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Is it possible to create a 'true successor' to Baldur's gate?

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
What's a "true successor"?

SoD can count as one, because it's basically a copypasta of BG1/2. POE can count as one, because it set out to be a spiritual successor and kept the basic things like RTwP, isometric, etc. Whether they are/will be good games or not, of course, is a different question.

I'm fine with good spiritual successors. That means I'm happy to count Underrail as a spiritual heir to Fallout, same with FNV relative to Fallout and TTON relative to Torment.

More specifically with Baldur's Gate, I love D&D and would love more good games made with it. Again, if SoD turns out to be good, great. Even though I despise Beamdog's 'strategy' with its EEs, they have more things going for them (all the assets) than SCL, which seems almost guaranteed to be shit.
 

Telengard

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It's possible, just really difficult. One would need to:
  • Hire a bunch of teen-angsty, Biowarian writers, not people seeking to making something mature. The hamminess that ensues is one of the four cornerstones of what makes BG tick. But these Biowarian hacks must then be set not to a hand-crafted world made by the team, but instead stuck to a heavily established high fantasy world, so thus players could pretend the game's writing was not so hammy as it is because of the world's "lore". People like hammy, but they don't want to talk about something hammy being great. It's a must-have juxtaposition.
  • Attach that hammy story not to old d&d, which nobody likes anymore, but to a middle d&d-like. You know, 3e. And thus you would want to hire an army of programmers to implement the top-heavy game design. Expensive, yes, but necessary if you don't want to spend forever at it.
  • Then one would need even more money so as to put someone just sitting there dreaming up different combat encounters in order to have a diverse range of encounter types. Plus a team of people to implement all of this guy's dreams, as well as implement all of the weapons that they would craft in their spare time.
  • Finally, you would want to hire voice actors to give some character and pathos to the otherwise blank archetypes your Biowarian writers hand you.

But at least you wouldn't have to worry about challenge, unlike the old days, since as long as you implement 3e and a range of diverse encounters, nobody cares anymore that the enemy can't actually fight you and just falls over and dies. (See TOEE.) There's some cost-savings to be had there.

To sum up, you need the four cornerstones - hammy Biowarian writing in an established setting, an army of people to implement a 3e lookalike and key in all the encounters and magical weaponry, a high-end encounter designer on staff to make RTWP work, and lots of voice acting to establish character in place of quality writing. Until somebody manages to stick those four cornerstones together, a true spiritual successor just won't happen.
 

Lhynn

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^Does this retard know baldurs gate was made on 2nd ed?
^Does this retard understand that the magic system made the game?
^Does this retard understand that writing was good enough to carry a game in a genre where the point of writing is to get you to adventure?

Gonna agree on good encounter design tho.
 

Obama Phone 3

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Seriously, what is it that you all love? The Real Time with Pause? The miss miss miss crit gameplay? The early game arrow tag? What, dammit, what?

#1 thing I like about BG2 is the robust story and gameworld.

BG2 is the only game aside from World of Warcraft that gives you that "huge open virtual world" feel. That, combined with meaningful C&C has not been replicated since.

If WoW had a better story instead of NPC's who spew meaningless nonsense, it would have bested BG2.
 

Lhynn

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#1 thing I like about BG2 is the robust story and gameworld.

BG2 is the only game aside from World of Warcraft that gives you that "huge open virtual world" feel. That, combined with meaningful C&C has not been replicated since.

If WoW had a better story instead of NPC's who spew meaningless nonsense, it would have bested BG2.
Joined: Mar 17, 2015
 

MilesBeyond

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Messages
716
It's possible, just really difficult. One would need to:
  • Hire a bunch of teen-angsty, Biowarian writers, not people seeking to making something mature. The hamminess that ensues is one of the four cornerstones of what makes BG tick. But these Biowarian hacks must then be set not to a hand-crafted world made by the team, but instead stuck to a heavily established high fantasy world, so thus players could pretend the game's writing was not so hammy as it is because of the world's "lore". People like hammy, but they don't want to talk about something hammy being great. It's a must-have juxtaposition

Man I love on BG's writing like crazy. It was stupid, but a sort of wink-nudge stupid. The hamminess is half of what makes BG so awesome. What makes characters like Minsc or Edwin memorable wasn't their nuanced personalities or their complex character arcs. It was the opposite. They were ridiculous caricatures of good and evil, and that's why they were so loveable.

To me, good writing is ultimately whether the game is able to convey information in a way that's entertaining and coherent with the overall tone, and BG delivers in spades. It's not deep or compelling or any of those things, but it's also not trying to be. That's the issue I have with the writing in basically every other Bioware RPG. There's nothing wrong with cheesy writing so long as you've got some self-awareness about it being cheesy. Hell, it can even be an asset so long as you're not obnoxious about it. That's the issue, though: With every game, they seem to be increasingly misled into thinking that their cheesy writing is actually serious.
 

