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I was talking about RPG subgenres (as this is an RPG site), not all video games.
No, but you claimed two decades of decline made BG seem like a challenging game while I pointed out that it was already challenging back in the day compared to some other RPGs made in that period (like Fallout, PST and Arcanum).
Calling BG2 an action game is absurd enough, but an adventure game? For the sake of argument, I would call Fallout more of an adventure-game-with-stats than BG is. In Fallout, conflict resolution involves either trivial combat, or it requires you to find the right right dialogue option or the right item (power armor, explosives, purple robe) that will skip combat or make it trivial. Advancement comes down to choosing a specific skill level or dialogue or hunting down a specific item or interactive element in the environment.
That is pretty much a graphical adventure game except for one admittedly big difference: Fallout has multiple possible resolutions to each conflict. But is that really such a big deal? The number of possibilities is limited and each is pre-scripted and static. If someone were to mod Fallout so that it included time travel at key points allowing you to go back and choose a different pre-scripted option, then the resulting game would be almost indistinguishable from a graphical adventure game.
In stark contrast, BG relies heavily on its roleplaying system for conflict resolution.
How is BG an action-adventure game with stats but Fallout is an rpg?
It had a role-playing system? Oh, you mean that if your fighter resolved conflicts with his sword and your wizard with his spells? Yeah, good times, good times.
How is BG an action-adventure game with stats but Fallout is an rpg?
Here is how I see it (and why I dislike linear games in general even though PST will be forever on my top 10 list but that's due to depth and writing): nothing you do in linear games matters. You drift from point A to point B to point C to be told what happens next and what you need to do. You don't uncover anything yourself, you unlock content at designated point. Eventually, you're told that you're a winnar who figured it all out, even if min-maxed and made the dumbest fighter possible.
The main strength of non-linear RPGs is that they put you in control and let you decide. Sure, the options, the choices, and consequences are scripted and limited, but even a simple choice is better than being forced to stay on rails.
It had a role-playing system? Oh, you mean that if your fighter resolved conflicts with his sword and your wizard with his spells? Yeah, good times, good times.
I am just bringing up the distinction between a system to resolve conflicts, even if it is combat oriented, and resolving conflict by walking through the actions that a game designer planned out for the player like in an adventure game, even if you get to select between a few different options.
Would you say the Wizardry games don't have a role-playing system?
Well, that would be because BG2 didn't have much in the way of wilderness. Not many areas to freely roam through. Personally, I'd find consider it much better if you had to manually navigate 3-4 maps between Athkatla and Trademeet. And then some more between Trademeet and Umar Hills, D'Arnise Hold, etc.
Actually, I preferred the more focused scope of BG2 to the free-roaming of BG1 and was glad that there were no pointless half-empty wilderness maps to traverse, instead we had multi-level dungeons with cool encounters and backstories to them.
Well, you're a master of hyperbole, and expert on theoretical gaming, but since you haven't even played the Gold Box games your opinion is based on limited experience.
It doesn't change than when everyone is trying to make a good RPG using even a deeply flawed system there is more chance some of them will succeed than when one odd guy/studio tries to do the same with even far superior one.
Hyperboles are one thing but your grasp on metaphors could use some work.
Anyway, I've overlooked some stuff I'd like to respond to:
It's one of the few cRPGs to emulate not only low-level D&D, but a more low-key style of the game (well, as much as marketable D&D can really be). Unlike other titles with similar level caps, or that include the BG1 level range, the player party isn't pitted against everything in the monster manual that happens to fall within the suggest encounter challenge ratings. Enemies are mostly humans or humanoids, and the chief foes, behind everything, are as well. For once, the "big bad" wasn't a dragon/lich/death-knight/demon/beholder/drow leading a horde of beasties against the "civilized races". However, this does make for a bit more "mundane" combat; many encounters in the early game lack interesting special abilities and tactics employed by foes. Compare the early dragonkin a party faces off against in Champions of Krynn, or to the elementals/orc attack/cave encounters in Knights of the Chalice to BG1's bandits/gibberlings/kobolds. BG1's NPC assassins and mercenary bands compare favorably, but many of the generic foes do not in the early game.
Actually, I can fully appreciate such a low key approach and BG1's by far most interesting combat encounters are those with parties of playable race NPCs.
The problem is that BG is just not low-key enough. The world of BG1 is full of gnolls, xvarts, kobolds, hobgoblins, tasloi, and tons of other such crap. Constant encounters with those detract from low-key experience and damage cohesiveness of the gameworld, while the encounters themselves are just boring. You have supposedly intelligent 'monster' races that are always hostile, yet they somehow coexist with humans and others in relatively human dominated area without having been driven out or exterminated, don't behave or seem to behave intelligently, don't have diverse roles when you do fight them - it all feels very artificial.
I know that D&D FR is a given here, but generally settings work better when races inhabiting roughly the same ecological niche either play nice, to at least certain degree, or segregate because of hostilities. It's also more compelling if even predominantly hostile races have some non hostile interactions unless the setting is that of a full on conquest.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work too well if you show up over-leveled or are practicing the art of powergaming.
