BioWare's idea for KOTOR2 revealed at Eurogamer

[Cross]

This was a piece of trivia that they eagerly shared with me during my job interview back in days of yore. Apparently the advice they got from Black Isle was that Baldur's Gate should be about helping a small village survive a hard winter involving bandits, low-tier monsters, etc. It would be interesting to see such a game someday, but the vibe I got in the interview (and to be honest, it seems semi-plausible) was that the Bioware folks thought that Black Isle was setting them up for failure giving them a humdrum storyline while Black Isle made games about saving the world from super mutants, etc. It's not like Black Isle's subsequent AD&D games followed the prescription they offered Bioware.

The IWDs certainly weren't as ego-pandering as BG, nor was The Black Hound supposed to be. Perhaps that was because of Sawyer's involvement. Avellone loves being over the top.

I know you love spreading your Sawyer worship to every topic, but Sawyer wasn't the lead on Icewind Dale and contributed little to its story.

PoE (and from the looks of it, its sequel as well) is a game where you literally get to meddle in the affairs of gods. It sure as hell doesn't make the argument that Sawyer favors non-epic stories. Meanwhile, Avellone's PS:T is a personal story about a character coming to grips with the fact that they can't change their fate and that trying to cheat the afterlife was a mistake.

 

[fantadomat]

Apparently the advice they got from Black Isle was that Baldur's Gate should be about helping a small village survive a hard winter involving bandits, low-tier monsters, etc.

Sooo they were trying to make them do Icewind dale?

Not really. To me, Icewind Dale is the evidence that of "do what I say, not what I do." Icewind Dale is about helping towns survive a hard winter involving armies of frost giants, undead, demons, etc., and centers around various supernatural McGuffins. It is basically what an ultra epic spoof of the "low level survive a hard winter" campaign would be.

The premise is the same more or less. They must have buffed the game because your party have to level up. It will be strange to have level 10 heroes running around killing level one bandits.Also supernatural McGuffins are part of the whole D&D thing. Anyway,it is sad that they did go under. It would be interesting to see a world where they become one of the big publishers/devs.

 

[Roguey]

I know you love spreading your Sawyer worship to every topic, but Sawyer wasn't the lead on Icewind Dale and contributed little to its story.

IWD didn't even have a lead, so everyone had a more-or-less equal say in its narrative.

PoE (and from the looks of it, its sequel as well) is a game where you literally get to meddle in the affairs of gods. It sure as hell doesn't make the argument that Sawyer favors non-epic stories.

Gods in PoE are just AI. You're meddling in the affairs of powerful magical golems. Josh's thoughts on the words epic:

As an adjective, it's become practically worthless. This is especially true in the context of fantasy, RPGs, and fantasy RPGs. When someone says, "this game is epic," I have no idea what he or she means.

"Epic" meaning awesome or grand in modern games/RPGs ala New Vegas Deus Ex: HR or Skyrim. Or even Wasteland 2

The fact that many people would not blink at the term being applied to all four of these games (one of which hasn't even entered development) means that it is effectively worn-out currency.

Meanwhile, Avellone's PS:T is a personal story about a character coming to grips with the fact that they can't change their fate and that trying to cheat the afterlife was a mistake.

You're leaving a lot of things out here with regard to what you actually do and who your character is.

What's up with James Ohlen taking all credit for DA? I thought that was Brent Knowles' baby.

Ohlen was the first lead designer, who left to work on TOR.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I loved KotOR. I was huge Star Wars nerd when I was younger and the game was dreamland despite the crap combat. I also must be the only person who never saw the twist coming and was blown away. Happy Days!


Fortunately, the movie prequels and now sequels have liberated me from my Star Wars infatuation, so however much Disney manage to screw things up in the future I shall remain serene.

 

[MRY]

Apparently the advice they got from Black Isle was that Baldur's Gate should be about helping a small village survive a hard winter involving bandits, low-tier monsters, etc.

Sooo they were trying to make them do Icewind dale?

Not really. To me, Icewind Dale is the evidence that of "do what I say, not what I do." Icewind Dale is about helping towns survive a hard winter involving armies of frost giants, undead, demons, etc., and centers around various supernatural McGuffins. It is basically what an ultra epic spoof of the "low level survive a hard winter" campaign would be.

The premise is the same more or less.

If you think "you must find the magical artifacts that can save the northlands from destruction by ancient demons waging a thousands-year-old war with their supernatural armies" is "helping a small village survive a hard winter," then Baldur's Gate is just a picaresque bildungsroman about a young man who abandons his education to go on a spree across the countryside with his friends, while trying to escape from his overbearing brother.

