Trent Oster's interview with pcgamesn.com: expect Baldur’s Gate V
JuliusBorisov
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“Icewind Dale was kind of this left-turn where you just jumped out and it was all about the bashing and combat and winning the fight and wondering what was around the next corner, that was going to be as challenging or even more challenging than what you just fought,” said Trent Oster.
“At BioWare at some points we tried to introduce puzzles that were different. Icewind Dale is like combat puzzles. And they’re just fun.”
“I think that’s where a lot of the satisfaction of Icewind Dale comes from,” said Oster. “By knowing the rules and by being able to build great combination characters and play them how they’re intended, you can do some amazing things that you wouldn’t think are possible with a party.”
“Those guys (from Black Isle) were good,” recalled Oster. “To me Black Isle was always about really, really strong artwork, and it still looks phenomenal. It’s just haunting.”
“Initially we were pretty intimidated by it, but once we started working with the content we were like, ‘Man, this stuff is so beautiful, it holds up so well’.”
“I always found Black Isle’s writing to be a lot more direct, a lot shorter,” he said. “At BioWare I think we tended to get a little novelistic. Whereas Chris’ stuff was more colloquial, and more accessible.”
“It’s like going in and finding Tolkien’s notes and trying to write the next book,” said Oster. “It’s really intimidating to start, but you’ve got most of his thoughts for the first third and you’ve just got to finish it up. At the end of it you get something you’re pretty proud of.”
“Often it’s the same story: you’ve got a lot of good plot ideas, you implement all of them, and late in the game you’re like, ‘We’ve only got time to fix 80% of the bugs. So 20%, we’ve just got to cut those off and bury them somewhere’. And that’s what you do.”
“It’s this amalgamation of features from Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II, and now Icewind Dale as well,” said Oster. “You get options on top of options in terms of what you want to do from a character standpoint. For the rules enthusiast you can just make some insane, insane parties.”
“I feel with the Baldur’s Gate stuff almost like a museum curator, even though I was one of the original guys who was there doing it the first time around,” mused Oster. “We’re doing good work but we’re doing it with borrowed property.
“I’m quite anxious for us to do our own thing and really explore Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying games - the way we’d like to do them now, with a certain progression in games design and how games have moved forward.
“Ultimately my goal would be to build another franchise like Baldur’s Gate.”
“Historically we had some really hard dates in the contract with Atari, and if we did not hit those we were heavily heavily penalised,” said Oster. “This time around it’s just us and Wizards, and it’s so much easier to do.”
“If we wanted to position ourselves in this mini-scale RPG renaissance thing, I wanna be the D&D house,” he said. “Baldur’s Gate was a great story but it’s been told and I think it’s time to start to think about the next great story.”
Oster’s time at EA after BioWare’s acquisition “opened his eyes” to the opportunities awaiting smaller-scale RPG developers.
“I think that’s given me a really great perspective on how to do the opposite of what they’re doing,” he said. “Whilst they’re looking at those 15 million unit sellers, we’re building the right niche games for the right niches. To me that’s what this golden age is about.”
What it’s not about is nostalgia. Oster insists that, like Obsidian, Larian and InXile, Beamdog are picking up old threads dropped by ‘90s RPGs and pulling them in new directions.
“One of the massive opportunities for us is to understand why that nostalgia is there in the first place, and to say, ‘If we had continued and done this and this and this, where would we wind up?’,” said Oster.
“I don’t wanna make Baldur’s Gate III. I wanna make Baldur’s Gate V.”
Details here" http://www.pcgamesn.com/icewind-dale-enhanced-edition/inside-icewind-dale-enhanced-edition-and-the-future-of-dd-rpgs
“At BioWare at some points we tried to introduce puzzles that were different. Icewind Dale is like combat puzzles. And they’re just fun.”
“I think that’s where a lot of the satisfaction of Icewind Dale comes from,” said Oster. “By knowing the rules and by being able to build great combination characters and play them how they’re intended, you can do some amazing things that you wouldn’t think are possible with a party.”
“Those guys (from Black Isle) were good,” recalled Oster. “To me Black Isle was always about really, really strong artwork, and it still looks phenomenal. It’s just haunting.”
