See, the thing so many of you are conveniently ignoring is that, as @Calemyr points out, the argument that merchant forums are the only reliable source of information is a flat-out fallacy. Newer games - released after SoD - are being discussed elsewhere. "Doom" was being talked about literally everywhere within days of release; likewise "SUPERHOT" if you prefer a more indie example. You can Google "The Banner Saga 2" - a game that came out three weeks after SoD - and find discussion threads, complete walkthroughs, tumblr fanart, memes.
That is what constitutes significant discourse. Not how popular a website is, or what people on Steam are saying (lest we forget that a certain metabombing run started there and on GOG). If that doesn't exist for SoD, and it does for games that were released after SoD, then that's the only parameter relevant to the OP's concerns.
@shawne, do educate us on how that actually equates to cultural significance for those games please.
Doom was already culturally significant, because of the legacy of original Doom. It's likely that game will fade away once the nostalgia dies, just like what happened for Doom 2 and 3. "The Banner Saga 2", that's not a cult classic series that was resurrected. "SUPERHOT"? Indie games are a dime-a-dozen. All of these comparisons are comparing apples to pizza.
Fact is, there's not many times that an expansion is developed for a game that is 15 years old. The game culture doesn't know what to think yet. So people need to calm down and quit expecting there to be epic hype.
Wait until the "BGNext" game. Then, look for the hype. If Beamdog markets that game properly, then you'll see hype.
Side-note: Don't confuse momentary hype with either success or cultural significance.
Fact is, there's not many times that an expansion is developed for a game that is 15 years old. The game culture doesn't know what to think yet. So people need to calm down and quit expecting there to be epic hype.
You know, it's pretty distasteful that you're being consistently dishonest about what this conversation is about. No one was asking for "epic hype" - just indications that SoD is being talked about in spaces that aren't administered by the people actually selling the game. It's a simple question, yet you can't seem to answer it without misrepresenting it as some kind of inflated hysteria, arguing that a culture infamous for making snap judgments within days (if not hours) of launch is somehow stymied by this one expansion pack. If you can't answer @Calemyr without being dismissive, maybe you're better served by agreeing to disagree and moving on.
I share Calemyr's view that there isn't all that much discourse related to the campaign itself - that is, outside of merchant forums. I think GameFAQs is a bad example, though. That place has been wilting for a decade. Plus it hasn't been keeping up with the times: its template a remnant of the late-90s. Beamdog should not be concerned about lack of discourse there. But I would be concerned about the lack of reviewing, third-party forum discussion, blogging and guide-writing. They will have to step up awareness for their next project and not let teacup storms drown out the virtues of their campaigns, imo. The Siege campaign itself is far from a failure.
Compared to the quantity of commentation for my NWN and in-depth retrospective posts (which receive a fraction of the hits), that is a pretty poor lvl of participation. The quality and length of commentation has not been quite as good, either. Some ppl on my other posts hit the character cap! That said the Aurora community is a different breed, and I thank my Siege readers for all their comments so far: they have been insightful, amusing and friendly (I censor the trolls and bigots, ofc).
I'm taking a break from the walkthrough atm. I know, I've been slack. Yes, it's partly due to lack of reader commentation, partly due to the campaign not blowing my hair back at every turn, and partly due to my commitments to NWN readers, too. I've been uhming and ahhing about Siege for quite a while. Someone slap me or throw a bucket of water over my head, but pls be aware that walkthrough writing is no EZ undertaking, no matter how simple a campaign it might be. Plus it's very time-consuming and at times mind-numbing, and the threat of burnout is ever-present. Moreover, I go through phases...
These are three months it should be there, when the game is new and exciting. And I'm not expecting some giant buzz. I'm just surprised to find next to nothing.
But I accept this isn't the right venue for this conversation.
You are right there, you are asking for information from a source you don't accept Personally I think you are just trolling and this thread should be closed Google SoD, to find the info you want, me I play the game. You want valid info about shamans and what works best for you. Is for you to roll up a shaman and play it, pickup every NPC along the way, and see which ones YOU like. The way other people play their characters and their preferred NPCs may not be the same way you like to play. In BGEE I happen to like having Neera in the party, But there are thousands that would sooner kill her on sight than have her in the party. Does that mean I am playing the game wrong, I don't think so.
