BG3 Was Almost a reality ... again
Shadowdemon
Member Posts: 80
I saw this article this morning. We all know about the BG3 that was being done by Black Isle (Project Jefferson - The Black Hound) a while back and was canceled at the last minute. It sounds like Obsidian was 'inches' away from doing it a few years ago when Atari canceled it last minute on them. One more opportunity for BG3 ripped away at the last minute. Grrrrrr! This project seems cursed 
Anyway here is the link: http://kotaku.com/5967965/obsidian-almost-made-baldurs-gate-3
Anyway here is the link: http://kotaku.com/5967965/obsidian-almost-made-baldurs-gate-3
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W00t!
Baldur's Gate is a party focused real-time with pause RPG that emulates(to a certain degree) the D&D ruleset of its time. If/when BG3 ever becomes a reality, it had better be the same. I can bend on the 3D thing since BG was only 2D because of how crappy 3D was at the time, but the other aspects are vital parts of Baldur's Gate's identity.
I hope it will be rereleased on steam anytime soon, so I can test the campaign myself.
KotOR 2 was pretty bad as well...buggy mess, incoherent story due to a bunch of elements getting cut out, ultimately turning into a bland mess. (though the whole KotOR series was cliche garbage to begin with so who knows, maybe Obsidian wasn't wholly to blame for that mess).
And don't even get me started on that atrocious crime Bethesda perpetrated on the Fall-out franchise...ugh.
With that in mind, I have to say I'm really bummed the project was scrapped
Imagine that! In Rashaman, they throw away Plate + 5!! Obviously too poor to even sell...I mean, c'mon! Oh yeah, and Epic Level Gnolls... *snort*!! Why haven't they already conquered all of Faerun and killed their pitiful Red Wizard Masters?!
Talk about loss of immersion!!
Thankfully, it was not long after that someone brought out a way to disable the spirit meter. That made the game much more enjoyable IMHO.
Story very good, game engine bad. Many bad design decisions made (Epic Gnolls, Barrel-o-l00tz, etc).
And for someone coming from a NWN background, NWN2 was a complete and utter disaster. It still is, and will remain so, especially since the last patch will never be released.
With all its faults NWN2 was still vastly superior to the mess that was the original
The same applies to the KotOR games
And as far as longevity goes, NWN1's online scene is still going strong with 100s of games being run at any given time. NWN 2 has like 10....and 2's PWs can't even compare to NWN1. Big empty worlds of that look spacious but you actually only walk in a very narrow path...no exploring and the like....Where as the best NWN1 worlds are almost like playing PnP, complete with tons of corrections to bring things more in line with what they should be, and large lush environs to explore, and if you use some of the user created graphic packs, it looks great too.
KotOR1 is the typical BioWare "SUPER BRIGHT WHITE or SUPER DARK BLACK" choice. It's your standard story of good and evil. KotOR2 is much different and gives us one of the best, if not the best, characters ever to have been written in history of gaming.
I'm sorry, but both NWN2 and KotOR2 are far better than their BioWare predecessors. Obsidian does the right stuff - but they mess around with certain details that outweigh heavily on the final product. Story wise, they were *always* the best.
There are many, many custom made Mods (especially Campaigns) are just better, storyline-wise.
If one does a complete comparison of all areas, then NWN does win out over NWN2 - and that is telling. NWN2 was supposed to be the sequel to NWN ala BG2 was to BG.
And in this it failed, miserably.
I have no idea on what you base your opinion on - perhaps the graphical quality or storyline of the OCs? If so, then yeah, you would have some basis in fact. But in most other areas, NWN2 falls short. And with Custom Content, NWN comes graphically close to NWN2...
If NWN2 was such a superior game, then everyone would have switched from NWN to NWN2. But they didn't.
I have no opinion on the KotOR games.
So much hating the KotOR games here
Examples here would be NWN2 and KotOR2.
NWN2 has a 2 year development time. Bioware had over 5 years for NWN.
KotOR2 was done from start to finish in 11 months and was forced to cut a ton of content due to pressure from Atari. Bioware did the first one in 3 years.
I find it amusing that after Bioware left for EA, Atari came back and finally seemed willing to give Obsidian their due.
Alpha Protocol and Dungeon Siege III bombed, though. An interesting article regarding Alpha Protocol:
http://www.1up.com/news/alleged-alpha-protocol-developer-calls
Fallout: New Vegas, I love. I think it's way more fun and interesting than Fallout III. It had its fair share of bugs, but most of them were fixed.
I'd choose Obsidian to create BGIII any day over Bioware, though. Bioware has lost it. I do look forward to Project: Eternity and South Park: Stick of Truth. I've rarely seen developers as happy and relieved. Especially regarding Project: Eternity they've stated that they love that they finally have the opportunity to create and own their own IP to love and nurture.