Telengard

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That hamminess is indeed one of the major reasons BG is a 2 million seller, and the other IE games, well, aren't. Hammy writing is fun. See old Doctor Who or just every single 80s show ever. Somewhere along the way, as you say, Bioware lost the ham and became pure melo. And while there are a lot of fans of melo, too, obviously, melo lacks that underpinning layer of fun that is one of the major building blocks of a lot of the old classics.
 

Telengard

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^Does this retard know baldurs gate was made on 2nd ed?
^Does this retard understand that the magic system made the game?
^Does this retard understand that writing was good enough to carry a game in a genre where the point of writing is to get you to adventure?

Gonna agree on good encounter design tho.
Funny, there are a number of IE games out there that use the exact same magic system and have better, more mature writing. But only BG series is a 2 million seller.

Hmm. I wonder why that is. Hmmm.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Who wants another shitty ACTION D&D game?

TURN-BASED OR ELSE!

Sorry, but the Infinity engine games were mostly crappy RtWP games....Man, when did the history revisionists make these games actually good?



Fallout/turn-based 4 life.jpg
 

Stokowski

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Nov 23, 2011
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Gehenna
What's with all the BG love?

High fantasy setting that doesn't give a shit for grimdark trendiness.
Rich and highly varied monster and encounter design.
Mages that are not just fundamentally ranged fighters expending mana for DPS.
Fighters that are not just fundamentally quasi-mages in heavy armor.
Appropriate and interesting status effects and counters.
Dwarves.
Rare gemstones.
Mage duels.
Quest overload.
Great soundtracks by someone other than Jeremy fucking Soule.
 
Joined
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The crit path of BG is garbage up until Cloakwood Forest or so where it turns itself around.

I can understand not enjoying the Prologue through Chapter 2 of BG1, but the Bandit Camp is actually quite well done. There's multiple ways to find it and players can either blitzkrieg the camp or can fake joining up and infiltrate the camp with minimal combat (only Sarevok's acolytes in the main tent).

And I think Octavius' point still stands as far as the crit-path of BG1 being extremely light on filler. If you don't venture off into the wilderness, Chapters 1 and 2 are quite swiftly paced and have the barest minimum of "filler" encounters. An aborted speedrun attempt from Gorion getting ganked onwards to the end of Chapter 2 looked something like this:

-Get Imoen, Xzar, and Montaron
-Fight Wolf
-Transition to area south of Friendly Arm Inn
-Fight 2 Xvarts (misplay)
-Transition to Friendly Arm Inn
-Fight Tarnesh
-Get Jaheira and Khalid
-Transition to area south of Friendly Arm Inn
-Go south to Beregost, fighting 2 bandits and then 2 kobolds
-Transition to Beregost
-Steal Wand of Lightning and Bastard Sword +1
-Gank Silke for XP and Gold
-Transition to High Hedge
-Buy Wand of Sleep and Wand of Fear from Thalantyr
-Transition to Beregost and then the area south of it
-Fight two Ogrillons (probably a misplay; should've run)
-Persuade Flaming Fist officer
-Transition to area north of Nashkel
-Fight Hobgoblin Ambush
-Fight bandit ambush further south
-Transition to Nashkel
-Grab Ankheg plate from farmland
-Kill Neira and rest (probably a misplay)
-Talk to mayor
-Transition to Nashkel Fair
-Kill named pickpocket for gold and master thievery potions
-Steal from potion maker's tent and buy the special potions
-Buy Necklace of Missiles from trinket merchant
-Transition to Nashkel Mines
-Grab Wand of Frost from tree
-Enter mines
-Get to basement 2 of mines
-Fight a couple kobolds
-Go to basement 3 of mines
-Fight kobold encounter
-Disarm traps
-Fight kobold encounter (avoiding spiders and the ghoul)
-Fight kobold and kobold commando encounter
-Disarm more traps
-Go to basement 4 of mines
-Fight kobold commandos
-Enter Mullahey's lair
-Fight Mullahey
-Open his chest

That's <25 encounters in two chapters, some of which were optional. A much leaner run could be done. Point is, there's hardly any filler on the critical path of BG1 and most people who complain about trash mobs are, in a way (not too comfortable with this*), inflicting it upon themselves.

*It's hard to admonish people for exploring in what purports to be an open-world game, hence why I'm a little reticent to 100% sell-in to BG1's defense.
 
Joined
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Messages
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BG1 is one of the very few CRPGs where you can avoid most of the trash mobs if you want, yet some people spent all their time in BG1 with trash mobs, and then write how much they hate the trash mobs.
It's also a game that gives you a lot of freedom in which of its contents you want to tackle and which to avoid. Even if you do only half the optional content, you will gain enough exp and powerful items to make it through the game easily. This helps to make the game world look bigger than it actually is and enhances replayability, as you are likely to discover things you hadn't seen before.

