Did Baldur's Gate really have an impact?

[Micormic]

Why would the wilderness consist of less then empty space? The more empty areas are actually what I liked about the game.

Some of us like to take a look around while playing games, not everyone enjoys walking through linear crypts killing skeletons and lizardmen for 50 hours :p

 

[Micormic]

On the other you have BG2, Fallouts (1 & 2) and such

Different reasons for these settings though. In fallout 1-2 it's post nuclear, there's seemingly nothing to see because outside of a few small settlements or other locations of interest the world is a wasteland.



In BG2 Athkatala(sp?) is nice, plenty of stuff to find/do and plenty of interesting content. However at least for me the game outside of that city was completely devoid of the exploration I enjoyed in the first game. Every area outside of the city is a quest. some good some bad and all of them devolve into a dungeon crawl, again some good some bad.


You could make the point I'm being pedantic considering like you said the wilderness area's in bg1 essentially boil down to walk through a mostly empty map maybe find something of interest and kill some trash mobs, but to me it essentially boils down to the feeling when you actually found something interesting in bg1 (like the baselisk(sp?) area on the far side of the map). Now again you could say wading through nothing to find something is busy work and in most cases I'd agree but, well I guess it comes down to personal preference.



BG2 to me felt much more streamlined and linear, the narrative was much heavier and the motivations much weaker(for me at least).

 

[Shadenuat]

Sure there are wrong approaches in making games!

There is no wrong approach to creating fun. Except Sawyerism of course, which is about telling players what they should think fun is, instead of following their actual responses.

Games are all abstractions created with reasonings and faults of their makers, and funny enough the imperfections is what often provides a part of realism. What you consider a right approach - like, learn by use systems, - because it provides you level of immersion, others might find dull garbage.

You are operating in black and white mode DraQ. Always were though, judging by this thread.

For starters, whenever you make your shit inconsistent you have your wrong approach right there

BG2 is more inconsistent though, as game world and story.

It has relatively seamless city (in which you can travel from one part, to sewers to underground temple), but the areas around the city have no connectivity compared to that city and are just one-time vignettes. But, let's say that is the feature of the game, and city serves as a central location for it. But then, while first half of the game is open, second half is completely, and literally, on rails, taking you from open city adventure into linear plot train in a super rush through kaleidoscope of plot events and plot cutscenes/locations. All that with a burst of power levels as you start somewhat close to BG1 (killing some slavers and even orcs) and end up clearing beholder lairs.

Speak what you will of BG1, but at least it is thematically and power level wise (low level D&D), geographically (single coast) and even narratively more consistent, and you also have more freedom in that game.

I mean, you correctly identified the key issue of BG1 once - the lack of interesting content. It's simple and fair, and it was addressed even in the first expansion (just compare Durlag's Tower with Firewine ruins; heck, even Werewolf Island does better job in its foresty area + ship than other areas in the game) but when you try to go into fundamentals and argue that walking around areas clicking on rocks makes IE games worse than un-modded Oblivion, pushing the faults onto the game structure instead, or just, you know, being isometric, I feel like you're losing the grasp on reality there.

 

[Yosharian]

It seems to me that consistency matters less than a strongly motivating overarching plot device.

BG2 is all over the place thematically, and in other respects, but the overarching plot of 'catch/kill this bastard that stole a piece of your soul' works for me.

In fact, one of the things I dislike about PoE is how it tries and fails to replicate that, more or less. I found Thaos to be a terribly boring villain that utterly failed to motivate me.

 

[Shadenuat]

I feel like the thing that goes the most for BG2 is the particular golden midlevel gap in AD&D, where you are already not so weak to die to kobolds, and strong enough to have many spells and tools and take on the interesting parts of AD&D bestiary, without everything turning into a high level farce like just wasting dragons en masse with your super spells and items. That allowed great depth and a lot of space for encounters and relevant equipment (meaning cool loot and nice growth in power level), and made battles memorable and fighting strong creatures for the first time an achievement. Everyone would always remember Firkraag, but many don't remember names of those other dragons you fight later.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

It seems to me that consistency matters less than a strongly motivating overarching plot device.

BG2 is all over the place thematically, and in other respects, but the overarching plot of 'catch/kill this bastard that stole a piece of your soul' works for me.

In fact, one of the things I dislike about PoE is how it tries and fails to replicate that, more or less. I found Thaos to be a terribly boring villain that utterly failed to motivate me.

And it applies to almost every quest I've played in PoE. Both main quests and side quests.

Why should you care about any quest? Find the missing noble girl? Get the treatment for the pregnant woman? Help X guild city with its questline?

All it ends up being is various lore dump with forgettable characters as the mouthpiece.

 

[octavius]

BG1 should have had a quest compass. Then you could have avoided all the empty areas.
Although there would be far less dead horses to beat in the next decades.

 

[JarlFrank]

[
Not padding the map with about 3x as much generic copypasta wilderness as it had actual content would be a good start.

