Feedback on Neera's and Rasaad's BGEE zones.
Messi
Member Posts: 738
I'm doing a BGEE run with Neera and Rasaad first time since shortly after the BGEE launch, and this playthrough has unfortunately reminded me of couple really glaring problems with these zones.
First of all there are very, very few caves, houses, etc. in vanilla BG1 that look like you can't enter them but can't. Also if you can't enter something that looks like you should there is always flavour text telling you why not. In these two zones it's the exact opposite. You can't enter anything, except Adoy's cave and the temple. Not Magreb's house(that doesn't even have a door), not that cave in that screenshot obviously either, and not the goblin huts.
The above may not sound like a big problem, but at least for me one of the best things about these games was a world you could explore and find cool things that weren't directly on the beaten path. It wasn't an amusement park ride like in many other games. Especially the Neera zone actually even follows a literal beaten path, and you can even get a guide so you don't get lost. Bonus points at least for the moose and squirrel in Neera's zone.
Second issue I have are the textures. How on earth did you manage to make them look worse than almost 15 year old graphics? The ground textures especially are very blurry, which is in huge contrast with the still rather sharp look of the old zones.
I haven't seen many of the BG2EE new areas yet, but hopefully those issues don't exist in that game.
First of all there are very, very few caves, houses, etc. in vanilla BG1 that look like you can't enter them but can't. Also if you can't enter something that looks like you should there is always flavour text telling you why not. In these two zones it's the exact opposite. You can't enter anything, except Adoy's cave and the temple. Not Magreb's house(that doesn't even have a door), not that cave in that screenshot obviously either, and not the goblin huts.
The above may not sound like a big problem, but at least for me one of the best things about these games was a world you could explore and find cool things that weren't directly on the beaten path. It wasn't an amusement park ride like in many other games. Especially the Neera zone actually even follows a literal beaten path, and you can even get a guide so you don't get lost. Bonus points at least for the moose and squirrel in Neera's zone.
Second issue I have are the textures. How on earth did you manage to make them look worse than almost 15 year old graphics? The ground textures especially are very blurry, which is in huge contrast with the still rather sharp look of the old zones.
I haven't seen many of the BG2EE new areas yet, but hopefully those issues don't exist in that game.
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Also I would really like a way to leave the area after killing Gamaz without trekking through the entire zone again.
How are IE created, anyway? I figure someone creates an isometric landscape and then the parts that cannot be walked are 'highlited'? Did they use different techniques to create them in the past? Seems to me the new areas are painted while the old ones are constructed from pre-rendered [wrong term?] elements.
The unaccessible cave was also weird. As already said, they could have copied a cave (there are like three different generic caves in BG1 and they are already copypasted everywhere, so what's one more copy?) and stuck some trolls inside. Perhaps a slightly different troll to make it stand out.
I also found ridiculous how you could find fire arrows and potions everywhere. A few is fine, but come on.
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/353001/#Comment_353001