Honestly, my default BG run these days starts in SOA, where I'll EEKeeper myself the boosts you'd get from the stat tomes, along with XP commensurate with finishing TotSC, or more rarely SOD, and get going from there.
Unpopular opinion: the original Baldur's Gate doesn't stand the test of time. It's too clunky, unbalanced, primitive, and immersion-breaking to stand up to more recent titles.
not only that but bg 1 with out npc project is not even worth playing imo. so in general a bg 1 needs to be modded to be enjoyable.
Unpopular opinion: the original Baldur's Gate doesn't stand the test of time. It's too clunky, unbalanced, primitive, and immersion-breaking to stand up to more recent titles.
not only that but bg 1 with out npc project is not even worth playing imo. so in general a bg 1 needs to be modded to be enjoyable.
Honestly, my default BG run these days starts in SOA, where I'll EEKeeper myself the boosts you'd get from the stat tomes, along with XP commensurate with finishing TotSC, or more rarely SOD, and get going from there.
Did you know that Finn-Jo's Sub-race mod will add the stats for the tomes automatically? (That doesn't include the ToSC extra tomes) If you don't want the sub-races you don't need to use them.
I actually like the unmodded vanilla BG1+TotSC experience much more than any other install in the IE series even of those are enhanced, modded or otherwise.
Can someone please make a disc swapper mod for bgee for me to force me to eject my Cd/Dvd every time an appropriate area transition to another cd takes place across the old bg1 areas? I miss that, that makes the game feel so much grander.
Can someone please make a disc swapper mod for bgee for me to force me to eject my Cd/Dvd every time an appropriate area transition to another cd takes place across the old bg1 areas? I miss that, that makes the game feel so much grander.
Unpopular opinion: the original Baldur's Gate doesn't stand the test of time. It's too clunky, unbalanced, primitive, and immersion-breaking to stand up to more recent titles.
Do you really hold that opinion or is it just because of the thread you are posting in? This is getting confusing.
I understand this thread is about opinions that people have the right to hold without being deemed "wrong". But the reason I'm asking this is because of this point "immersion-breaking".
Of all the things that can be said about BG, the opinion that it doesn't pull you into the world completely I find very strange.
BG2 you can see and feel the "game", it's been created to pull in a bigger audience and there are things that simply don't work from any angle. Too many quests set within shouting distance from each other, too many conveniences, too much driven narrative, too many set pieces. You have to really suspend your sense of disbelief for a lot of the game and invent a lot of head cannon.
BG on the other hand just evolves IMO. You can lose yourself in the setting.
I can argue that half of those are true or worse for bg2 though, but those will be my opinions and experiences. I do believe bg2 made quite some improvements over bg1 (npc interaction, romances, variable opponents, sidequest depth, combat intelligence, larger interesting areas, more variable travel destinations) but at the same time they also overdid certain improvements (worse villain, railroad storyline, quest density, lack of wilderness, awful leveling and mid to high spell casting, over the top high level items, pause inventory). Just to name a few things of course.
To each their own.
And yes, I really am serious about the disc swapping. I miss that as do I miss the loading screens.
Unpopular opinion: the original Baldur's Gate doesn't stand the test of time. It's too clunky, unbalanced, primitive, and immersion-breaking to stand up to more recent titles.
Do you really hold that opinion or is it just because of the thread you are posting in? This is getting confusing.
I understand this thread is about opinions that people have the right to hold without being deemed "wrong". But the reason I'm asking this is because of this point "immersion-breaking".
@UnderstandMouseMagic: I do hold that opinion, which is why I posted it. Just because it's highly unpopular doesn't mean it's insincere. I don't make posts just to stir controversy.
To answer your question, the things I find immersion-breaking in BG1 are the more humorous things like some of the sillier dialogue options and characters like Portalbendarwinden. If you stick to the main quests of BG1 and TotSC, the game is pretty serious, but the side quests and side areas tend to be a little goofier.
But as we've said before, this thread is not here for intensive debate. It's here for voicing unpopular opinions and subjective feelings--not trying to pin down objective facts.
@semiticgod I partially agree. Its clunky and primitive, but there is a lot of charm there. The oddball references, self aware characters, its very endearing.
As for my unpopular opinion:
BG1 is better than BG2 on a first playthrough.
I've replayed BG1 more times than I can count.
I've replayed BG2 a few times and TOB once.
If mods didn't exist, I don't know if I would have ever replayed BG1.
Here's an unpopular opinion: BG2 quickly becomes a snore because the railroading, lack of exploration, and lack of minor and meaningless quests means you can quickly have every area and item location memorized. BG1 quickly becomes a snore because of no party interaction and one dimensional voice lines. The community content is what has kept these games great.
Unpopular opinion: the original Baldur's Gate doesn't stand the test of time. It's too clunky, unbalanced, primitive, and immersion-breaking to stand up to more recent titles.
Do you really hold that opinion or is it just because of the thread you are posting in? This is getting confusing.
