Owlcat's next game is an AAA title that will need full voice acting to compete with BG3

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Are we seriously pretending bg3 had good combat?

Baldur's Gate 3 only has good combat in comparison with the execrable RTwP combat system of its predecessors.

 

[Swen]

Are we seriously pretending bg3 had good combat? 5e plus larians house rules made the combat a waste of time filler could not stomach finishing the game how bad it was. Also the illusion of choice was lol bad all you did was choose what map/level you load into next like your playing left 4 dead or a cheap game for kids bg3 was larping as a epic roleplaying game. Oh god larians 5e gimicky itemization belongs in a nightmare. Game was a colossal failure outside of interesting characters and it even handled that poorly with the badly implemented approval system.

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Are we seriously pretending bg3 had good combat? 5e plus larians house rules made the combat a waste of time filler could not stomach finishing the game how bad it was. Also the illusion of choice was lol bad all you did was choose what map/level you load into next like your playing left 4 dead or a cheap game for kids bg3 was larping as a epic roleplaying game. Oh god larians 5e gimicky itemization belongs in a nightmare. Game was a colossal failure outside of interesting characters and it even handled that poorly with the badly implemented approval system.

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

Disco elysium

 

[Rhobar121]

Are we seriously pretending bg3 had good combat? 5e plus larians house rules made the combat a waste of time filler could not stomach finishing the game how bad it was. Also the illusion of choice was lol bad all you did was choose what map/level you load into next like your playing left 4 dead or a cheap game for kids bg3 was larping as a epic roleplaying game. Oh god larians 5e gimicky itemization belongs in a nightmare. Game was a colossal failure outside of interesting characters and it even handled that poorly with the badly implemented approval system.

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

I'd like to know too. I don't remember any crpg in which it was really good compared to other genres.
Usually, when CRPGs excel in their combat system, they do so in a negative way.

 

[MjKorz]

Owlcat is one of the studios whose games can benefit from the switch to "full" voice acting (minus the protagonist). Their games are riddled with endless piles of graphomania-induced verbal diarrhea with virtually nonexistent class/race/background reactivity. Switching to "full" voice acting inevitably leads to the trimming of dialogue trees due to extra voice-acting costs, which would be bad in an actually good RPG with lots of reactivity, but in Owlcat's case it'll serve to make the narrative more focused and coherent. Owlcat games need smaller dialogue trees with more reactivity and the switch to full voice-acting does not hinder this kind of narrative design transition.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

There are only a few things I hate more than voice crapting. It instantly has me reaching for the mute button and reading the dialogue at my own pace anyway.

Hopefully it will soon be solved by AI reading text to the morons while leaving other people alone.

 

[Aarwolf]

Are we seriously pretending bg3 had good combat? 5e plus larians house rules made the combat a waste of time filler could not stomach finishing the game how bad it was. Also the illusion of choice was lol bad all you did was choose what map/level you load into next like your playing left 4 dead or a cheap game for kids bg3 was larping as a epic roleplaying game. Oh god larians 5e gimicky itemization belongs in a nightmare. Game was a colossal failure outside of interesting characters and it even handled that poorly with the badly implemented approval system.

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

King Arthur: Knight's Tale
Dungeon of Naheulbeuk
Expeditions: Conquistador and Viking

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Are we seriously pretending bg3 had good combat? 5e plus larians house rules made the combat a waste of time filler could not stomach finishing the game how bad it was. Also the illusion of choice was lol bad all you did was choose what map/level you load into next like your playing left 4 dead or a cheap game for kids bg3 was larping as a epic roleplaying game. Oh god larians 5e gimicky itemization belongs in a nightmare. Game was a colossal failure outside of interesting characters and it even handled that poorly with the badly implemented approval system.

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

Codex Game of the Year 2023 Jagged Alliance 3

 

[Swen]

Are we seriously pretending bg3 had good combat? 5e plus larians house rules made the combat a waste of time filler could not stomach finishing the game how bad it was. Also the illusion of choice was lol bad all you did was choose what map/level you load into next like your playing left 4 dead or a cheap game for kids bg3 was larping as a epic roleplaying game. Oh god larians 5e gimicky itemization belongs in a nightmare. Game was a colossal failure outside of interesting characters and it even handled that poorly with the badly implemented approval system.

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

Codex Game of the Year 2023 Jagged Alliance 3

Not a real rpg though.

Also remind me what the metascore of JA3 is and compare that to BG3, thanks.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Not a real rpg though.

