Disclosure: I used to work for Ascendant Studios.
While I’m sure that execs at both EA and Ascendant thought BG3 wouldn’t amount to much, several employees did see the writing on the wall and tried to sound the alarm. It’s hard for me to really believe that those in charge didn’t see this one coming, but, I have no way of knowing for sure.
There are a few games that got delayed to February due to busy release schedule. I wonder how those will do.
I really want to play it but there is just so many others games out this year, it’ll be perfect for PS plus
I think another issue is what they did and didnt do with the game. Originally I was interested and hyped about the game based solely on the premise of a AAA 1st person magic casting game. But then once they started showing gameplay it looked like another generic 1st person shooter except they swapped guns for gauntlets.
That showcase they did, did not serve the game any justice and made it look more so like magic wasnt much as you casting it as much as it was which gun type do you want to use. Especially since each gauntlet not only has its set magic, but a bunch of prefixes and suffixes that basically dictate how the weapon works, fires, stats, etc. I was expecting something along the lines of maybe Dishonored or Bioshock but all in on the magical aspect, but the initial gameplay didnt really show that. It didnt help that it had that Destiny style UI and all those annoying little stats and a bunch of tiny incremental upgrades.
It wasnt until after the game had already came out and you got to see some real gameplay that it started looking more interesting because you actually got to see some of the magic at work. But even then it still looked like every other FPS already out and didnt lean enough into its own identity.
P.S. Doesnt help that it does the thing that all AAA games seem to like doing nowadays where they like to make your character super submissive and everyone else around them an insufferable, condecending, demeaning %*@&. Just watching it I was getting annoying. I couldnt imagine having to sit through it with that dialogue.
If you didn’t anticipate BG3 to be a huge success you weren’t really paying attention. The game was in EA for like 2 years before release and it obvious even back then that the game was quality.
IoA’s problem was it’s marketing, and by that I mean lack there of. I didn’t even know the get existed until about 3 months before release when some YouTuber I watch were invited to play an early build.
After that I didn’t really see anything else until release and the get started getting mid reviews.