There are even better examples. Let's just take a look at the Gamebanshee walkthrough for BG1 and pick a wilderness area.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgate/walkthrough/ar4300.php

The walkthroughs over on Gamebanshee always show all the points of interest on any particular area map, neatly labeled. You can count the amount of points of interests on half a hand here. There's three interesting things to discover on a huge map with lots of empy space in between. Exploration on this map consists of walking through an empty landscape, and if you're lucky you encounter small groups of 3 hobgoblins to fight, and then these 3 points of interest. Wow. Such excitement.

In fact, let's check what these points of interest even are:
1. Get ambushed by hobgoblins and find dead travelers with an amulet you can return to their father for a reward
2. A fourth wall breaking character advertising the company's next franchise (since NWN was released only after BG2, it's possible this character was only implemented in Beamdog's Enhanced Edition - if that's the case, the original version of this map would only have two points of interest)
3. A hermit who tells you something inconsequential in a small, irrelevant tongue-in-cheek conversation

So... of these 3 points of interest, only one is actually interesting: you get ambushed and find two dead people who have a quest-relevant item on their corpses. The other two are pointless fluff, and they're not even the good kind of pointless fluff. They just ramble at you with conversations that have no relation to the game's story and that's it. And the ambush is right at the point where you enter the map, since when you first enter it you arrive from the north, so you can't miss it. You'll walk right into it first thing you do.

So the interesting content on this map doesn't even need to be discovered. It comes at you right away, leaving you then with a map that is completely empty and doesn't have anything left to discover.

Yeah, peak level design right there.

To be fair to the game, let's take a look at some other areas. This one might just be an exception. I've picked a wilderness map from the Gamebanshee walkthrough randomly, and found this:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgate/walkthrough/ar3000.php

Again, it's a huge wilderness map with only 4 points of interest. Let's see what they are:
1. Some dude wants you to retrieve a scroll that was stolen from him. It's at point 1a.
2. Red wizards of Thay talk to you, then inevitably attack you, leading to a challenging encounter.
3. A bunch of spiders attack you, leading to a challenging encounter.

So... one pretty generic fetch quest (a monster stole a thing I own! Bring it back!) which is repeated throughout the game several times. Seriously, most of BG1's sidequests follow the pattern of "A monster stole a thing I own! Get it back!" so this is just one more quest of the type you already solved a dozen times before. Yawn.
Then there's also one genuinely interesting encounter with a bunch of evil wizards.
And then there's a relatively generic encounter with a bunch of spiders.

It's... more than the other map had, I guess. But there's still plenty of empty space, the encounters are all concentrated to the northeast section of the map rather than scattered throughout, meaning most of the area you explore doesn't contain anything interesting. And only one of these encounters could be called interesting at all.

Ok one more just for fun:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgate/walkthrough/ar4700.php

Xvart village! Ooh, finally something interesting... or is there? Hey, look at all that empty space at the bottom. The map could have been cut in half vertically, and nothing of value would have been lost. The areas beyond the central mountains are completely empty and devoid of content.

As for the content itself...
1. A village of Xvarts that attacks you on sight. Challenging with a level 1 party, but already becomes rather trivial at level 3 and above. No interesting loot to find except for generic weapons, gold, and low-value gems.
2. One Xvart in the village will call a bear that will attack you. Challenging at low level, adding some variation to the Xvart village.
3. A tiny little cave that contains a treasure chest and one bear just like the one you just fought in the village, except here the bear is alone so the encounter is comparatively trivial.
4. Some random guy who wants to scam you by selling you fake magic items.

It's... ok I guess? Better than the previous maps but still very generic and meh overall. Also, look at all that empty landscape south of the mountains! There's nothing there! Nothing whatsoever!

Also, this is a good time to point at the inconsistency of BG1's world design. Most of these locations have nonsensically wacky encounters in them: some nobleman who tells you about Neverwinter Nights, a hobo who rambles at you with random stuff, a guy who tries to scam you with fake magic items... all of these wouldn't be bad encounters in and by themselves. They'd be great little encounters to add life to a city like Baldur's Gate. But they're not in a city. They're in the wilderness. Random places of the wilderness. Just standing there, among the trees, waiting for an adventurer to encounter them. Ok. Yes. Very immersive, very believable.

And that's why BG1's exploration is bad. You have large maps that are largely empty and filled with maybe 1 to 3 points of interest. Those points of interest are either generic as fuck (a group of hobgoblins that attack you! a guy who's had his scroll stolen! a cave with one bear in it!) or so random they don't make any sense being there (a bunch of pretty powerful wizards standing in a random place in the middle of the wilderness with nothing nearby that would be of interest to them! a guy trying to scam you with fake magic items somewhere at the ass end of the world where usually no travellers pass by!).

It's not very coherent. It's just a mess of at best mildly interesting things with little consequence to the big picture. Even if the exploration itself was fun at a systemic level, there's not much to discover to make it worthwhile.

