Baldurs Gate 2: Capstone to the Golden Era of crpg's?

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, YOU could but not the hero of the wastes who's fighting incorporated EVIL.

Suffice to say - if you had to actually put an end to all manner of sinister machinations you'd be in quite a few scuffles as well. If you just lived as a peaceful but important blah blah then you'd just be an NPC and Fallout would be pointless.

In the context of Fallout as a game in which you go kick ass and save shit - yeah, you gotta kick ass.

The frequency and importance of is up for debate however.

Well, yeah, that's the difference. You can't expect a game to not have any combat at all when it's about going out into the wastelands on an important quest. Fallout's combat also manages to be fun enough to not be annoying. Still, the diplomacy options are a bit too stat-dependant, so if you go into the game not knowing how to design your character, you're not going to get any of those options at all. Still a great game.

That's why I also liked Arcanum a lot more, it's more obvious what kind of stats you need - Persuasion skill + Charisma to convince people of shit, Intelligence to get dialog options. And a lot more choices available throughout the game.

 

[Murk]

^ Oh yeah, I agree entirely.

Oh wait, this is the internets

You're a raging homo-faggot and your mother performs fellatio for rates that are, quite frankly speaking, far below the average for the deed.

 

[Ratty]

You seem to be implying that there was this plethora of quests and I just obsessively chose all the violent ones, right? Sorry, no, there weren't actually that many per hub point. So your argument is that I am playing an RPG, which generally revolves around undertaking tasks, but to get the non-violent path I should avoid the majority of the tasks? Great. I could also avoid the combat by turning off my computer and going and making tea. Avoiding quests isn't the same as alternative solutions to quests.

Why do you lie? Majority of quests *have* non-violent resolutions. Your failure to find these is just that - your failure.

Maybe thats why I took a char with high Intelligence and Charisma. I think it must be. Pity I didn't realise that only the very highest ranks of those traits really counted.

You most certainly don't need "very highest" ranks of those attributes, what gave you that idea? You need 9 points in Intelligence and about 100% Speech skill. As I recall, Charisma is irrelevant for all purposes except for bartering (do note that in FO2 Charisma is more important, because it limits the number of followers you can have). Science skill of 100% should be sufficient for even the most difficult checks (not so in FO2).

I've already explained that saying "dont get the water then!" when the game impresses you with this sense of urgency about your vaults water situation, is lame-o. And I had Ian when I did those fights. Obviously in taking advantage of Fallouts vaunted free-roaming I took the wrong path.

There are no wrong paths in Fallout. There are only paths that are more difficult than others.

You seem insistent upon proving the conjecture from my previous post - that you are unable to enjoy a CRPG in which it's possible to fail. I don't know what kind of games you normally play that cuddle you so much, but in Fallout failure occasionally happens and more often than not results in bloodshed. That's not a flaw, but part of the game experience. It *is* the wasteland, after all. If you can't live with that, then maybe Fallout simply isn't the game for you.

Why is that more sensable than talking to the mayor who might have far more resources and skill at organising a counter-attack than yourself? Of course I was aware of the violence option (which needed me to kill 2 deathclaws to equip the gang first iirc, STILL getting me into fucking combat). The point is not that the quest was difficult to figure out, it was that it offered only a violent solution.

You *can* talk to mayor Zimmerman. But if you manage to convince him that Blades aren't responsible for his son's death, Regulators will turn on him and murder him right before your eyes, upon which your best option is to make a break of it. But I suppose you're correct in that this quest, despite having an impressive number of possible solutions, will inevitably have you bloody your hands at some point. It's just one of those few quests that can't be handled by pacifist characters. I don't have a problem with that, seeing as it's entirely optional and not exceptionally rewarding.

You've met many hunters and trackers who got skilled from books, without ever actually being out there and getting practical experience, have you?

There is a difference between possessing some degree of survival ability and being an expert hunter/tracker. If you know how to set up a camp, light a fire, identify and/or cook edible plants - all of which you can learn from books or educational videos - you are already moderately skilled in outdoors survival.

 

[elander_]

@NN
"Good natured was required? Ugh. That just infuriates me more."

Err ... no. Required is a bit of an exageration here. Good nature is a trait made for the diplomat and wise guy. It raises your base skill % in medic, speech and other skills. This means you start with a speech skill of 60 or something instead of 30 at the expense of your weapon skills. It's perfect for this character and it should be obvious.

@NN
"Where is this Tycho?"

Tycho is in a Junktown bar but i don't think he will join you right away. You have to relate yourself with other npcs first.

@dagorkan
"I think one of the big problems is that the fundamental game design is full of 'if/else', 'yes/no' checks. "

No these yes/no checks are necessary. Maybe it was a bit overdone in Fallout but it's an important design decision. What i'm saying is that choosing dialog lines in Fallout can be risky, like talking to a real person. This gameplay mechanics is one of the reasons why characters feel so alive. Fallout characters aren't like Oblivion characters where you raise their disposition up and down like a yo-yo.

@aweigh
"How contextually logical would it be to go through Fallout without combat? Even if the game provided alternative ways to solve quests that didn't involve guns being drawn, you would still have to defend yourself from the radiated mutants and animals. Just because you can talk your way out of a situation in a tow doesn't mean that you're not gonna have to fight against encounters in the wilderness, be it radscorpions or bandits; same as in real life if you get mugged in an alley."

