We’re just beginning to catch our breath after the previous flurry of major releases in the last couple of months, where we get the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Final Fantasy 16, Diablo 4, and Street Fighter 6, all in the space of a few weeks (to say nothing of the months preceding that period). But of course, 2023 is the year that keeps on giving, which means there’s still plenty more to come. And as far as the immediate future is concerned, there are two games in the pipeline right now that are sucking up almost all the oxygen- Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3.
Two massive RPGs, both highly anticipated from years, both coming from developers that are the absolute best at what they do. The hype is palpable in the lead-up to both launches, and given the fact that both of them are promising to deliver huge, choice-driven RPG experiences, it’s only natural to draw comparisons between the two (even if the style of gameplay is going to be radically different in both games). But if you were indeed to draw comparisons, which of the two games would come out on top, not only in terms of how well they do and how popular they prove to be, but also in terms of how effectively they succeed in delivering on their promises?
The strengths that both games are touting have excited audiences to no end. With Starfield, Bethesda Game Studios is promising its biggest game ever, which, for a studio that has built its reputation over the decades on building some of the most gargantuan games you’ll ever see, is a lofty ambition, to say the least. Up until now, we’ve seen what Bethesda’s RPG formula brings with it in a fantasy setting and in a post-apocalyptic setting, but now that that formula is boldly going where no BGS game has gone before and heading into the vast expanses of space, the possibilities of expanding look to be endless. On top of having the emergent, player-driven RPG experience that the studio has always been associated with, Starfield is adding everything from space travel to over a thousand planets for players to explore, and that’s an incredibly exciting prospect.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is taking a different approach. Just like Starfield, it’s going to build on the successful formula that Larian Studios has established with its previous games, but that formula, of course, is less action RPG and more Dungeons and Dragons. Choice and consequence mechanics have been a thing in games for as long as anyone can remember, but there’s almost no other genre that consistently implements them as well as this specific category of role playing games- and in this particular category, right now, there’s no one better in the industry than Larian.
Of course, which of the two games resonates more strongly with you will depend on what you’re looking for. If it’s a huge open world experience with a reactive world made of interlocking systems and mechanics, Starfield is looking like it’s going to be the ultimate experience. If, however, you want your reactivity to be more tied to a branching story and experience the joy of watching the world and its characters react and respond to your actions in unpredictable ways, it’s going to be hard to look past Baldur’s Gate 3.
What makes this head-to-head match-up particularly interesting is that both games are coming from studios who have immense legacies. Bethesda Game Studio’s is, of course, much more enduring, having delivered genre-defining experiences in the open world RPG space for pretty much as long as the studio has been around. Across The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, BGS has time and again set the standards and single-handedly defined genre conventions, delivering numerous titles that, to this day, rank as some of the best this industry has ever seen.
Admittedly, the last decade has seen the developer’s stock taking a bit of a dip, but it’s not the type of dip that you’d associate with the likes of, say, BioWare or Blizzard Entertainment. Yes, Fallout 76 was a disaster at launch- but it wasn’t made by the main BGS team that’s working on Starfield, and at this point, it’s also now a significantly better game that’s actually easy to recommend to fans of the genre and the franchise. Yes, Fallout 4 wasn’t at the same level as something like Skyrim, but even though it was a game with its fair share of issues, it was still a legitimately good RPG in its own right. Does BGS have a history of overpromising? Certainly, it does. But this is also a studio that has a history of delivering some of the greatest games ever made, and there’s every reason to believe, based on what we’ve seen of it until now (which is quite a lot) that Starfield could be another notch in that illustrious belt.
On the other hand, the trajectory of Larian Studios’ reputation is almost a reversal of that of Bethesda Game Studios. The studio has been around for almost three decades now, but for the majority of that period, it was a fairly obscure name that the masses weren’t very familiar with. For a significant period of time, Larian’s games used to be decent enough, but they were never remarkable by any means, and it wasn’t until Divinity: Original Sin came out in 2014 that the studio’s rise well and truly began. Of course, from that point onward, the rise was a rapid and meteoric one, to say the very least, thanks in large part to 2017’s Divinity: Original Sin 2, which is widely considered to be one of the greatest CRPGs ever made. So thorough was the critical and commercial success of Original Sin 2 that, almost overnight, Larian became the new kings of the subgenre, becoming earmarked as the heir to the throne that was once held by BioWare.
There’s obviously little doubt that Bethesda’s games have the far wider appeal. They’re much more approachable and much less intimidating even to those who might not be too familiar with the ins and outs of the genres, which, in turn, means that where sales are concerned, the competition between the two games might not necessarily be too close (even in spite of all the significant unit sales that Starfield will be sacrificing due to there being no PlayStation version). Pretty much every major BGS release tends to sell dozens of millions of copies – hell, Skyrim currently stands at over 60 million units sold worldwide – and it’s hard to imagine a world where Baldur’s Gate 3 does those numbers. There’s little doubt, however, that in absolute terms, Baldur’s Gate 3 will be massively successful, and will continue that steep upward trajectory that Larian’s graph has enjoyed in recent years. Even in its early access period alone, it has sold over five times as much as what Divinity: Original Sin 2 managed in its own early access period, so it’s safe to assume that Larian is headed for yet another commercial success story.
At the end of the day, it’s nothing but good news for gaming that both of these games are coming out in such close proximity to each other. Getting to play even one game that can legitimately stake a claim to a genre’s throne is rare enough as it is, but getting two of them together? That almost never happens- and yet, this is the year where that’s happened multiple times already, and may very well happen again. That fans of RPGs are going to be able to dive into two potential behemoths of the genre in the coming weeks is, to say the least, incredibly exciting.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
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