on a balcony, cast flight on my rogue, and had him stealth in to achieve the objective. That's emergent design. Solutions to problems that weren't explicitly programmed in but work because the rules are loose and can be applied intuitively. There's a part in the game where you have to cross a bridge blocked off by some high level enemies, and there are a ton of ways to get across the bridge that I know of, several of which the developers didn't intend for, and probably dozens more that I've never even seen before, because the game just lets you run loose with its systems.
That's depth.
That is very cool, i agree.
There are other games out there that give that amount of freedom. If not more. That's all I'm saying.
It's a very pretty game.
I don't think FF7 is one of those games.
Can you give some examples of games that give more freedom than that? Because as the other person said, ff7 is not one of those. And I too am curious because I love those kinds of games. And while owlcat's pathfinder games are great, they're also not a viable answer, since you've mentioned them.
Fallout. Tyranny. Disco Elysium. Wastland. Ultima. New Vegas. Deus Ex. Outward. Vampire the Masquerade. Any Owlcat game (yes they are a valid answer). Kingdom Come.
Those are just off the top of my head.
Guess we just have a different definition of deep then if you feel like those games give you more options than bg3.
Lmao!
My thoughts exactly when I read your list of "deeper" games. What exactly can you do in kingdom come that BG doesn't allow you, for example?
They don't seem interested in detailing why they feel that way. They're just going to give BG3 backhanded compliments and list games they feel are better without explaining anything. And you know, I've played a number of those games too. They aren't deeper RPGs, because being deeper than BG3 is a high bar to clear.
Yup. I'm fine with bg3 being considered a shit game. That's an opinion and everyone can not like it. But it's silly to label it something that it's not. Something that's more or less measurable . Like pretending the sky is green or something. Makes no sense. Don't like the characters? Fine. Don't like the plot, writing, etc? Fine. But don't tell me it's shallow when it has so many different ways to approach everything and so many things you can do differently.
Dues Ex the famous on rails game, right?
Yeah, you got me. I totally said that.
I'm pretty sure nobody had the option to save Aeris, side with Sephiroth, finish blowing up Shinra before having to change to disc 2, etc
your comparison to FF7 isn't really accurate as they're two different types of RPGs
and CRPGs are known for being far more fleshed out than any jrpg, so I'm curious to hear your reasons for saying so. considering FF7 doesn't even allow you to make your own character to roleplay.
BG3, while very fun, is a pretty shallow game. Obviously that's not a popular opinion, but it's unfortunately true. There are far more fleshed out CRPGs out there.
i think you possibly are confusing BG3 for another game. nobody would make a statement like that unless they either hadn't played it or were trying to troll.
I generally agree with his statement, bg3 is very simple in terms of character building and has shallow exploration/questing (particularly after act 1). But then again, that's the case for most AAA games out there - they are made in a way that anyone can play them to the end.
You all keep throwing these big accusations around without actually giving any alternatives for those of us that actually want to play these deeper more complex games that we've somehow never heard of. Why is that? Give us some games to play, please!
The op did give an alternative, I can't speak much for it however.
Baldur's gate 3 barely has any character building after picking a class at the start. It really doesn't feel you're building a character so much as following a template. And worse, the classes are all very vanilla. Pathfinder wotr for example has much better character building, the mythic classes add a ton of depth and interesting interlacing.
The big problem about exploration in bg3 is that there's just not much to do. Most dungeons are like a handful of rooms and that's that. You go in, you talk to a few people, you do 1 combat and rarely 2 and go out. There's no sprawling or sense of discovery. I'll recommend Underrail for exploration.
I see. We just have different opinions on what RPGs should be and that's okay. I prefer a deep lake to a shallow ocean, so to say. I'll take bg3, disco Elysium or mass effect over Skyrim any day of the week.
I've still got 100+ hours in games like that as well.. they're just not as fun or memorable to me and I often end up bored before the end. Had to force myself to ignore a bunch of the map in order to finish Witcher 3 and kingdom come, for example.
Gothic 2 is like the sweet spot, imo. Large enough that you don't feel confined, but not that large that you get bored doing the same stuff over and over again. And while I did say that KC:D had me bored with exploration by the end, I didn't feel bad about skipping parts of it like I did in other games because there the size of the map is just for realism and it's not actually filled with meaningless stuff.
As for character building, I just play path of exile for that. I play RPGs for the stories. If it can have both, great, but I'm not gonna complain about build diversity in a game that I'm not gonna play more than once or twice anyway.
I too. That doesn't mean bg3 is perfect by any stretch, it's the epitome of a theme park crpg, and quite frankly your shallow ocean analogy too. One encounter with harpies, one encounter with owlbears, one encounter with fungi, one random dragon tossed in... Everything starts and ends in a flash.