See, the thing so many of you are conveniently ignoring is that, as @Calemyr points out, the argument that merchant forums are the only reliable source of information is a flat-out fallacy. Newer games - released after SoD - are being discussed elsewhere. "Doom" was being talked about literally everywhere within days of release; likewise "SUPERHOT" if you prefer a more indie example. You can Google "The Banner Saga 2" - a game that came out three weeks after SoD - and find discussion threads, complete walkthroughs, tumblr fanart, memes.
Well, you make a game out of a movie starring The Rock and of course there's going to be buzz.
I'm dutch anyways, but when it is spelled that way it just sounds like an epic Character name - "I am Boleyn, master swordsmen from the east.... and west."
What I'd like to know is what will Beamdog's next move be? Aside from BG and Icewind Dale, however, I image, they could still just go on to just create more BG and IWD remixes, and still easily afford to put all their children's children in college.
At the end of the day how could SOD conceivably fail? We all love BG, thats why we here, and for the 10 bones - we buy that on a six pack or soda pop and potatoe chips.
Beamdog hit a gold mine with these old school classics, but gold mines ether collapse, are depleted, or uncover a Balrog. Back in the early 2000 after BG had finished up, NWN came out, and, seemingly, we all carried on from there. Interesting enough, i've found those forums again, and NWN 1 and 2 is, to my amazment, still alive and kicking! I still remember the load hints on BG saying we could transfer our character to NWN, obviously that was premature.
What I like about the niche of Beamdog's games, even better, is WOW ruined everything, anyway, already. So good on those old school gamer geeks, and us for thahat matter, we were not assimilated by WOW and the 100001 WOW knockoffs. Hmpf.
(one little grammar error and I almost didn't have to say I'm an editor)
How to type Baloney correctly - still baffled. I swear my Kenyan wife, who knows three other languages, can still spell better then I. This must be a right brain, left brain thing - just chalk it up.
Know what I just found out on Wikipedia? The Boleyn family name was previously de Boleyne, and before that de Boulonge, from the French city of Boulonge-sur-Mer, which is derived from the Latin Bononia, which was also the Roman name for the Italian city of Bologna, the namesake of the disgusting sausage we sometimes spell baloney. So really, a baloney sandwich and a Boleyn sandwich are fundamentally the same thing.
How to type Baloney correctly - still baffled. I swear my Kenyan wife, who knows three other languages, can still spell better then I. This must be a right brain, left brain thing - just chalk it up.
The right brain vs. left brain thing is mostly made-up nonsense. Your wife is just smarter than you. That's a good thing; embrace it.
Fact is, there's not many times that an expansion is developed for a game that is 15 years old. The game culture doesn't know what to think yet. So people need to calm down and quit expecting there to be epic hype.
You know, it's pretty distasteful that you're being consistently dishonest about what this conversation is about.
I think it's distasteful that you're being consistently ignorant of the reality of the way this works here.
My only point (as if I could even make one), no matter what the outcome, abid emotion, intelligence (what I seem to be lacking), or power, is we all past the great devour test of MMO's, or is it MMORG's? The Borg of RPG world which is WOW and it's 100,001 clones. So, everyone here, saying what I possibly don't even care for like @Calemyr, and many others with such great intelligence is like watching Obama and Zuckerberg speak live in the same room together - sofaking boring.
Someone cried troll until Red Riding Hood sold it to an imposter of a pig. I remember a time without trolls, on forums, and a time when I would wake up thinking, did I really say that? With the title of DM. Now those were the days on NWN MODING worlds like Molan and 7th house. And don't even get me started in the days of Guild Wars and DDO. @Lilura nice to hear you talk abot NWN, most everone from NWN started out in BG, so this class of gamer is the same, and I would hate to be a Daniel and shout, I have seen the future! Nope, wait, I just read it from a generic fortune cookie from food laced with MSG and rat crawlings.
Let's not bite the hand that feeds, and if so, it's because we want more.
