Thank you for reviving Baldur's Gate!
Beck
Member Posts: 1
I'm so glad, that after soooo much years someone at last is trying to revive one of my best game ever. I can't get my eyes of new Dragonspear. I wish that you will continue and a lot more people will understand how games should be developed! Just don't stop! Maybe create kickstarter project to gather more funds from crowdfunding.
More people need to know about Baldur's Gate.
Wish you the luck.
More people need to know about Baldur's Gate.
Wish you the luck.
25
Comments
I am starting my 3rd SoD run, which will take me 9 months to complete at the rate I'm currently going
"Rumors on the development of The Black Hound continued up until 2012 upon the announcement of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. The developers, Beamdog, revealed that they planned on making Baldur's Gate III, but did not initially reveal whether it would be a continuation of The Black Hound.[3][4][5] Beamdog would later clarify that a possible Baldur's Gate III would not be based on The Black Hound and instead be an original story."
Assuming this quote is true, I am a little worried beamdog are keeping with the original story just to have an excuse to use the same old tired overused game engine. The Baldurs Gate fanbase will keep dying slowly if there isn't a complete overhaul in future games imo.
For example, what happened later to some of the other characters whom we met during the existing games? There could be some decent stories in that, and (as I understand it) this was the idea behind the cancelled "Black Hound" project for a third game.
Alternatively, if it is assumed that the Bhaalspawn protagonist accepted ascension to godhood, then there could be all sorts of decent stories based on the development of a church of followers of the new god. Our old protagonist might even make a (non-playable) cameo appearance as the new god! (A long while ago on this forum, I offered a plot outline for a story about the followers of the new god which would have been substantial enough to make both BG3 and BG4 - a low-level game leading into a higher-level game.)
A spin-off, provided that it has a sufficiently substantial connection to the Bhaalspawn saga, could still legitimately use the "BG" name.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beamdog has the potential to revive the entire BG franchise out of limbo and into the modern age continuing it on indefinitely. Though to do this imo would require a few things:
- A much needed engine update of either 3.5e or 5e
- Modern day competitive 3D graphics, many gamers only care about the bling bling now days..
- Either keep politics out of it or at least use finesse with it this time around.
- Make amends with former customers who felt disenfranchised for reasons I don't have to mention
- Writing and voice acting needs to be far above and beyond the effort of the BG series so far. Should be able to compete with Bioware's immense use of dialogue and romance.
And yeah that's about it from what I can tell. It really shouldn't be hard to make BG3 a cash cow
Art imitates life, the real world will always leak into the tales we tell.
Eh, Bioware's writing isn't really that amazing. I enjoyed the writing in SoD more than most of the stuff BIoware has put out recently.
Audio and story on the other hand, well... I think the demand that everything must be voiced in modern games is a far bigger offender in the slow death of storytelling because it's such a heavy limitation on variety in dialogue. It's almost infeasible for the amount of text in games like BG and PST to be fully voiced.
However let's be realistic, us old school gamers are just a tiny minority. To bring in the cash there needs to be a massive upgrade to both graphics and audio, increasing the demographic of the target audience is a must for something like a BG series to be anything major once again... What? Dragon age has more than enough classes and variables. Furthermore Neverwinter nights 2 had more classes and dialogue then almost any game I have ever played in my life. Beamdog has more than enough money to compete against them, heck many small indie companies have already done so competing successfully against gaming giants.
Like it or not the gaming industry is cut throat and the competition is imo thriving. If peoples mindsets are stuck in catering only for us minorities without any concessions at all for the majority of gamers... well there won't be many high-end old school RPGS made for us to enjoy, just not profitable enough.
RE: Graphics/story, I usually defer to my Star Wars analogy; The original trilogy at its time had state of the art special effects, but they still looked crappy. I didn't matter. It was enough to spark the imagination and send it soaring, and the story was what made the franchise what it is. On the other hand, you have SW 1-3 that were over CGI'd, looked nice, but a lot of the acting sucked, and the story (I'll never forget when they take the glucometer to young Ani to determine his midichlorian count, NOR WILL I FORGIVE!) sucked as well.
Ideally we'd like both, but story is where the Forgotten Realm is extremely deep and I'd personally like that to be the focus. Just about anything made today will look better than 1998, but I don't want Beamdog to go overboard.
Pillars was a great looking game, but it didn't have D&D or the FR, and I think that's why a lot of people didn't adore it more, no built in attachment. How many times can you make a knock-off kobold?
Imo high-end game options for will forever dwindle since we have been so busy narrowing our target audience. The majority of gamers are not like us, they need bling. The original BG series had graphics that were great for its time, thus they had a much larger target audience to justify a higher budget game release.
Beamdog's niche is D&D, FR fans, and (c)RPGers. Myself personally, I was just a RPGer when I got into BG. It's laughable how bad I was in the beginning and I didn't get any of the references (i.e. Volo, Drizzt, Cadderly, etc). They can follow some of the (good) moves Blizzard made, not with the same scale, but certainly in their market strategy.
There was one thing that stood out with the BG series; it wasn't cheap. Sure it was buggy, but you could see how much intellectual capital went into these games. It sounds simple, but the more you looked, the more you found (i.e. decades of FR books, the depth of D&D rules, mods, and the list goes on).
If BD wants to broaden the player base (we can debate separately if that's even a good idea) we know anything 'new' will be 5e. Maybe they will find a way to attract more of the PnP crowd.
What other moves could they make to significantly draw a new crowd of players?
"What other moves could they make to significantly draw a new crowd of players?"
Use Text speech, gr8.
Get Harry Potter to mention he plays it. Even better, give HP a guest slot, he's a wizard isn't he?
OK, not such realistic suggestions.
I completely agree with you on your other point. The care and love that's poured into BG is breathtaking. Better graphics and more dynamic UI will never compete with that.
HP has been such a phenomenal success, knock it all you like for being a generic, rip off boarding school story, but JK Rowling believed in her story and characters and that shines through.
It's that level of conviction that will bring in people, they want to believe.
I have mixed feelings about 5e, I doubt it will be as good as 3.5 imo... Still this is a positive change as almost anything will be better than overused tired old 2e.
Unfortunately, unless it's another expansion, anything new will be 5e per WotC.