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

Aside from real RPG and Codex GotY 2023 Jagged Alliance 3, some examples of CRPGs with good combat:

• Turn-Based Tactical
  • Pool of Radiance and the rest of the Gold Box games
  • Perihelion
  • Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and sequel
  • Temple of Elemental Evil
  • Age of Decadence
  • Wasteland 3
• Real-Time Action-Based
  • Demon's Souls
  • Dark Souls
  • Dragon's Dogma
  • Salt & Sanctuary
  • Dragon's Dogma II

A number of Codexers would also support non-tactical turn-based combat, such as that found in Wizardry-likes.

 

[Raghar]

Owlcat founder breaks down RPG budgets and Larian’s impact on genre: “We can’t invest $200 million to make BG3”​

https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/18/rpg-budgets-owlcat-cannot-invest-200-million-to-make-bg3

“We made all our games with partial voiceover, because 1) it’s expensive and 2) it makes the development process extremely difficult. Especially when you have one million words,” Shpilchevskiy said. “Looking at BG3, you understand: it is becoming a must-have feature, which doesn’t guarantee you success, but if you don’t meet that bar, your game is considered one that no longer fits into the right category. So it looks like we will have to do a full voiceover for our next games.”

They are literally mentally disabled. Their games had problems called bugs. And theirs most recent game had problem called badly thought RPG system. And that's it.

Also they had problem with loving black characters. Like why was that ranger with OP stats? Why was the first tank character black? Person with sex change and black. If it was some British comedy about dysfunctional society like Fawlty towers, I'd understand, but that game wasn't a comedy.

Third game had black, but I think you can kill her fairly easily and if it was one game of three, it was just an exception from rule. (In fact, it could be easily explained by original owner of the ship being a collector of curiosities.) Actually, if they had guts they would claim she is ONLY black in that star sector. And then she would be fine. Especially if she wouldn't talk like mentally disabled moron. (Which was probably owlcat games attempt to make her feel of being of different ethnicity.)


And I could use similar analysis to show more serious mishaps, but I think the above proves my point.

But my advice for owlcat is: paying for voice acting is a waste. (BG3 wasn't successful because of voice acting, Larian got so good reputation it could create decent 2E BG3 and it would be fine without voice acting. Instead they did Divinity:OS 3, used 5E, and created wonky story, and people said Larian you imbecile why didn't you simply made game about blonde knight on a white horse who is marrying a cute princess? BG3 had enough positives to be successful in spite of these mishaps.)

 

[Saxon1974]

Owlcat founder breaks down RPG budgets and Larian’s impact on genre: “We can’t invest $200 million to make BG3”​

https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/18/rpg-budgets-owlcat-cannot-invest-200-million-to-make-bg3

“We made all our games with partial voiceover, because 1) it’s expensive and 2) it makes the development process extremely difficult. Especially when you have one million words,” Shpilchevskiy said. “Looking at BG3, you understand: it is becoming a must-have feature, which doesn’t guarantee you success, but if you don’t meet that bar, your game is considered one that no longer fits into the right category. So it looks like we will have to do a full voiceover for our next games.”

Good grief, could care less about voice overs, I usually turn them off. This is a good way to destroy a studio with wasted money.

 

[scytheavatar]

Not a real rpg though.

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

Aside from real RPG and Codex GotY 2023 Jagged Alliance 3, some examples of CRPGs with good combat:

• Turn-Based Tactical
  • Pool of Radiance and the rest of the Gold Box games
  • Perihelion
  • Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and sequel
  • Temple of Elemental Evil
  • Age of Decadence
  • Wasteland 3
• Real-Time Action-Based
  • Demon's Souls
  • Dark Souls
  • Dragon's Dogma
  • Salt & Sanctuary
  • Dragon's Dogma II

A number of Codexers would also support non-tactical turn-based combat, such as that found in Wizardry-likes.

Baldur's Gate 3 has better combat than all of the games mentioned other than the Souls games and argubly the first Dark Sun game (Wake of the Ravager had dogshit combat compared to Shattered Lands). I think the list of CRPGs with better combat than BG3 isn't big at all. Solasta certainly is one of them (and that changed with the DLCs). Argubly DOS2 too.

 

[Takamori]

Jesus fucking Christ Owlcat games is retarded? They saw obsidian go through this voiced shit meme and they ate a pile of turds doing that.
Make your graphics prettier, dont balance the game with your ass, deliver the game at least 50% done instead of whatever the fuck they do and you have to wait 1 year until EE.
Like VA should be the last thing on the list even we are talking about expecting something from an AAA game.

