Larian’s Swen Vincke posted a tweet yesterday showing the game hitting 500,000 concurrent players, making it the third most played game on all of Steam He said that he told IT to only expect 100,000 concurrents at max.
Honestly mate? Buy it. This isn't a AAA game; this is a AA game made completely independently, without microtransactions or lootboxes or any of the many bullshit practices of modern gaming. The studio deserves your support.
It does have a multiplayer component, but it's co-op. The game can be played in its entirety either way, and indeed, the single player experience is fantastic. So's the multiplayer experience. The former is similar to Dragon Age Origins, and the latter is literally Dungeons and Dragons. Both are fantastic, and both are worth playing.
Don't skip it. This is a deeply special game, and if you're sick of the AAA bullshit, a great way to show the greater industry is by supporting it. Vote with your wallet.
FWIW, AAA is not typically defined by budget, but instead by the presence of a publisher and methods of release. If you go by standard definitions, as a completely independent developer who crowdfunded the game at the start, Larian's actually indie.
There is no consistent definition for AA or AAA. It's just an implied level of production value. This game's got the equivalent modern day production value of a AAA game from 15 years ago, but the production value of AAA games like Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption these days has soared to levels unattainable to most.
Sure you could. The Witcher 3 has better production value by a meaningful amount with tons of scenes to shoot and permutations of those scenes. People said you couldn't meaningfully do better than the likes of the Kickstarter CRPGs ten years ago because of how much work would go into voice acting and animating all of those scenes, but BG3 is the better production value version of that.
Frankly I think that's laughable. The Witcher 3 is fine production quality wise, but it's not even sort of competitive with BG3. The main quest line vs BG3 side quests, maybe, but there's a huge step down to the animation quality of anything else.
I'm still working my way through BG2, but even watching main story quests in BG3 in the footage that's coming out around launch, the thought frequently enters my mind that the Witcher 3 looks better, like it got better touch-ups beyond what the engine automates for them.
A lot of the storytelling is through 2D scenes giving the illusion of being animated by moving pieces around (which does the job perfectly fine), and a lot of the side quest stuff is just plopping one character without any impressive animation in one spot just dropped in the world.
In BG3, there are a bunch of minor side quests where there are several characters interacting with each other in the 3D world, and your decision making branches branch harder. Just the sheer number of otherwise "minor" interactions with fully animated, voiced, and narrated actions is crazy.
It's not at all focused on multiplayer. Honestly, it's probably super difficult to sink into the story if you're playing with other people because there's a ton of dialogue and that's difficult if everyone's not moving at the same pace. Multiplayer is probably intended for people who really want to invest a lot of time playing with a specific person. Single player is the primary way the game works.
Multiplayer makes fights more fun, but the game's story is better experienced on single player.
When I first started playing I was mostly just using basic attacks against enemies like a regular rpg. When I played with friends with all sets of different builds I saw them dropping furniture to barricade doors, shoving enemies off of cliffs, triggering traps from a distance and all sorts of cool stuff I wasn't even considering. But outside of fights everyone moved somewhere different and triggered different story elements that the others weren't seeing at all.
I think that was intended for figure out ways to beat some of the time sensitive quest, where the trigger might be you talk to someone, enter an area, etc. If you long rest then the NPC might be dead and change the subplot. With multiplayer I don't know how they handle long rest(like can one player go long rest while others don't? or a voting system? etc.) Anyway, I do single player, and I think multiplayer could be fun as well.
Oh sorry I didn't explain myself well enough. I mean if there's a significant online component where a large part of the content is interactions with other players, it seems like there's a shelf life to getting the best experience from the game. So maybe it's worth having a legit copy instead of pirating some time down the road.
You're not missing anything content-wise if you play it solo. In solo mode you control all 4 of your party members during their turns, and in the multiplayer mode you control some of your party and your friend(s) control the others. The game content is the same but the experience is very different since multiple players are generally less tactically coordinated than a single person and they can wander the map separately
It's only 1 to 4 player co op, there is no major social element, don't worry you can get buddies together to play BG3 years from now if you want co op
I'm playing single player and its astounding so far, tho, so you're fine either way
There’s a multiplayer component like in Larian’s previous Divintiy: Original Sin games where your friends can join your party, but otherwise you can play it pretty much single-player.
Fwiw, I apparently paid for it like 3 years ago when it was in Early Access on Steam and forgot about it until I went to try and buy it again recently, but it’s absolutely worth the $60 if you wanna play it now bs later.