Do you stop being a diplomat if you kill a fly or a rat that is bothering you? I think you are missing the point with your exageration. If you get a random encounter you may be forced to fight and that's why you have companions with you. That's very different than solving a quest by force when you have the skill and possibility to do it by other means.


I think the problem with playing a diplomat has to do with:
* wasting a tag or too much xp on a weapon skill (should tag speech, medic, science, repair later)
* character relevant attributes (cha and int) are not maximized enough (just to be sure i assigned 10 to each)
* not getting the good natured trait (want to know why? read the fucking manual or the trait description in front of your eyes)
* not exploiting the quests available at start (we should be able to raise to level 5 just by doing quests in vault 13, shady sands, and junktown and you only need to kill a radscorpion to get his tail)
* missing companions (after junktown you will get dogmeat, tycho and ivan as companions)

Ok so some things are a bit hiden and are a bit illogical.
* when you exit Vault 13 wait a day and then return and enter the vault to get 1000xp in quests and raise one level as well as geting some extra loot
* it's easy to miss the rope in shady sands (traveling to the hub just to get a rope is taxing for a low level diplomat and dumb)
* easy to miss everytime you use medic successfully you gain 50xp skills (you can heal yourself this way without wasting stimpaks)

Besides having a good start you need to save the game before each important dialog interaction and consult the walkthrough to know when a quest hits a bug and doesn't act like it should, but you should notice something odd if this happens.

Playing a diplomat is hard and unforgiving but it's not impossible or unresonable as some people claim. Avoid doing too many mistakes while playing this character. Unlike a fighter which has unlimited xp from encounters, the quests that give you xp for using diplomat and smart guy skills are limited resources. If you fail them you won't get any other way to compensate and later you start getting higher speech and int requirements so if you don't have enough stats say goodby to your diplomat.

Overall i belive there are enoough xp from using the 4 diplomat skills to raise your level to 12. Just don't fail too many or your progress will get stalled without any other way to get xp from your diplomatic talents. You can of course get xp from random encounters and let you companions do the fighting but you don't need to. You can finish Fallout playing like a diplomat because the devs made sure you could.

How many levels can you raise while playing Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights just trought dialog? You guys must be joking right?

 

[hotdognights]

I don't think anybody is trying to argue that Fallout is perfect-excellent, or even best, are not synonymous with perfect. The game has an abundance of flaws, from the shallow combat system to the uneven skillset. But to assert that its a strictly combat based affair is, at best delusional.

The very first town in the game features two major quests, that in themselves are fairly unexciting and boring-clear out a cave of monsters, or rescue the mayor's daughter. Thing is neither of those quests have to be solved with guns blazing-you can collapse the entrance to the cave using traps skill, for instance. There are a myriad of ways to solve the rescue quest, violently and non-violently, from outright purchasing Tandi, to talking the bandits into letting her go for free with speech skill, to fighting the bandit leader in one on one combat, to sneaking your way through and picking the lock on her cell.

And zero combat play throughs isn't necessarily a mandatory feature for excellent RPGs-the point is, context matters.

Now I'm not going to bash Baldur's Gate for something it did supremely well-art design and graphics. I think it's still one of the best looking RPGs to date. And I'm not going to harp on a relatively minor issue like paththinding that's been solved through patching and technology. But I think that the game is, at best, poor.

Now combat certainly played a major role in Fallout. But in Baldur's Gate, combat was almost always the exclusive solution to quests. In BG, you had a wide variety of choice as to what quests to do, and when to do them, but not very much choice on HOW to do them-contrast that to Torment, where you strung along from A-B-C-D in a fairly linear fashion, but had a wide degree of latitude in how to treat ABCD.

Now that's not really a problem in itself. I'm playing through Wizardry 8 right now and having a blast. The problem stems from bastardization of real time and turn based systems and the flaws inherent to 2nd ed AD&D, or at least Bioware's implementation of it. Simply put, real time with pause lacks the strategic control and tactical refinement of a turn based system and the visceral thrill of a real time system. You get the worst of both worlds. Now it's better for clearing out hordes of goblins-or, for that matter, mantises, but simply because it's quicker; the solution is not to implement a relatively shallow system, but to eliminate sequences of trivially easy combat.

More importantly though, is that player input into character development essentially stops after character creation. Leveling up is only slightly more involved than in jRPGs. Maybe this is an AD&D thing, but that's not absolution.

Basically, dungeon crawlers are fine, but BG suffers from a boring yet shallow combat system and a poor character development system.

Story and writing don't do much to redeem it either. BG1 actually had a pretty decent story in outline, based on political intrigue and a villain who was more a cunning plotter than a mad wizard. BG2's story descended into mysticism about mad scientists and stupid elves. The story-telling is high on exposition, low on interactivity, which is a fatal flaw in a video game. But setting aside the broad outlines of the story, they're poorly implemented. The voice acting was, for the most part, superb, espicially the voice acting of David Warner. Too bad they had lousy scripts to work with. Every NPC, espicially fan favorites like Minsc and Jan Jensen, were essentially one sentence design documents stretched out to accommodate the script of a 60 hour plus game. I'd take the laconic Fallout NPCs over the the constant retardation of the BG2 NPCs.

In a lot of respects(not combat), KOTOR and Mass Effect represented steps forward from Baldur's Gate, albeit very small steps.

