Game News Beamdog announce Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, with Chris Avellone onboard

[VioletShadow]

I want to jump on the hype-train, but can't muster any excitement at all. Why am I so jaded?

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

are you seriously implying that voice acting, writing and fonts are the most important things in BG games?

If these monkeys aren't even capable of these simple things, they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near serious gamedev. They should be doing mobile p2w shit for kongregate, not BG3. If they seriously have such bad taste as to replace a beautiful fantasy font with obvious shit, imagine the story they're going to write.

Somehow even Obsidian lacks proper taste nowadays. Just look at their official poe portraits selection. Should've seen a shit story coming when the first portraits appeared in some early KS updates.

MCA-onboard and all

Would you stop saying that? He's so far from the board, he's being paid to use a spyglass to briefly describe what he thinks of the general outlines of the board.

 

[Serious_Business]

What the fuck man. What is this shit? How about not making a paid expansion for a 20 years old shit game? That would be decent

I'm out

 

[Andhaira]

I would pay premium for a Baldurs Gate III using 5e with Avellone on board, even if it is RTwP and not TB.

 

[Irenaeus II]

I would pay premium for a Baldurs Gate III using 5e with Avellone on board, even if it is RTwP and not TB.

Seconded.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I want to jump on the hype-train, but can't muster any excitement at all. Why am I so jaded?

 

[mindx2]

Someone alert me when the BG:EEs are on sale as I won't pay $20 for each of them but I can't pass up getting this.... it's Baldur's Gate man.... yeah, I'm weak...

 

[Excidium II]

I would pay premium for a Baldurs Gate III using 5e with Avellone on board, even if it is RTwP and not TB.

Seconded.

5e is p. boring for a CRPG

 

[Irenaeus II]

I would pay premium for a Baldurs Gate III using 5e with Avellone on board, even if it is RTwP and not TB.

Seconded.

5e is p. boring for a CRPG

I like 5ed a lot and I have never seen a cRPG use it.

 

[uaciaut]

Idk BG has its pros and cons but it's 17 years since it got launched, can't people just learn from the goods, fix/remove the bads and move onto something else?

I mean it's clear at this point that Beamdog is milking a fanbase that revolves around nostalgia and maybe they're checking prospects of how a bigger project for something like BG3 would work.

Can't they or Avellone (especially him in this case, idk how talented beamdog people are) try to create/get involved with something new at this point.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Idk BG has its pros and cons but it's 17 years since it got launched, can't people just learn from the goods, fix/remove the bads and move onto something else?

I mean it's clear at this point that Beamdog is milking a fanbase that revolves around nostalgia and maybe they're checking prospects of how a bigger project for something like BG3 would work.

Can't they or Avellone (especially him in this case, idk how talented beamdog people are) try to create/get involved with something new at this point.

Well, PoE is p. awesome, despite what people with bad taste in this forum have to say.

 

[Latro]

Never played the EEs, but I'm curious about this.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

I like it. Its a shame its between both games and not a new game. And the old engine does not really hold up pretty well, especially in the character sprites. But hey its Chris. I want more now.

 

[Shin]

I wonder how they'll manage to squeeze 20+ hours gameplay between BG1 and BG2 and not have the player's party vastly over-leveled by the time you reach Amn.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Idk BG has its pros and cons but it's 17 years since it got launched, can't people just learn from the goods, fix/remove the bads and move onto something else?

I mean it's clear at this point that Beamdog is milking a fanbase that revolves around nostalgia and maybe they're checking prospects of how a bigger project for something like BG3 would work.

Can't they or Avellone (especially him in this case, idk how talented beamdog people are) try to create/get involved with something new at this point.

I think there's a nostalgic fanbase for this sort of game (which PoE also targeted I guess) precisely because of the way DnD-type games evolved. When people were questioning the design of that new 5e DnD thing (Sword Coast Legends with 4 Pc limit, cooldowns, very fast akshun etc) the response from the project lead was that the game is clearly following the evolution from BG2 > DA:O > SCL. Not everyone agrees that that direction is an improvement.

So while in an ideal world I agree that we could have seen great improvements from these games (or better yet for some of our tastes, more iterations on what TOEE offered), we didn't. So appealing to nostalgia with these throwback projects guarantees a certain amount of attention and sales.

tl;dr: if anyone wants a new DnD game the choice is this or SCL.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I wonder how they'll manage to squeeze 20+ hours gameplay between BG1 and BG2 and not have the player's party vastly over-leveled by the time you reach Amn.

