Baldur’s Gate 3 can’t set the standard for RPG games, Larian says

pcgamesn.com:

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the talk of the town, in turn spawning debates about whether Larian’s project will set a new standard for RPG games, and with the Baldur’s Gate 3 release date closing in director Swen Vincke has addressed these discussions in an interview. Whatever your feelings towards Baldur’s Gate 3, we’re within touching distance right now, and that’s exciting.

With the impending Baldur’s Gate 3 PC release time, the entire videogame industry is aflame with a discussion about Larian’s D&D RPG adventure. This goes for developers as much as players, with recent online discussions about whether or not Baldur’s Gate 3 will actually set a whole new standard for RPGs. Now BG3 director Swen Vincke has responded to the discussions.

“When I started out Ubisoft launched Assassin’s Creed, and everybody was saying ‘everything’s going to be like Assassin’s Creed, you’re all doomed, no one’s going to be able to make this game anymore’” Vincke says during an interview on the Friends Per Second podcast, which you can watch below.

“Here we are many years later, and plenty of games exist, Assassin’s Creed still exists. If you’re going to make something exactly like us [at Larian], you’re going to need a large team, but you don’t have to make something exactly like us, there’s so much stuff that you can do.”

While there is some truth to Assassin’s Creed’s overall impact on triple-A game design since its inception in 2007, what Vincke is saying is that not literally every single game became Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft did fall into a rhythm of designing very similar open-world games due to AC’s success, but the actual standard for open-world games continued to shift, which is something Vincke was also asked about with Baldur’s Gate