Never said it was perfect. I'm just saying that op claiming it's shallow is wrong. At least not more shallow than any other rpg out there. And at least by my definition. And I think other people's too, because as of right now, they're at -16.
Just because it doesn't have a huge map with a 1000 pointless quests and bandit camps that add nothing to the game doesn't mean it's shallow. The biggest decision a game like fallout ever gave us was the decision to nuke a town. Beyond that, it was just a kill this guy or convince him to run away. Not sure how that's deep but whatever.
You really shouldn't base your opinion on how other people perceive it, we're in a bg3 thread, most people here see it positively - so do i for that matter, but any criticism here is gonna be met adversarially. It's always weird interacting with a fanbase when 80% of ppl that started bg3 never finished it, most ppl here never really got the full experience.
Act 3 in bg3 is exactly that though. The game has huge pacing issues. The whole tadpole stuff goes completely limp halfway through act 1. Companions interactions die off after act 1. Act 2 is full of rewrites and undercooked content. The emperor was obviously added very late in game development and the story twist as a result is cheap as hell. There's no bad guy path - most of the evil interactions are killing off people and effectively locking yourself out of content. I could go on...
I'm talking about the definition of the words "deep" and "shallow", here. Nobody said bg3 was the best or the worst game. Just that it's shallow. And most people agree that it's not.
And yes, there's issues, but none of the ones you've brought up make it a shallow game. And honestly, outside of act 3, and more specifically the ending, I haven't noticed any of the stuff you're talking about. And what game gives you a more "evil" path than the one where you help the goblins kill a bunch of druids and refugees and get minthara as a companion. You can convince gale to sacrifice himself and blow up the whole party just for lulz. You can become an assassin of bhaal. You can get shadowheart to and astarion to become evil too, since those are choices as well. All the dark urge stuff, there's the kid in the druid grove that stole the idol which you can either save or let the mean druid bitch kill her. You can choose to either save or destroy the last light inn in act 2, bunch of people will die there as well. Remember scratch? You can return him to his abusive owner. You can kill karlach.
You can take over the netherbrain and use the absolute's army to conquer the world, you can wipe out Baldur gate's citizens memory and rule over them or you can make them kill each other. Or you can become a mind flayer and get everyone in BG to do the same and make them serve you
I could go on. But you've obviously made up your mind and I'm probably just wasting my time. We're not arguing opinions here, we're arguing facts. And apparently, for some people, fallout and kingdom come are deeper games even tho your second playthrough will be 90% the same and you only have like 4-5 meaningful decisions to make that only amount to whether you kill or not some guy and whether you side with some guy or another and then you get an either sad or happy or angry or neutral prologue at the end.
Is bg3 he deepest game ever? No, but it's not shallow either. In most RPGs, 1 playthrough or 2 are enough to see everything. Or better yet, 1 playthrough plus a 10 minute YouTube video or one wiki page that explains it in a few lines.
Only other game where the my second playthrough was more different than the first one was disco Elysium and even that wasn't like a whole other game or anything.
Giving you choices does not add depth, it substracts it, the developers have to write twice as much content that you won't see, and because they have to account for each choice the story is much stricter in how it can evolve. Choices and replayability are opposites to story depth.
Anyhow, my argument was more about the fact that they don't delve beyond the surface of things much, even companions barely have a single questline each. It's very much a theme park crpg, everything has to be short lived and interesting lest they bore the audience.
See, we've come full circle back to my previous argument that we're simply disagreeing on the definition of the word deep. For me, a deep game is a game where there's many choices. For you, that's a game with a lot of detail to every bit.
Most people, in my experience, agree with my definition.
What makes deus ex deep? The amount of choices you have. Your choices don't change the plot. The only thing you change is how you finish the game. You still end up in the same place.
Think of it this way: there's a slider for choices and one for story detail and length.
Which one is the deeper game, the one with no choices but with a long and detailed story? Like a really long walking simulator, for example.
Or a game with 10 levels that you can approach in 10 different ways each? Sort of like a hitman game or something?
Pretty+cinematic does not mean better. You need to play more crpgs, my friend.
oh, I'd say ive played quite a few, bud. but the advice is appreciated.
enjoy your generic protagonist with a mysterious dark past. seems like a truly unique concept in RPGs! 🙏
Then i recommend playing more games with unique concepts. DnD is like the most generic concept on the planet.
BG3 is the same as any of the other games previously. A D&D game with an amazing DM. Immersive story and characters, great system at the foundation, and excellent gameplay to channel the story and system through.
I think BG3 spent most of their time saying no to dull or shallow ideas, rather than reinventing the wheel. And of course it worked incredibly.