There is no way they could have done ToB as a full sequel. The power creep factor was just too high. It has been pointed out in the thread that D&D just doesn't play nearly as well at ridiculously high levels. I couldn't imagine trying to balance an entire game the size of the first two entries in the series if the levels are BEGINNING in the twenties. Leveling up is the highlight for many of us when we play. There just wouldn't be enough there unless you ended up going to Sigil and laying the smack down on the Lady of Pain herself! Maybe they should of used this game as the ending for 2nd Edition and had the character whack out Vecna on the way. Or, maybe they ended the story the right way after all. BG3 would be much better served with a new character starting at level one.
D&D handles the epic levels just fine, provided you introduce problems of an epic nature, like something that threatens the entire plane, or multiple planes, or something dealing directly with a war between gods. So, yes, having Gromnir's mercenaries and the armies of Tethyr be a challenge for the PC at that point was stupid. If they wanted to do that, they should have made it a gauntlet and literally thrown a couple hundred or more enemies at you in waves. But, if they take the shenanigans to another plane, or planes, epic levels make a lot more sense when you're fighting githyanki dragon riders and efreeti warlords.
@Schneidend That sounds like an awesome game! It just doesn't sound like a very good Baldur's Gate game. And I don't think this is an appropriate place for a real discussion about the pros and cons of D&D at high levels. But if you enjoy that sort of thing the discussions around D&D Next over at the WotC forums should be right up your alley. There is plenty of high level balance bashing over there! I do believe that when power levels reach god like status a real life DM is necessary to smooth out the wrinkles.
IMHO Torment was the Infinity Engines purest roleplaying experience. Icewind Dale was the purest dungeon crawl experience. Baldur's Gate was somewhere in the middle with plenty of exploration. I don't think the power level present after BG2 was going to continue to progress within the context of the Baldur's Gate theme. But I would buy an epic level Icewind Dale in a heartbeat. Maybe set it in the Blood War if you don't care that WotC scrapped that idea.
ToB pulled a hollywood, they took 100 hours of potential plot and gameplay, and turned it into a short expansion to a story without much to do with eachother to wrap up the series.
Thief: 200 Hide in Shadows, 200 Move Silently, yet every enemy in ToB could see my thief when in Stealth, rendering the LongSword GrandMastery I had worked so hard for pretty much useless.
Thief: 200 Hide in Shadows, 200 Move Silently, yet every enemy in ToB could see my thief when in Stealth, rendering the LongSword GrandMastery I had worked so hard for pretty much useless.
I didn't enjoy it as much as the original but being connected with Baldurs Gate I would have bought it anyway. Like a Star Trek movie people are gonna go good or bad.
High level AD&D campaigns are notoriously difficult to design because of the ridiculous power levels of the player characters -- it's one of the reasons why most people (in my experience) prefer level ~1-15 content, be it in video games or tabletop games. Within that level range the content is still challenging and the widest and most interesting selection of beasties can be used. Once players get above level 20, they can start challenging gods and ridiculous things like that, and it just becomes silly... That's why a full blown BG3 as a continuation of the Bhaal spawn storyline would have been very unlikely to work or been satisfying.
I like ToB -- I don't think it needed to be much longer than it was, and I felt it provided a very satisfying end to my character's story. It was linear, sure, but how could it not have been? Its story has a great sense of urgency, and I think random areas or encounters that are just there for the sake of exploration would've felt terribly out of place.
I didn't like the start because it felt so disconnected with the ending of SoA. Suddenly you are thrown in to the middle of a war that ravages across the realm, yet you never heard about it before. By the time i got settled in on the story i was already getting near the finish, where i ended up fighting an oversized pms woman on a space ship.
The game definitely felt rushed, which was even admitted by the original developer who also made Ascension if i remember correctly. I would have preferred if they spread the story across a full game (bg3) instead of packing it all in to an expansion.
i thought ToB was allright, the only problem is, when you play it 100 times it gets easy as ballz, the only real peave i would have with it is, it be a little bit short, it gives you an 8 000 000 xp cap maximum, but unless you gring spiders in some fashion you would never hit it, i think the best i have every done, going through SoA first and importing to ToB and doing absolutely every quest blah bleh blah, i was at 7 000 000 xp, so i had to go to yaga shura's unclave and grind that last 1 000 000 xp in baddies, i say the only thing that needs to change is make it so achieving that 8 000 000 xp doesnt have to be done in a grind, i think thats what the main problem is and why people think the game is short, because if you just start with a team in ToB you have 2.5 million xp and if you do absolutely everything without grinding i think you might be able to hit 6 000 000 xp just before you start chapter 10, thats a lot of experience away from the cap, i say fill that in and then ToB will be 100% fine, plus if ToB is boring to you, start a mulitplayer team, make them all fighters, and then dual class the last 3 fighters into a cleric, thief, and a mage, and play on the hardest difficulty, i just did that a week or so ago and it was a hoot on how brutal it was my mage class didnt surpass my figther class until after i finished watchers keep and the forth challenge, good times
Comments
IMHO Torment was the Infinity Engines purest roleplaying experience. Icewind Dale was the purest dungeon crawl experience. Baldur's Gate was somewhere in the middle with plenty of exploration. I don't think the power level present after BG2 was going to continue to progress within the context of the Baldur's Gate theme. But I would buy an epic level Icewind Dale in a heartbeat. Maybe set it in the Blood War if you don't care that WotC scrapped that idea.
I like ToB -- I don't think it needed to be much longer than it was, and I felt it provided a very satisfying end to my character's story. It was linear, sure, but how could it not have been? Its story has a great sense of urgency, and I think random areas or encounters that are just there for the sake of exploration would've felt terribly out of place.
I do
By the time i got settled in on the story i was already getting near the finish, where i ended up fighting an oversized pms woman on a space ship.
The game definitely felt rushed, which was even admitted by the original developer who also made Ascension if i remember correctly.
I would have preferred if they spread the story across a full game (bg3) instead of packing it all in to an expansion.