I can understand this hesitation, but I don’t expect that from Larian, they’ve delivered in the past and I suspect they’ll deliver again.
(So had CD Projekt Red of course, but Cyberpunk’s launch issues were largely stability/performance related, IIRC. Whereas Hello Games over-promised and under-delivered core features on No Man’s Sky.)
Cyberpunk’s launch issues were largely stability/performance related
I played the first release when it came out. There were a LOT of mission-breaking bugs, missing content, much less customization options, entirely missing features, a really messy perk system etc. It feels like a very different game now, since they patched in more content that was initially missing.
They should’ve pushed back the game at least for another year. 1.0 mostly focused on the cutscenes and Johnny Silverhand/Keanu Reeves since that’s what sold the game initially and left a lot to be desired in other areas.
If I remember correctly, you couldn’t even skip the first training mission. You also had to combine clothes that looked like ass because the armor rating was tied to them and there was no cosmetics system (that came with 2.0).
Let’s be straight: as amazing as Baldur’s Gate 3 is today, Act 3 launched half baked and half broken. My first playthrough experience was horrible, largely thanks to broken flags and missing content from the Upper City, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have comparable experiences with early versions of Original Sin 2. Hell, they rewrote basically the entire final act of that game with the definitive edition, and I’m under the impression Original Sin 1 had a similiar situation, though I didn’t play it enough between the original and the definitive edition to experience it.
Now, part of all this is because Larian opts to make decisions to cut content and reduce scope rather than abuse their staff or delay a project. In Baldur’s Gate specificslly, I won’t say I am perfectly happy with the outcome, but they are a good studio that practices reasonable employee ethics, and ultimately puts in the work to get there with the product as well. I’d have no issue buying Divinity day one or even pre-ordering, but I do not expect a perfectly complete and polished experience on release.
It still has bugs to this day. I played through the whole game two months ago. The printing press mission was extremely broken. It’s a mission where you are supposed to swap out the headline in a printing press so a magazine doesn’t shit-talk your party. The mission progressed as intended, the press even praised me for swapping the article out and on the next day I still got shit-talked.
I had to do the whole mission again and talk to the printing press twice (for no reason) to fix it. Yenna in my camp also never cooked for me.
Larian announcing their next game to be even bigger than before makes me a bit cautious. I hope they don’t bite off more than they can chew.
I think with CDPR people had conveniently forgotten how much of a broken, buggy mess Witcher 3 was at release tbh. It wasn’t as broken as Cyberpunk but I think that it was also easily forgotten because people weren’t remotely as hyped for the game when it came out. CDPR actually has always had a track record of putting out really buggy games that get patched into great ones later.
All these promises can quickly spiral into the No Man Sky/Cyberpunk issue where on release, it’s a shell of what peoples expectations were.
You might say, “Well they fixed it.” But only after running their staff ragged to meet broken promises.
I can understand this hesitation, but I don’t expect that from Larian, they’ve delivered in the past and I suspect they’ll deliver again.
(So had CD Projekt Red of course, but Cyberpunk’s launch issues were largely stability/performance related, IIRC. Whereas Hello Games over-promised and under-delivered core features on No Man’s Sky.)
I played the first release when it came out. There were a LOT of mission-breaking bugs, missing content, much less customization options, entirely missing features, a really messy perk system etc. It feels like a very different game now, since they patched in more content that was initially missing.
Someone did a writeup of all the patches here.
They should’ve pushed back the game at least for another year. 1.0 mostly focused on the cutscenes and Johnny Silverhand/Keanu Reeves since that’s what sold the game initially and left a lot to be desired in other areas.
If I remember correctly, you couldn’t even skip the first training mission. You also had to combine clothes that looked like ass because the armor rating was tied to them and there was no cosmetics system (that came with 2.0).
Let’s be straight: as amazing as Baldur’s Gate 3 is today, Act 3 launched half baked and half broken. My first playthrough experience was horrible, largely thanks to broken flags and missing content from the Upper City, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have comparable experiences with early versions of Original Sin 2. Hell, they rewrote basically the entire final act of that game with the definitive edition, and I’m under the impression Original Sin 1 had a similiar situation, though I didn’t play it enough between the original and the definitive edition to experience it.
Now, part of all this is because Larian opts to make decisions to cut content and reduce scope rather than abuse their staff or delay a project. In Baldur’s Gate specificslly, I won’t say I am perfectly happy with the outcome, but they are a good studio that practices reasonable employee ethics, and ultimately puts in the work to get there with the product as well. I’d have no issue buying Divinity day one or even pre-ordering, but I do not expect a perfectly complete and polished experience on release.
It still has bugs to this day. I played through the whole game two months ago. The printing press mission was extremely broken. It’s a mission where you are supposed to swap out the headline in a printing press so a magazine doesn’t shit-talk your party. The mission progressed as intended, the press even praised me for swapping the article out and on the next day I still got shit-talked.
I had to do the whole mission again and talk to the printing press twice (for no reason) to fix it. Yenna in my camp also never cooked for me.
Larian announcing their next game to be even bigger than before makes me a bit cautious. I hope they don’t bite off more than they can chew.
I think with CDPR people had conveniently forgotten how much of a broken, buggy mess Witcher 3 was at release tbh. It wasn’t as broken as Cyberpunk but I think that it was also easily forgotten because people weren’t remotely as hyped for the game when it came out. CDPR actually has always had a track record of putting out really buggy games that get patched into great ones later.