The lead designer of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has discussed the difference in design philosophy between Bethesda games and Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3.
Its easy to miss entire zones and dozens of bosses in a playthrough. You can kill an npc or make a dialogue choice and miss their entire questline in Elden Ring/dark souls. They intentionally hide these things so you could never even know you’re missing huge chunks of content.
Thank god for Fromsoft. So many unique moments you don’t find in other games because others are too worried about people missing anything.
I could name a half dozen of those moments just off the top of my head. The recent favorite was jumping into a fairly obscure well and watching as that tiny sewer suddenly opens up to the massive Subterranean Shunning Grounds. I have a hard time finding that well when I’m looking for it.
Or Dark Souls when they hide an entire area behind a sneaky series of hidden walls and chests - IE it is a fairly innocuous place anyway and easy to assume the chest was the point of the hidden room and not look for more secrets behind it.
It’s such a relief to see Larian/BG3 and Fromsoft/ER succeed because you know other studios are watching. I just hope they learn the right lessons from that success instead of trying to clone those games. Those two studios built a foundation of expertise and assets over the years, honed in on what they were good at, and created very unique experiences. Hopefully we get more and more of that in the coming years.
Ever hear of FromSoft?
Its easy to miss entire zones and dozens of bosses in a playthrough. You can kill an npc or make a dialogue choice and miss their entire questline in Elden Ring/dark souls. They intentionally hide these things so you could never even know you’re missing huge chunks of content.
Thank god for Fromsoft. So many unique moments you don’t find in other games because others are too worried about people missing anything.
I could name a half dozen of those moments just off the top of my head. The recent favorite was jumping into a fairly obscure well and watching as that tiny sewer suddenly opens up to the massive Subterranean Shunning Grounds. I have a hard time finding that well when I’m looking for it.
Or Dark Souls when they hide an entire area behind a sneaky series of hidden walls and chests - IE it is a fairly innocuous place anyway and easy to assume the chest was the point of the hidden room and not look for more secrets behind it.
It’s such a relief to see Larian/BG3 and Fromsoft/ER succeed because you know other studios are watching. I just hope they learn the right lessons from that success instead of trying to clone those games. Those two studios built a foundation of expertise and assets over the years, honed in on what they were good at, and created very unique experiences. Hopefully we get more and more of that in the coming years.
Stuff like that is awesome, really brings the world to life
And makes for great replayability by doing things differently!