Who is the better writer, Dickens of Tolkien? You can't compare them objectively, there is no factual, objective measure. Not even sales gives you that.
I would say the writing on BG1 is actually mediocre at best. It was great for it's faithful interpretation of PnP D&D, but there are far to many (now badly dated) pop culture jokes, the plot is simply a retailing of the monomyth, and characterisation is virtually non-existent. Indeed, if the writing had been better, it wouldn't really have resembled the PnP game in my experience.
SoD for the most part ditches the dumb jokes (it's where they have felt the need to include some that there are problems), the plot is not off the peg, and the characterisation is deep and complex. Overall, it is far superior. Indeed it is the vastly improved writing that makes the transition not entirely smooth.
Yes, SoD would have been better as a stand alone story, rather than squeezed between BG1 and NG2, but we know that wasn't an option for Beamdog for financial and licencing reasons.
something that should be noted. sod is tonally more in line with bg2 then 1. 1 was more a series of mini adventures with a main plot that does not really pick up until you get to the title city. sod and bg2 on the other had were more focused and serious with light shades of humor.
Who is the better writer, Dickens of Tolkien? You can't compare them objectively, there is no factual, objective measure. Not even sales gives you that.
What sort of nonsense is this? There absolutely are factual, objective measures you can use to evaluate Dickens' technique in comparison to Tolkien's - their writing style, their strategies of characterization, the structural cohesion of their plotting, their attention to detail, their methods of ontological definition, etc. It's a useless comparison, of course, because they operated in completely different genres and used completely different tools as a result, but acting like it's just impossible to have any objective standards for writing is ridiculous and lets far too many amateurs off the hook.
A more apt comparison would be to ask who's the better writer, Tolkien or John Norman. That's not a question anyone would have difficulty answering.
Who is the better writer, Dickens of Tolkien? You can't compare them objectively, there is no factual, objective measure. Not even sales gives you that.
their writing style, their strategies of characterization, the structural cohesion of their plotting, their attention to detail, their methods of ontological definition
None of which tells you objectively that one writer is BETTER than another. It's quite easy to show that Dickens had a far broader range of techniques, but I would still rather read Tolkien. Some writers look awful if you analyse their technique, or even look as such simple things as grammar and spelling, yet are immensely successful and popular.
"Hack" is a term that applies far more appropriately to Dickens than to Tolkien. He was a very very talented hack, but a hack is definitely what he was, turning out pages of text week in and week out to fill pages in a magazine.
Tolkien was an academic, who never saw writing as anything other than a hobby, and wrote to amuse himself, not what was commercial. The very opposite of a hack.
It actually hasn't engaged me from the start, something vital is missing.
Here is what I wrote in the first post of my walkthrough:
"... and in fact, many things are not made quite as clear as they ought to be. For example, the narrative (i.e, wtf is going on) is fed in dribs n drabs (short dialogue lines and bare-bones journal entries) and lacks the conviction, swagger and Realmslore flavor of the original campaign".
It just doesn't feel like Baldur's Gate. That's what is missing. Oh, and good writing. It does pick up in a few places, imo (Dwarves of Dumathoin and the two Sieges), but it drops off again to mediocre each time. Bring on Gaider, I say.
I found myself wandering around, unsure wtf was going on and having the overall feeling that the game hadn't started yet. And that went on for ages.
At one point the bossy one you meet at the start, suggested we went "up the road" to have a look around, at the first camp. I found myself in the cave/dungeon with the lich at the end, but we were just going to have a look round. What was this quite extensive episode doing when we were casually having a scout round?
So completed it, but throughout had the feeling I'd done something wrong, taken a wrong turn, shouldn't be there.
It's bad writing, plot development, call it whatever, when a player feels like they are doing the game "wrong". And it hasn't stopped yet. Did the whole bridge thing wondering whether I was in the right area at that point in the game or even if I was meant to kill everybody.
@UnderstandMouseMagic I never had that issue. If anything, I had that feeling more with BG1, which was much more unfocused and based on exploration to find plot threads gradually (not a bad thing) while SOD felt far more focused on a central narrative. Yes the writing style was different, but that doesn't make it worse. My problem is that people are treating this as an objective issue, where how much you enjoy someone's writing over another's is entirely subjective.
Here's an example of what happened on my playthrough.
