It's because they've all played with Sword Coast Stratagems and no longer remember what the game Bioware designed was like.
I've only used it once. The other dozens of playthroughs were without.
So you play it like an adventure game? BG2 is many things but challenging is not one of them.
I think we clearly became top tier
HOW INTERPLAY FOUNDER HELPED JUMP-START BLIZZARD — IGN UNFILTERED
Kickstarting an industry titan.
Brian Fargo, the founder of Interplay and inXile Entertainment, was instrumental in the creation of Silicon & Synapse, which ultimately became Blizzard Entertainment, and has shared the story behind its inception.
On that latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered, Fargo first explained how he knew the guys who would go on to found Blizzard—Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce, and Allen Adham—saying that at the time, because there was no internet, they would all trade games with each other.
Then sometime later, Adham went into the military, and upon his return, he saw what Fargo was doing with Interplay and wanted to get into the business as well. "He got back and he said, 'I want to do what you're doing. That looks great.' And I said, 'Well, let me help you.' And so we gave them their first contracts to get them launched into the business," Fargo said.
So, thanks to a publishing deal with Interplay, Silicon & Synapse was able to create and launch the Super Nintendo game RPM Racing in 1991. The title was followed by The Lost Vikings and Rock 'n Roll Racing, both of which launched in 1993, one year prior to the company's brief name change to Chaos Studios. Shortly thereafter, they ultimately settled on the name Blizzard Entertainment, the studio that ranks as IGN's eighth greatest video game maker of all time.
For more about Fargo's incredible impact as a game designer during the days of Interplay, check out the first part of this month's IGN Unfiltered interview, which goes live this week.
Wtf is Tides? Why did they have to c reate such convoluted and boring concept for their game? WTF with the writing? Why is it so tasteless and filled with meaningless descriptions? Doesn't make any sense.
Tell us about the NOLA expansion. Are your VR efforts centralized in that office, or is there a lot of overlap between it and Newport Beach?
BF: Having an office in the South has allowed us to draw talent that wouldn’t be able to move to California. inXile is really starting to hit its stride with the quality it’s producing, and I’m proud of the teams we’ve assembled.
MF: The main challenge of opening the NOLA office was figuring out effective lines of communication between multiple studios. Since nothing we develop is being exclusively made at either location, one of the things that I’m the most proud of is that the two studios have found a way to work like one team. One of the risks of growing a studio is that the internal culture tends to change as you get larger. Having two smaller studios instead of one large one has made it easier for us to maintain the type of environment that we want to create these games in.
It’s been reported that Brian wants to retire after Wasteland 3 ships. Any plans for Matt to step up and take the helm?
BF: I think Matt’s enjoying his New Orleans experience too much, plus we have a few years before that happens.
MF: I don’t think any of us at inXile have ever spent any time dreaming of being CEO. We’re here because we like the products we make and the culture we’ve created to make them in. I’m sure it would be a more interesting story if I described it as being more like Game of Thrones, but it’s safe to say that nobody is lining up to take Brian’s job. Besides, I’ll believe it when I see it. They’ll pull his smartphone out of his cold, dead hand, and when they do he’ll be in the middle of an email that’s most likely about some sort of game or technology that he saw.
INTERPLAY FOUNDER ON WORKING WITH NINTENDO ON MARIO TEACHES TYPING — IGN UNFILTERED
Back when inXile Entertainment founder Brian Fargo was still head of Interplay, he created Mario Teaches Typing for Nintendo, and has since shared with IGN what it was like working on the project.
On the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered, Fargo discussed how the idea for the game came about. "At the time, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing was the big hit," he said, noting he knew its creator Les Crane, who, in addition to being a radio announcer and television talk show host, was the chairman of The Software Toolworks.
Fargo said he "had seen somewhere that over half the people were buying [Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing] to teach their kid to type," and so he thought a game like it with Mario as the instructor would be a great idea.
"So I thought, 'Well, a teacher... What's more interesting than a teacher but Mario?' So I went to Nintendo and pitched them and they loved it and it was a huge success," Fargo said.
However, Crane wasn't particularly happy about the game's success. In fact, when Fargo went to one of Crane's shows, he said Crane "was giving me the stink eye." Fargo later called him up to find out what was wrong, only to learn that Crane was upset with him because of his work on Mario Teaches Typing, which was in direct competition with his educational software.
Fargo also revealed how one poorly-crafted Mario product from another company ended Interplay's Mario game-making relationship with Nintendo. "We did Mario Teaches Typing and then we did Mario's Game Gallery. [Shigeru] Miyamoto liked what we were doing and so everybody was happy, and then somebody else came out with some other Mario product that was not high quality," he explained. "And so they came back and said, 'No more with Mario.' And we said, 'Yeah, but you like us.' And he said, 'Brian, we do but... no more.'"
In addition to Mario Teaches Typing, its sequel, Mario's Game Gallery and the recently released smartphone game Super Mario Run, there are several other titles that branched out beyond Nintendo's own hardware. Check out IGN's list of 8 Mario games released on non-Nintendo platforms for a look at a few of these games.
For more fascinating stories from Fargo as a game designer during the days of Interplay, check out the second part of this month's IGN Unfiltered interview, which goes live this week.
The way some around here are talking about it, you'd think all of BG2 was one giant mage duel, that required a massive amount of tactics, clever positioning, and careful selection of gear to even think about beating.
It's because they've all played with Sword Coast Stratagems and no longer remember what the game Bioware designed was like.
And is that really Avellone?