So everyone just calm down and have a Boleyn sandwich - I hope I'm not trolling, but I did make three posts in a row, so just bamn me.... case and point, SOD can't possibly fail. Let's look at the new Starwars, tiss not as good as the originals but we still ate it up. Not to mention the cash cow it will be in Android and IPAD. As for the resurgence in this game, by the love of the dev, I get to go back in time, and after I've had my fill, I'll want to repeat history and move onto an NWN type game, and no, not Neverwinter *Shiver*
@Lilura nice to hear you talk abot NWN, most everone from NWN started out in BG, so this class of gamer is the same
Thanks. I used to be an Infinity Engine snob, one of the worst. I was dismayed by the OC and Aurora's lack of full party control. But then I discovered the jungle of NWN mods, built by talented members of the community over the last decade. And oh my, was I impressed. So much so, that most of my blog is about NWN modules. For the last two years I have been playing NWN modules, to the exclusion of all else (BG and Siege, excepted). I'm still a scrub that's scratching the surface after two years. Pretty amazing. Anyway, this is off-topic. You can read up about these mods on muh blog.
I would just luurve it if Beamdog made a NWN3... nothing has come close to the power, flexibility and ease-of-use of the Aurora toolset in all these years. It's a pretty powerful engine, capable of more than one might think, and able to contend with current gen engines in many ways. Anyway, that's a topic in itself, isn't it.
I don't think it's wrong to be dismayed by the henchman system, it just wasn't very good from the start. And I'm the other way around, I started with NwN and then made my way onto the IE games. I've never really gotten the IE vs aurora engine crap though. At least with the passing of time nowadays and looking back, I feel like everyone involved with those games were all fighting the ''good fight'' ^^
Id say this discussion has failed. No offense but comparing the reaction and discussion for a fully fleged triple a title developed by ID and produced by Bethesda to an EXPANSION to an old game like Baldurs Gate is beyond ridiculous.
The Baldurs Gate series critically has always been held in high regard just like Planescape Torment but the reality is both these games have endured for so long because of an extremely loyal but relatively small playerbase who discuss and mod and continue to play these games.
Its like comparing reaction to the English Premier League which is one of the biggest sporting competetions in the world to reaction to the world snooker championships. Two very different beasts.
A better comparison is to something like PoE and yes I would say PoE has had a wider impact again thats because it was a new, full game not an expansion. Even then Id say the reaction and discussion to both has been somewhere in the same ballpark.
Personally the thing Ive noticed most is how some people incorrectly judge SoD. Instead of saying its an expansion that goes beyond what most expansions do, they instead talk about it like its a full game that just comes up short.
I think SoD is serving a particular niche. Its people who want real RPGs not psuedo rpg FPS games that do nothing more than pay lip service to RPGs.
I think both sides of this discussion have a point. On the one hand, SoD doesn't seem to have made many waves among the broader gaming community. On the other hand, it is an expansion to a 17 year old game whose plot isn't particularly relevant to people who haven't played the original game, and even if you *did* play the original game, you aren't allowed to purchase SoD unless you also buy BGEE, which a number of BG fans haven't wanted to do. This tells me that even a perfect SoD was never going to get the "buzz" some people on both sides apparently expected.
@Calemyr There're two very well-known sites where people discuss RPGs in today's Internet: rgpwatch.com and rpgcodex.net. Siege of Dragonspear has been discussed on hundreds of pages on these sites. I wouldn't comment on the users' views expressed on rpgcodex.net about SoD, but the fact remains - this expansion got more pages in discussions than many other new games, Witcher and Fallout included. rgpwatch.com has even reviewed SoD, and made in a detailed way. These two sites are majorly where people find news regarding RPGs and discuss RPGs nowadays, and, believe me, it caused massive discussions there.
I think it's important to remember that the cultural impact of Baldur's Gate is zero. Go out into the street and ask the people you meet about Baldur's Gate and most of them will have never heard of it. The have probably heard of Dungeons and Dragons, but won't understand how it is played.
What you are really talking about is a highly niche subculture.
And the closest equivalent release to SoD is the PoE expansion, The White March.