And before anyone says "But Jarl, you like Morrowind, don't you? That also has plenty of empty areas to traverse and large stretches of land that contain nothing more than a random cliffracer encounter or a boring NPC that gives you an escort quest!", yes, Morrowind also has plenty of empty land and the generic quests - especially the escort quests - are terrible and one of the things Morrowind doesn't do well at all. But the exploration itself is more fun because you're taking a more active part in it. You explore a fully 3D world in first person perspective, you can jump and swim and dive and even fly if you have the right spells for it. You have actual spatial navigation as a core gameplay element. I love playing Morrowind with that mod that radically increases the view distance, because you can look at the horizon and see a faraway island and you can just decide to swim there and explore it. Or you look at the peak of a mountain, and you can climb it. Navigation is a gameplay element in itself.

In BG, exploration is a matter of "comb over the entire map and uncover all the fog of war, until everything has been discovered".
That's not very engaging, is it? In fact, you could just use a cheat to reveal the fog of war and wouldn't lose any gameplay by it. You'd just avoid tedium because that cheat will show you the large empty stretches of nothingness, so you can just ignore them instead of exploring them in the hope of discovering something that isn't there.

Let's contrast this to BG2, which removed the empty and boring wilderness areas and created a more focused world instead, where each location was connected with one or more quests and had some actual design effort put into it.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgateii/walkthrough/umarhills.php

This is Umar Hills, one of the areas outside Athkathla where you can follow one major quest and have a couple of side quests, too. Look at the arrangement of the points of interest: most of them are in the southeast, where the vilalge is - understandably. But there's also one point of interest to the far north of the village, one point of interest in the southwest corner, and one in the northwest corner. Every corner of the map has something interesting in it. While there is some empty-ish wilderness space in the center, the map doesn't have any excess landmass that could have been cut: if you look at the BG1 wilderness areas I posted above, they all have large stretches of nothingness at the edges of the map. Not so here. The content in Umar Hills is spread in a way that guarantees you will find something at every corner of the map, unlike, say, the Xvart village in BG1 where the entire southern half of the map is completely empty and devoid of content.

And what about the content itself?
1. You arrive here and the mayor addresses the citizens about recent cases of murders and disappearances. Nice, sounds like a quest hook that actually has something to do with the local village, rather than BG1's generic "a monster stole my item please bring it back" shtick.
2. You can find a merchant near the inn who turns out to be an accomplice to the murdering tanner from another quest, set in the Bridge District of Athkathla. This immediately establishes that the world is an actual world, where characters in one place may have connections to characters in other places. Much, much better than BG1's many instances of random characters appearing in random places and having nothing at all to do with anything else in the game.
3. The minister will ask you to investigate the ogres in the north and ask them if they have anything to do with the disappearances of villagers. Nice, the hook that was established at arrival is taken up and you get a quest that actually has something to do with local events!
4. Some random sidequests, but they're all more involved than what you get in BG1. Children who want to be adventurers and ask for swords, and if you give them to them the mayor will tell you you're no longer welcome in the village for endangering the children. A quest where a wizard wants you to dissuade his daughter from seeing her lover, but if you can make him change his mind by saving him from a botched golem construction. A guy who tells you one of the farmer's chickens has swallowed a valuable gem. They're small quests, similar to a lot of the quests you get in BG1, but they add some flavor to the village and they're at least marginally more interesting than the "monster stole item plz bring back" type of quest.
5. The house of the local ranger who was killed by whatever it is that kills people in this town. You find a journal here that leads you to another location. Cool. That means this location isn't just self-contained but just part of a quest that spans several locations. Much more interconnected than any of the generic wilderness areas of BG1.
6. A location related to one of the quests at point 4, just a simple "enter cave and fetch item" affair, so this particular one is about on par with BG1's points of interest.
7. A ranger who can become your companion and tells you about the plans of the cowled wizards to enter the planar sphere in Athkathla. Oh hey wow, is that another reference to a different quest in a different area of the game? Looks like in BG2, things are actually all somehow connected with each other, rather than being random one-offs with no consequence towards anything!
8. The ogres you're supposed to talk to in the quest you were given at point 3. You can either kill them all, or talk to them and they'll tell you they're not responsible for the murders, instead they actually want to establish trade with the village. Cool.

So, just in this one location we have about as many points of interest as in two of BG1's generic wilderness maps combined, and every single point of interest is more interesting than the BG1 ones because they're somehow connected to a quest and have a larger context to their existence rather than just being there for the sake of being there.

Let's look at another BG2 area:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgateii/walkthrough/windspearhills.php

Now, at first glance this doesn't look that much more interesting than the BG1 wilderness areas, does it? Only 4 points of interest, and plenty of empty space in the center.

But let's look at the actual points of interest:
1. You arrive here and are immediately attacked by monsters, but it turns out they were actually knights with an illusion spell put on them to make them appear like monsters. A guy arrives and takes you to his home at point 2 to talk to you about this.
2. The guy explains to you that a guy named Firkraag stole these lands from him and terrorizes them with his illusion magic. Also, his daughter gets kidnapped by bandits while you visit him! Boom, instant plot hook for a quest. The guy wants to you get his child back and deal with Firkraag if you can.
3. You can find the feary queen here to whom you can give some acorns you received from dryads in the prologue. This area lets you conclude a quest you've started in the prolouge and haven't had a chance to finish until now. Cool!
4. This leads into the dungeon where you'll deal with the quests you received at point 2.