 

[MetalCraze]

I'm playing BG2 now and there's one thing that ruins gameplay for me.
biowarish good is emo shit.
biowarish evil is redneck shit.
so I've decided to roleplay... normal human. I mean chaotic neutral. and wtf. Like for most of the time it's only good or bad choices. sure there's almost always "I don't care" choice - but it looks more like oblivion-styled "if you don't want to complete quest - don't take it" and gives no exp. so unless I would want to meet Irenicus with 10 lvl characters I will have to do stupid extreme good or extreme evil, because bioware did it "give beggar some money or kill him" way.

 

[Disconnected]

Comparing Fallout/Torment to the rest of the IE games, is sort of like comparing a Roguelike to The Longest Journey. The former are PnP-style role playing games. The BG series (and the IWDs) are dungeon crawlers, exactly like the old Gold Box games. The difference between them is simply that the IE versions are bigger & better at everything, except for the combat, where BioWare apparently had to abandon TBS to cover for the fact that no IE AI ever made, has been able to play AD&D 2ed. Not implying the modder-made efforts aren't significantly better than the original offerings, it's just not saying much, since a fucking hole in the ground is better than any developer made IE AI.

 

[ghostdog]

Fallout is very different from torment and BG2 is also very different from Bg1 and IWD. There are 3 great games IMO made with IE, Fallout , Torment and BG2.

 

[hotdognights]

Fallout is very different from torment and BG2 is also very different from Bg1 and IWD. There are 3 great games IMO made with IE, Fallout , Torment and BG2.

Um, Fallout wasn't made with the IE.

I think it's pretty clear that Baldur's Gate and Fallout had different goals, but the gripe of a lot of BG detractors is that it wasn't successful at what it tried to do. The story was laughable, and the meat of the game, the combat, paled in comparison to both successors an contemporaries, like Wizardry and Jagged Alliance.

 

[Disconnected]

I think it's pretty clear that Baldur's Gate and Fallout had different goals, but the gripe of a lot of BG detractors is that it wasn't successful at what it tried to do. The story was laughable, and the meat of the game, the combat, paled in comparison to both successors an contemporaries, like Wizardry and Jagged Alliance.

The story thing sounds like a false comparison. If you hold the BG series up against similar games, both earlier and later, it sure as shit isn't laughable. On the contrary, it's at least as coherent as anything else out there, far better written than anything I've seen (which isn't everything, mind) & gets a lot more time in the Sun than stories usually do. Of course, it's not fucking Dostoevsky. But then, neither's any other dungeon crawler.

As for the combat.. Yes, it's messed up. In my opinion - but it's a matter of taste - it is still at least 50 times more fun than Wizardry. But it would have been a hell of a lot better if BioWare hadn't "innovated" it half to death with their RTwP system & focused on writing a solid AI instead. I'll readily agree JA2 is better, though if BG had been turn based, I'd probably feel differently.

Then again, my opinion of the combat is no doubt heavily influenced by the fact that I've been playing AD&D 2ed since it was published. Even botched real time AD&D is bound to appeal more to me than almost anything else.

 

[aweigh]

I also prefer FO combat to Wizardry combat. And how is Wizardry even a successor to FO-style CRPG's?

 

[hotdognights]

@Disconnected

Saying the story is better than any other dungeon crawler's doesn't mean that its good, and settling for "better than the Gold Box, at least" is asking for mediocrity. That being said, I think there are lots of combat-centric RPGs with better storylines, such as Daggerfall and the Ultima series(while not dungeon crawlers, the Ultima series still centered around combat-based gameplay).

This is purely personal taste, but I'd prefer a more minimal story to the joke that was BG2's_+TOB's "epic," although, like I said earlier I BG1's story wasn't bad. Ditto with laconic characters versus obnoxius, poorly written, verbose characters.

At BEST, judged against other dungeon crawlers, BG has an okay story; judged against story-based RPGs, it has a decent combat system. Taken as a whole, it's Baldur's Gate is mediocrity writ large.

As far as the combat system-well, there is room for subjectivity there. My bias probably comes from having never played tabletop D&D, but I don't really the AD&D system at all. At low levels too much is left to random chance; at high levels the game becomes fantasy superheroes. Likewise, in 2nd edition AD&D, at least as represented in BG, there's very little player input in character development after creation. Compare that to Wizardry, which has a wide variety of skills and fighting styles to develop. I can see AD&D having some redeeming features-Dark Sun's combat was pretty fun, but they definitely don't shine trough in BG.

In BG, the only tactical challenge is countering spell protections with the proper dispel. Once you figure out the relation between protections and what breaches protections, the game becomes trivially easy and repetitive. Wizardry offered a variety of challenges throughout the game.

Really, I'd love to see cRPGs forget that Dungeons and Dragons ever existed. I dislike class systems, period, and D&D classes are inflexible and rigid(less so in 3e). The only settings that had a hint of interest fall by the wayside, while the supported settings are watered down versions of the ghettoized fantasy genre; we get the dregs of the dregs.

And a lot of the mechanics simply don't translate from tabletop to PC. I can see why rest-based casting systems, d6s, d8s, and d20's are valuable in a tabletop setting, but they either don't work or are unnesseary in a cRPG.