@Calemyr There're two very well-known sites where people discuss RPGs in today's Internet: rgpwatch.com and rpgcodex.net. Siege of Dragonspear has been discussed on hundreds of pages on these sites. I wouldn't comment on the users' views expressed on rpgcodex.net about SoD, but the fact remains - this expansion got more pages in discussions than many other new games, Witcher and Fallout included. rgpwatch.com has even reviewed SoD, and made in a detailed way. These two sites are majorly where people find news regarding RPGs and discuss RPGs nowadays, and, believe me, it caused massive discussions there.
The OP was talking about the campaign itself, though, right? I post regularly on the Codex and it seems to me ppl are not talking about the Siege campaign all that much. There are basically two threads, both of which I post in. The first has nearly 4,000 posts but only a fraction of that is campaign discourse, prompting someone to make a second, explicitly "non-political" thread for the campaign, one that currently has about 150 posts... both threads have not been posted in for a few weeks, to a month.
The above answers OPs question in the affirmative, at least in regard to the Codex: that the Siege campaign was not as interesting as its tea-cup storm controversies.
EDIT - I'm not sure about campaign discourse on RPGWatch... from my experience that site is great for news but not so much for in-depth discussion. The ppl there seem to talk about RPGs politely and casually, rarely getting into the nitty-gritty of builds, party composition, tactics, and other stuff like that. They like to write up lists of their favorite RPGs and mods, with nary an opinion expressed on them.
That's one reason I started my blog: to get away from the snark of some sites and the banality of others.
Wow. The last few posts here are beautiful. Exactly what I had hoping for. @JuliusBorisov gave me new places to look at, @Lilura comparing the offerings to what I actually asked for, and good ol' @Fardragon making a very valid point that simply using the phrase "cultural success" presumes far more impact than intended.
@JuliusBorisov, thanks for providing me with some new options. It's easy to dismiss one site or another as outdated, dying, biased, or what have you, but actually posing something new is challenging and I thank you for it. I will definitely be looking through those forums during slow points in the next few days (gotta do something while my tests run). Thank you very much.
@Fardragon, you're absolutely right. If we're talking globally, this is absolutely a niche game, a poorly advertised sequel to games considered closed for well over a decade that is in a style alien to the current gaming landscape. It was a clear flaw in my wording to suggest otherwise. What I was referring to was the gamer culture and more particularly subculture of the Infinity addicts, people who still to this day debate whether Aerie's romance arc is a painful examination of overcoming identity-destroying trauma or simply a painful example of irritatingly whiny melodrama, or the virtues of combining Valygar and Mazzy or Minsc with Aerie/Nalia. I want meaningful discussions of SoD - the characters, their challenges, their interactions - and I have difficulty finding it.
@Lilura, you are dead on. I don't much care about Minsc and Mizhena, I'd rather talk about which combinations of characters are the most effective, the most fun, the most satisfying, etc etc. I'd rather talk about the Dragon Blade and if it is enough to make Minsc's Rashemi Rage worth more than a niche panic button. I'd rather talk about whether the Shield of Egons is enough to make a Cleric of Lathandar or an Undead Hunter more valuable and whether it should be carried over to BG2 and whether it's generally wasted on an expansion that vastly favors humanoids and demons over undead. I want to talk about the Shaman and the tricks and tactics that can make it worth playing through three games, or whether it should be seen as a summoner with divine magic or a spontaneous divine caster with summoning support. I want to talk about Skie and whether she managed, as I have often claimed, to have pulled herself out from beneath the pile of forgettable extras into one of the more interesting threads in the series, regardless of theories. I want to talk about Irenicus, and whether his presence in SoD cheapens his performance in BG2 or brings it to a new level. I want to talk about Baeloth and whether his presence as a now canon character in the main story (as opposed to a secret cameo) adds or detracts from his persona. I want to talk about what combination of characters makes the most narrative sense across the series: do you include Jaheira and Khalid, drop them after Nashkel, and then use the end of SoD to reintroduce them to the party? Does SoD's meddling screw up the continuity of constant characters like Minsc, Viconia, and Edwin? With the hindsight of SoD, are there any romance tracks that just become better for the inclusion? Does it make more sense to have a different cast for each game, with the exception of Imoen, to accentuate the isolation of the Scion and their reliance on Imoen to serve as their one constant? Are any of the EE regulars solid enough to be reserve a space in all three games? What classes make the most sense for a character who has been through the Scion's experiences? How do you use these games to tell the best story you possibly can?
