I learned from the movies that the best way to unearth a criminal conspiracy is to follow the money. That advice also applies to understanding videogames: feel out where a game dedicated the big bucks and you'll get a sense of where its heart truly lies.
In Baldur's Gate 3, the money went into the cinematic motion captured conversations, which imbue the endless dialogue with an animated sense of life that Larian had never managed in its older games. In Dragon's Dogma 2, this year's long-awaited RPG sequel, I could immediately tell the money did not go into its conversations in the same way. Walking through a small stopover town alongside a road that wound through open wilderness in either direction, villagers began hailing me with quests and news, yanking away control of my camera and spinning it 180 degrees to face them as they told me about a missing son or local mystery.