 

[Mauman]

God I hope not. Fact is there will always be at least one voice (probably more considering modern times) that makes me want to strangle someone.

At least when there's just small parts of VA it can be tolerable.

It saddens me that there's so many in this world who've lost the ability to simply enjoy reading.

 

[luj1]

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

Look at this retard

ToEE
KotC I
KotC II (esp. Hearkenwold)
Fallout Tactics
Tales of Maj Eyal
even Wizardry 6-8

 

[luj1]

• Perihelion
• Dark Sun: Shattered Lands

Good games that I adore, but hardly exceptional combat

 

[luj1]

Pool of Radiance

lol

 

[MjKorz]

Owlcat founder breaks down RPG budgets and Larian’s impact on genre: “We can’t invest $200 million to make BG3”​

https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/18/rpg-budgets-owlcat-cannot-invest-200-million-to-make-bg3

“We made all our games with partial voiceover, because 1) it’s expensive and 2) it makes the development process extremely difficult. Especially when you have one million words,” Shpilchevskiy said. “Looking at BG3, you understand: it is becoming a must-have feature, which doesn’t guarantee you success, but if you don’t meet that bar, your game is considered one that no longer fits into the right category. So it looks like we will have to do a full voiceover for our next games.”

And theirs most recent game had problem called badly thought RPG system.

The funniest thing is that they think they can salvage the Rogue Trader combat when the entire system was horribly designed from the ground up to revolve around extra turn stacking and alpha striking. They are now removing the extra turn stacking strategies from the game which just shows that they had no idea what they were doing when they designed the system in the first place.

 

[Swen]

Okay then wiseguy what crpg has good combat?

Look at this retard

ToEE
KotC I
KotC II (esp. Hearkenwold)
Fallout Tactics
Tales of Maj Eyal
even Wizardry 6-8

....no

 

[luj1]

I doubt you know anything

For laughing at ToEE and KoTC you should be flogged and impaled on a giant black dildo, made in Poland

 

[Vulpes]

Have you seen anyone get excited about something like environmental destruction in an SP game?

Yes, blowing shit up was the main appeal of both Red Faction Guerrilla and the Just Cause series.

 

[TumblingTorin]

I think a big problem they have is their presentation and writing. Owlcat games, Pillars of Eternity and other similar games are just copying the old Infinity Engine games' presentation and barely doing anything to improve on it. Yeah, those cutscenes of important things happening are nice and all, but one of the big things you do in these games when you are not in combat is dialogue, and it is boring.

When PoE2 added full voice acting, it didn't add much to dialogue. Characters are still just standing there, barely moving and with barely any life. These are video games, the visual aspects are important. Was there even a point to bother looking at the top half of the screen when dialogue happens. I feel like VO just enhance what is there, the writing is long and drawn out, so the VO made it feel longer and more drawn out. The addition of portraits to all NPCs added more to dialogue then the VO. If the portrait actually changed expressions, it would have been better.

The old IE games are limited with what they can do because of their sprites, but these new games?
FFS, these games are in 3D! Take advantage of it! You don't have to do cinematic cutscenes all the time or have in depth mo-cap, just give dialogue something to give it more life and personality. Even something as simple as the character standing differently or having them gesture during each line can add some personality.

Of course, better presentation and full VO won't matter if the writing is long, boring, and shit. They need to cut down on descriptions. If you are already showing it on screen, why still write down what is happening? I know Planescape described a lot of stuff because of how strange it is but I don't think Baldur's Gate really had a lot of descriptions in their dialogue. It's been awhile since I played those games but weren't the old BG dialogue mainly just conversions?

 

[scytheavatar]

I think over time it is getting increasingly apparent that Owlcat is a B tier developer which produced the A tier Pathfinder games through brute force and will. Kind of like how the Path of Exile devs are a bunch of hacks yet the game is a success because they keep producing content for it. Rogue Trader is a much closer indicator to what Owlcat is capable of making, and now with them going full 400 man studio with multiple games I am concern about the struggles they will be facing next.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Baldur's Gate 3 has better combat than all of the games mentioned other than the Souls games and argubly the first Dark Sun game

Out of games I've only played this year I can name at least 3 with better combat than BG3: Dungeon Rats, Dwarf Run & Dragons Dogma (don't count that one? still have 2 examples from just this year)