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Will Baldur's Gate Die In 15 Years?

I am wondering if Baldur's Gate will be dead in 15 years. What do you personally think? Is it an immortal classic or is it just a popular old game? Will thousands still play Baldur's Gate in 2050? Realistically is Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition the last release of Baldur's Gate? The game will die eventually, it is inevitable; but when and why?
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Comments

  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    People still play Chess, people still play NESs. Only the very best games will survive eventually, but there is no reason a game has to stop being played, though tech advances can create huge hassles for computer gaming, and eventually all tech stuff wares out, so the Mobile platform is actually a really, really big deal. If BGEE was PC/Mac only, I'd say it would be more precarious.
    NimrandunbarArcalianMagpieRandoms
  • SeldarSeldar Member Posts: 438
    soon a remake of BG with the Pillars of eternity's engine but with 2D characters... a dream
    WithinAmnesia
  • WithinAmnesiaWithinAmnesia Member Posts: 958
    Hmm, so you fine ladies, gentlemen and Gibberlings think that Baldur's Gate is like a good book or a movie? It will be akin to Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit?
    GallowglassNotabarbiegirlMagpieRandoms
  • WithinAmnesiaWithinAmnesia Member Posts: 958
    edited May 2015
    Grum said:

    In 15 years all anyone will remember are the baldurs gate books.

    How so @Grum ? I thought that the games were more well known and memorable; until you said it, I had forgotten about the books!:P.
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    *straight face*

    BG has books? Are they any good?
    Montresor_SPSouthpawButtercheese
  • WithinAmnesiaWithinAmnesia Member Posts: 958
    edited May 2015
    DreadKhan said:

    *straight face*

    BG has books? Are they any good?

    I know right? I have not read them per se but they were written in under a year and Minsc (in the books) has fiery red hair.. So.. Go make some fruit punch from those Lemons and Grapefruits.
  • IntoTheDarknessIntoTheDarkness Member Posts: 118
    It will surely die? Wasteland came out 10 years earlier than BG. Hardly anyone plays it these days. Games develop faster over time. I'm sure we will have at least dozens of BGish-games such as POE 15 years later.
  • WithinAmnesiaWithinAmnesia Member Posts: 958
    I agree 110% with you @Aureol ! You have reaffirmed my confidence in the longevity in the epic saga that is: Baldur's Gate!
    batoorJuliusBorisov
  • reedmilfamreedmilfam Member Posts: 2,808
    Well, it's lasted for a long time, as is. I don't know about 15 years, but, since it's on android and I-stuff, it's possible, if not a sure thing.
    WithinAmnesiaButtercheese
  • batoorbatoor Member Posts: 676

    Hmm, so you fine ladies, gentlemen and Gibberlings think that Baldur's Gate is like a good book or a movie? It will be akin to Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit?

    In fame? No I don't think so. As a classic within roleplaying games 50-100 years for now, I certainly hope it is.

    It's a pity video games overall are still in their infancy compared to films/tv series and literature. I hope at some point in time they will be taken as seriously as storytelling mediums by society. It's getting better, but there are still some hurdles.
    DreadKhanWithinAmnesiaThacoBell
  • lunarlunar Member Posts: 3,460
    edited May 2015
    I agree with @Aureol the game never dies as long as a fan base is here, and bg has a very solid fan base. Especially, modding community is very robust and has always been this way. Let's face it, if we did not have the modding community, still going strong after 10+ years, we would not have had the enhanced editions either. Because the game wouldn't have been kept alive for so long. And I am sure you can look up to many modders contributing to the enhanced editions in one way or another. The modders did those huge projects because they loved the game. Modding and coding is not easy for bg, and still, we have a lot of top quality mods and more coming, because it is so much fun. Both to create mods, and to play them.
    JuliusBorisovAerakarMagpieRandoms
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    Videogames don't get much respect I agree, but part of this is that people see a game with 0 story, or tons of problematic content and blindly paint the entirety.

    This is analogous to saying 'Because I read a really shoddy Harelquin Romance, I am justified in saying that Shakespeare must be crap too'. Much of this WILL change in a generation or two, which will allow games to be considered 'Classic', in the sense that some great 19th century literature has been canonized. Not every writer is really 'canon', nor all the work of a given writer, but the real standouts will, well, stand out. Note, many authors really popular during their life are later on forgotten/ignored, while some that were not popularly celebrated enter canon.