Tabletop and computers both have weaknesses and strengths that are a product of their medium. Rather than trying to shoehorn tabletop systems onto the PC, and recycle crappy settings, I'd love to see developers come up with systems tailored to the PC and create new settings.

@aweigh:

I don't think anybody would compare Wizardry and Fallout(I didn't!). Both BG and Wizardry are part of the dungeon crawler subset of RPGs though, and their most important trait is how fun it is to kill monsters. We were contrasting BG and Wizardry's combat systems, and Fallout's and BG's RPG elements.

 

[RK47]

I also prefer FO combat to Wizardry combat. And how is Wizardry even a successor to FO-style CRPG's?

uh how the heck do you even compare both? They're so different from each other.

 

[RK47]

I also prefer FO combat to Wizardry combat. And how is Wizardry even a successor to FO-style CRPG's?

uh how the heck do you even compare both? They're so different from each other.

 

[aweigh]

I wasn't the one comparing them.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

There was design to Baldur's Gate?

Level and encounter design?

to the massive dependence on luck for the first 3 or so levels

You weren't playing right then. Because the "luck" factor comes into play just as much as it does in Fallout. You have to use tactics to stack the odds in your favor. Take for instance a fight between a first level fighter and a bear. The first level fighter can always win by running and shooting at it with a bow. Sure, he could win by bum rushing it with a sword, but half the time he'll die horribly. It's up to the player to not put their characters in scenarios they can't win.

and the horrible system of magic

It worked pretty well, and is far better than some lazy-ass mana system that is easily exploited with potions turning mages into potion fueled flamethrowers. I'm assuming the complaint is the perceived uselessness of low level mages. Which is sort of understandable. A player created mage is going to be very frustrated if they try to solo the game because it simply isn't geared for that. Mages are meant to be support early on, and heavy artillery later on. Early on, that one (or two if you are a specialist) Sleep, Grease, Charm, or Color Spray can really make a difference. Of course someone who memorizes only direct damage spells is going to be heavily disappointed.

Baldur's Gate on the other hand was my first step toward realising glitz and subtance were two very different thnigs.

So it was your first big "disappointment"?

It's just a shame that both titles, in 1992 are both at least as good as Baldur's Gate, if not better.

How so? They're entirely different things. Wizardry is a dungeon crawler supreme with an incredibly long playtime, tons of combat, and no "fluff" in between. Ultima is a dungeon crawler with adventure puzzles shoehorned on it to provide "virtuous" gameplay because Garriot was too much of a pansy to stand up to an anti-Dungeons and Dragons group.

Baldur's Gate took the gameplay of an RTS, got rid of the strategic layer, made tactics irrelevant for 90% of combat

No, it didn't. Tactics were the thing that make it so that some people can play the game ironman and make it, and other people constantly whine about "broken combat all about luck". There's plenty of strategy, whether it be using an entangle spell to entrap a bunch of ogres while you pound on them with missile weapons, having your fighter drop a potion of explosions at his feet after luring enemies around him, or dropping a protection from magic scroll on the enemy mage, cleverly destroying any offense or defense capabilities he might have.

and added a bunch of superfluous bullshit, like VO, 5 CDs worth of pre-rendered backgrounds, dynamic loot piles, CG cutscenes.

No argument here. Their priorities were a bit off. The good news was the spite based nature and lack of reliance on fancy 3d rendering or such made it relatively bug-free. The bad news was that disk swapping was a damn pain just to see the same cut and paste trees on grass over and over.

I just don't see how it meets anyone's standards. If I wanted RTS, Total Annihilation was a better option. If I wanted a RTS with a tactical focus, there was Starcraft. If I wanted a squad based tactical combat game, there was Jagged Alliance or even the X-Com series. If I wanted an adventure game with grindy combat and level-ups, Japan has about a thousand better options. If I wanted something that alternately failed at being serious and failed at lulz, there was Jerry Springer.

I can understand this type of sentiment, I sort of think in the same vein. I don't want to play crap, I want some of the best or most fun stuff available in the field or the genre. But you judge Baldur's Gate based on a bunch of things it isn't and rip it to shreds comparing it's pieces to fully-fledged games that represent the best in their genre. Baldur's Gate and the Infinity Engine try to be a jack of all trades type of deal, combining a bit of strategy, a bit of tactics, some role-playing, that while not as good as Fallout blows most of the other crap out of the water, and some decent combat. It's not going to beat some of the best games in their strongest areas, but does a decent job on a bunch of varied areas.

But the fucking micromanagement is generally you vs the interface/pathfinding. If your cockwits actually did what you either told them/scripted them to, there would be little need for micro-management.

This is a completely ignorant view of the game. There's plenty of other things to do.

And if you think it's your mad skillz that got you through tough fights, think again.

Says the guy with soooo much experience with the engine. Sorry to pull a cheap shot like this, but I think the credentials/experience card can be pulled here.

The fight against that fag at the gigantic castle pretended to be an inn is the classic example. The whole fight was pretty much decided by the result of a single roll when he cast fear against your party.

No it wasn't. There's a wonderful thing about AD&D and that's guaranteed spell disruption. The game gives you a person with a wand of magic missiles and ample meatshields before then. You also can get some ranged weapons which work really well too. Make use of them. Or you can have your character run and hide and let the guards kill the assassin.

There was never a sense of toughing out a heroic victory against a superior opponent, just the luck of the dice which would seemingly result in either death, or an unscathed victory.

