( ENSPIRE Entertainment ) The 100-Hour RPG Releases with Far More Players Than Ever Expected
ENSPIRE Contributor: Martin Draus
The new release of Baldur’s Gate 3 was something that many fans were looking forward to, but the amount of popularity and success it achieved on the day of release was staggeringly high. The game peaked on Steam with 472,136 players on release, being an enormous success for a franchise that hasn’t seen light for more than two decades. The numbers surprised the developers at Larian Studios who have now witnessed all of their hard work into making an excellent game pay off.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is the third game in a franchise that hasn’t had a mainline game in a very long time. The first Baldur’s Gate was produced by Bioware in 1998 and the second game followed closely in 2000. The series continued through the Dark Alliance spin-off games in 2001 and 2004 which were made by different studios. Nearly a decade later, the original two games got Enhanced Editions in 2012 and 2013, but the series wouldn’t get a full sequel until the Larian Studios’s game in 2023.
The success of Baldur’s Gate 3 is not surprising as Larian Studios has had a lot of experience with the RPG genre. They were established in 1996 and had started the RPG series Divinity. They have made seven games in their long-running franchise and had great experience going into Baldur’s Gate 3. Their recent games have been very successful but none came close to what Baldur’s Gate 3 made, it is the company’s greatest accomplishment yet.
There are many reasons for Baldur’s Gate 3 being as successful as it ended up being. Larian Studios put their time, effort, and love into making a game that supports over 100 hours of gameplay while providing player choice in branching paths. The game also contains some of the best combat in any strategy RPG, resulting from years of Larian Studios perfecting their formula. The product is of top-notch quality, and well deserving of the attention and praise that it’s getting.
Reviews of the game are overwhelmingly positive, and the fans seem to love what they got. This positive reception is part of why the game was so successful and it came from the high quality of the game itself. Larian Studios knocked the ball out of the park with the release of Baldur’s Gate 3 and it’s a victory for both the studio and the fans. The future of Larian Studios is very bright, as whatever their next project may be, it will be met with high anticipation.
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