Divinity What makes a "Baldur's Gate" to you?

[Chippy]

At the risk of sounding like a prat, and writing pages of why I was enamoured with BG 20 years ago: BG was IS just greater than the sum of its parts.

The writing played a major role in setting the tone in BG1, which was better than BG2, but Gaider still did his best work and it carried over. The attention to detail showed the developers actually loved what they were doing with the game & setting. The way it made the player (or was it just me) feel like I was creating and actual living, breathing, historical character in the FR - is one of the reasons BG3 is such a spit in the eye.

I don't think it matters too much to put this and 100 other things into discussion - because in the past 2 decades or so, I've noticed that people get totally different things out of the games than I did. So the original game was like it was produced by the Ford>Ken Miles>Carroll Shelby relationship, and now (decades later) you have a modern company with a new generation have admitted they didn't even know what the original was...and they've been asked to make another one.

Yeah. Ok.

 

[Morality Games]

Maybe Baldur's Gate is so fucking boring of a town so nothing really needs to take place there. So why name the game Baldur's gate (now a trilogy) if its so damn unimportant. Well, maybe it is important. Has anyone put a list of how many npcs (important or otherwise), quests, important items, hidden features, encounters, and other are located in Baldur's Gate 1-2 and the expansions. A nicely detailed bit on JUST Baldur's Gate the city. Maybe its in the walkthroughs. I think I passed through BG a few times in the Savage Frontier Gold Box games (or was that Neverwinter?)

Compared to Waterdeep (Undermountain, political intrigue of the Masked Lords), or Neverwinter (sole beacon of civilization amid ancient secrets buried beneath an untamed wilderness full of monsters), Baldur's Gate is indeed roughly as interesting as a wet carrot and the last place I would set a series in. I will observe, as sort of a port into Sword Coast from the rest of the world, it is a good location for adventures themed around subversive foreign influences and cults. Any cult that implants itself in Baldur's Gate is in a prime location to spread itself into the rest of Sword Coast or indeed any other point in the world.

Larian's game is still going to be more of a Baldur's Gate game than any game since the first because it still going to be themed around and take place within Baldur's Gate, though.

 

[pomenitul]

It's not a sufficient condition in and of itself, but Larian not being involved is part of Baldur's Gate's quintessence.

 

[vortex]

It's not a sufficient condition in and of itself, but Larian not being involved is part of Baldur's Gate's quintessence.

Larian can evolve into more serious game dev out there. They should have been given a chance. If not them, BG3 would never take off, probably.
RTWP is part of Baldur's Gate's quintessence though. Despair.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The squid ship fascinated me. I really need to be looking at my spelljammer lore but that's a damn fine air unit.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Shitty writing with boring combat and pretty painted landscapes.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

What are the features without which a game cannot be a part of the "Baldur's Gate" line of games?

The absence of Larian's stupid shit