Did Baldur's Gate really have an impact?

[Makabb]

Baldur's gate 1 story is 50 hours long, and BG 2 with TOB is 100 hours long........ that is a western RPG in 1999, still unrivaled to this day in the ammount of content.

If Morrowind removed the open world and packed its content it would be max 5 hours long of content for comparison, because in Baldur's Gate 2 there is content on every corner.

 

[Makabb]

Bg 2 dropped the 'open world' however, it has much less areas, but they packed them with even more content.

 

[Darth Canoli]

It almost seems cliché to say that Baldur's Gate 'saved' or 'revived' the cRPG genre from its mid-90s slump. The problem is that I really don't see it. Yes, there were some good games released in its wake (PS:T, Arcanum, Gothic, even Morrowind for some), but they seem to come from vastly different lineages. My main problem with this thesis is where are all the birdmen games? Every time a surprisingly popular games is released, there is always a slew of copycats produced by two-bit developers trying to cash in on a 'fad.' Of course these games always merely copy the 'feathers' and end up sucking, but they are still produced. When Super Mario Brothers became popular, lots of developers made 'Mario-clones', and thus the 2-D platformer genre was born. When Doom became a hit, lots of 'Doom-clones' followed. The same thing happened with Warcraft II, Diablo, God of War, Myst, Grand Theft Auto, and several others. Hell, even Ultima and Wizardry have spawned dozens if not hundreds of clones each! So, where are all the Baldur's Gate clones?

I guess to be a Baldur's Gate clone, a game needs to have fantasy combat from an overhead perspective and play like an RTS (maybe with a pause feature); it also needs a dialogue tree. These seem to be the 'feathers' of Baldur's Gate. Here are all the clones I can think of (that were not developed by Bioware).

Planescape: Torment
Icewind Dale 1 & 2
Drakensang: The Dark Eye (maybe)
Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon
Hell, to be generous, why not throw in Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor and ToEE!

As you can see, this is not a very long list. Are there any others?

There is no such thing as Retard's Gate clones outside of Icewind Dale.

First, Retard's Gate didn't invent much, it was the first to my knowledge using the infinity engine but that engine doesn't belong to Retard's Gate.
That was the only thing, isometric games started way before Diablo (which was there before Retard's Gate), remember The immortal (Electronic Arts), for instance and so many more.

Even interactions between party members was done before.

The only thing Retard's Gate invented is the cosmic hamster Bouh, well, at least i think it did but it's probably not true, it was probably in someone's mind for a decade at least before Baldur's Gate.

Planescape Torment used the same engine but it pains me anyone could ever mention such a thing (which i'm not going to repeat), it's so wrong in any way you would consider.

If one would picture it into a dystopian politic image, it'd be like Trump (Retard's Gate) and Bush Jr (IWD) having a distant glorious cousin, J. F. Kennedy (PS:T)

 

[Lilura]

The worst thing about BG is its fans. Mutts like Theldaran.

Funny thing about Theldaran is, he tries to act like he's some kind of authority, like he's the leading commentator for BG. Exhibit A is that dumbed down history lesson he tried to give us.

He thinks he can write and has a blog that gets 1 mil views per year, but he doesn't. He's just a shitposter lost in the shuffle.

 

[octavius]

I hear the Kardashians have lots of viewers too.

 

[Lilura]

Octavius is another mutt, btw.

He always takes petty jabs at me because he feels inadequate. And we all know why: it's because I have a blog and he doesn't.

I mean, I don't even go for the views. I cover old games and moreover old mods for old games.

If I was going for views, I'd start covering what the Codex covers.

Despite that, I'm on the verge of overtaking crpgaddict, who is, btw, Octavius' hero, and who has been blogging for twice as long and posted four times as much.

He just has a dumb old following rather than strong indexing, so his blog is going to plateau and then drop whereas I have the opposite and thus I'm on ever-steepening incline for the foreseeable future.

Plus, most fans of Renaissance RPGs are in the prime of their lives whereas those of the so-called "Golden Era" are starting to develop medical conditions that have their root in the aging process.

 

[octavius]

Octavius is another mutt, btw.

He always takes petty jabs at me because he feels inadequate. And we all know why: it's because I have a blog and he doesn't.

I mean, I don't even go for the views. I cover old games and moreover old mods for old games.

If I was going for views, I'd start covering what the Codex covers.

