Baldur's Gate 3, Larians makining it.

laserit

Who's excited, I know I am

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-finally-happening/

moshra

I am excited.  I've been waiting for the makining of this game for a long time.

Adamantine

Oh, I'm *beyond* excited. BG2 is my favorite offline game ever.

Unfortunately at the same time also even more beyond pessimistic that this BG3 wont be even in the same universe, let alone any near in quality, to BG1 and BG2.

Just playing BG1 now - the original from 1998, not the EE from something like ~2012 I believe ? Really funny, its a tiny 640x480 window on a 1920x1080 screen on my old computer that still has a CD drive (well actually its of course a DVD or Blueray, not CD, I dont even know which of the two, and I think its also a writer ? Never used it as such though). I cant run it maximized because then he shows a 4:3 game in 16:9 aspect ratio - yeesh. I tried lowering the resolution of the desktop, too, but thats not doing much good either.

Anyway, it works and its HUGE FUN.

Once I've finished BG1, I'm planning to try next if I can still manage to get BG2 to run. IIRC it definitely supported 800x600. And back in the days there was also a patch to run BG1 with the BG2 engine, I wonder if that still works, too. That was definitely a huge improvement - better than EE. For example one could finally use the super, super useful zickzack party formation in BG1, its all I've ever used in BG2 (though sometimes one also needed the line).

By the way I'm not going to install the Swordcoast expansion before finishing the main game, because if I have the expansion installed I can no longer finish the main story, it always locked up in the first battle with Sarevok.

Might even get the EE someday soon, too. Would be nice not needing a CD drive in the computer so I can play it on my notebook. I'm not too keen on the EE though, they didnt actually fix anything of interest. Like, they added more party npcs. Because clearly BG1 totally lacked in number of available options for your party. And can I even run Swordcoast at all with EE ?

Thinking about it, maybe there is nowadays a patch so one doesnt need the CD anymore ? Then I could just copy BG1 to my notebook and that would be so much nicer than playing on that old loud computer. I would then make a copy of BG1 and a copy of BG1 with Swordcoast, so I can switch over to the expansion at any time I want to.

Either way its so fun to play this stuff once more.

But I'm 100%, nay, 1000% prepared that BG3 will suck BIG TIME. And all press releases about it sound exactly like that. Oh yeah, they will "modernize". Right. Because ... modern games are so much better than BG1 and BG2 ? ROTFL !!! Thats how you announce poorly thought out junk, garbage, trash. I remember how they announced Witcher 1 this way and what did they end up with ? A game in which you have to klick on the opponent in the correct frequency. That definitely was the dumbest combat system ever in any roleplaying game, and by a large margin. Actually it was still better than Witcher 2 because I dont understand combat in Witcher 2 at all (couldnt finish the tutorial) so I cant play it. Whatever.

And no matter, even if BG3 sucks, I'll just have fun with the originals. As long as I can still get them to run on any computer at all, anyway.

At least I've checked out D&D5 and was very pleasantly surprised. Unlike D&D4, which was riddiculous and awful and not D&D at all, they've returned to actually improving the system instead of throwing it all out of the window and doing something completely different. I still think its too magic focused and non-magic classes need more love, but you can now make for example a cleric/mage again and its not great but tolerable, while in D&D3 you had to have prestige classes to get that to work tolerably, and even then that worked not as well as in AD&D.

And its so funny, back when I played BG2, I had a HUGE HEAP of ideas how to make this game better.

Like, make the magic system suck less (its great but mage vs mage combat could be much more interesting than getting a bigger spell to rid the opponent of their increasingly absurd defenses), make nonmagic classes more interesting (give everybody special abilities, not just magic classes spells, pretty much like all good MMOs do it), get rid of this completely absurd restriction that you have to sleep all the time to get new spells (as if people could sleep another eight hours after they just had rested eight hours), make the romances more dynamic and interesting, make the game world realistic sized and seamless, make the graphics 3d and viewing distances realistic, make party members react to your charisma score more (Cha 18 you can easily play with Edwin and Minsc in the same party and neither will leave because of reputation, no matter if its high or low, while at the same time you can run two romances in parallel and both ladies will be happy. While Cha 8 you better get somebody like Keldorn to help out with leadership, and make sure he's 100% happy, too, or your group will fall apart and you'll only get Imoen and Jaheira to stay with you, and you'll have a hard time starting any romance at all), switch to a system thats inspired by D&D but better adapted to the computer, etc.