So, overall fewer points of interest compared to Umar Hills, but still vastly more interesting than BG1's wilderness maps because the content you find here isn't just a bunch of random NPCs spouting random nonsense, or random encounters with generic enemies that have no particular reason to be there. Instead, everything is connected to some quest or another, there's instant drama and story related to everything you encounter here, and it actually manages to pull you in narratively.

BG2's overall area and quest design is just so infinitely superior to BG1's, it's not even funny.

And I haven't even posted one of Athkathla's districts yet, which are the densest and most interesting areas in the game.

 

[Shadenuat]

Now, at first glance this doesn't look that much more interesting than the BG1 wilderness areas, does it? Only 4 points of interest, and plenty of empty space in the center

It also looks extraordinary gamist just from the first glance, with points of interest marked even reinforcing that.

There is dude-ruler who lives within 5 minutes walk of gigantic entrance to forgotten dungeon and a huge bathing place of fey. And to the north of his house is the gathering place of werewolves, which picture doesn't show. And everyone more or less gets along, aside from poor dude.

Fun to explore, but same nonsensical world-building as some random dude trying to scam you in the forest.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

[
Not padding the map with about 3x as much generic copypasta wilderness as it had actual content would be a good start.

There are even better examples. Let's just take a look at the Gamebanshee walkthrough for BG1 and pick a wilderness area.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgate/walkthrough/ar4300.php

The walkthroughs over on Gamebanshee always show all the points of interest on any particular area map, neatly labeled. You can count the amount of points of interests on half a hand here. There's three interesting things to discover on a huge map with lots of empy space in between. Exploration on this map consists of walking through an empty landscape, and if you're lucky you encounter small groups of 3 hobgoblins to fight, and then these 3 points of interest. Wow. Such excitement.

In fact, let's check what these points of interest even are:
1. Get ambushed by hobgoblins and find dead travelers with an amulet you can return to their father for a reward
2. A fourth wall breaking character advertising the company's next franchise (since NWN was released only after BG2, it's possible this character was only implemented in Beamdog's Enhanced Edition - if that's the case, the original version of this map would only have two points of interest)
3. A hermit who tells you something inconsequential in a small, irrelevant tongue-in-cheek conversation

So... of these 3 points of interest, only one is actually interesting: you get ambushed and find two dead people who have a quest-relevant item on their corpses. The other two are pointless fluff, and they're not even the good kind of pointless fluff. They just ramble at you with conversations that have no relation to the game's story and that's it. And the ambush is right at the point where you enter the map, since when you first enter it you arrive from the north, so you can't miss it. You'll walk right into it first thing you do.

So the interesting content on this map doesn't even need to be discovered. It comes at you right away, leaving you then with a map that is completely empty and doesn't have anything left to discover.

Yeah, peak level design right there.

To be fair to the game, let's take a look at some other areas. This one might just be an exception. I've picked a wilderness map from the Gamebanshee walkthrough randomly, and found this:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgate/walkthrough/ar3000.php

Again, it's a huge wilderness map with only 4 points of interest. Let's see what they are:
1. Some dude wants you to retrieve a scroll that was stolen from him. It's at point 1a.
2. Red wizards of Thay talk to you, then inevitably attack you, leading to a challenging encounter.
3. A bunch of spiders attack you, leading to a challenging encounter.

So... one pretty generic fetch quest (a monster stole a thing I own! Bring it back!) which is repeated throughout the game several times. Seriously, most of BG1's sidequests follow the pattern of "A monster stole a thing I own! Get it back!" so this is just one more quest of the type you already solved a dozen times before. Yawn.
Then there's also one genuinely interesting encounter with a bunch of evil wizards.
And then there's a relatively generic encounter with a bunch of spiders.

It's... more than the other map had, I guess. But there's still plenty of empty space, the encounters are all concentrated to the northeast section of the map rather than scattered throughout, meaning most of the area you explore doesn't contain anything interesting. And only one of these encounters could be called interesting at all.

Ok one more just for fun:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgate/walkthrough/ar4700.php

Xvart village! Ooh, finally something interesting... or is there? Hey, look at all that empty space at the bottom. The map could have been cut in half vertically, and nothing of value would have been lost. The areas beyond the central mountains are completely empty and devoid of content.

As for the content itself...
1. A village of Xvarts that attacks you on sight. Challenging with a level 1 party, but already becomes rather trivial at level 3 and above. No interesting loot to find except for generic weapons, gold, and low-value gems.
2. One Xvart in the village will call a bear that will attack you. Challenging at low level, adding some variation to the Xvart village.
3. A tiny little cave that contains a treasure chest and one bear just like the one you just fought in the village, except here the bear is alone so the encounter is comparatively trivial.
4. Some random guy who wants to scam you by selling you fake magic items.

It's... ok I guess? Better than the previous maps but still very generic and meh overall. Also, look at all that empty landscape south of the mountains! There's nothing there! Nothing whatsoever!