There's so much that can be discussed and it isn't. And, to be frank, I don't much care for the atmosphere here, but it's all I have. Baldur's Gate has been a good part of my life, you see. I still remember playing BG2 during midnight LAN parties in undergrad, about stupidly insisting that I'd rather make my own character than play Minsc when the other players offered him to me (in fairness, that was my introduction to the franchise). I remember carefully collecting different combinations of mods each year for an annual run of the game, to see what fans could add to the game in the form of Tyris Flare, or Fade, or Kelsey, or spending all of Throne of Bhaal in a delicate dance of moral philosophy in a bid to guide Irenicus into using a second third chance to better purpose. I remember trying Saerileth and being pleased to find a romance where "lover" wasn't a kind term for "unlicensed therapist", regardless of the many flaws of the mod. I remember cheering out loud (a rare event) when I saw the Baldur's Gate Trilogy and BG1NPC mods pull Baldur's Gate into Baldur's Gate 2 levels of quality, because I wanted to witness the original game but found I couldn't stand its original format, of playing BG1NPC's rendition of a Dynaheir romance and letting that color my character's friendship with Minsc for the rest of the story. To this day I'm prone to spending lunch breaks jotting down potential characters to play, combinations of characters to build up around them, and events and artifacts that could be central factors in that run. I enjoyed the fact that so many others shared my interest and had so much to contribute. I enjoyed reading what they had to say, even when I didn't agree with them, and the little angles I missed on my own.
OHHINRTRM (Oh holy hell I'm not reading THAT rambling monolith) version? SoD isn't bad, but what made Baldur's Gate so incredible from undergrad to my humdrum 9 to 5 life has been the community around it. I miss it. Maybe nobody else on this planet sees it that way, but I feel that SoD is a fraction of the game it should be. Is that a failure of the game? I don't know.
what made Baldur's Gate so incredible from undergrad to my humdrum 9 to 5 life has been the community around it. I miss it.
Don't miss it. This forum is exactly the community you're looking for. No matter that these boards have an official domain name in them, they are the best place to discuss anything about BG and SoD in particular, including things you mentioned (just create new discussions, and the talk will begin). This forum is full of different people, it's far from being developer-only, people here share a variety of opinions.
what made Baldur's Gate so incredible from undergrad to my humdrum 9 to 5 life has been the community around it. I miss it.
Don't miss it. This forum is exactly the community you're looking for. No matter that these boards have an official domain name in them, they are the best place to discuss anything about BG and SoD in particular, including things you mentioned (just create new discussions, and the talk will begin). This forum is full of different people, it's far from being developer-only, people here share a variety of opinions.
As I have tried to. I find the atmosphere here to be acidic, preferring to insult, dismiss, and focus on "gotchas" over actually discussing, as though the goal of discussion were to "win" in some way, rather than contribute to a whole broader and wiser than any of its creators. Besides, most of the conversation is whining (and I am certainly guilty as well) over engine changes, the absurdly silent progress of tablet ports, potential BG2 additions, the frustrating collector's edition, and so on. Even here, we talk around the game much more than about the game, if you follow me.
I have never enjoyed merchant forums as venue for discussing games. Honest discussion does not survive where only the true believers speak. Nobody comes to this forum save those who have already made up their mind one way or the other. Perhaps in this opinion I am showing my age once again, but I have yet to find a conversation on this forum to dissuade me of that hypothesis.
I think it's important to remember that the cultural impact of Baldur's Gate is zero. Go out into the street and ask the people you meet about Baldur's Gate and most of them will have never heard of it. The have probably heard of Dungeons and Dragons, but won't understand how it is played.
What you are really talking about is a highly niche subculture.
Which is why you need to understand that the cultural impact will likely be limited to that niche subculture...