But little did I know back then that there never would be any better offline game. Well, not in the past twenty years, anyway.

And even today, the quality of storytelling in BG1 and especially BG2 is just amazing. Even Bioware themselves never made another game at this level. Compared to BG2, other Bioware titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins have actually been a bit low on story. The romances in SWKotoR and DAO for example can only be called rudimentary, with like seven dialogues in SWKotoR total and I dont even remember who you could even romance in DAO, was it that witch ? She wasnt even likeable at all. Viconia is super likeable in comparison.

What would I do if I would design BG3 ? First thing I would try to get the best storytelling material possible. Next I'd go full hardcore on the rules, not meaning that I'll try to implement everything super faithfully as in P&P, but I'll make the game offer a challenge at all levels (except the early ones because it seems to me even D&D5 still sucks on those levels, they still havent fixed you can get oneshotted very easily).

Adamantine

Whow just read around a bit and apparently one can patch the original games to high res and everything already.

So EE ... really doesnt do much ?

laserit

Adamantine said:

Whow just read around a bit and apparently one can patch the original games to high res and everything already.

So EE ... really doesnt do much ?

As long as we don't have to constantly switch around those 8 cd's I'll be happy

Scot

That news is m.a.k.i.n.g. me excited.  

Iselin

It's not Canadians making it like the originals were but Larian is so good they are almost Canadian

Adamantine

laserit said:

Adamantine said:

Whow just read around a bit and apparently one can patch the original games to high res and everything already.

So EE ... really doesnt do much ?

As long as we don't have to constantly switch around those 8 cd's I'll be happy

Thats not even needed with the original unpatched game, all you have to say is "install everything". Its merely a click orgy because for some reason they havent added a button "select all", so you really have to select every single option by hand.

I never ever switched any CD for BG, not even when it came out.

H0urg1ass

GO FOR THE EYES BOO!  GO FOR THE EYES!

*SQUEEEEEE!*

Pre-MMO's I think I played BG2 more than any other game in existence.  I would play through on a character, make a new one, pick a different group of companions to recruit and go again.  I want to say I played it nearly every day for most of two years.  Yep, just checked, it came out in September 2000 and I played it until I went to Basic Training in September 2002.

I played good, I played evil, I played neutral.

My favorite was still my Chaotic Good Elf Ranger but I had some really fun games being bad too.

Every five or so years I'll reinstall it and fire it up again and play for a week, but I never finish it anymore.  However, now that BG3 is on the way, maybe it's time to fire up and run through the first two all the way again.

BUT KICKING FOR GOODNESS!

Bladeburaiba

Excited, curbing my expectations though.

I finished BG2 with a party, then would only play solo from then on.  If you just collect a few items early, you could create a super powerful character, and things flowed much better.

I am not sure if that was the most fun way to play, but I liked the challenge.  Although, I wonder if playing with one character actually made it easier in the end.  I didn't have to skip any encounters, and much less save scumming due to one of your characters getting permanently killed.

Adamantine

Another thing I find amazing about BG2 is by the way that the development time was apparently ... TWO YEARS.

Two years ?!?!?

Just ... whow.

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen for example is at five years by now. First announced in January 2014, only ten days before SOE announced they'll shut down Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Sovrath

Adamantine said:

Another thing I find amazing about BG2 is by the way that the development time was apparently ... TWO YEARS.

Two years ?!?!?

Just ... whow.

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen for example is at five years by now. First announced in January 2014, only ten days before SOE announced they'll shut down Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Not sure the point, it's apples to oranges. One is a single player game (is there multi-player?) with 2 dimensional sprite graphics and the other is an online game, 3d, mmorpg.

couple that with a small team, who knows how many of them are donating their time, and it makes sense that it's taking a while.

While throwing a lot of people at game doesn't insure shortening development time, not having enough people and people wearing multiple hats, will make it take longer.