Also, this is a good time to point at the inconsistency of BG1's world design. Most of these locations have nonsensically wacky encounters in them: some nobleman who tells you about Neverwinter Nights, a hobo who rambles at you with random stuff, a guy who tries to scam you with fake magic items... all of these wouldn't be bad encounters in and by themselves. They'd be great little encounters to add life to a city like Baldur's Gate. But they're not in a city. They're in the wilderness. Random places of the wilderness. Just standing there, among the trees, waiting for an adventurer to encounter them. Ok. Yes. Very immersive, very believable.

And that's why BG1's exploration is bad. You have large maps that are largely empty and filled with maybe 1 to 3 points of interest. Those points of interest are either generic as fuck (a group of hobgoblins that attack you! a guy who's had his scroll stolen! a cave with one bear in it!) or so random they don't make any sense being there (a bunch of pretty powerful wizards standing in a random place in the middle of the wilderness with nothing nearby that would be of interest to them! a guy trying to scam you with fake magic items somewhere at the ass end of the world where usually no travellers pass by!).

It's not very coherent. It's just a mess of at best mildly interesting things with little consequence to the big picture. Even if the exploration itself was fun at a systemic level, there's not much to discover to make it worthwhile.

And before anyone says "But Jarl, you like Morrowind, don't you? That also has plenty of empty areas to traverse and large stretches of land that contain nothing more than a random cliffracer encounter or a boring NPC that gives you an escort quest!", yes, Morrowind also has plenty of empty land and the generic quests - especially the escort quests - are terrible and one of the things Morrowind doesn't do well at all. But the exploration itself is more fun because you're taking a more active part in it. You explore a fully 3D world in first person perspective, you can jump and swim and dive and even fly if you have the right spells for it. You have actual spatial navigation as a core gameplay element. I love playing Morrowind with that mod that radically increases the view distance, because you can look at the horizon and see a faraway island and you can just decide to swim there and explore it. Or you look at the peak of a mountain, and you can climb it. Navigation is a gameplay element in itself.

In BG, exploration is a matter of "comb over the entire map and uncover all the fog of war, until everything has been discovered".
That's not very engaging, is it? In fact, you could just use a cheat to reveal the fog of war and wouldn't lose any gameplay by it. You'd just avoid tedium because that cheat will show you the large empty stretches of nothingness, so you can just ignore them instead of exploring them in the hope of discovering something that isn't there.

Let's contrast this to BG2, which removed the empty and boring wilderness areas and created a more focused world instead, where each location was connected with one or more quests and had some actual design effort put into it.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgateii/walkthrough/umarhills.php

This is Umar Hills, one of the areas outside Athkathla where you can follow one major quest and have a couple of side quests, too. Look at the arrangement of the points of interest: most of them are in the southeast, where the vilalge is - understandably. But there's also one point of interest to the far north of the village, one point of interest in the southwest corner, and one in the northwest corner. Every corner of the map has something interesting in it. While there is some empty-ish wilderness space in the center, the map doesn't have any excess landmass that could have been cut: if you look at the BG1 wilderness areas I posted above, they all have large stretches of nothingness at the edges of the map. Not so here. The content in Umar Hills is spread in a way that guarantees you will find something at every corner of the map, unlike, say, the Xvart village in BG1 where the entire southern half of the map is completely empty and devoid of content.

And what about the content itself?
1. You arrive here and the mayor addresses the citizens about recent cases of murders and disappearances. Nice, sounds like a quest hook that actually has something to do with the local village, rather than BG1's generic "a monster stole my item please bring it back" shtick.
2. You can find a merchant near the inn who turns out to be an accomplice to the murdering tanner from another quest, set in the Bridge District of Athkathla. This immediately establishes that the world is an actual world, where characters in one place may have connections to characters in other places. Much, much better than BG1's many instances of random characters appearing in random places and having nothing at all to do with anything else in the game.
3. The minister will ask you to investigate the ogres in the north and ask them if they have anything to do with the disappearances of villagers. Nice, the hook that was established at arrival is taken up and you get a quest that actually has something to do with local events!
4. Some random sidequests, but they're all more involved than what you get in BG1. Children who want to be adventurers and ask for swords, and if you give them to them the mayor will tell you you're no longer welcome in the village for endangering the children. A quest where a wizard wants you to dissuade his daughter from seeing her lover, but if you can make him change his mind by saving him from a botched golem construction. A guy who tells you one of the farmer's chickens has swallowed a valuable gem. They're small quests, similar to a lot of the quests you get in BG1, but they add some flavor to the village and they're at least marginally more interesting than the "monster stole item plz bring back" type of quest.
5. The house of the local ranger who was killed by whatever it is that kills people in this town. You find a journal here that leads you to another location. Cool. That means this location isn't just self-contained but just part of a quest that spans several locations. Much more interconnected than any of the generic wilderness areas of BG1.
6. A location related to one of the quests at point 4, just a simple "enter cave and fetch item" affair, so this particular one is about on par with BG1's points of interest.
7. A ranger who can become your companion and tells you about the plans of the cowled wizards to enter the planar sphere in Athkathla. Oh hey wow, is that another reference to a different quest in a different area of the game? Looks like in BG2, things are actually all somehow connected with each other, rather than being random one-offs with no consequence towards anything!
8. The ogres you're supposed to talk to in the quest you were given at point 3. You can either kill them all, or talk to them and they'll tell you they're not responsible for the murders, instead they actually want to establish trade with the village. Cool.