I hit the Bronsky (sp) bridge before doing anything else in that area. Four NPC, charname, Vic, Edwin, Corwin. A big fight started, was killing everything quite happily (OK we are pretty high level). Ended up stopping the game, reloading because it made no sense, the FF attacked as well, everything going off but WTF was going on?
It was only after reloading that I did anything about finding a wardstone, the temple, and discovering where Khalid and that lot of quests were.
So could I have just battled through ignoring the temple, Khalid ect.?
1- Are the bugs mostly ironed out by now (I plan on playing it solo only)?
I still have technical problems with the game unfortunately. It seems to differ drastically between players though. If you buy it through Steam I believe you can claim a refund if you aren't happy, so there's that.
2- I read that some of the more controversial stuff has been removed or will be taken in consideration if there is a new BG game (Minsc line removed for example). Did the negative reviews blow this out of proportion? Not that it bothers me to have some gay or transgendered or feminist characters in a game (I have friends in all those categories), just that it bothers me if it feels like the story goes out of its way only to push this forward (basically, it bothers me if it doesn't feel ''natural'').
Mizhena's dialogue tree discussing her transexuality certainly doesn't feel natural to me, and in my opinion it's terribly written, but it's a small, isolated reference. The game doesn't push it down your throat. I think they removed the gamergate reference (I certainly didn't hear it when I played), and the goblin NPC is part of an optional sidequest.
3- I found that the voice acting and characters (the new ones) were awful and blend in BG EE and BG2 EE. Does SoD do a better job at this?
I thought the team did a fantastic job with the voice acting. It's one of the best bits of the game. They managed to track down the original VAs for the characters in the base game. The only let-down is Jaheira, whose lines are unvoiced, but they were unable to recruit her original VA.
4- Is the dialogue between party members or quests for them (if there are any) good or important? I would like to continue with my solo Monk run all the way through BG EE into SoD into BG2 EE but I have normally played BG1 and BG2 with full parties to get a more complete feel of the game and quests first. As I read that SoD is linear and story supposedly weak, would I miss out much by trying to solo my way through it?
Occasionally quests can be completed by asking another party member to give their input or advice. The game offers multiple solutions to problems though, so you might be okay.
5- Was the story bridge satisfying to you? I'm not looking for spoilers here but more how you felt about it. I read that the story was very weak which worried me because one of the best things for me about the BG series was the story. I'm curious about SoD mostly because I'd want to see what story bridges the two together.
I think the series didn't need SoD. A prequel to the original would have been better in my opinion, but that's a personal preference of my own. It was okay. Not amazing, not appalling, just okay. The game does have some really good bits of storyline, and I believe it is worth playing at least once if you're a BG fan, but I found the ending so awful that I'm choosing to pretend it never happened.
6- My Monk is past lvl 7 already in BG1 EE and I just cleared the Nashkel mines. The level cap is lvl 8 for him unless I redo Black Pits 1 I believe (which would then be lvl 10?). What are the levels and xp caps like in SoD? Is lvl 8 good enough (if I solo) to start there? What lvl (or xp since every class has different xp lvl) can I expect to be if I don't go too much out of my way to do every possible sidequest and solo through it for BG2?
I'm afraid I'm a bit clueless about monks, it's never a class I've really played, so I can't answer this one. sorry about that!
My last runthrough was more or less bug-free, which is certainly an improvement over the state of the game at release. I found the VA to be strong and generally liked the distinctive personalities of the joinable NPCs, though their combat usefulness varies considerably (Safana is notably weak, for example, while Corwin is quite strong).
Whether the story bridge was "satisfying" depends a lot on what you expected SoD to do. If you feel SoD needed to be about how Irenicus captured CHARNAME, then you will be puzzled that most of the game covers an entirely different antagonist (Caelar) with the "main point" of SoD occurring in an end-of-game cutscene which no amount of role-playing can avoid. On the other hand, if you think the unresolved question between BG1 and BG2 wasn't so much how CHARNAME was captured but why the Grand Dukes wouldn't have immediately ordered a full-scale mobilization to retrieve him, then there's a better chance you'll be happy with what SoD has to offer. You might or might not like the Caelar storyline, and you might or might not think the populace or the Grand Dukes were too easily swayed by too little evidence, and you might or might not like the writing and the interface, but you'd hopefully at least enjoy the further adventures of CHARNAME along with a plausible explanation for how the period between BG1 and BG2 could have unfolded.