    Critical Theory WILL get its claws into gaming... it already has, at least with feminism.
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    I'm sure if Y does well, really well, it might generate some buzz. The EEs are a nice reminder that BG was a really big IP, and might have legs still. The obvious challenge with BG3 would be 'how do we make this game actually a BG game, vs try to cash in on the name?'. There are other things that can be explored within the Bhaalspawn Saga, beyond exclusively Gorion's Ward. And any Abdel we can dodge is probably just peachy...
    Grum
  • WithinAmnesiaWithinAmnesia Member Posts: 958
    edited May 2015
    @elminster I have my doubts about Beam Dog being fit to do a half decent Baldur's Gate III. Beam Dog is good, but they are far far far away from being excellent. Maybe with more time and experience they can get the creative clout to make a legendary game. Although as it stands, I would not want Beam Dog to touch Baldur's Gate III. Although that is not to say that it is out of their potential...
    jacobtanNightRevanBlucher
  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,315
    Baldur's Gate 3 runs into the other issue of Baldur's Gate 2 being as good as it is at least in part because it had Baldur's Gate 1 to work off of. In Baldur's Gate 2 you start off at levels 8+ or so and once you get out of the first dungeon you can pretty much fight everything from vampires to liches and even dragons. Its hard to get to that point of legendary if you need to spend 20-30 hours of gameplay just to get to the point where you could reasonably expect to be in the position to fight these sorts of creatures (without them appearing horribly nerfed). I found Pillars for instance got boring pretty fast from a combat perspective because outside of resistance differences the enemies you encounter in the early/mid game never seem to differ all that much in terms of their abilities and strategy (shadows being a rare exception). Its the same I would say with the original campaign of NWN2.

    Besides having to live up to the combat of Baldur's Gate 2 you also have to live up to how people remember how good the story, dialogue/characters, or gameplay was.

    So I guess we will see if it ever happens.

    But overall without Baldur's Gate 3 I don't see the series surviving another 15 years. Its then no surprise that Minsc and Boo seem to have already expanded themselves to other media :)
    jacobtan
  • jacobtanjacobtan Member Posts: 655
    Beamdog needs to show that it is capable of creating a quality game from scratch, from conception to finish. Barring this, fans may still play, but as a commercially-viable series, it is toast. There are only so many Infinity Engine games to enhance, and more than half of them are done.
    WithinAmnesia
  • SkatanSkatan Member, Moderator Posts: 5,352
    I believe BG will exist and be playable for "nerds", just like some ppl prefer vinyls still or collect stamps or whatever which is completely outdated. Hell, in my hometown of Gothenburg we have a Retro gaming convention which grows and grows for every year. For each year I see the spread in ages become wider and wider as we older ones grow older, but sons and daughters accompany their parents.
    The great thing is that in their young eyes, that shit is cool for being so rudimentory and basic. Even if only one in 10 000 of the new generations will get addicted to nerdy old stuff, it'll be enough to keep a small community alive, thus prolonging the life of "classics" a couple of generations.

    And as for the Shakespear comparison above, I wonder though, how many has actually read Shakespear? Not that many nowadays. Everyone knows about him (or them, as some suggest), of his works etc, but few actually read them. Perhaps it'll be the same with some games, they are taught in class as classical works, but few actually take the time to read them?

    I don't think I personally will play BG in 15 years, but if/when I get kids, I will show them what I did as a kid, just like my father did with me (he played with wooden cars, hehe.. ). Maybe they will enjoy it in between their sessions of being neurally integrated into the matrix, or whatever is coming in the future.
    WithinAmnesia
  • NightRevanNightRevan Member Posts: 81
    Well so far I have kept playing through the trilogy often enough, st least twice or more a year. I get the itch and I'm back in, and that was before the enhanced editions. And so far the demands of other resources (such as graphics, voice overs etc) and associated costs (at least for large titles) modern games can't match the size and breadth of BG2. Nor have I yet found an RPG I thought was overall better, there have been a number which did this or that aspect better or did things in different and interesting ways that I have really enjoyed and liked, but none have matched the total package as it were.