But as i said, people's opinions vary. I liked nwn1 as well but i agreee that nwn2 was crap if for no other reason than the camera was horrendous and gave me headaches and i felt like it was made by a modern day Geppetto. So much of the animation in the cut scenes especially looked like puppets which made them look like garbage.
And again i agree with many of the folks in that i too liked MoTB(despite my above mentioned criticisms). I never did play storm of zehyr. It's still sitting on my shelf with about 10inches of dust on it.
Quick fyi about nwn1 multi-player online players, mostly through the gamespy software. I read that some company had bought out gamespy from ign and the new company has apparently shut down all servers with no comment or information about what they plan to do about it. I've not seen anything yet as to any up-to-date news about that but i confess, i haven't followed it dilligently.
NWN's was about as entertaining as watching paint dry
Can't imagine how anyone in their right mind can like it more than NWN2's (which itself isn't anything spectacular either but still)
And that's just the OC. If we throw MotB into the mix... Care to elaborate? If I want MP i'll play MMORPGS. It's a nice bonus for SP RPGs but otherwise it's largely irrelevant.
Oh and please don't go "bethesda fanboy" on me. If the community had to fix a game it doesn't make the original game better, it just shows off that other people can do a better job than the devs.
As far as replay-value is concerned, NWN2 rapes NWN
I'd also like to mention the mind-numbingly idiotic idea to replace companions with henchmen AND limiting the party size to PC + 1 henchman (although considering how horrible those characters were, it's probably better that the game doesn't saddle you with more than one) AND not even giving the player control over the bloody useless things, thus killing off any tactical aspect and pretty much turning the game into a hack&slash (and not even a fun, relaxing one at that) Again with the community... how does that relate to BioWere's job at creating the game? And don't even mention the toolset, that's not part of the game
With that said again, I'd like you to name a few of those custom campaigns that have a better story (which includes immersion and by extension voice-acting) than MotB
Oh and btw NWN2 has Khelgar. Much better than Aribeth
p.s.
Even though Obsidian have proven time and again that they're the best when it comes to RPGs they still take a lot of undeserved heat, mostly from the same people who roam the internet, singing the praises of those over-hyped sellouts at BioWere
I actually agreed that I liked MotB, story-wise....unfortunately, being stuck in the NWN2 engine was a MASSIVE minus.
As for classes, they used the same garbage from NWN, AND committed further class-rape on the new kids on the block (and how badly they F'd up Warlocks will NEVER be forgiven).
NWN 1 wasn't really meant as a game (WotC F'd up their original plans back in the twilight days of BG2), the campaign was just a bonus to help sell the aurora toolset, and it worked splendidly. They improved a little bit for SoU, HotD though was a let down...it had some potential but all the ridiculous garbage god-gear that gets thrown at you really turned me off (MotB is also guilty of this, even if the story was better done). I mean hell, the advertizement for NWN doesn't even mention the campaign at all, it mentions how you can create your own adventures, and DM them with your friends pretty much like a table top game. The community was always the focus of for NWN 1. NWN2 was just a poser trying to replicate that success..with mixed results, which is seen clearly through a MUCH smaller community.
And please...don't bring Bethesda up in this discussion.....While Obsidian has had it's share of buggy as hell on release games, they do at least tend to fix some of the problems themselves...Bethesda bugs are their main identifying trademark. They won't fix that crap themselves since making unplayably buggy SHAT is what separates them from their competitors.
NWN2's interface is a clunky mess. Even the majority of the people who like NWN2 will agree that NWN1's was a HELL of a lot better.
And like most things, graphics ARE in fact subjective, requiring a huge amount of graphical power doesn't mean shat is gonna be something else...it's still gonna be shat...just using more system resources to do it. I find NWN2 to be quite repulsive graphically, and while it's fairly bland in it's base form, NWN doesn't elicit the same reaction.
Honestly.
If you are going to criticise something, at least criticise it right!
NWN2 OC has its problems. Mostly due to a distinct lack of polish, and a really bad (but not ME3 level bad) ending that was quite literally "rocks fell, everyone died".
And people were not pleased.
MotB is forking awesome though.
Though I have to say seeing "we wanted to do BG3 like Bethesda did Fallout 3" sent chills down my spine in horror. Dear god.
Fallout 3 wasn't an awful game, in fact it was addictive as hell, but it genuinely has (in my subjective opinion) the worse Main Questline in any game i've ever played (that wasn't overall a terrible game).
Please?
But I suppose it's more likely that ... well everything is more likely.