I understand this thread is about opinions that people have the right to hold without being deemed "wrong". But the reason I'm asking this is because of this point "immersion-breaking".
@UnderstandMouseMagic: I do hold that opinion, which is why I posted it. Just because it's highly unpopular doesn't mean it's insincere. I don't make posts just to stir controversy.
To answer your question, the things I find immersion-breaking in BG1 are the more humorous things like some of the sillier dialogue options and characters like Portalbendarwinden. If you stick to the main quests of BG1 and TotSC, the game is pretty serious, but the side quests and side areas tend to be a little goofier.
But as we've said before, this thread is not here for intensive debate. It's here for voicing unpopular opinions and subjective feelings--not trying to pin down objective facts.
Thanks for the reply and wasn't having a go.
Funnily enough I find the random characters in BG make it far more real. Maybe I look approachable (but then it happens to my children as well), I find meeting characters like Portalbendarwinden is quite a regular occurance. People tell you the most extraordinary things completely out of the blue sometimes.
For instance, at a bustop (at a frigging bustop) some years back this random woman ended up telling me all about her child (who was with her and playing with mine) whose father was her husband's brother, and he knew but the husband didn't, nor did the grandparents. But what really worried her was she wanted another but was finding it hard to decide whether to go with the tried and tested brother or her actual husband because she was worried that the child would look very different.
Case of, why tell me? But if you put that in BG, it would fit perfectly. That mixture of something quite serious being presented in a way that makes it hard to actually take it seriously as her concern was so arbitrary.
I mean, there's also characters like Maple Aspen Willow and Bub Snikt and Larry, Darryl, and Darryl, which outright break immersion... The tombstone inscriptions in Nashkel and the random Phoenix King encounter there don't help either.
I mean, there's also characters like Maple Aspen Willow and Bub Snikt and Larry, Darryl, and Darryl, which outright break immersion... The tombstone inscriptions in Nashkel and the random Phoenix King encounter there don't help either.
As a DM I add some puns and supposably funny remarks in my narratives and players seem to enjoy it as long as it works as comic relief rather than general rule.
I don't dislike replaying bg1, but some parts are a bit tedious early on. Once I get to the city i have a ton of fun though. Very atmospheric, just not as much as Athkatla.
Totsc has actually grown on me a lot over the years.
What this forum really needs is "I Like Half of That" and "I sort of agree with that" and "That was almost insightful" buttons. Because I keep reading people's posts and I think to myself "I am really liking that" or "I am agreeing the f... out of that" or "This poster's opinions are the same as mine; they must be amazingly insightful (and probably hot)".
And then they say something totally unlikable, ridiculously disagreeable or monumentally uninsightful and I sit here with my head in my hands saying "Why doesn't everyone agree with me?"
@Permidion_Stark: I tend to give agrees even to posts I only partially agree with, especially if the part I agree with comes at the end. Sometimes I put the most agreeable part of my own post at the bottom to make the post overall seem more agreeable!
@Permidion_Stark: I tend to give agrees even to posts I only partially agree with, especially if the part I agree with comes at the end. Sometimes I put the most agreeable part of my own post at the bottom to make the post overall seem more agreeable!
Unpopular opinion: the original Baldur's Gate doesn't stand the test of time. It's too clunky, unbalanced, primitive, and immersion-breaking to stand up to more recent titles.
Do you really hold that opinion or is it just because of the thread you are posting in? This is getting confusing.
I understand this thread is about opinions that people have the right to hold without being deemed "wrong". But the reason I'm asking this is because of this point "immersion-breaking".
Of all the things that can be said about BG, the opinion that it doesn't pull you into the world completely I find very strange.
BG2 you can see and feel the "game", it's been created to pull in a bigger audience and there are things that simply don't work from any angle. Too many quests set within shouting distance from each other, too many conveniences, too much driven narrative, too many set pieces. You have to really suspend your sense of disbelief for a lot of the game and invent a lot of head cannon.
BG on the other hand just evolves IMO. You can lose yourself in the setting.
Welp almost made it without a complete ban, oh well.
Honestly, its the open worldness combined with the type of story that causes bg1 to fall into the same trap bg 2 did for me. It's one of those " time is of the importance" yet hey look we can go to this big open world and explore it before doing anything that actually matters with no real repercussions for our lollygagging. I mean i am a fan of open worlds, heck i like exploring but with certain types of you have to suspend your disbelief
The fake urgency is common to almost all games, and I think it's actually for the best. In a game with multiple questlines, you don't want to lock the player out of completing one just because the player is too slow, gets distracted, or is trying to complete too many quests at once. It might be less realistic for every questline to be without a timer, but the alternative is to limit the player's options and add an extra layer of pressure on the player.
Deadlines are stressful, and games are there to reduce stress.
A game that did open world nicely to was the grand theft auto series. Well, I only played vice city, San Andreas, and liberty city so I can't speak for the newer ones.
But with moat the missions I never really dealt that there was a sense of urgency, except for specific missions which were actually timed, or you failed then because you couldn't keep up.