It also doesn't work very well with BG1's pathfinding or endless respawns. The mines are mostly drawn out maze of twisting passages all alike filled with kobolds - also all alike.
They get better afterwards up to and including exit in unfamiliar territory, but when I first played the game I was so worn out by repetitive content up to this point that I ragequit.
The critical path, from Nashkel onwards, is well-paced and interesting enough, but going off the beaten path can result in long stretches of experiencing slogs of relatively uninteresting content with some legitimately good content peppered in. Obviously, sluicing through the rough to find these gems doesn't make for particularly exciting gameplay...a malady most "open world" or "exploration-based" games suffer from. For instance, Morrowind may have some neat locations and treasures, but you'll have to trudge through dozens of cliff racers in the overworld and slog through a generic bandit cave or two for every interesting locale
Actually I can't really agree with that. A well structured exploration-centric game (like Morrowind) doesn't just feature content plopped down in the middle of generic nowhere. It features information you can gather and world structure you can decipher and follow in effort of actually finding interesting stuff without stumbling around blindly. It can also feature subtle funneling from one quest to another or from quest to point of interest, where during the course of one you're set in position to get into another if only you're curious, perceptive or adventurous enough.
A well designed exploration game will also involve player in the act of exploring, by letting player notice stuff and directing their attention.
Basically, for any of your decisions regarding exploration to be worth more than a coin flip you must see where you're going and be able to notice stuff you might want to investigate. This is the case with Morrowind, but not with BG1 where finding anything is purely luck (or tedium) based.
Speaking of world structure, BG1 just doesn't know what kind of game it tries to be.
Let me explain: on one end you have games where points of interest form all the locations while the terrain in between is abstracted away. You move between locations that are guaranteed to be, well, *something* by the way of map travel, and any encounters on the way are handled by the way of small, generic encounter maps, or encounter specific ones.
On the other end you have continuous worlds - they try to represent entirety of the gameworld, interesting or not, in either 1:1 or downscaled format. Those are games where you can go everywhere and also games where finding interesting stuff can be gameplay of its own (if they are structured for it to involve some player judgement).
Then you have BG1. On one hand you have area maps covering the gameworld pretty uniformly and indiscriminately - most of them are composed mostly, if not entirely of nondescript wilderness, with no unique content or anything that would justify calling them points of interest. On the other maps are generally interspersed with several h walks of terrain not represented in game, where random encounters are instantiated on their separate minimaps and so on.
It feels very arbitrary because the game is essentially composed of points of interest that aren't and stretches of abstracted away terrain that can be reasonably presumed to be just as (un)interesting as stuff you can actually traverse in detail.
Then you have the fact that despite being basically grid of physically adjacent (minus 8h walks, of course) maps you can "explore" by going from one to another, some maps are only available for entry after fulfilling arbitrary plot related conditions (Cloakwood).
It feels as if game is constantly oscillating between POIs and continuous world based effectively ending up an undecided mess constantly changing the rules by which it's meant to be played.
That extends to other areas as well - it's a party based game yet it ends with single protagonist's death, it tries to give RPCs their own agency, yet it robs them of it by giving player total control over their inventory and character sheets right from the onset, and so on.
However, later on the content wheat/chaff ratio greatly improves when veering off the critical path. The city of Baldur's Gate is rich with quests, encounters, and interesting locales.
Too bad that by this point player is already heavily conditioned that side content sucks.
It's also rather late in game already - we're talking of 7 chapter game in which first 4 chapters just plain suck - that's not good.
Overall BG has a very skewed content distribution both on and off critical path.
I had to register at theese forums just to let you know my 5 cents
Baldurs Gate was one of the first "modern" games I played, before that me and my friends only had 386 or amiga machines. That was for sure one reason it blew me (and my friends) away. The time following I tried a lot of other CRPG, but they were either crap (the newer ones) or too hard too handle (the older ones). So I admit BG got a bit dusty, but I think it's still worth playing.
I liked the plot and writing though it was a bit silly at times. The overall atmosphere was great, things like weapons breaking all the time because of the tainted ore from the nashkel mines. And interesting encounters which were no quest or fight but just talking to interesting people, like an astrologer telling your fortune or a bard or priests telling you about the gods. Also all the books you could read. I guess it introduced a lot of people (just like me) to D'n'D and actual role playing. There were a LOT of great ideas in the game, maybe spread over an area too wide, but I found it more fascinating than other overloaded worlds.
The fights. How many cRPG are there, which give you a nice isometric perspective with a full party, tactical fights and is that easy to control? Say what you want but Infinity Engine is still unbeaten for me in this regard. If you play on hard and with SCS mod installed it's still quite a challenge, even if you know the sytem and enemies by heart. The sytem itself might have it's weaknesses, but it has depth, since it's simply a good implementation of AD&D.
Regarding some other things said before: There ARE rumors and information, sometimes only if you pick up a certain npc, that guide you to the most interesting challenges off the main roads. And if you go for them, you may find other unmentioned ones . For me it was part of the fascination of the world. Also the plot is linear, true, and playing evil in BG is not very rewarding, but except from the main quest things in the world are different depending on your reputation. Some people won't talk to you, guards and even mages of the flaming fist will hunt you if you commited to many crimes, there are many conflicting quests forcing you to take sides and you will get different story elements (dreams) and different special powers. Aaaaand there ARE conflicts you can handle without fighting. Sometimes you can talk your way out and often fleeing the enemy is a good decision, too
The biggest reason for me to not play this game today (which I still do) would be the outdated graphics no mod or re-release could change.
Else, go get the Enhanced Edition (which is fixing a lot of bugs like wrong implementation of rules regarding weapons, enemies etc. and adding nice lights in doors and houses during the night, as well as almost giving you the BG2 system) and install some mods: SCS (for more challenging battles), aTweaks and bg2tweaks (a lot of options to make it more p'n'p like or remove rules you think are silly), TeamBG's Armor and Item Pack (making it less ugly) and solaufein's lvl40 mod (dealing with the before mentioned almost).
For BG2 stay with the original, it's better than the beamdog version so far.
Here is how I see it (and why I dislike linear games in general even though PST will be forever on my top 10 list but that's due to depth and writing): nothing you do in linear games matters.
Now you're just saying that some games are better in theory, and that doesn't have anything to do with the matter at hand (BG). Freedom means nothing if it does not lead to anything interesting. If my choice is between winning the game or ending up dead in a pool of acid, I'd prefer a better linear narrative to a disjoined one.
If I had to choose theoretically a great RPG, I'd also pick Fallout because of it's ideas. I love my RPGs for their bold ideas.
But the radio still never worked anywhere else than a single pre determined location at the end game, and dynamite in a cave was just pixel hunting.
Technically you can stealth in and steal documents from the Nashkell mines. There's multiple ways to get into the Bandit camp, and once again you can simply steal the documents. After that you don't have much choice at all.
Technically you can stealth in and steal documents from the Nashkell mines. There's multiple ways to get into the Bandit camp, and once again you can simply steal the documents. After that you don't have much choice at all.
Completely unimportant... but I believe the first time I played BG1, I gathered all the companions I could find and led them to that dwarf guy's "mercenary" house/business place. Had an absolute blast role playing my guy as a elite mercenary company leader, repeatedly switching party members for almost all the locations.
Completely unimportant... but I believe the first time I played BG1, I gathered all the companions I could find and led them to that dwarf guy's "mercenary" house/business place. Had an absolute blast role playing my guy as a elite mercenary company leader, repeatedly switching party members for almost all the locations.
That's how you play games! But I have the feeling adding features to a game by just using your imagination becomes harder while you grow older and have to live this everyday live where playing games becomes more like watching tv, mere cosumption of a ready made product.
Hmmm, I wouldn't say it's becomes harder as you grow older. It becomes harder because newer games streamline everything for you and hit you over the head i.e. you can't gather all the companions in one place in ME series because it's done for you. Essentially the ability to create your own stories is stripped away, leaving you with options the developers specifically planned for, rather than letting you discover your own little moments.
Completely unimportant... but I believe the first time I played BG1, I gathered all the companions I could find and led them to that dwarf guy's "mercenary" house/business place. Had an absolute blast LARPing my guy as a elite mercenary company leader, repeatedly switching party members for almost all the locations.
That's how you play games! But I have the feeling adding features to a game by just using your imagination becomes harder while you grow older and have to live this everyday live where playing games becomes more like watching tv, mere cosumption of a ready made product.
Technically you can stealth in and steal documents from the Nashkell mines. There's multiple ways to get into the Bandit camp, and once again you can simply steal the documents. After that you don't have much choice at all.
What about Candlekeep interior, the inns, every single temple, the siren coast map, the Hall of wonders?
Visuals also don't make much of an impression without the right sound, the best games provide a solid audiovisual package. What kind of consoletard doesn't get a nerdgasm listening to the BG theme, or this
Oh yeah, BG1 has much better music, especially the battle themes. I also like the music that plays in wilderness maps. But no, the environments in BG1 looked inferior (which isn't surprising, since it was the first ever IE game).
Here is how I see it (and why I dislike linear games in general even though PST will be forever on my top 10 list but that's due to depth and writing): nothing you do in linear games matters. You drift from point A to point B to point C to be told what happens next and what you need to do. You don't uncover anything yourself, you unlock content at designated point. Eventually, you're told that you're a winnar who figured it all out, even if min-maxed and made the dumbest fighter possible.
Gameplay mechanics and systems have choices and consequences ingrained within them to widely varying degrees. If a game has sufficiently complex mechanics and systems to engage with, that to me can be just as if not more compelling than a game being "non-linear". I think Baldur's Gate a good example of a game that has complexity and reactivity in how it plays, both in and out of combat.
I don't want to get into the "what is an RPG?" debate, but I do think dismissing a game on the basis of linearity without taking into account the nuances of its mechanics and systems is a little disingenuous and unfairly reductive.