 

[fantadomat]

Apparently the advice they got from Black Isle was that Baldur's Gate should be about helping a small village survive a hard winter involving bandits, low-tier monsters, etc.

Sooo they were trying to make them do Icewind dale?

Not really. To me, Icewind Dale is the evidence that of "do what I say, not what I do." Icewind Dale is about helping towns survive a hard winter involving armies of frost giants, undead, demons, etc., and centers around various supernatural McGuffins. It is basically what an ultra epic spoof of the "low level survive a hard winter" campaign would be.

The premise is the same more or less.

If you think "you must find the magical artifacts that can save the northlands from destruction by ancient demons waging a thousands-year-old war with their supernatural armies" is "helping a small village survive a hard winter," then Baldur's Gate is just a picaresque bildungsroman about a young man who abandons his education to go on a spree across the countryside with his friends, while trying to escape from his overbearing brother.

Wait,what.....are you telling me that BG is not that?! Also helping a small village during the winter is in the game. It is just that this winter there is ork attacks and demons. Tough luck,i guess.

 

[MRY]

:D

I guess I had understood the core of the "village through winter" idea to be that the threats would be small, local, and low-magic -- of course with D&D there would need to be some fantastical elements, but the whole point (as I understood it) was to deemphasize the epic and make it more about, I don't know, some witch who's suspected of sickening cattle, or bandits who had blockaded the way into the valley. More Quest for Glory-ish. But who knows?

 

[Background Character]

Sounds awful, thank fuck for all the canceled Bioware games.

 

[Gimble]

"The initial twist in the first two-page concept we had for Knights of the Old Republic 2 was you were going to be trained by a Yoda-like figure," Ohlen says, "someone from the Yoda race. That character was going to train you in the first part of the game but then you were going to discover this Yoda figure was actually not the good Yoda you expected...

"He was training you to essentially be his enforcer, a Dark Lord to conquer the universe, and he was going to become the main villain." Dun dun duunnn!

But this KOTOR 2 concept never made it any further. BioWare bosses Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk called it off. "It was a very smart decision on their part," Ohlen says. "In order for a company to be successful and control its own destiny you need to own your own IP, and we didn't own Dungeons & Dragons or Star Wars. Mass Effect was something we decided we had to do instead of another Star Wars game."

Hey, thats the plot device they used for Jade empire.

 

[fantadomat]

 

[Santander02]

Old wise mentor who trains you and you are supposed to trust and look up was instead just using you for his evil plans. Sounds like Jade Empire's Master Lee. Guess Bio couldn't let that plot go to waste after coming up with it.

EDIT: Ninjad, damn you Gamble!

 

[MRY]

Old wise mentor who trains you and you are supposed to trust and look up was instead just using you for his evil plans. Sounds like Jade Empire's Master Lee. Guess Bio couldn't let that plot go to waste after coming up with it.

EDIT: Ninjad, damn you Gamble!

It's also the first sentence of Infinitron's post.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Beastro]

Meanwhile, Avellone's PS:T is a personal story about a character coming to grips with the fact that they can't change their fate and that trying to cheat the afterlife was a mistake.

Whose solution is destroying the world bit by bit. You hardly play as an Average Joe.

 

[Sceptic]

It's not like Black Isle's subsequent AD&D games followed the prescription they offered Bioware.

I'd argue most of them did. The IWDs are much more localized in their threats and relatively low on the epicness scale. PST is about as personal a quest as you can do. They continued this trend as Obsidian too, NWN2 OC seems like it should be epic, but in light of the evil ending showing KOS not doing much beyond reclaiming Illefarn I'd say that's not too epic either. MotB is pretty personal and in fact going the selfish ending you leave the world (and the curse) in exactly the state you found it. SOZ is probably the one with the biggest "problem baddie" but most of the game itself is pretty low-key, kinda like BG1 actually, which IMO handled the iron crisis part of the plot pretty well.

 

[MRY]

But what they were recommending (or what I understood them to be recommending) was not a "personal" story at all -- it was a story centered on a village, not on a person. The defining characteristic was that it was local (i.e., confined to a secluded village in a valley) and that the threats at issue were relatively mundane. Black Isle and Obsidian's games were the opposite of that -- they all involved extraordinary people going through extraordinary environments facing extraordinary foes and obstacles.

It's been a while since I played BG2 (I never played BG1), and I certainly liked it much less than Obsidian's games, but it didn't come across as any more epic than BI/O games.