And that never existed in Fallout either in most situations. Take the deathclaw for instance. It was all about getting a lucky critical. If you didn't get one, you probably died. If you got one, it died.

Same goes for the kobolds with a single arrow that can one-shot you or... do nothing at all to you. Micromanagement and tactics in general pale in comparison to sheer luck.

Totally untrue. Sleep spells, color spray, and that ever handy wand of magic missiles are all easily available to help you persevere. And going off the beaten path a bit can also save your ass.

If there was just a single NPC that didn't shit me so much that I couldn't stand to have them in my party

What in the hell was your major malfunction? You can turn off their voices, which was the only thing that could bother you seeing as they didn't start dialogues any other way except in a few situations. I known the whole shtick with not wanting to be annoyed when you are supposed to be enjoying yourself, that is totally understandable. But it wasn't like they were that annoying or ever forced their personalities upon you with no recourse whatsoever. You could always mute them and the problem is solved. Or replace their sounds with Samuel L. Jackson wav files.

maybe I'd have more than just a couple of guys with swords. Fake multiplayer for the win.

Archers? If you're creating your own party there should be no excuse.

Hah! Of course that was my first port of call. I set it pretty fucking high, and it still couldn't manage to navigate a single character around an ally. Even on a beastly computer by today's standards, you just can't set the nodes high enough to stop your party from being fucking idiots.

You must have some one-in-a-million problem. Because I've never had a real problem with pathfinding except when there were more than 40 units onscreen and active in combat.

Bullshit. You could do that, but you're not going to get far until you're overpowered.

I'm just saying both Fallout and the Infinity Engine share a lot of the "hands off" feel. Not that that's a bad thing, especially in RPGs, but that neither were super hands on, constantly requiring the player's input in the way a game like Jagged Alliance or Starcraft demands.

Compare that with Baldur's Gate where you select an enemy and then sit back for a minute while your character auto attacks each fucking "turn", until you either win or get one-shotted and have to reload.

If you solo a fighter and are determined to only use one weapon and reload whenever you lose to "force" your way through the game, then yes. You're basically describing the most boring and un-stimulating way of playing the Infinity Engine games and assuming it is the entirety. Not exactly the best argument.

Is there a reason to move once you've engaged an enemy in Baldur's Gate?

Yeah. To get the hell out of a losing fight, to continue to hit a big bruiser of an enemy with a ranged character without being hit, and to reposition yourself in a better location, maybe a choke point where enemies can't surround your characters and get bunched up, allowing your beefy blockers to hold them easier while your ranged attacks mow them down.

There sure as hell is in Fallout.

You mean abuse the system by shooting and then ducking behind cover that enemies were too stupid to understand?

I consider Baldur's Gate/2's combat to be shithouse for the same reason I consider the tunnels filled with ants under Necropolis to be shithouse. There's no fun in going through the motions for a preordained result.

Okay....this one doesn't make much sense to me. Isn't that any linear combat based game including pretty much every old CRPG in existence? You will eventually win through attrition, so why play at all? Then comes the whole journey is more important dealio, in which it becomes incredibly subjective. And didn't you admit that you never made it past Chateau Irenicus in BG2? Isn't that like judging Fallout 2 entirely on the Temple of Trials or Fallout on the rat caves/Vault 15?

The best the Infinity Engine seems to manage to "spice things up" is to throw in the occasional critter that wont' hit you 80% of the time, but when it does, it instantly kills you. Wheee.

Or you know the enemy parties who may be set up much like your own, be packing magic, and use some decent tactics. Maybe the large scale battles with lots of footsoldiers who have their own spellcaster support. Or perhaps the big powerful foozles with lots of options at their disposal like beholders, mind flayers, dragons, and demons.

Oh, I tried very hard to silence those fucks. Didn't really work out for me.

Options->Sound Options->Character Sounds->Never.

Not that difficult. You could always just hit the goddamn mute button and LARP a deaf protagonist because you hated the music and hated the voice so sound wasn't doing you any favors.

Also, I couldn't silence the scumfucks you had to talk to to advance the storyline or various quests, and there were a plethora of shitholes that would force "conversation" with you.

Text that can be instantly sent away with the Enter key or a click of the mouse. The horror! Seriously though, I can't understand anyone who lived through the "Thou shalt fetcheth on thy quest" bullshit of Ultima or the utterly awful writing of other early CRPGs could complain so much about Bioware's writing. It wasn't that bad in Baldur's Gate if only because their egos hadn't been lit aflame.

Even trying to be fair, I can't think of a single character I'd actually want to hear from Baldur's Gate.

I wasn't a huge fan of most of the characters either. They weren't all that great, but they weren't mind warpingly annoying, save Noober, a joke gone horribly wrong.

I liked Morte in Torment, but not enough to justify dragging myself through the shitty combat just to progress through the IF component.

The combat in Torment was almost all optional, save Ravel, Ignus, and Trias.

I'd be more inclined to say Oblivionised, where objects and buildings that have supposedly been standing for decades or centuries are curiously spotless and shiny.

Okay....so the overemphasis on graphics is bad, but spending more time to "dirty up" the buildings with different textures and unique cracks allover the place is necessary. Plus, it's a high fantasy romp. I don't see anyone bitching about Ultima Seven being pretty squeaky clean and "Oblivionized".