So, just in this one location we have about as many points of interest as in two of BG1's generic wilderness maps combined, and every single point of interest is more interesting than the BG1 ones because they're somehow connected to a quest and have a larger context to their existence rather than just being there for the sake of being there.

Let's look at another BG2 area:

http://www.gamebanshee.com/baldursgateii/walkthrough/windspearhills.php

Now, at first glance this doesn't look that much more interesting than the BG1 wilderness areas, does it? Only 4 points of interest, and plenty of empty space in the center.

But let's look at the actual points of interest:
1. You arrive here and are immediately attacked by monsters, but it turns out they were actually knights with an illusion spell put on them to make them appear like monsters. A guy arrives and takes you to his home at point 2 to talk to you about this.
2. The guy explains to you that a guy named Firkraag stole these lands from him and terrorizes them with his illusion magic. Also, his daughter gets kidnapped by bandits while you visit him! Boom, instant plot hook for a quest. The guy wants to you get his child back and deal with Firkraag if you can.
3. You can find the feary queen here to whom you can give some acorns you received from dryads in the prologue. This area lets you conclude a quest you've started in the prolouge and haven't had a chance to finish until now. Cool!
4. This leads into the dungeon where you'll deal with the quests you received at point 2.

So, overall fewer points of interest compared to Umar Hills, but still vastly more interesting than BG1's wilderness maps because the content you find here isn't just a bunch of random NPCs spouting random nonsense, or random encounters with generic enemies that have no particular reason to be there. Instead, everything is connected to some quest or another, there's instant drama and story related to everything you encounter here, and it actually manages to pull you in narratively.

BG2's overall area and quest design is just so infinitely superior to BG1's, it's not even funny.

And I haven't even posted one of Athkathla's districts yet, which are the densest and most interesting areas in the game.

If I could goldfist I would. I was going to write the exact same post, as I did something similar in shoutbox a few days back, but, as you can see, it's a hell of a lot of actual work doing a genuine effort post.

 

[JarlFrank]

Now, at first glance this doesn't look that much more interesting than the BG1 wilderness areas, does it? Only 4 points of interest, and plenty of empty space in the center

It also looks extraordinary gamist just from the first glance, with points of interests marked even reinforcing that.

There is dude-ruler who lives within 5 minutes walk of gigantic entrance to forgotten dungeon and a huge bathing place of fey. And to the north of his house is the gathering place of werewolves, which picture doesn't show. And everyone more or less gets along, aside from poor dude.

Fun to explore, but same nonsensical world-building as some random dude trying to scam you in the forest.

Yet on a narrative level, it works because everything is in some way related to something else that happens in the game world. Yes, BG2 is often as nonsensical in its arrangement of elements as BG1 was, but it's definitely more internally consistent because all these elements are somehow related to each other.

If this were a BG1 region, the feary queen would just be there and ask you to fetch the lost acorns in a forest nearby. In BG2, finding her is the goal of a long-running quest.

Both BG games are essentially just games that throw cool shit from the player's handbook, monster manual, DM guide, etc on one big messy pile and hope that the result is fun.
BG2 is just a lot better in structuring that pile in a way that makes it feel more meaningful and interconnected, rather than just being random things that have no connections whatsoever.

BG2 is effective in what it does because of that internal consistency. There are several sidequests to which you will find references in other parts of the world. Long-running quests that you start in chapter 1 but can't finish until several chapters in. Broken magic items of which you find one part early on, but the second part only later, and can let a smith reforge it then. It's still a pretty random collection of cool shit from the Forgotten Realms, but it's all connected with each other, it all ties into the big picture somehow, whereas BG1 just leaves you with one-off encounters that feel generic and underwhelming.

 

[Theldaran]

Still with the obnoxious Cloakwood argument? Jeez, you can make that accessible right from the start with a mod. You can also recruit those late-in-the-game characters from the start with mods, therefore increasing your party selection options.

Mods are an essential part of a lot of PC games, and they improve on their shortcomings. Those shortcoming don't mean that the game was shit in the first place.

Last time I checked the glorious Master Race laughed at console crowd for not having mods overall.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Still with the obnoxious Cloakwood argument? Jeez, you can make that accessible right from the start with a mod. You can also recruit those late-in-the-game characters from the start with mods, therefore increasing your party selection options.

Mods are an essential part of a lot of PC games, and they improve on their shortcomings. Those shortcoming don't mean that the game was shit in the first place.

Last time I checked the glorious Master Race laughed at console crowd for not having mods overall.

The first time you play a game, assuming you're the kind of person who likes to avoid spoilers, will be the generic version. Yes, you could ask people beforehand what mods are advised & hope you don't get spoilers, but, at that point, how would you even know what you do or don't want. Essentially, the process is about seeing what the original game offered. Sure, any replays will go with whatever you want & all etc, but if that first run doesn't motivate you to play it again it doesn't really matter what mods do, unless they literally provide you with a whole new game/experience.