Whether the story bridge was "satisfying" depends a lot on what you expected SoD to do. If you feel SoD needed to be about how Irenicus captured CHARNAME, then you will be puzzled that most of the game covers an entirely different antagonist (Caelar) with the "main point" of SoD occurring in an end-of-game cutscene which no amount of role-playing can avoid. On the other hand, if you think the unresolved question between BG1 and BG2 wasn't so much how CHARNAME was captured but why the Grand Dukes wouldn't have immediately ordered a full-scale mobilization to retrieve him, then there's a better chance you'll be happy with what SoD has to offer.
Except not, because the question of why the Grand Dukes don't try to rescue you is answered in the same end-of-game cutscene. If the story of SoD had been about you joining the Dragonspear Crusade (and thus alienating the Dukes), then it'd make sense that the overall story would answer that question - but before Skie's murder you're as much a hero to Baldur's Gate as you were before.
but before Skie's murder you're as much a hero to Baldur's Gate as you were before.
Except, even as early as Boarskyr Bridge, the populace would fear you. Do you think something as significant as burning the symbol of Bhaal into the bridge would fail to spread like wildfire? By the time you return to Baldur's Gate, everyone fears you. The death of Skie just gave them an excuse to justify their fear, regardless of whether the Bhaalspawn killed her or not.
But the difference is that you discover you can walk straight through the UD by accident, (in fact it was literally less than a week ago I found out you could because somebody mentioned it in a thread here) whereas SOD it's the opposite. Nothing occured in that area that suggested not walking straight through, it was happening before I was even aware anything had been missed.
@UnderstandMouseMagic But you literally meet Jaheira on the previous map who tells you the situation and that you should find the runestone to get into the fort. You cannot miss her.
Except, even as early as Boarskyr Bridge, the populace would fear you. Do you think something as significant as burning the symbol of Bhaal into the bridge would fail to spread like wildfire? By the time you return to Baldur's Gate, everyone fears you. The death of Skie just gave them an excuse to justify their fear, regardless of whether the Bhaalspawn killed her or not.
And had that happened at the end of the game, then it would justifiably overshadow your actions. But following that event, you go on to stop a crusade that has displaced thousands of refugees, defeat the Shining Lady, and prevent a baatezu invasion. And you are known to have done these things, because everyone's calling you the savior of Dragonspear by the time you come back. But none of that has any impact on what happens next, nor on BG2 at all.
In my SoD run-throughs, the populace became increasingly disenchanted with CHARNAME over the course of the game as they came to view him as a dangerous Bhaalspawn. Yes, he did good deeds but most were done with few witnesses, and even those few witnesses sometimes misinterpreted his actions as villainous rather than heroic, egged on by several important NPCs who actively tried to smear CHARNAME. It's true that the soldiers who fought with CHARNAME at Dragonspear Castle thought well of him, but none of them actually witnessed the final battle so they are simply taking CHARNAME at his word that he fought and dispatched the "big boss" rather than conniving with him. And even if seeing CHARNAME strike at the family of a Grand Duke didn't turn them, who's to say the populace would believe their claims about CHARNAME's heroism rather than concluding they had obviously been corrupted or deceived by CHARNAME (or been taken in by the magnetic personality strong Bhaalspawn seem to possess)?
I agree that it's unfair for CHARNAME to be treated so poorly by the people of the Sword Coast after all he did for them in BG1/SoD, but at the same time I do think the SoD team tried to lay out a reasonable case for how this could happen.
And had that happened at the end of the game, then it would justifiably overshadow your actions.
You're forgetting how long it would take news to travel. And I don't just mean how long it would take messengerX to get back to Baldur's Gate, I also mean that it persist as a rumor (getting crazier as it goes) through the general populace of the city.
Its not that difficult to work a bunch of people up and turn against someone they previously admired. Smear campaigns have been known to work.
Yup. Why do you think US politicians keep using campaign ads that smear their opponent? It's easier to get an emotional kneejerk reaction than to get a well thought-out, logical reaction.
Yeah, that's pretty much the only part of the ending that I like. It pictures the masses as fickle and eager to find a scapegoat for every problem they have. And Duncan acts as the face of these masses so to speak.
In a way, this can be a nice justification for a previously good-aligned Charname to turn Neutral or Evil in SoA (either in Hell, or with EEKeeper). Disillusionment with people and the nagging feeling that whatever they do, they'll be "Bhaalspawn" forever.