The cultural impact is thus: "Did fans of the D&D-based RPGs, fans of the BG series...maybe even fans of cRPGs in general, find SOD to be a game that was a worthy expansion to BG1?". If the answer is yes, then SOD had a good cultural impact. If the answer is no, then it was a bad cultural impact.
I find the atmosphere here to be acidic, preferring to insult, dismiss, and focus on "gotchas" over actually discussing, as though the goal of discussion were to "win" in some way, rather than contribute to a whole broader and wiser than any of its creators. Besides, most of the conversation is whining (and I am certainly guilty as well) over engine changes, the absurdly silent progress of tablet ports, potential BG2 additions, the frustrating collector's edition, and so on. Even here, we talk around the game much more than about the game, if you follow me.
I have never enjoyed merchant forums as venue for discussing games. Honest discussion does not survive where only the true believers speak. Nobody comes to this forum save those who have already made up their mind one way or the other. Perhaps in this opinion I am showing my age once again, but I have yet to find a conversation on this forum to dissuade me of that hypothesis.
Why post on this forum about how much you dislike this forum? I disagree with your assessment of this community, and this thread of yours exemplifies the kind of meta-discourse you're complaining about. I don't want to reinforce your impression that we're dismissive, but I haven't taken this thread very seriously because I really don't understand what you hoped to accomplish with this discussion. Did you just want people to validate your nostalgic discontent?
I agree that this community can be defensive about the games and about Beamdog, especially after the wave of negative attention that followed the Siege of Dragonspear release. So it's not the best place to find impartiality on questions like "Has Siege of Dragonspear Failed?" It is a good place for friendly, in-depth conversations about gameplay, though. If you look a little bit harder, I think you'll find a lot of those conversations.
Comments
That is what constitutes significant discourse. Not how popular a website is, or what people on Steam are saying (lest we forget that a certain metabombing run started there and on GOG). If that doesn't exist for SoD, and it does for games that were released after SoD, then that's the only parameter relevant to the OP's concerns.
Doom was already culturally significant, because of the legacy of original Doom. It's likely that game will fade away once the nostalgia dies, just like what happened for Doom 2 and 3. "The Banner Saga 2", that's not a cult classic series that was resurrected. "SUPERHOT"? Indie games are a dime-a-dozen. All of these comparisons are comparing apples to pizza.
Fact is, there's not many times that an expansion is developed for a game that is 15 years old. The game culture doesn't know what to think yet. So people need to calm down and quit expecting there to be epic hype.
Wait until the "BGNext" game. Then, look for the hype. If Beamdog markets that game properly, then you'll see hype.
Side-note: Don't confuse momentary hype with either success or cultural significance.
Anyway, my walkthrough has received tens of thousands of hits but only 47 comments over my eight lengthy and detailed posts. Part IV, which I thought was my best post, received zero comments! It surprised me a lil', that's all.
Compared to the quantity of commentation for my NWN and in-depth retrospective posts (which receive a fraction of the hits), that is a pretty poor lvl of participation. The quality and length of commentation has not been quite as good, either. Some ppl on my other posts hit the character cap! That said the Aurora community is a different breed, and I thank my Siege readers for all their comments so far: they have been insightful, amusing and friendly (I censor the trolls and bigots, ofc).
I'm taking a break from the walkthrough atm. I know, I've been slack. Yes, it's partly due to lack of reader commentation, partly due to the campaign not blowing my hair back at every turn, and partly due to my commitments to NWN readers, too. I've been uhming and ahhing about Siege for quite a while. Someone slap me or throw a bucket of water over my head, but pls be aware that walkthrough writing is no EZ undertaking, no matter how simple a campaign it might be. Plus it's very time-consuming and at times mind-numbing, and the threat of burnout is ever-present. Moreover, I go through phases...
Personally I think you are just trolling and this thread should be closed
Google SoD, to find the info you want, me I play the game. You want valid info about shamans and what works best for you. Is for you to roll up a shaman and play it, pickup every NPC along the way, and see which ones YOU like.
The way other people play their characters and their preferred NPCs may not be the same way you like to play.
In BGEE I happen to like having Neera in the party, But there are thousands that would sooner kill her on sight than have her in the party. Does that mean I am playing the game wrong, I don't think so.