But I believe this was also aided by the fact that the story never really was a hero's journey or the fact the world didn't basically revolve around the mc. You were just a average joe just trying to come up. Yeah, you do become a crime lord but that's in the later half.
One of the things about linear stories is they can fit the urgency into not just into the story but also into the play.
You know what? I actually don't dislike any of the recruitable NPCs. I like Neera, I like Khalid, I like Anomen, I...am stoically tolerant of Hexxat. I genuinely feel that even the most two-dimensional party members have enough characterisation to warrant some degree of sympathy.
I can't stand games with deadlines and timed quests. Majora's mask is the only such game that I actually like. Real life punishes me all the time for getting distracted, so it's nice with games that just go like "yeah, sure, go check out that gnoll stronghold! There's no rush, this is a game after all!"
Comments
(That doesn't include the ToSC extra tomes)
If you don't want the sub-races you don't need to use them.
Can someone please make a disc swapper mod for bgee for me to force me to eject my Cd/Dvd every time an appropriate area transition to another cd takes place across the old bg1 areas? I miss that, that makes the game feel so much grander.
Do you really hold that opinion or is it just because of the thread you are posting in?
This is getting confusing.
I understand this thread is about opinions that people have the right to hold without being deemed "wrong".
But the reason I'm asking this is because of this point "immersion-breaking".
Of all the things that can be said about BG, the opinion that it doesn't pull you into the world completely I find very strange.
BG2 you can see and feel the "game", it's been created to pull in a bigger audience and there are things that simply don't work from any angle. Too many quests set within shouting distance from each other, too many conveniences, too much driven narrative, too many set pieces.
You have to really suspend your sense of disbelief for a lot of the game and invent a lot of head cannon.
BG on the other hand just evolves IMO. You can lose yourself in the setting.
I do believe bg2 made quite some improvements over bg1 (npc interaction, romances, variable opponents, sidequest depth, combat intelligence, larger interesting areas, more variable travel destinations) but at the same time they also overdid certain improvements (worse villain, railroad storyline, quest density, lack of wilderness, awful leveling and mid to high spell casting, over the top high level items, pause inventory). Just to name a few things of course.
To each their own.
And yes, I really am serious about the disc swapping. I miss that as do I miss the loading screens.
To answer your question, the things I find immersion-breaking in BG1 are the more humorous things like some of the sillier dialogue options and characters like Portalbendarwinden. If you stick to the main quests of BG1 and TotSC, the game is pretty serious, but the side quests and side areas tend to be a little goofier.
But as we've said before, this thread is not here for intensive debate. It's here for voicing unpopular opinions and subjective feelings--not trying to pin down objective facts.
I've replayed BG2 a few times and TOB once.
If mods didn't exist, I don't know if I would have ever replayed BG1.
Here's an unpopular opinion: BG2 quickly becomes a snore because the railroading, lack of exploration, and lack of minor and meaningless quests means you can quickly have every area and item location memorized. BG1 quickly becomes a snore because of no party interaction and one dimensional voice lines. The community content is what has kept these games great.
Thanks for the reply and wasn't having a go.
Funnily enough I find the random characters in BG make it far more real. Maybe I look approachable (but then it happens to my children as well), I find meeting characters like Portalbendarwinden is quite a regular occurance.
People tell you the most extraordinary things completely out of the blue sometimes.
For instance, at a bustop (at a frigging bustop) some years back this random woman ended up telling me all about her child (who was with her and playing with mine) whose father was her husband's brother, and he knew but the husband didn't, nor did the grandparents. But what really worried her was she wanted another but was finding it hard to decide whether to go with the tried and tested brother or her actual husband because she was worried that the child would look very different.
Case of, why tell me?
But if you put that in BG, it would fit perfectly. That mixture of something quite serious being presented in a way that makes it hard to actually take it seriously as her concern was so arbitrary.
old-BG1 is unbearable.
Totsc has actually grown on me a lot over the years.
And then they say something totally unlikable, ridiculously disagreeable or monumentally uninsightful and I sit here with my head in my hands saying "Why doesn't everyone agree with me?"
Cookies are delicious.
Honestly, its the open worldness combined with the type of story that causes bg1 to fall into the same trap bg 2 did for me. It's one of those " time is of the importance" yet hey look we can go to this big open world and explore it before doing anything that actually matters with no real repercussions for our lollygagging. I mean i am a fan of open worlds, heck i like exploring but with certain types of you have to suspend your disbelief
Deadlines are stressful, and games are there to reduce stress.
But with moat the missions I never really dealt that there was a sense of urgency, except for specific missions which were actually timed, or you failed then because you couldn't keep up.
But I believe this was also aided by the fact that the story never really was a hero's journey or the fact the world didn't basically revolve around the mc. You were just a average joe just trying to come up. Yeah, you do become a crime lord but that's in the later half.
One of the things about linear stories is they can fit the urgency into not just into the story but also into the play.