Baldur's Gate 3 has created "a new audience" for RPGs thanks to how it expresses rules, says Larian CEO

rockpapershotgun.com:

Among Larian CEO Sven Vincke's greatest hopes ahead of Baldur's Gate 3's release was that it would get people interested in RPGs who had previously been turned off by them. This strikes me as a pretty tall order, given that Baldur's Gate 3 is also one of the most in-depth RPGs you'll play, but going by post-release responses, Vincke thinks Larian have managed it, thanks in large degree to more readable production values than you find in many RPGs.

That's from an extended interview with D&D advocate and Youtuber Todd Kenreck, which is worth listening to in full - BG3's reception aside, it covers intricacies like why the game doesn't have Dispel Magic, and why so many corpses have no heads. "[I wanted it to be] 'AAA' in the way that it's presented to you," Vincke recalled, about five minutes in. "And my hope was, and that's what's happening now, is that that's going to draw a new audience, people that actually don't know they like this kind of gameplay, that were turned off by all the systems and the screens.

"Because the onboarding of DnD is not an easy thing, but I was fairly convinced that if you do it properly in terms of presentation, and you really go overboard with it, a lot of people will be drawn to it, and so we've got a lot of people now saying 'I didn't know I like this, right' and that's that's probably the most rewarding thing - like, hey, we brought you into a new type of experience that you didn't know, but it's actually a lot of fun."

Vincke attributed the game's expanded following among RPG agnostics to its movie-style cinematics, of which there are dozens of hours' worth. He also pointed out that the notion that turn-based gaming is a nerdy cult pursuit doesn't have much basis in reality. "A lot