Anyway, on a past similar discussion in the BG thread, the main reason people defended BG1 was not for the OC anyway, they were adamant that its expansion was the main reason for playing BG1 & that it's expansion is somehow the golden child of bg1's experience just because of the Tower dungeon (nothing else, just one dungeon). & I admit, it's an OK dungeon, but I'm not gonna replay an epic of dismal dreariness just to do one dungeon.

 

[JarlFrank]

Mods don't fix the emptiness of the wilderness region or the genericness of about 80% of the quests.

 

[Theldaran]

Still with the obnoxious Cloakwood argument? Jeez, you can make that accessible right from the start with a mod. You can also recruit those late-in-the-game characters from the start with mods, therefore increasing your party selection options.

Mods are an essential part of a lot of PC games, and they improve on their shortcomings. Those shortcoming don't mean that the game was shit in the first place.

Last time I checked the glorious Master Race laughed at console crowd for not having mods overall.

The first time you play a game, assuming you're the kind of person who likes to avoid spoilers, will be the generic version. Yes, you could ask people beforehand what mods are advised & hope you don't get spoilers, but, at that point, how would you even know what you do or don't want. Essentially, the process is about seeing what the original game offered. Sure, any replays will go with whatever you want & all etc, but if that first run doesn't motivate you to play it again it doesn't really matter what mods do, unless they literally provide you with a whole new game/experience.

Anyway, on a past similar discussion in the BG thread, the main reason people defended BG1 was not for the OC anyway, they were adamant that its expansion was the main reason for playing BG1 & that it's expansion is somehow the golden child of bg1's experience just because of the Tower dungeon (nothing else, just one dungeon). & I admit, it's an OK dungeon, but I'm not gonna replay an epic of dismal dreariness just to do one dungeon.

That's a poor argument, as BG1 is a pretty good experience vanilla (well, maybe not to kids these days). Besides, both games are so replayable that mods aren't out of the question if you like them, provided you're not hating them trying to look cool.

By the way, I don't want to pay too much attention to the consensus about BG1. I played it on its time and I remember well what kind of experience it was.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I don't hate it & I can assure you I do not have a cool reputation on this site, BG1 has a reputation for being the most boring IE game & my experience didn't argue with that. A proponent of BG1 on this very thread didn't even argue that it wasn't boring, he just claimed he prefers his games to be boring, that he finds more activity boring & he doesn't find boringness boring. I can't say I've ever felt the need to mod any other IE game & the fact that BG1 is the 'mods will fix it' one suggests something more than I can ever elucidate.

 

[Shadenuat]

BG2 is effective in what it does because of that internal consistency. There are several sidequests to which you will find references in other parts of the world

I am not sure I am getting what people call "consistent" anymore. Picking quest in one place and solving it in another does not equal to game being fundamentally and structurally consistent. BG1 also has quests which has references - people talking about some wizard fallen in love with a dryad, or the whole Iron Crisis thing, which even affects your party items.

I was going to write the exact same post, as I did something similar in shoutbox a few days back, but, as you can see, it's a hell of a lot of actual work doing a genuine effort post

I don't think anyone ever argued hard that BG2 doesn't have more and better content. Pointing to bunch of maps 20 years later and going "see? see??" is the definition of beating a dead horse by now.

What BG1 did differently however, was its structure. For a low level D&D, where you can always find yourself trying to bite more than you can chew, it provided a lot riskier exploration and delving into edges of an unknown game space, where you could die in various unexpected ways.

BG2 in comparison is, well, pretty balanced and even features quite a lot of actual hand-holding? Aside from maybe Twisted Rune or trying to take on local dragon (although it is entirely possible), it doesn't matter where you go from the start - be it slavers or shadows or sewers, you will probably beat it, because every vignette is designed so even beginner party can go through it, even without that much preparation - actually, a lot of world is even level scaled a bit, so you won't meet that many beholders in sewers, but face some gaunts instead. And remember fire and acid arrows in metric tons in De'Arnese Keep?

Someone mentioned location with basilisks, and that they liked that you can, you know, just go there, not because of a particular quest, and without NPCs shoving scrolls of protection on you by force; but because that's where road took you. And I feel there is some value in that.

This is why,



I like Pathfinder,

Because the world is structured a lot less as a collection of vignettes tied by some narrative, but you can go around forests into foresty locations, there is an island location on an island, mountain creatures ambushing you in the mountains, and you can kill yourself over fighting Will-o-Wisps even if you never took that quest or "opened" that location on your map with any quests.

By the way, did I ever tell you,

about our lord and savior Pathfinder

 

[SausageInYourFace]

This discussion .. it seems .. somehow so familiar.

OMG guys, look at the time! Why, its 2013 again!

Now, let me take you on a tour of yesteryears fun discussion of the exploration in BG, in which, among other memorable moments, a certain Georgian quality shitposter reveals the full powerlevel of his autism and a beloved dragonkin Codexian comes to the conclusion that there is no exploration in Baldur's Gate at all.

Good times.

 

[Shadenuat]

I want to be younger

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

and a beloved dragonkin Codexian comes to the conclusion that there is no exploration in Baldur's Gate at all.