Despite that, I'm on the verge of overtaking crpgaddict, who is, btw, Octavius' hero, and who has been blogging for twice as long and posted four times as much.

He just has a dumb old following rather than strong indexing, so his blog is going to plateau and then drop whereas I have the opposite and thus I'm on ever-steepening incline for the foreseeable future.

Plus, most fans of Renaissance RPGs are in the prime of their lives whereas those of the so-called "Golden Era" are starting to develop medical conditions that have their root in the aging process.

I'm not sure if that was hilariously cringeworthy or brilliant satire.

 

[Mark Richard]

He always takes petty jabs at me because he feels inadequate. And we all know why: it's because I have a blog and he doesn't.

Wait, you have a blog? This is the first I'm hearing about it.

 

[Lilura]

Yes, I have a blog. I'm actually the leading commentator for Infinity, Aurora and Electron; indeed, the Renaissance era itself.

The blog is unmonetized and bereft of donate begging.

It is also moderated with an iron fist. Nothing that goes against what I say gets through the gate.

The ways things should be.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I still wonder if you're serious with this "blogger on an ego trip" shit or if you just like to act like an anal-retentive cunt for the lulz. Don't answer please, the ambiguity makes it rather enjoyable.

 

[Theldaran]

The worst thing about BG is its fans. Mutts like Theldaran.

Funny thing about Theldaran is, he tries to act like he's some kind of authority, like he's the leading commentator for BG. Exhibit A is that dumbed down history lesson he tried to give us.

He thinks he can write and has a blog that gets 1 mil views per year, but he doesn't. He's just a shitposter lost in the shuffle.

Oh, I don't mean to steal the crown of top BG commentator from you. I bet you're bathing in millions of bucks as we speak, all from your blog.

EDIT: Apparently not? Then, please do explain, what good is talking about bazillions of views if it doesn't net you a single cent? Are you a retard?

 

[octavius]

I still wonder if you're serious with this "blogger on an ego trip" shit or if you just like to act like an anal-retentive cunt for the lulz. Don't answer please, the ambiguity makes it rather enjoyable.

Imagine Tiax with a blog.

 

[Lilura]

Oh, I don't mean to steal the crown of top BG commentator from you.

Pah. Cite your write-ups. You are but a flea compared to my power, you ugly knobgoblin.

Then, please do explain, what good is talking about bazillions of views if it doesn't net you a single cent? Are you a retard?

"Please do explain"? Did you purse your lips together while typing that? The answer is prestige in this sphere. Something you will never attain, queer parrot.

 

[MilesBeyond]

I still wonder if you're serious with this "blogger on an ego trip" shit or if you just like to act like an anal-retentive cunt for the lulz. Don't answer please, the ambiguity makes it rather enjoyable.

 

[Sykar]

BG gave rise to Beamdog...

 

[Theldaran]

> has a blog with "millions" of hits
> doesn't monetise it
> does it for "prestige"

You deserve your payment either way. A government pay.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Baldur's gate 1 story is 50 hours long, and BG 2 with TOB is 100 hours long........ that is a western RPG in 1999, still unrivaled to this day in the ammount of content.

If Morrowind removed the open world and packed its content it would be max 5 hours long of content for comparison, because in Baldur's Gate 2 there is content on every corner.

tsk tsk. Kingmaker, my boy. Kingmaker. It's longer than BG2 (I'd argue that the 3.5esque systems give it more girth, too), and without any walking simulator bullshit padding out your playtime. Might even be longer than BG2 + TOB. Hard to tell until they actually finish the second half. Whether it's comparable on quality is another question, but quantity has a quality all its own.

 

[Micormic]

Besides, BG1 was anything but open world with locations being gated-off for no tangible in-universe reason (fucking cloakwood) just because you haven't progressed far enough through the main story.
It has always been a linear story-based game, with a lot of ultimately spurious wilderness thrown in.

The only location that's gated off in bg1 without reason is cloakwood. The bandit camp is hidden and you can't find it till find directions. The city itself I don't remember the exact reason, I think it was quarantined? Don't remember. Going back to candlekeep can't be done if you don't have some book you get later on.

Again I'm only pointing this out because you're nitpicking. Even in Fallout 2 it's not like you can walk down to the oil tanker and sail to the oil rig in 10 minutes of game time. Again nearly every RPG or sandbox games has artificial limitations on where you can and can't go. Early TES? Randomly generated garbage.

The worst thing about BG is its fans.

This I agree with 100% but there's 2 sides to the coin.


On one hand you have the BG hardcore fans, whether or not they're fans of later bioware is in my experience irrelevant. These are the types of people who think Jon Irenicus was a deep character with complex motivation or that killing trash mobs for 40 hours is a valuable usage of one's time.


On the other hand you have the Anti BG crowd who seemingly bitch about it just to appear edgy and sophisticated. They're usually either 'hardcore' fans of the goldbox games(as in read about them ,pretended to actually play them but never did because either too young or too much adhd). Or they're fans of games like Morrowind or Icewind dale or NWN 1/2 and they pretend those games don't have all the same problems their criticism of BG can be applied to.



Truth is the BG games were above average to good. They were fun but repetitive. They had alot of shitty characters but quite a few gems. Combat was hit and miss(both in engine and in trash mob encounter design) but frankly better then most of the other trash that people praise on these forums. Most of the complaining either comes from hypocrites or attention seekers.

 

[octavius]

And from people who still haven't learnt about mods, but whose bitching is still based on vanilla unpatched BG1.

 

[JarlFrank]

BG one is still the weakest game of the series tho.

 

[Micormic]

BG one is still the weakest game of the series tho.

There's only 2 games in the series but BG 1 is my favorite =)

 

[JarlFrank]

There's also Siege of Dragonspear

 

[octavius]

BG one is still the weakest game of the series tho.

I dunno...BG 2 kinda breaks down in the Underdark.
And ToB was exhausting.

 

[DraQ]

It's not open world, it's an imitation of open world in a time when true open world wasn't established.

Utter hogwash that only establishes your opinion as that of a complete ignoramus.

Ultima, one of the very first cRPGs was already an open world one in 1981 - heck almost all the subsequent instalments were also released long before BG1.
TES debuted in 1994 with Arena, followed by Daggerfall in 1996 and was also fully committed to open world gameplay from the very onset.
Fallouts (and Wasteland before) were arguably open world, especially compared with BG.
You also had Sid Meyer's Pirates! and Elite series firmly establishing the concept of open world in games (in case Ultima was insufficient).

I am sure many Codexers will rush to provide countless more examples but the point have been made:
True open world was well established prior to BG1. In fact it was quite popular way to make large and complex games back when storage media and memory were THE limiting factor constraining amount of unique, hand-made content and scripting.

It still had extraordinary amounts of content for the time (hell, 5 CDs) and you could do a lot of side quests even if they were simple.

If BG's sidequests were enough to declare it an open world game, pretty much every cRPG is one by default.

Yes the main quest is linear but what do you expect?, BG1 wasn't a story-driven game, but exploration was one of its strong suits (POE tries but isn't quite there). Given the shitty stories we tend to have in this kind of game, I really prefer exploration.

Two points:

• "Exploration" as subset of gameplay generally refers to non-automatic activity involving looking around, noticing things and following the noticed cues to discover stuff. In BG you "discovered" stuff simply by covering all the traversable terrain on the neatly delimited, rectangular map to remove the black fog of war, while waving the mouse cursor over every pixel, then clicking on all the reachable edges of the map (at most 4) to uncover subsequent locations. It is as boring and mechanical as it sounds and by any sane definition BG has no exploration.
• Even BG's "exploration" IS story-driven, because you won't get to Cloakwood before the right part of the MQ, because fuck you, that's why. Even if you already have a sidequest sending you there, like reclaiming the sword of some little shit of a halfling.

"Spurious" wilderness is a way to see it, I see it as a good backdrop to adventuring, the core of the D&D experience. BG was a good D&D experience. Each time you found a magical weapon in a dusty cave after killing some wolves was great.

It takes more than a backdrop to have adventures, and BG was awfully starved of one of the remaining crucial components - content.

If it was a continuous open world game it could be excused because it would essentially be obliged to portray its entire gameworld although not necessarily to scale. The thing is that BG is not continuous - there are 4-8h of travel between individual areas so they effectively count as PoIs embedded in the amorphous wilderness devoid of content... except the PoIs too are mostly amorphous wilderness devoid of content.
Even dungeons are deeply underwhelming - Firewine anyone "you are in a maze of twisty little passages all alike, filled with twisted little kobolds all alike"?

 

[Micormic]

there are 4-8h of travel between individual areas so they effectively count as PoIs embedded in the amorphous wilderness devoid of content...