“Initially we were pretty intimidated by it, but once we started working with the content we were like, ‘Man, this stuff is so beautiful, it holds up so well’.”
“I always found Black Isle’s writing to be a lot more direct, a lot shorter,” he said. “At BioWare I think we tended to get a little novelistic. Whereas Chris’ stuff was more colloquial, and more accessible.”
“It’s like going in and finding Tolkien’s notes and trying to write the next book,” said Oster. “It’s really intimidating to start, but you’ve got most of his thoughts for the first third and you’ve just got to finish it up. At the end of it you get something you’re pretty proud of.”
“Often it’s the same story: you’ve got a lot of good plot ideas, you implement all of them, and late in the game you’re like, ‘We’ve only got time to fix 80% of the bugs. So 20%, we’ve just got to cut those off and bury them somewhere’. And that’s what you do.”
“It’s this amalgamation of features from Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II, and now Icewind Dale as well,” said Oster. “You get options on top of options in terms of what you want to do from a character standpoint. For the rules enthusiast you can just make some insane, insane parties.”
“I feel with the Baldur’s Gate stuff almost like a museum curator, even though I was one of the original guys who was there doing it the first time around,” mused Oster. “We’re doing good work but we’re doing it with borrowed property.
“I’m quite anxious for us to do our own thing and really explore Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying games - the way we’d like to do them now, with a certain progression in games design and how games have moved forward.
“Ultimately my goal would be to build another franchise like Baldur’s Gate.”
“Historically we had some really hard dates in the contract with Atari, and if we did not hit those we were heavily heavily penalised,” said Oster. “This time around it’s just us and Wizards, and it’s so much easier to do.”
“If we wanted to position ourselves in this mini-scale RPG renaissance thing, I wanna be the D&D house,” he said. “Baldur’s Gate was a great story but it’s been told and I think it’s time to start to think about the next great story.”
Oster’s time at EA after BioWare’s acquisition “opened his eyes” to the opportunities awaiting smaller-scale RPG developers.
“I think that’s given me a really great perspective on how to do the opposite of what they’re doing,” he said. “Whilst they’re looking at those 15 million unit sellers, we’re building the right niche games for the right niches. To me that’s what this golden age is about.”
What it’s not about is nostalgia. Oster insists that, like Obsidian, Larian and InXile, Beamdog are picking up old threads dropped by ‘90s RPGs and pulling them in new directions.
“One of the massive opportunities for us is to understand why that nostalgia is there in the first place, and to say, ‘If we had continued and done this and this and this, where would we wind up?’,” said Oster.
“I don’t wanna make Baldur’s Gate III. I wanna make Baldur’s Gate V.”
Details here" http://www.pcgamesn.com/icewind-dale-enhanced-edition/inside-icewind-dale-enhanced-edition-and-the-future-of-dd-rpgs
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Comments
I don't really care what they'll be called. Let it be Baldur's Gate III or V or whatever, doesn't matter to me - as long as the games are good!
At least, I HOPE that's what he meant. I can't imagine what a BG written to today's game play standards would be like...I can only tell you it'd be one of the best games ever made.
But seriously, I'd just be happy to see Planescape:Torment reproduced...
I doubt he meant it literally. BG is just the posterchild for the entire genre, i.e. old school isometric RPGs.
“Baldur’s Gate was a great story but it’s been told and I think it’s time to start to think about the next great story.”
-One! Two! Five!
I think I saw that one already...
So I think there can--and well could be--be a Baldur's Gate 3. What Trent's comments make me wonder is whether BG3 will end up being designed by some other developer that is aiming at huge sales (which probably means 3D graphics, design for console systems, and MMO). And if Beamdog would actually rather prefer to start building its own game franchise now in more of a niche market for fans of the Infinity games (that style of gaming anyway). That's what I took from his reference to reference to EA and his
everything is better with an x
You add a graphical engine like the one use in Dragon age origin for exemple, and keeping the extraordinary atomshphere of bg/bg2 iwd/iwd2 game and i think we can have something great.
The top will be if we can have a scenario where you mustn't just kill the great evil (in bg/bg2 you can just kill all foes, but what seduce peoples is the path to become (or not) a god) and of course great companion with true personalities...