Just finished two playthroughs (good/evil) and thought overall was great 8/10, game flowed smoothly with only a couple bugs, great interaction and dialogue along with combat and tougher AI (played on insane) than expected. settings and quests were decent too.
I don't remember anyone at Beamdog saying the expansion would *begin* with your capture by Irenicus and then document what happened between that point and BG2. If that's what is meant by SoD successfully "bridging" the gap between BG1 and BG2 then it clearly doesn't succeed.
But at least in my mind, the bigger story to tell is how CHARNAME fell from grace to the point where he lost the protection of Baldur's Gate and was in a position where he'd be on the run and easily capturable by Irenicus. That's the "bridging" story I was interested in seeing and I think it is a story SoD successfully delivered.
As to whether Irenicus was too heavily involved in SoD, I just don't see it. After all, he captured CHARNAME at the beginning of BG2 specifically *because* he had been previously watching CHARNAME and knew him to be a Bhaalspawn. When would this previous observation happen if not in SoD? And regarding the objection that he seeming pops in and out of situations at will, disregarding objections from anyone else who might be present, I seem to recall him doing exactly the same thing in BG2. So this too is entirely consistent with his character, at least in my judgment.
Was SoD too linear, or too heavy-handed at times, or too buggy at initial release? Maybe. Was it not what some people expected? Undoubtedly. But I do think it accomplished the objective of bridging the gap between BG and BG2, as long as "bridging the gap" means explaining how CHARNAME's reputation fell through the floor rather than literally how he was captured and moved to Irenicus' dungeon.
I don't remember anyone at Beamdog saying the expansion would *begin* with your capture by Irenicus and then document what happened between that point and BG2. If that's what is meant by SoD successfully "bridging" the gap between BG1 and BG2 then it clearly doesn't succeed.
But at least in my mind, the bigger story to tell is how CHARNAME fell from grace to the point where he lost the protection of Baldur's Gate and was in a position where he'd be on the run and easily capturable by Irenicus. That's the "bridging" story I was interested in seeing and I think it is a story SoD successfully delivered.
As to whether Irenicus was too heavily involved in SoD, I just don't see it. After all, he captured CHARNAME at the beginning of BG2 specifically *because* he had been previously watching CHARNAME and knew him to be a Bhaalspawn. When would this previous observation happen if not in SoD? And regarding the objection that he seeming pops in and out of situations at will, disregarding objections from anyone else who might be present, I seem to recall him doing exactly the same thing in BG2. So this too is entirely consistent with his character, at least in my judgment.
Was SoD too linear, or too heavy-handed at times, or too buggy at initial release? Maybe. Was it not what some people expected? Undoubtedly. But I do think it accomplished the objective of bridging the gap between BG and BG2, as long as "bridging the gap" means explaining how CHARNAME's reputation fell through the floor rather than literally how he was captured and moved to Irenicus' dungeon.
Comments
I would say the writing on BG1 is actually mediocre at best. It was great for it's faithful interpretation of PnP D&D, but there are far to many (now badly dated) pop culture jokes, the plot is simply a retailing of the monomyth, and characterisation is virtually non-existent. Indeed, if the writing had been better, it wouldn't really have resembled the PnP game in my experience.
SoD for the most part ditches the dumb jokes (it's where they have felt the need to include some that there are problems), the plot is not off the peg, and the characterisation is deep and complex. Overall, it is far superior. Indeed it is the vastly improved writing that makes the transition not entirely smooth.
Yes, SoD would have been better as a stand alone story, rather than squeezed between BG1 and NG2, but we know that wasn't an option for Beamdog for financial and licencing reasons.
A more apt comparison would be to ask who's the better writer, Tolkien or John Norman. That's not a question anyone would have difficulty answering.
Tolkien was an academic, who never saw writing as anything other than a hobby, and wrote to amuse himself, not what was commercial. The very opposite of a hack.
Totally agree.
I found myself wandering around, unsure wtf was going on and having the overall feeling that the game hadn't started yet.
And that went on for ages.
At one point the bossy one you meet at the start, suggested we went "up the road" to have a look around, at the first camp. I found myself in the cave/dungeon with the lich at the end, but we were just going to have a look round. What was this quite extensive episode doing when we were casually having a scout round?
So completed it, but throughout had the feeling I'd done something wrong, taken a wrong turn, shouldn't be there.