You can judge by year alone if you want, but when one game is released in the beginning of January 1997 and the other in the end of December 1998, I'll take certain liberties and call the 23.5 month gap two years.

Fair enough.

As for the graphics - tech wise, they're pretty comparable

Uhhh....no. Just check the systems requirements on both of them.

but Diablo edges Baldur's Gate out in art direction. Both have their fair share of high-fantasy cliches, but Diablo oozes style and polish

That is absolute bullshit and you know it. Both Diablo and Baldur's Gate were generic fantasy and had next to no creativity in art direction with Baldur's Gate ripping right out of the monster manual and Diablo just throwing in as much cheesy slasher horror and goth bullshit as possible.

Baldur's Gate 2 however, did get a unique flair of it's own.

Diablo 2 just got more bikini armor and the like.

Baldur's Gate wasn't exactly amateur, but there aren't too many sprites I could look at and say "that's clearly Baldur's Gate. It couldn't belong in any other game."

Huh....that's absolutely no evidence of the genericness or lack thereof because it's totally subjective and based upon certain biases. You wouldn't have much attacment to the art style as you dislike the games, just as I like the games and would be significantly biased towards them.

Yeah, it does. but the environments still look more unique than most tile based games before and after.

Eh. I suppose. The wilderness areas in Baldur's Gate 1 got a little repetitive though.

Why step back from the best? Why the fuck should it be acceptable to present something that isn't even half as accomplished as its predecessor, or many games that came before?

Let's see....they were using a licensed ruleset to get a little exposure and maybe make some money. They sacrificed creative controlover the ruleset for that, though added a few things in later like spells and kits in Shadows of Amn, which worked out for the better. Plus, after Jade Empire, do you really want Bioware's homebrew rulesets?

If someone had put a first person shooter without normal/parallax mapping on the market post FEAR, it would have been crucified as "archaic". Why not the same for shit game design?

I'd love total advancement of game design all the time as much as you would, but let's face it, that isn't going to happen.

Diablo transcended its classes. You'd be fucking kidding yourself if you tried to say your level 10 warrior was the same as mine, and the coercion was gentle at worst.

Are you kidding? The warrior was meant to just smash....that's all he did. The Rogue shot her bow and maybe threw some cantrips, while the sorceror was fucked over more than the psionic-user in System Shock 2.

I seem to remember playing an intelligent warrior that was capable as both a mage and a fighter.

You could cast a few spells, so what. I could multi or dual class in Baldur's Gate if I wished to and have a fighter who could cast spells too..

In Baldur's Gate, you have what, a skill point every second level or so and the occasional spell selection. Whoop-de-fucking-doo.

Hey, at least Baldur's Gate had balanced classes/character-types who could all easily complete the game...something a lot of other developers struggle with.

Again, you had a lot more control over how your Wizardry characters developed compared to Baldur's Gate.

Not in the earlier ones.

Why? I seem to remember a vast array of spells

Uhhhhh....not really. You had some walls, a few direct damage spells, and the occasional stat lowerer.

a whole bunch of skills with very distinct purposes

This I can buy, even though most of the skills were more like bonuses.

more profound item bonuses

Uhhhh......no. Items could make a huge difference in an Infinity Engine game. Potions, wands, scrolls, and magic weapons really could turn an impossible battle into a cakewalk when used right.

but can't come close to the stat development or skills of HOMM.

That "Pathfinding" skill was so deep and engaging as was the "Logistics" skill that let you move more.

I'm not counting "exploration" since that basically amounted to mowing the fog of war looking for fights - it's essentially "downtime" or dead wood that the game would have been better off without.

Try the actual city of Baldur's Gate or Athkatla in Shadows of Amn for exploration. Or all of Torment save Carceri.

The NPC interaction was worse than the combat and best skipped over as quickly as possible.

Really now? I've yet to ever see a game match Shadows of Amn in terms of "active" companions who respond to each other and the player character. Despite the rather mediocre writing, the gameplay portion was pretty nifty. Guess stereotyping the entire engine off of Gorion, Tarnesh, and Noober is a-okay though.

In four, maybe five chapters of Baldur's Gate and the first bit of Torment, I can't recall anythin I would consider tactical or strategic. Maybe once I sent two fighters with stone immunity up against a basilisk while everyone else stood back.

Because from all accounts you play the games with absolutely no finesse whatsoever and don't actually look for the strategy. I could play Starcraft by just zergling rushing through and deem it simplistic and stupid, much like what you're doing with the Infinity Engine games

I could go into great detail of nail biting and dramatic Wizardry 7 combats I've had in the last hour.

And I'm sure there's absolutely no "luck" in those games either where an unfortunate encounter will fuck your entire party into the stone age.....

Let's say hypothetically you played a game, didn't enjoy a single aspect of it - in fact, found it horribly disappointing as a release from a publisher with a reputation for quality and a couple of top notch recent releases.

There's your first mistake, judging by publisher. Between Wasteland and Fallout, Interplay was cranking out duds. Stonekeep anyone? You bought into a game from an unknown developer with no experience in the RPG field. It's like buying stock in some company almost blindly.

Where's the compulsion to play the sequel, or other spin offs with the same core gameplay?

I can buy that entirely. Then just stop stereotyping everything based on what you played.

