'That Shows You Intelligence of Gamer Audience;' Swen Vincke on Game of the Year Title for Baldur's Gate 3
Larian head Swen Vincke said that he did not expect Baldur's Gate 3 to receive the game of the year award.
The Golden Joystick Awards 2023 gala kicked off a string of events summarizing the past months in our industry. The king of this year's event turned out to be Baldur's Gate 3, which took a record-breaking seven statuettes, including the most important one - Best Game of the Year.
Shortly after the end of the event, the editors of GamesRadar asked the head of Larian Studios, Swen Vincke, to comment on the results. In an interview with journalists the developer revealed that the award for Baldur's Gate 3 comes as an absolute surprise to him, because during the development of the RPG the team did not make any compromises that could make the game accessible to the widest possible audience.
"That's the thing that you would never expect, because we didn't know, we didn't compromise a lot. You know, we tried to make everything as approachable as possible, but we didn't really compromise on it. So the common wisdom would be 'compromise to make it accessible to a large audience'. So that shows you the intelligence of the gamer audience, which is really a good thing," Vincke said.
Recently, the subject of Larian Studios' bold approach to the design of BG3 was raised by former Bethesda employee Bruce Nesmith. The creator of, among others, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or Fallout 4 noted that the Belgians "looked into all the darkest corners" and "did what Bethesda could not afford to do."
The title of game of the year for Baldur's Gate 3 is a truly great honor, especially if we consider what kind of competition Larian's RPG had to face. Recall that many games competed for the top prize at the Golden Joystick Awards 2023, such as, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Diablo IV, Alan Wake 2 or Starfield.