It's bad writing, plot development, call it whatever, when a player feels like they are doing the game "wrong". And it hasn't stopped yet. Did the whole bridge thing wondering whether I was in the right area at that point in the game or even if I was meant to kill everybody.
Here's an example of what happened on my playthrough.
I hit the Bronsky (sp) bridge before doing anything else in that area. Four NPC, charname, Vic, Edwin, Corwin. A big fight started, was killing everything quite happily (OK we are pretty high level).
Ended up stopping the game, reloading because it made no sense, the FF attacked as well, everything going off but WTF was going on?
It was only after reloading that I did anything about finding a wardstone, the temple, and discovering where Khalid and that lot of quests were.
So could I have just battled through ignoring the temple, Khalid ect.?
Whether the story bridge was "satisfying" depends a lot on what you expected SoD to do. If you feel SoD needed to be about how Irenicus captured CHARNAME, then you will be puzzled that most of the game covers an entirely different antagonist (Caelar) with the "main point" of SoD occurring in an end-of-game cutscene which no amount of role-playing can avoid. On the other hand, if you think the unresolved question between BG1 and BG2 wasn't so much how CHARNAME was captured but why the Grand Dukes wouldn't have immediately ordered a full-scale mobilization to retrieve him, then there's a better chance you'll be happy with what SoD has to offer. You might or might not like the Caelar storyline, and you might or might not think the populace or the Grand Dukes were too easily swayed by too little evidence, and you might or might not like the writing and the interface, but you'd hopefully at least enjoy the further adventures of CHARNAME along with a plausible explanation for how the period between BG1 and BG2 could have unfolded.
But the difference is that you discover you can walk straight through the UD by accident, (in fact it was literally less than a week ago I found out you could because somebody mentioned it in a thread here) whereas SOD it's the opposite. Nothing occured in that area that suggested not walking straight through, it was happening before I was even aware anything had been missed.
I agree that it's unfair for CHARNAME to be treated so poorly by the people of the Sword Coast after all he did for them in BG1/SoD, but at the same time I do think the SoD team tried to lay out a reasonable case for how this could happen.
In a way, this can be a nice justification for a previously good-aligned Charname to turn Neutral or Evil in SoA (either in Hell, or with EEKeeper). Disillusionment with people and the nagging feeling that whatever they do, they'll be "Bhaalspawn" forever.
But at least in my mind, the bigger story to tell is how CHARNAME fell from grace to the point where he lost the protection of Baldur's Gate and was in a position where he'd be on the run and easily capturable by Irenicus. That's the "bridging" story I was interested in seeing and I think it is a story SoD successfully delivered.
As to whether Irenicus was too heavily involved in SoD, I just don't see it. After all, he captured CHARNAME at the beginning of BG2 specifically *because* he had been previously watching CHARNAME and knew him to be a Bhaalspawn. When would this previous observation happen if not in SoD? And regarding the objection that he seeming pops in and out of situations at will, disregarding objections from anyone else who might be present, I seem to recall him doing exactly the same thing in BG2. So this too is entirely consistent with his character, at least in my judgment.
Was SoD too linear, or too heavy-handed at times, or too buggy at initial release? Maybe. Was it not what some people expected? Undoubtedly. But I do think it accomplished the objective of bridging the gap between BG and BG2, as long as "bridging the gap" means explaining how CHARNAME's reputation fell through the floor rather than literally how he was captured and moved to Irenicus' dungeon.
But at least in my mind, the bigger story to tell is how CHARNAME fell from grace to the point where he lost the protection of Baldur's Gate and was in a position where he'd be on the run and easily capturable by Irenicus. That's the "bridging" story I was interested in seeing and I think it is a story SoD successfully delivered.
As to whether Irenicus was too heavily involved in SoD, I just don't see it. After all, he captured CHARNAME at the beginning of BG2 specifically *because* he had been previously watching CHARNAME and knew him to be a Bhaalspawn. When would this previous observation happen if not in SoD? And regarding the objection that he seeming pops in and out of situations at will, disregarding objections from anyone else who might be present, I seem to recall him doing exactly the same thing in BG2. So this too is entirely consistent with his character, at least in my judgment.
Was SoD too linear, or too heavy-handed at times, or too buggy at initial release? Maybe. Was it not what some people expected? Undoubtedly. But I do think it accomplished the objective of bridging the gap between BG and BG2, as long as "bridging the gap" means explaining how CHARNAME's reputation fell through the floor rather than literally how he was captured and moved to Irenicus' dungeon.