    But then I am someone who loves to re-read books and re-watch films I have enjoyed and see something new or just enjoy re-immerse myself in it's narrative, setting and characters once again, letting the narrative inspire, challenge or effect me once again with it's world-view, message and presentations of themes via it's narrative. I love old movies just as much (and often better than many) modern movies and find to many current novel and films attempts to be 'dark, gritty and realistic' leads to stories often enough anything but full of characters sucked of any humanity or human depth, meaning or complexity, offering no real reflection on deeper issues or allowing engagement of different views, and in the end in attempting to edgy ends up endorsing, upholding and reinforcing the current consumerism nihilistic worldview completely. But I'm quite biased over such things and I've gone way off track, but interactive games that have the impact like BG2 will always have their audience (particularly if they still offer something current games don't on the whole).

    And as long as it has a dedicated fan base it will be kept alive (Ultima games are still being kept alive in this way, such as the development of the Exult engine to run Ultima 7 and it's expansion Serpent Isle on, or a similar provision for Daggerfall I came across).

    As for BG3 I have always wondered what it would be since the story dominating the game series is that of Gorian's Ward and the Bhaalspawn crisis etc, all of which are wrapped up in Throne of Bhaal. Would it just be a game in the style of BG but largely unconnected to the original game and story except for perhaps a token throw-away point? And if so would it really be BG3 in any real sense besides the name? I don't know, though something I would enjoy is seeing Throne of Bhaal expanded into a full game sized adventure on the same scale as SoA to be a true full third installment to the trilogy to match BG 1 and BG2: SoA.
    WithinAmnesiaSkatan
  • MathsorcererMathsorcerer Member Posts: 3,037

    It will surely die? Wasteland came out 10 years earlier than BG. Hardly anyone plays it these days. Games develop faster over time. I'm sure we will have at least dozens of BGish-games such as POE 15 years later.

    Yes, Wasteland came out in 1987. People still play it today and it still had enough popularity that many people (including me) backed the Kickstarter for Wasteland 2 to the point where it tripled or quadrupled its original goal. The original Bard's Tale came out in 1985 and some people still play it (yes, including me from time to time). Those people will also help that Kickstarter to surpass its goal and then we will finally get our sequel nearly 30 years later.

    Computer games are, like many other pursuits, like classical music--the great ones will persist as new generations discover them (or they are renewed onto more modern platforms like the EEs and like what inExile is doing with WL2 and BT4). The others--Temple of Elemental Evil, Myst, etc--fall into obscurity relatively quickly and will be replayed or remembered only by a few.

    People are still playing and modding BG, BG2, and IWD nearly 15 years after their initial releases. That's a pretty good sign that the games will be around for another 15 years.

    WithinAmnesiaSkatan
  • WithinAmnesiaWithinAmnesia Member Posts: 958
    edited May 2015
    I have read some Shakespeare *cough* Mac, er 'The Scottish Play' (lest I suffer the wrathe of the dreaded 'curse') *cough*. I think that from what I have read that I can observe a unique magic in its construction; I see all classic works of entertainment are interconnected with this promethean magic as akin to a puppeteer's hand married to stings of puppets. I think that Baldur's Gate has some of that harmonic magic too; alas may it last? Only lady time will reveal that secret to those whom stick around to linger a bit longer than most.
    Skatan
  • MathsorcererMathsorcerer Member Posts: 3,037
    atcDave said:

    There's a few different issues to consider, and in ways BG is both similar and dissimilar to other mediums like books and movies.
    For myself, I will continue to play and enjoy BG as long as technology allows. And that's a big qualifier. Computers and operating systems are constantly developing. I also continued to play and enjoy the Gold Box games until the technology became too big a burden for my little pea brain. It is no longer worth the effort to learn emulators and all. If someday, some more ambitious nerd than I figures out a way to update that program so it will painlessly run on a modern system, I will buy it.

    DosBOX can be your friend, @atcDave. A simple mount command and you can be playing Gold Box games in less than one minute--that is how I play them on Win7 computers. I still have a laptop at home that runs XP and the old dos-based games (Bard's Tale, Dragon Wars, Gold Box series, etc) run natively on it.

    Also, don't underestimate the power and dedication of modders. My wife found a Pool of Radiance mod for the NWN engine (is that Aurora? she would know)--the entire game is there, from Podol Plaza all the way to Valjevo Castle. I haven't played it but one of these days I may try it just to see how it works.
    WithinAmnesiaSkatanTymaker
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