Infinitron linked the answer a page ago.

 

[Infinitron]

It seems people have forgotten how experience point level thresholds work in AD&D

 

[Irenaeus II]

It seems people have forgotten how experience point level thresholds work in AD&D

http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/6904/thinktank-rebalancing-ad-d-xp-tables

Something that's drove me nuts about the AD&D xp table is how nonsensical it is. RP "reasons" aside, it just doesn't make any sense.

Most of them work exponentially and that does make sense. Fighters need 2000 for 1, then double that for 2 (4000), double it again for 3 (8000), and continue this until level 10 when it settles on 250k per level from then on out.

Most classes seem to follow this for awhile. Then you start getting some just crazy outliers and all the sudden things that used to take the longest to level take the least amount of time, and some classes have extra XP tacked on here and there, and it's just weird.

Paladins and Rangers mostly follow it til the pattern breaks at 6->7, and then starts again from 7-9, then settles on 300k per level. Every other class hits at least 10 if not higher before the XP table hits just the same value per level. If it followed the pattern of fighters, it'd only be 288k per level beyond 9, meaning they'd hit 36 instead of just 34 by the ToB level cap.

Mages follow this rule til level 6, when suddenly it only takes 20k xp again to go from 6 to 7, then 30k to go from 7 to 8, then 45k to get to 9. "wot." Then it starts to slow way, way down again. If it followed the pattern, they'd only hit 8 by the end of BG1, but be leveling faster at 12 and beyond. End game cap would be 34 instead of 31.

Clerics follow this rule til 4 (1500, then 3000, then 6000, then 13000) but at least it's not that far off what double would be. Then you need to gain 14500 to hit the next XP level. But now all the sudden we start falling the rule again when none of the other spell casters do, needing 55000, 110000 and then again we decide to break again by needing 225000. Meanwhile, mages who were leveling up significantly slower than clerics up until this point get a weird boost in how rapid they level comparitivly and hit level 9 by the end of BG1 while Clerics are stuck at 8.

Then we have thieves, who also magically start leveling faster comparitively to "the rule" at level 7 to 8. It starts going additive rather than multiplicative. (20k xp needed, then 30k, then 40k, then 50k)

Then we have druids and honestly who knows what the hell is going on there because it doesn't seem to follow any pattern, at any point, til after the nonsensical climb from 14 to 15.

 

[DeepOcean]

Anyone that played the EEs, I didn't because those world maps they came up with gave me cancer, we know that Beamdog can't write for shit (not that Bioware is much better), did they add any new areas on the EEs? I wanna know if they have any clue about combat encounters and area design. Sure, there are a bunch of modders working for them but they could be more of the kind of modders that added new companions on BG 2 ( that were all awful) and not the guys that did gameplay overhauls.

 

[Zeriel]

Oh boy, let's rape and defile Baldur's Gate again!

 

[Spectacle]

I wonder how they'll manage to squeeze 20+ hours gameplay between BG1 and BG2 and not have the player's party vastly over-leveled by the time you reach Amn.

Spoiler

They're going to give no XP for killing monsters in combat

Spoiler

 

[ArchAngel]

EE versions had some good encounters but most I tried were not. I only played bg2ee half way and skipped on most new characters so I might have mised the best stuff.
I hope this expansion gives us some of the cool mage battles from bg2 but one encounter from the stream didn't show promise in enemy mage AI.

 

[Rake]

Also, are you seriously confident Beamdog will be able to come up with content that will match the original games?

Not realy. But that is irrelevant to how good IE was.
I'll make it realy simple for you why the critisisms that Beamdog using a 15 years old engine are idiotic.
We know IE is capable to produce a game like BG2. So there is absolutely no fucking reason not to use it. Any other engine, even if technicaly superior, will cut into their budget.
PoE would be a better game if Obsidian had the ability to used the IE and just produced content with it.

 

[mixer]

I would pay premium for a Baldurs Gate III using 5e with Avellone on board, even if it is RTwP and not TB.

But... why? Bhaalspawn saga is over, adding more stuff to it will not make it more awesome. Might as well make new game using 5e with Avellone. BG3 would be just name rape, and i can't support that.

 

[Somberlain]

But... why? Bhaalspawn saga is over, adding more stuff to it will not make it more awesome.

Original but cancelled BG3, Black Hound, wasn't going to be about Bhaalspawn saga either.