But of course, people who compulsively need to clear every single pixel of fog of war and desperately need every last xp will graze every map in a geometrical pattern and then complain about the tediousness of their behaviour:
Because if you avoid trash mobs you miss content
 

ArchAngel

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Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
People are too obsessed with C&C. Not every game needs to be like Fallout 1 and 2. BG1 was fun exploring and running into different kind of adventuring groups or assassins or just some crazy people. You had a nice conversation with most of them unlike modern games like Skyrim and such. Combat was also challenging enough because the game didn't care if you had magical weapon, magical blunt weapons, resistance to charm or to petrification or if you have any chance to beat the Ogre Magi just released from a box. It presented combat challenges and left you to your own devices on how to solve them.

Fallout gave you freedom and tools to solve quests in multiple ways, BG did that with combat.
 

Lord Andre

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Gypsystan
BG2's spell system left room for pretty awesome emergent gameplay. I wonder how many people know that if you cast divination immunity on yourself, you won't get your stats drained in the pocket plane trials at the end. Because the magic that drains you is from divination school.

I guess that's what happens when you (at least partially) implement a system that is supposed to service hundreds of scenarios and games, instead of making your own shitty clone that is made only for your self contained 1-shot game.

Perhaps that is the way to obtain the fabled grail of "emergent gameplay", you design for a greater scope than that of the scenario you intend to implement... :M

Oh yeah, and as a side note, AD&D's monster manual at the time was second to none. So if you think BG2 had good encounter design you should take that into consideration.
 

laclongquan

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That hamminess is indeed one of the major reasons BG is a 2 million seller, and the other IE games, well, aren't. Hammy writing is fun....And while there are a lot of fans of melo, too, obviously, melo lacks that underpinning layer of fun that is one of the major building blocks of a lot of the old classics.

This. Hammy is fun, because the writers set out with fun firmly in their cheeks. Melo is problem because once you set on the path of melo, all too easily you fall to the path of taking yourself too seriously. As demonstrated by

Jade Empire. This is half hammy, and half melo. That's why it's still bearable.

Mass Effect series~ The more melo it gets, the idiotic it sounds.

Also, in another developers: Fallout 1 is melo. It never gell that much with me. Fallout 2 is hammy. It's great. Also why 2 always irritate the melo fan of 1.
 

Immortal

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Hating IE is the new edge. Too bad steam didn't exist when BG came out.. I feel like we would be seeing a Bethesda Paradox.

Everyone hates on the game -in theory- but still has a played count of 500 hours. :roll:
 

Infinitron

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I think it's risky to say that being hammy was critical to BG's success. It became a hit because it was a successfully marketed flagship brand and a big, impressive game that carved out a niche. Would that really have changed if it was written by the writers of the more "melo" Icewind Dale?
 

MicoSelva

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Few games gave me the same sense of going on an adventure as BG1 and BG2. This effect was a combination of many elements (graphics, sound, setting, writing, characters, enemy variety, quest overlaod, game size, itemization, rules system, my age at the time), but in the end, that is what matters - in BGs you feel like you are an actual adventurer, who really is adventuring. A true successor would need to replicate that feeling - it does not really matter if it is TB or RTWP, D&D or not, set in Forgotten Realms or elsewhere.

D:OS last year was pretty close to achieving the same thing, but ultimately it felt short of my expectations - maybe because my expectations are higher now than when I was sixteen, and maybe because D:OS failed in some aspects (like making you give a shit about what is going on).

PoE did not even approach this sweet spot, mostly due to taking itselfy too seriously.
 

ArchAngel

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Few games gave me the same sense of going on an adventure as BG1 and BG2. This effect was a combination of many elements (graphics, sound, setting, writing, characters, enemy variety, quest overlaod, game size, itemization, rules system, my age at the time), but in the end, that is what matters - in BGs you feel like you are an actual adventurer, who really is adventuring. A true successor would need to replicate that feeling - it does not really matter if it is TB or RTWP, D&D or not, set in Forgotten Realms or elsewhere.

D:OS last year was pretty close to achieving the same thing, but ultimately it felt short of my expectations - maybe because my expectations are higher now than when I was sixteen, and maybe because D:OS failed in some aspects (like making you give a shit about what is going on).

PoE did not even approach this sweet spot, mostly due to taking itselfy too seriously.
For me D:OS biggest problems were not enough areas to explore and they were only filled with encounters that felt like grinding (like PoE). Also companions were nowhere near as fun as BG1 ones :D
And the conversation system with that rock paper scissors thing was just terrible.
 

octavius

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Funny, there are a number of IE games out there that use the exact same magic system and have better, more mature writing. But only BG series is a 2 million seller.

Hmm. I wonder why that is. Hmmm.

Because it's a more well rounded experience than combat focused IWD or graphic novel PS:T?
 

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