@InKal nice click, but completely pushed aside by too many @Calemyr responses - I really wasn't interested in that thread or that derailment.
At the end of the day how could SOD conceivably fail? We all love BG, thats why we here, and for the 10 bones - we buy that on a six pack or soda pop and potatoe chips.
Beamdog hit a gold mine with these old school classics, but gold mines ether collapse, are depleted, or uncover a Balrog. Back in the early 2000 after BG had finished up, NWN came out, and, seemingly, we all carried on from there. Interesting enough, i've found those forums again, and NWN 1 and 2 is, to my amazment, still alive and kicking! I still remember the load hints on BG saying we could transfer our character to NWN, obviously that was premature.
(one little grammar error and I almost didn't have to say I'm an editor)
How to type Baloney correctly - still baffled. I swear my Kenyan wife, who knows three other languages, can still spell better then I. This must be a right brain, left brain thing - just chalk it up.
Let's not bite the hand that feeds, and if so, it's because we want more.
I would just luurve it if Beamdog made a NWN3... nothing has come close to the power, flexibility and ease-of-use of the Aurora toolset in all these years. It's a pretty powerful engine, capable of more than one might think, and able to contend with current gen engines in many ways. Anyway, that's a topic in itself, isn't it.
The Baldurs Gate series critically has always been held in high regard just like Planescape Torment but the reality is both these games have endured for so long because of an extremely loyal but relatively small playerbase who discuss and mod and continue to play these games.
Its like comparing reaction to the English Premier League which is one of the biggest sporting competetions in the world to reaction to the world snooker championships. Two very different beasts.
A better comparison is to something like PoE and yes I would say PoE has had a wider impact again thats because it was a new, full game not an expansion. Even then Id say the reaction and discussion to both has been somewhere in the same ballpark.
Personally the thing Ive noticed most is how some people incorrectly judge SoD. Instead of saying its an expansion that goes beyond what most expansions do, they instead talk about it like its a full game that just comes up short.
I think SoD is serving a particular niche. Its people who want real RPGs not psuedo rpg FPS games that do nothing more than pay lip service to RPGs.
What you are really talking about is a highly niche subculture.
And the closest equivalent release to SoD is the PoE expansion, The White March.
The above answers OPs question in the affirmative, at least in regard to the Codex: that the Siege campaign was not as interesting as its tea-cup storm controversies.
EDIT - I'm not sure about campaign discourse on RPGWatch... from my experience that site is great for news but not so much for in-depth discussion. The ppl there seem to talk about RPGs politely and casually, rarely getting into the nitty-gritty of builds, party composition, tactics, and other stuff like that. They like to write up lists of their favorite RPGs and mods, with nary an opinion expressed on them.
That's one reason I started my blog: to get away from the snark of some sites and the banality of others.
@JuliusBorisov, thanks for providing me with some new options. It's easy to dismiss one site or another as outdated, dying, biased, or what have you, but actually posing something new is challenging and I thank you for it. I will definitely be looking through those forums during slow points in the next few days (gotta do something while my tests run). Thank you very much.
@Fardragon, you're absolutely right. If we're talking globally, this is absolutely a niche game, a poorly advertised sequel to games considered closed for well over a decade that is in a style alien to the current gaming landscape. It was a clear flaw in my wording to suggest otherwise. What I was referring to was the gamer culture and more particularly subculture of the Infinity addicts, people who still to this day debate whether Aerie's romance arc is a painful examination of overcoming identity-destroying trauma or simply a painful example of irritatingly whiny melodrama, or the virtues of combining Valygar and Mazzy or Minsc with Aerie/Nalia. I want meaningful discussions of SoD - the characters, their challenges, their interactions - and I have difficulty finding it.