Bethesda don't follow their own beat, they just go with whatever is perceived to be popular. And right now, that's a pausable real time system not unlike KOTOR. They're also going with the same shitty polarised morality

and the same focus on "cutting edge" graphics and linear plotlines.

Are you trying to say that Bethesda picked up the graphics boner from Bioware? Because that would be asinine. Every single one of their

But I'm not even talking about direct clones, like Drakensang.

A "direct clone"? You sure it isn't just trying to use it as a cash in reference to pick up the largely disillusioned demographic of people who hate Bioware's new stuff for the dumbed down nature, but adored the old Infinity Engine? Because that's what it seems like to me.

I'm talking about the general trend of forgoing depth and gameplay for shallow mass-market pulp-fiction bullshit, which Bioware have always had in spades.

Mass market? Are you fucking kidding me? The Infinity Engine was not some mass market design by committee type of thing. Why? Because Dungeons and Dragons is about as much of a mass consumer buzzkill as can be. Was the writing in Baldur's Gate pretty shallow? Yeah. Not because it was mass marketed though, because Bioware just sucks at it.

Diablo admittedly deserves to cop some of the blame. But there was a time when Diablo was considered an abomination that didn't deserve the RPG moniker.

What reality are you living in because I want to live there....they seem smart. It was universally praised by anyone with a voice as a great RPG, in the same year that Final Fantasy 7 went mainstream and sold millions. Sure, us grumpy, old CRPGers hated both of those shitheaps, but everyone else just rode Blizzard and Square's love train all over town and their voices were what mattered.

You could say the same sort of things against Oblivion. It ain't that bad when viewed as just a game.

No way Jose....Oblivion as just a game was pretty terrible. Level scaling, stupid quests, and no character diversity do that. I don't think I need to list the myriad flaws of Oblivion here, so suffice to say, it's an awful game even in a vacuum due to huge design inconsistencies.

But when you look at it within context of the industry at large, read nothing but glowing reviews for something that is pretty average and the constant suggestion the more, if not all games should be striving to be more like it... well, you develop something of an aversion to it.

I can sort of buy this. It kind did suck watching the Infinity Engine, Baldur's Gate in particular, get blowjobs whilst Fallout was left alone when it deserved the praise and recognition. But in the end it didn't really matter because other games stole the Infinity Engine's blowjobs, like Final Fantasy and Diablo and ultimately took the genre by force. While I would much rather by inundated with Fallout clones, I hoped the Infinity Engine's strong sales would at least make for some halfway decent Diet-RPGs like Baldur's Gate. It didn't though.

However, the trends that both set and the irreparable damage they do to gaming and game design can't be denied.

What trends? The Infinity Engine was surpassed in it's own time by much bigger fish. It's success was an aberration, an oddity at best. Probably bought mostly by Diablo fans because they looked kind of alike. Only Bioware, the company that made them created more games even remotely in the same vein, but they were polluted by the influence of the bigger fish, namely Diablo and jRPGs.

That's why I embark upon unholy crusades against both. You'll notice I do the very same thing for games such as Doom 3, which dealt many blows to the FPS genre.

Fair enough. But Doom 3 deserves the hate, the Infinity Engine is like attacking some one hit wonder band from the 80s for ruining music. There are much worthier targets, like the aforementioned Dark 3, Final Fantasy, and such.

God damn that was long. Sorry about that.

 

[Raapys]

So what we've found out in this threat is that no RPGs actually have good combat, and that besides PS:T no game has a really great story/writing.

Seems to me then that BG2's 'mediocre' qualities aren't actually so bad after all, because except for a selected few, most other games are at best on-par when sized up.

I suspect nostalgia is throwing alot of weight around here too.

 

[Jasede]

Never thought I'd see Section8 spout crap like this despite usually having good and agreeable views. Thanks to Edward for defending this mediocre to good, but far from abysmally horrible game so well.

 

[hotdognights]

Regarding strategy versus luck in BG:

Grease, Entangle, Sleep all play a role in low level combat in BG true-but how is that any different than any other dungeon crawl? The game hardly deserves credit for something that's been a genre trope for decades.

The reason people gripe about the random factor is that sleep, entangle can either win a battle or do nothing at all. At low levels, it seems the chances are about even, and more dependent on the die roll than player choices about character development, equipment, or spell protections. This is further worsened by BG's simultaneous six second turns, which make launching area effect spells like web and sleep a major hassle. ToEE had fun combat(although that was 3e). So did Dark Sun. So there may be some good in AD&D and D&D 3e; it's just not well represented by the Baldur's Gate series.

I actually did play through and beat all three games in the BG series, more out of morbid curiosity than enjoyment, and while there was some degree of tactics in BG, it wasn't anything special, although it was better presented than most dungeon crawlers. In BG2, once the proper spell combos are figured out, which happens about a tenth of the way through the game, combat gets real boring real fast. Likewise, the first fight with a dragon was challenging and enjoyable to beat, but there are like 3-4 dragon fights in the game, and 2, 3, and 4 are as easily beaten as a horde of trolls.

Regarding character interactions in BG:

Quality trumps quantity, and zero is better than a negative value. Detailed NPC and extensive character interaction become a demerit when there's as poorly written and characterized as in Baldur's Gate.