H0urg1ass

DMKano said:

Holding my excitement until gameplay proves it's a worthy successor.

I would go a little further and hope to hell that the game mechanics are at least reasonable.  One of the reasons that I didn't like PoE at all was because they departed so radically from AD&D rules like the strength stat that powered all damage.

NO.  Mental strength powers spells and magic.  Physical Strength powers swords.  It's been like that across 100's of RPG across decades of gaming.  You don't meddle with that dynamic.  It's "fixing" something that isn't broken.

Now, do I really expect it to be AD&D?  Nope.  Because WoTC is going to use it as a platform to push their D20 D&D books, but I really wish it would stay old school just for old school sake.

And no, I liked THAC0 just fine thank you very much.  It was only confusing to dumb people.

Mendel

laserit said:

Adamantine said:

Whow just read around a bit and apparently one can patch the original games to high res and everything already.

So EE ... really doesnt do much ?

As long as we don't have to constantly switch around those 8 cd's I'll be happy

I just bought BG1:EE and BG2:EE just to avoid the CD swapping.  I can't beat $5 apiece.

Adamantine

H0urg1ass said:

And no, I liked THAC0 just fine thank you very much.  It was only confusing to dumb people.

"Dumb people" being people who understand the extremely obvious fact that simply defining it the other way around would be the intuitive way that everyone expects, any other rulesystem uses and that any noob would immediately understand without explanation and could extremely easily be done without changing anything else about the rulesystem.

Next time, before you call other people stupid, maybe spend, I dunno, three seconds thinking about what you're talking about ? All you talk about here is something you're used to, but has otherwise absolutely no value.

Scot

Adamantine said:

H0urg1ass said:

And no, I liked THAC0 just fine thank you very much.  It was only confusing to dumb people.

"Dumb people" being people who understand the extremely obvious fact that simply defining it the other way around would be the intuitive way that everyone expects, any other rulesystem uses and that any noob would immediately understand without explanation and could extremely easily be done without changing anything else about the rulesystem.

Next time, before you call other people stupid, maybe spend, I dunno, three seconds thinking about what you're talking about ? All you talk about here is something you're used to, but has otherwise absolutely no value.

For me this slavery to D&D rules only serves to enforce the "one design" philosophy that games have, pushing gaming to banality. While there is divergence from genre within a genre differences are stripped out. Depending on the genre, one RPG system, one UI, one way of doing classes, must haves from auction houses to alignment systems.

lahnmir

Scot said:

Adamantine said:

H0urg1ass said:

And no, I liked THAC0 just fine thank you very much.  It was only confusing to dumb people.

"Dumb people" being people who understand the extremely obvious fact that simply defining it the other way around would be the intuitive way that everyone expects, any other rulesystem uses and that any noob would immediately understand without explanation and could extremely easily be done without changing anything else about the rulesystem.

Next time, before you call other people stupid, maybe spend, I dunno, three seconds thinking about what you're talking about ? All you talk about here is something you're used to, but has otherwise absolutely no value.

For me this slavery to D&D rules only serves to enforce the "one design" philosophy that games have, pushing gaming to banality. While there is divergence from genre within a genre differences are stripped out. Depending on the genre, one RPG system, one UI, one way of doing classes, must haves from auction houses to alignment systems.

My neutral evil side agrees with you, my chaotic good side doesn't.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Scot

Torval said:

Scot said:

Adamantine said:

H0urg1ass said:

And no, I liked THAC0 just fine thank you very much.  It was only confusing to dumb people.

"Dumb people" being people who understand the extremely obvious fact that simply defining it the other way around would be the intuitive way that everyone expects, any other rulesystem uses and that any noob would immediately understand without explanation and could extremely easily be done without changing anything else about the rulesystem.

Next time, before you call other people stupid, maybe spend, I dunno, three seconds thinking about what you're talking about ? All you talk about here is something you're used to, but has otherwise absolutely no value.

For me this slavery to D&D rules only serves to enforce the "one design" philosophy that games have, pushing gaming to banality. While there is divergence from genre within a genre differences are stripped out. Depending on the genre, one RPG system, one UI, one way of doing classes, must haves from auction houses to alignment systems.