To be fair, and in line with this whole notion of talking about a game for its 'feelz' rather than factual reality, I honestly didn't feel like I'd 'explored' anything in BG1. I came away from the game with no sense of what that region was like nor what kind of people/creatures inhabited it. I remember rocky hilltops & trees & being constantly 'bugged' by respawning random encounters that were either wolves or bears or some low level humanoid, sometimes with go-faster skins, but got no sense that any of them actually lived in those regions, they might as well have been abstracted blobber random dungeon encounters, but a blobber makes up for that with every room & nook and cranny being something unexpected, BG didn't really have much in that regard, a Basilisk camp here, a nutty ghost there, but no knobs to turn or secret panels to reveal.

The city itself is no different, it's like a mass produced government funded estate where one architect writes a basic plan & the builders just replicate it until all the land is used up. The city had lots of NPCs wandering about but felt dead as a doornail, and certainly not the hub of some giant region, which BG2 actually manages to do. Explore one district of BG city & you've explored them all, the same as the wilderness areas.

There's a difference between exploring and just nobbing about in an area & that difference is in the idea that exploration is the hunt for something, usually something new and unexpected where, the further you travel, the stranger things become. BG was just nobbing around, like when you're on the town with your mates and decide to do a pub-run because it's boring to stay in the same pub all night, even though all the pubs are pretty much the same, it just adds a bit of movement into the process.

 

[Shadenuat]

Modded BG1 is fun

 

[Micormic]

and a beloved dragonkin Codexian comes to the conclusion that there is no exploration in Baldur's Gate at all.

To be fair, and in line with this whole notion of talking about a game for its 'feelz' rather than factual reality, I honestly didn't feel like I'd 'explored' anything in BG1. I came away from the game with no sense of what that region was like nor what kind of people/creatures inhabited it. I remember rocky hilltops & trees & being constantly 'bugged' by respawning random encounters that were either wolves or bears or some low level humanoid, sometimes with go-faster skins, but got no sense that any of them actually lived in those regions, they might as well have been abstracted blobber random dungeon encounters, but a blobber makes up for that with every room & nook and cranny being something unexpected, BG didn't really have much in that regard, a Basilisk camp here, a nutty ghost there, but no knobs to turn or secret panels to reveal.

The city itself is no different, it's like a mass produced government funded estate where one architect writes a basic plan & the builders just replicate it until all the land is used up. The city had lots of NPCs wandering about but felt dead as a doornail, and certainly not the hub of some giant region, which BG2 actually manages to do. Explore one district of BG city & you've explored them all, the same as the wilderness areas.

There's a difference between exploring and just nobbing about in an area & that difference is in the idea that exploration is the hunt for something, usually something new and unexpected where, the further you travel, the stranger things become. BG was just nobbing around, like when you're on the town with your mates and decide to do a pub-run because it's boring to stay in the same pub all night, even though all the pubs are pretty much the same, it just adds a bit movement into the process.

That's generally what happens when your brain is accustomed to killing skeletons and lizardmen for hours on end with no variety or nuance.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Why I rated you 'old' :

Oct 8, 2018 at 3:14 AM - Micormic: first one had skeletons and lizardmen for days

Oct 8, 2018 at 3:23 AM - Micormic: skeletons in the vale of shadows, the lizardmen in wherever they were and being bored

Oct 8, 2018 at 3:56 AM - Micormic: not everyone liked killing lizardmen and looting chests for 30 hours like an autist

Oct 8, 2018 at 4:04 AM - Micormic: and you can actually go to other shit in between killing skeletons and lizardmen

Oct 8, 2018 at 4:21 AM - Micormic: oh i wonder what lizardman 64 is gonna drop! a longsword and 8 coins

Oct 9, 2018 at 10:01 PM - Micormic: killing skeletons and lizardmen in icewind dale

Oct 10, 2018 at 6:14 PM - Micormic: unless you like killing skeletons and lizardmen over and over

not everyone enjoys walking through linear crypts killing skeletons and lizardmen for 50 hours :p

That's generally what happens when your brain is accustomed to killing skeletons and lizardmen for hours on end with no variety or nuance.

Why did I tell you why I rated you:

Oct 8, 2018 at 3:03 AM - Micormic: if you don't like IWD 2 why do you always quote or or emote me defending it

Oct 8, 2018 at 3:03 AM - IncendiaryDevice: I have no memory of rating anything you've written about IWD2

Oct 8, 2018 at 3:04 AM - Micormic: i usually lump the skeleton/lizardman criticism in with the orcs in iwd 2
Oct 8, 2018 at 3:04 AM - Micormic: maybe im wrong

Oct 8, 2018 at 3:05 AM - IncendiaryDevice: what are you talking about?

 

[Micormic]

stuff

What does any of that have to do with you enjoying lizardmen and skeletons?



I'd pull up some quotes of you and icewind dale 1 but you aren't important to me and I don't have them saved =/

 

[PEACH]

That whole argument was from this thread I think?
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/icewind-dale-is-a-very-boring-bad-game.122084/

Coincidentally I was reading through it just a couple days ago after starting my first run of Icewind Dale and the shit about endless lizardmen / skellies seemed familiar at first glance