Regarding the mainstream appeal of BIO's games:

D&D may be a pariah label in the mass market at large, but the PC games market, and the PC RPG market in particular, doesn't represent the entire market. A Forgotten Realms D&D branded RPG was a lot safer bet in 1998 than a post-apoc original setting based on GURPS. BIO's next venture into IP development-Star Wars. BIO's first original IP? An pastiche of kung fu settings infused with Star Wars cliches and parallels. Their next? Straight up Star Wars, with just enough changed to keep Lucas's lawyers at bay.

I think the biggest issue those of who look at Bioware and BG in particular with disdain is that it's hailed as the pinnacle of the RPG market, and it represents a kind of stagnation. BG doesn't have clones because it does set a bar that developers aspire, but it's a very old bar that hasn't been lifted since '92.

It's not that BG is completely horrible. It's that it's mediocre and held up as a standard to aspire to. Like Star Trek and Star Wars for sci-fi.

 

[hotdognights]

Fair enough. But Doom 3 deserves the hate, the Infinity Engine is like attacking some one hit wonder band from the 80s for ruining music. There are much worthier targets, like the aforementioned Dark 3, Final Fantasy, and such.

This would be true if Baldur's Gate were a blip on the radar. Nobody attacks crap like Stonekeep because it simply doesn't matter. The point is that if you talk to most RPGs fans, if you talk to most gaming press, they're rate BG as the pinnacle of the genre. It seems that RPG fans and press aren't willing to merely settle for mediocrity; they ASPIRE to it.

 

[hotdognights]

So what we've found out in this threat is that no RPGs actually have good combat, and that besides PS:T no game has a really great story/writing.

Seems to me then that BG2's 'mediocre' qualities aren't actually so bad after all, because except for a selected few, most other games are at best on-par when sized up.

I suspect nostalgia is throwing alot of weight around here too.

Off the top of my head:
RPGs with better stories than BG that aren't torment: Ultima V-VII.5, Quest for Glory IV, Shattered Lands, Buck Rogers:Countdown to Doomsday, Fallout, Fallout 2, Mask of the Betrayer, Arcanum, Bloodlines, KOTOR2, Albion, Space 1889, Deus Ex, Geneforge 1, 2, and 4

RPGs/dungeon crawlers with better combat than BG: Wizardry 7-8, Temple of Elemental Evil, Jagged Alliance 1 and 2, Might and Magic:Worlds of Xeen, Might and Magic 6, the first Pools of Radiance(although it loses out on presentation ease of interface), Prelude to Darkness

 

[Volourn]

L0L Most of that is shit. I love the Fo series; but to say their stories are better than the Bgs stories is retarded. Plain, and simple. L0L

And, lol, at the 'better' combat games. POR had better combat? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

[hotdognights]

L0L Most of that is shit. I love the Fo series; but to say their stories are better than the Bgs stories is retarded. Plain, and simple. L0L

And, lol, at the 'better' combat games. POR had better combat? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

A priori statements ahoy. Really, what the fuck is the point of posting if you're going to just throw out white noise?

Fallout had less hand-holding narrative, but the featured less unambiguously evil antagonists, more irony, and more mystery solving than BG. The way super-mutants were slowly revealed for instance. The lack of heavy handed narrative and cut scenes was one of Fallout's virtues, because it left the player to discover the story.

The only thing BG2's story had going for it was well voice acted villain. Other than it was EVIL WIZARD WANTS YOUR SOUL and lets throw every D&D baddie at the player along the way. Oh, and have creepy, teenage romances mixed in with one-note joke characters in the way of NPC interaction.

Pools of Radiance was the best of the otherwise crappy Gold Box games, and while it's interface was far inferior to BG's, simply by virtue of being turn based it allowed for more tactical control.

 

[hotdognights]

On a tangent, I think Neverwinter Nights is a pretty good microsm of Bio's strengths and weaknesses.

The OCs were utterly mediocre, but there's an incredible amount of high quality content modules. Adam Miller and Stephen Gagne's work outstrip anything Bioware's ever done, but we'd have never seen it if not for the engine and toolset BIO built.

Tales of Arterra, for instance, rips its general story outline off pretty heavily from BG, but does everything about 20x better.

 

[roshan]

The combat in BG1 sucked because it was simply too easy. There was no need to apply any sort of strategy or thinking, it was basically going through the same motions over and over again. IWD and IWD2 on the other hand had some much tougher battles that required some thought to get past.

Regarding soundtrack, I would say that the soundtrack in Baldurs Gate was revolutionary. Of course, a lot of it was mood/ambient music for tombs, dungeons and nights in the wilderness, and is therefore bound to be forgettable. It was never meant to be memorable music and therefore must not be judged based on that criteria. It has to be judged based on what it was meant to do, which was to enhance the mood and feeling of the areas, and in terms of that it was perfect. That being said, there were lots of memorable themes - Beregost, Naskel, the Carnval, exploring the woods in daylight, Baldurs Gate, the main theme, the various tavern themes, the church themes, many of the combat themes and so on. The soundtrack had so much to it. The sheer diversity of instruments and sounds used, the variety of the themes, and so on. BG must have had the most extensive soundtrack of its time.

Regarding pathfinding, it was flawless in the IE games. I could click on the total opposite end of the map and the characters would make their way there with ease, even in twisting dungeons, and that was without turning up search nodes.

Anyone complaining about the soundtrack and pathfinding in Baldurs Gate is not someone who should be taken seriously.