I mean, it's a silly point to belabor, since for all I know I'm misremembering, or the doctors were misremembering, or they misunderstood the advice, or the advice rested on the mistaken impression that BG would involve RTS-style base/resource management, which would work better in a small village setting. Or some combo.

 

[aweigh]

Anthem should not scare you, the discerning and intelligent RPG Codex poster. Anyone who thinks BioWare still has good games left in it after seeing the unparalleled shit-shows that were Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 3 is smoking some amazing shit.

(assuming this hypothetical 'anyone' was a die-hard fan, as non-fans jumped ship after Dragon Age 2).

I DISAGREE WITH THAT VIDEO!!!!11

 

[fantadomat]

But what they were recommending (or what I understood them to be recommending) was not a "personal" story at all -- it was a story centered on a village, not on a person. The defining characteristic was that it was local (i.e., confined to a secluded village in a valley) and that the threats at issue were relatively mundane. Black Isle and Obsidian's games were the opposite of that -- they all involved extraordinary people going through extraordinary environments facing extraordinary foes and obstacles.

It's been a while since I played BG2 (I never played BG1), and I certainly liked it much less than Obsidian's games, but it didn't come across as any more epic than BI/O games.

I mean, it's a silly point to belabor, since for all I know I'm misremembering, or the doctors were misremembering, or they misunderstood the advice, or the advice rested on the mistaken impression that BG would involve RTS-style base/resource management, which would work better in a small village setting. Or some combo.

You should play BG 1,it is pretty low level and your enemies are more mundane. You fight a koboult tribe and a bunch of bandits. The grand plan was about market manipulation.

 

[Storyfag]

I never played BG1

You should fix that. It's worth it.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

The REAL KOTOR2:

Everyone knows that Obsidian's KOTOR2 was a failure plagued with bad writing and weird philosophy memes and nobody with less than 200 IQ knew what the fuck was going on. Constantly being nagged by some old bitch is not the definition of "AWESOME", and after slogging through two hours of KOTOR2 it becomes obvious why Bioware abandoned Obsidian and went on to create epic masterpieces such as Dragon Age 2.

But what if Bioware had developed KOTOR2?

Enter SMOKEY's coffeshop: Amsterdam, four months after the release of KOTOR where head game designers were discussing plans for the epic sequel, KOTOR2.

Three blunts of hyperchronic kingston superskunk OG kush in, CEO and head KOTOR designer 'Jeff Kaslpin' was high as a kite... and he had a stroke of genius:

"What if like.... What if Yoda was actually a bad guy, dude? Your mind would be BLOWN. Like, epic pot twist bros."

And thus sparked Bioware's early plans for KOTOR2.

 

[Neanderthal]

But what they were recommending (or what I understood them to be recommending) was not a "personal" story at all -- it was a story centered on a village, not on a person. The defining characteristic was that it was local (i.e., confined to a secluded village in a valley) and that the threats at issue were relatively mundane. Black Isle and Obsidian's games were the opposite of that -- they all involved extraordinary people going through extraordinary environments facing extraordinary foes and obstacles.

I'd love to see a small scale, super simulated, grounded and extremely reactive crpg with that kind of setting. Too often in my opinion devs and creators fall for the more is more fallacy, and have their worlds lurching from cataclysm to cataclysm, until their epic save the world plots are boring and pedestrian. Oh its tuesday, must be another demonic incursion!

They do this even before the world and its interesting points are introduced or explored, it almost seems like they're hesitant to even try and breathe life into their creations. Small scale heroics could be far more effective than usual godslaying bollocks, and the devs could try and make a cohesive game for once where every part of the gameplay, narrative and themes fit together and serve to reinforce each other.

 

[Tigranes]

To understand how 'small' or 'local' scale events can be fascinating and significant, you'd have to peel your eyes off television and Hollywood for a bit, and read some history and literature.

 

[Sensuki]

The premise sounds a bit like what they used for Jade Empire with that Master Li guy or whatever his name was.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Isn't the best RPG about saving a village from winter and dealing with its local problems ultimately Heroine's Quest? It's even on the Codex toplist.

 

[Storyfag]

I'd love to see a small scale, super simulated, grounded and extremely reactive crpg with that kind of setting.

It's called The Witcher 1 Act 4. Also Act 1 to a certain extent.

 

[fantadomat]

To understand how 'small' or 'local' scale events can be fascinating and significant, you'd have to peel your eyes off television and Hollywood for a bit, and read some history and literature.

I just read small and local events and got a flashback to this: