Depends what you mean by measure up. Baldur's Gate 3 is my first CRPG that I was able to stick with for more than an hour and I absolutely LOVE it, and that was before even trying co-op, which somehow made it even better. I'm hopelessly obsessed with it, to the point where I had all Sunday to myself while my wife napped off her hangover, and I opted to try to power through the rest of Final Fantasy 16, just hoping I could get to the end, so I can focus purely on BG3 with all of my gaming time. It would be nonsense to compare this game to Starfield (which I'm also very excited for) because they're such vastly different types of RPGs. I think this game sets the generational benchmark for RPG quality, but I don't think it's even going to be the highest selling RPG of the year if that's what benchmark we're using. I think for now and the foreseeable future it's certainly the benchmark for quality especially when it comes to your choices actually mattering.
Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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I'm pretty sure BG3 and Starfield will be compared anyway despite their differences. Particularly their attitude to in-game purchases and other marketing tactics, and handling of release bugs.
Oh yeah I have no doubt that they will be, I just don't think they should be if we're strictly talking about just being RPGs because they're so different.
Starfield is Bethesda, so it's going to be a buggy mess that barely works on release and will still have major game breaking bugs ten years later. But it'll have a ton of mods to fix those bugs so the devs don't have to. Might take a while though.
However, I don't think it will dethrone skyrim when it comes to the sheer modding capabilities. I think the only game that could potentially dethrone that is es6.
Personally, I have little interest in starfield. It feels like a scifi game without the scifi if that makes any sense. Everything in the trailer was humans, why does elder scrolls have more interesting races and options? Starfield is a game where you can go to multiple planets and yet... everything is just earth and futuristic utopia. It feels like it lacks creativity.
It seems like there is something other than humans, but we haven't seen it yet. It's not a playable race though. Some kind of space magic race or something. It's supposedly more hard sci-fi though, so humans only makes sense. That said, there are a bunch of alian creatures to kill.
I'm very skeptical of Starfield though. Bethesda used to make great RPGs, but they consistently treated their players more and more like idiots who need to have their hand held through everything. It's sad.
Yeah, I'm not a massive scifi fan - I tend to like the diversity it offers but if you don't offer it I'm like. "Isn't this just a happier cyberpunk setting?" Whoch I was interested in the cyberpunk game, i followed the development quite closely. But the more I heard about it nearing release, the more suspicious i got of it and I never bought it pre-ordered it and even suggested to my super hyped friend to cancel his pre-order. He didn't and was sups3rdisspppitnrd with the game. Everyone was and I was kind of like "were none of you paying attention to the development? The red flags were the size of Mars"
Bethesda is kind of turning into the safe, mid game company ala Nintendo. And Bethesda does have pretty buggy games at launch. Skyrim is still buggy years later. Granted Bethesda has fixed most of the game breaking bugs over the years. (Though people still consider the unofficial patch to be mandatory due to the state of the game at the launch. The thing is, the unofficial patch is not mandatory. However, so many other mods require it anyway.) Most of the bugs that are left are just engine related bugs since they are still using their 10+ year old engine on modern technology that it was never supposed to work on. Starfield is promised to have aco pletely new engine, and we know that this game is just testing it out. And all the improvements will go into ES6. I expect Starfield to be more broken on launch than Fallout 76.
Ok, so I'm starting here:
Most of the bugs that are left are just engine related bugs since they are still using their 10+ year old engine on modern technology that it was never supposed to work on. Starfield is promised to have aco pletely new engine, and we know that this game is just testing it out.
That's not how engines work. They're a collection of tools that all work together, and they can all be updated over time. The creation engine that was used in FO4 likely has none (or very little) of the code left from when it was called Gamebryo. For example, Unreal Engine 5 is built on top of every UE before it. For some reason people call the creation engine 10 years old but UE5 modern. Starfield is still using the creation engine, they're just calling it Creation Engine 2 now, and somehow people think that means it's an "entirely new" engine. It isn't. It's updated, but it was for every game before too. People in the internet ignorant of game/software development have been saying they need a new engine though, so they just finally added the 2 and they think it is a new engine.
(Sorry for the rant. This annoys me so much. The engine is nit the reason for almost any of the bugs and it wasn't "designed" to not run on modern hardware.)
As for sci-fi, I don't think it's just happy cyberpunk. For example, Firefly is more of a cowboy show than anything. Usually it's used, like fantasy, to distance ourselves from issues being discussed so we can examine the without bias. This works even better with fantasy sci-fi I think, because it can use alians as an allegory for race or other things, but hard sci-fi can be more Immersive. The Expanse is great as using it's setting for this.
Also, Cyberpunk is actually pretty good now. If it goes on sale, I'd say it's worth picking up. It's not as good as I was hoping with the hype before launch, but it is a good game if you go in without that baggage.
I'm ready for the next Pathfinder game by owlcat. All I want is for them to go back and forth releasing games adapted from campaigns.
I honestly wouldnt mind just like a mega dungeon crawler with their engine made by a smaller team or something. I don't even need all the same quality voice acting etc, kind of like a icewind dale to baldurs gate if you know what i mean.
The next big RPG will no doubt be from Owlcat and the 40k game they're making and I will be buying it, of this there is no doubt. I'll be getting Starfield in 10 years time when the ultra mega turbo deluxe game of the year edition releases and I still need the Unofficial patch to fix it.
Rogue trader for sure. Honestly, if anyone here hasnt played pathfinder wotr i highly recommend it. It's definitely more advanced and complex than bg3 in terms of ruleset imo but it's really good. Far better mechanically, better quality of life and ui as well by a longshot.
When I first started playing TTRPGs I played some Pathfinder. It's such a good system. It's better than Dnd 5E in my opinion. It's hard to get people to play it though because 5E is so much more approachable. Pathfinder really let's you go crazy with it and do whatever you want.
I haven't played the CRPG though. I'll have to give it a try. I heard about it years ago and then it just disappeared.
Pathfinder 2 is pretty good and much more accessible than Pathfinder 1 was, while still having a fair amount of depth to the system.
Played kingmaker, didn't know about wotr... looks daunting