@Lilura, you are dead on. I don't much care about Minsc and Mizhena, I'd rather talk about which combinations of characters are the most effective, the most fun, the most satisfying, etc etc. I'd rather talk about the Dragon Blade and if it is enough to make Minsc's Rashemi Rage worth more than a niche panic button. I'd rather talk about whether the Shield of Egons is enough to make a Cleric of Lathandar or an Undead Hunter more valuable and whether it should be carried over to BG2 and whether it's generally wasted on an expansion that vastly favors humanoids and demons over undead. I want to talk about the Shaman and the tricks and tactics that can make it worth playing through three games, or whether it should be seen as a summoner with divine magic or a spontaneous divine caster with summoning support. I want to talk about Skie and whether she managed, as I have often claimed, to have pulled herself out from beneath the pile of forgettable extras into one of the more interesting threads in the series, regardless of theories. I want to talk about Irenicus, and whether his presence in SoD cheapens his performance in BG2 or brings it to a new level. I want to talk about Baeloth and whether his presence as a now canon character in the main story (as opposed to a secret cameo) adds or detracts from his persona. I want to talk about what combination of characters makes the most narrative sense across the series: do you include Jaheira and Khalid, drop them after Nashkel, and then use the end of SoD to reintroduce them to the party? Does SoD's meddling screw up the continuity of constant characters like Minsc, Viconia, and Edwin? With the hindsight of SoD, are there any romance tracks that just become better for the inclusion? Does it make more sense to have a different cast for each game, with the exception of Imoen, to accentuate the isolation of the Scion and their reliance on Imoen to serve as their one constant? Are any of the EE regulars solid enough to be reserve a space in all three games? What classes make the most sense for a character who has been through the Scion's experiences? How do you use these games to tell the best story you possibly can?
There's so much that can be discussed and it isn't. And, to be frank, I don't much care for the atmosphere here, but it's all I have. Baldur's Gate has been a good part of my life, you see. I still remember playing BG2 during midnight LAN parties in undergrad, about stupidly insisting that I'd rather make my own character than play Minsc when the other players offered him to me (in fairness, that was my introduction to the franchise). I remember carefully collecting different combinations of mods each year for an annual run of the game, to see what fans could add to the game in the form of Tyris Flare, or Fade, or Kelsey, or spending all of Throne of Bhaal in a delicate dance of moral philosophy in a bid to guide Irenicus into using a
secondthird chance to better purpose. I remember trying Saerileth and being pleased to find a romance where "lover" wasn't a kind term for "unlicensed therapist", regardless of the many flaws of the mod. I remember cheering out loud (a rare event) when I saw the Baldur's Gate Trilogy and BG1NPC mods pull Baldur's Gate into Baldur's Gate 2 levels of quality, because I wanted to witness the original game but found I couldn't stand its original format, of playing BG1NPC's rendition of a Dynaheir romance and letting that color my character's friendship with Minsc for the rest of the story. To this day I'm prone to spending lunch breaks jotting down potential characters to play, combinations of characters to build up around them, and events and artifacts that could be central factors in that run. I enjoyed the fact that so many others shared my interest and had so much to contribute. I enjoyed reading what they had to say, even when I didn't agree with them, and the little angles I missed on my own.OHHINRTRM (Oh holy hell I'm not reading THAT rambling monolith) version? SoD isn't bad, but what made Baldur's Gate so incredible from undergrad to my humdrum 9 to 5 life has been the community around it. I miss it. Maybe nobody else on this planet sees it that way, but I feel that SoD is a fraction of the game it should be. Is that a failure of the game? I don't know.
So I asked you.
I have never enjoyed merchant forums as venue for discussing games. Honest discussion does not survive where only the true believers speak. Nobody comes to this forum save those who have already made up their mind one way or the other. Perhaps in this opinion I am showing my age once again, but I have yet to find a conversation on this forum to dissuade me of that hypothesis.
The cultural impact is thus: "Did fans of the D&D-based RPGs, fans of the BG series...maybe even fans of cRPGs in general, find SOD to be a game that was a worthy expansion to BG1?". If the answer is yes, then SOD had a good cultural impact. If the answer is no, then it was a bad cultural impact.
I agree that this community can be defensive about the games and about Beamdog, especially after the wave of negative attention that followed the Siege of Dragonspear release. So it's not the best place to find impartiality on questions like "Has Siege of Dragonspear Failed?" It is a good place for friendly, in-depth conversations about gameplay, though. If you look a little bit harder, I think you'll find a lot of those conversations.