That's not D&D's fault. That's the fault of unimaginative lazy people probably looking to make an easy buck. There are tons of alternative systems and rule sets too and none of them have done anything to change paradigms or make a difference at all.

Sure, like it is not WoW's fault it was so successful it spawned a thousand imitators, but that still leaves us with the problem. I don't think we need a paradigm shift, a new RPG system used as commonly as DnD, all we need is a gaming climate where developers do not baulk at the idea of using something players have not seen countless times before.

cheyane

Torval said:

DMKano said:

Holding my excitement until gameplay proves it's a worthy successor.

Same. At least it's not Obsidian.

The other thing is, I feel like Wizards is just milking the franchise name. There are so many places and adventures in the Forgotten Realms outside of Baldur's Gate yet here we are again. I probably would have felt the same about an IWD successor too. Find a new place, new adventures, new characters, and new series of events.

I agree with this but I am also a firm believer of the "take what you can get" school.

Adamantine

I'm not sure what game exactly is supposed to be a WoW clone.

WoW itself was an EverQuest clone. So many of these "WoW clones" games would have been like WoW, anyway. Because it wasnt really something fundamentally new. My own favorite MMORPG, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, was a lot like WoW in many respects, too. It was published far too close to WoW to be a clone of the later.

And WoW didnt actually introduce that many new features, and those which it actually introduced didnt actually get copied a lot. And among the reasons why WoW was successful have been factors like low hardware demands. Probably also being simply the right game at the right time. And a very unrestricted advertisement budget.

To me WoW was never appealing. I dont like instancing. To me instancing removes one of the main reasons why I love playing a MMORPG in the first place, and thats the feeling to live in a world with thousands of other players I might meet at any time, around the corner.

And using a system like D&D, which clearly is made for P&P not for computer, has a number of great effects that made it desireable anyway:

- First of all, D&D is already very rich. Theres a lot of options and these options are full of flavor.

- Second of all, D&D is already pretty well balanced. Having a system thats both rich in diversity and flavor, but balanced is far from an easy thing to have.

- Third thing is also important, and thats because of being designed for P&P, D&D is kind of unusually restrictive for a computer game. But these restrictions are actually a lot of fun in itself. For example the whole "spells per day" system means you have to think a lot about what spells to memorize. And if you play one of the classes that dont have to memorize, you instead have to think a lot about what spells to learn permanently.

The third point is pretty much like the problem of instancing. Sure, instancing solves certain problems. But without a problem, a game is simply less interesting.

I wouldnt defend this as a general principle though. Thinking about how to optimize your character is fun, and thats why I like games which are both complex and well balanced at the same time. But for example having to think about how to organize your inventory is far less fun. Thank god for bags of holding !

Maurgrim

Torval said:

DMKano said:

Holding my excitement until gameplay proves it's a worthy successor.

Same. At least it's not Obsidian.

The other thing is, I feel like Wizards is just milking the franchise name. There are so many places and adventures in the Forgotten Realms outside of Baldur's Gate yet here we are again. I probably would have felt the same about an IWD successor too. Find a new place, new adventures, new characters, and new series of events.

Would be sweet to come back to Dalelands again like the old 90s games and even Sembia.

Adamantine

Meh.

I really dont care too much about what the main story of BG3 will be.

Frankly the main story of Baldurs Gate 2 sucked BIG TIME. You immediately knew what will happen, you immediately knew the opponent. You immediately lost Imoen and had to work hard to get her back. What about people who *gasp* dont like Imoen ? Though I know no good reason why you wouldnt like her, but yeah such people exist. In BG1 one could simply ignore her if one wanted to.

And yet BG2 was a much improved game over BG1.

The fun will be in the side quests, the party npcs and their story and quests, and in how well they will implement the rulesystem, both in respect to how challenging it will be to play the game and in respect to how indepth the system will be.

For example, while "The Temple of Elemental Evil" was otherwise a really poorly made game with tons of bugs, hardly and story, and many more issues, it was combatwise really challenging and that part was fun.

And thats why I am not optimistic that BG3 will be any near BG1 or BG2 as a gaming experience.