As an aside no reloads need not be based on knowing everything about the game inside out. Plenty of people have completed previously unseen content -e.g. from mods or SoD - first time out. I completed a sight unseen no reload of Icewind Dale EE not too long ago for example. No SCS / main character vulnerability made it somewhat easier than it will be when EET (hopefully) incorporates IWDEE after the patches roll out.
Yup. My blind SoD run is in the no-reload thread. It was actually really fun, because I just had to guess what kind of threats I'd be facing in the next fight.
I always figured that I would die in the real world if I died in a no reload run. That's right kids, I'm that hardcore. I'm still here because I have never died in a no reload run.....because I have never attempted to play the game with no reloads. Can we still be friends?
Well, even single-player Diablo lets people continue, even though it has no reload option as such. But here is a thought: how about a softer kind of no-reload? Some people might be satisfied with a decision to only load autosaves. That throws you back a distance every time, yet it's not ruinous.
The closest I've ever come to a no-reload run was purely by accident. Made it all the way to the Dragospear castle assault in SoD. Cleric/Rangers are kind of super powerful.
Well, even single-player Diablo lets people continue, even though it has no reload option as such. But here is a thought: how about a softer kind of no-reload? Some people might be satisfied with a decision to only load autosaves. That throws you back a distance every time, yet it's not ruinous.
Before I made the full move to no-reload, I was doing exactly that. I was emulating the old JRPGs of my youth, where you could only save your game at specific places. For example, a paladin could only save at the Lathander's temple in BG1 and the paladin's Order in BG2. Thus, you have to no-reload parts of the game, not the whole thing. That way, dying was a frustration, but not overly crippling. Might be interesting for some of you out there.
The closest I've ever come to a no-reload run was purely by accident.
Well, I recall some of my experiences playing RPGs and I think that's how it was with me. I remember times or I have a general impression that I used to go for a long time without saving. In Morrowind, for example. Then again, I also remember loading again and again and again in places, like the smugglers' cave in that game, close to where you start out. It was so easy to die there. But I don't recall saving again and again, that's the difference. I don't recall winning an inch and securing it on the hard drive, then repeating for the next inch. I didn't reload when I found myself doing something stupid, like selling an expensive item... I don't reload for that now either, but now I regret having done it. Back then I didn't regret such things. I just moved on.
I don't know what happened - have I gotten old and cagey or... I don't want to blame myself completely. Part of the problem has got to be with the whole real-life environment nowadays... I just don't find the sort of laid-back ease outside of games that I remember. Even touching on how games are used. I mean, we spend so much time struggling with copy protection, and where to find torrents, and whether our computers will even shoulder the system requirements, and we get to browse Google so FREAKING MUCH for answers. Or to submit feedback. This is a bit of a tangent, stay with me: recently I found a couple of flaws with the Enhanced Edition engine and I wrote about them here on the "Troubleshooting" forum. That should be enough for Beamdog to take notice and take heed. But they've designed a whole submission process out there on something called "redmine," where, of course, I would need to register to just file my request, and then they have a form to fill and a step-by-step procedure... Yeah, for them it's a logical and orderly way of getting their information, but who is paying the price? The person reporting the bug has to spend his time going through the motions, as if he's a company employee, when in fact he generously donates his discovery. I can explain my bug in one sentence, except they aren't listening unless I fill out the form. This is just an example. I feel that we all get involved in way too much of peripheral business like this.
Given this kind of junk now filling my life, is it any wonder that I approach a new box thinking "Let's see how these developers are going to rip me off, hopefully not too badly, they will be following some trend or other, and their marketing dept. will be the real designers... They're going to make me jump through a few hoops, no doubt about it. Well, maybe there will be good balance between boredom and enjoyment." But the truth is, this kind of balance is always bad.
I guess the word that I have for games these days and the environment outside of games is "unforgiving." It's just harsh, somehow even playing the Infinity oldies is harsh. Too much smarts crammed in, too many angles to cover. Maybe that's why people go on these no-reload runs... personal quests, that's all I can call them. It's an unconscious effort to avoid many "accessory features," dungeons created to challenge and make players invest their hours rather than to be fun (like Durlag's Tower underground, what a grind in every way). By avoiding everything except what they feel they just can't give up on, people dump a lot of the junk gameplay they would otherwise have to acknowledge and engage in.
Do you guys play with many mods? I've never tried a no-reload run, but I also tend to mod the absolute hell out of my games, trying to make it more challenging.
Side question - how much of the game do you have mentally mapped out, and how much do you use online guides for? For example - I casually remember where something like 50% of the traps are in SoA - but hell if I remember where or what the other half are. Do you have an idea of what spells a given wizard has ("I need free action to deal with this mage, and high fire protection to deal with that mage...).
Lastly - Do you guys cheese much? I try not to cheese too much, but I end up doing it a fair amount, especially when fighting 4 or 5 mages at once, without that many spell-protection lowering spells even memorized...
@BallpointMan: There are many ways of doing a no-reload run. I already know where everything is (I only rarely check guides), but I don't plan out specific encounters until I'm just about to do them. I like to improvise things, and I tend to use unorthodox tactics even if they're "cheesy" or whatever. I do experimental no-reload runs.
I'm currently playing a whole bunch of mods installed using BWS, but the mods I always play with are SCS (with nearly every option installed) and Ascension.
@semiticgod Yeah. I more or less use BWS and select as many of the "challenging" options as possible. Mostly they're in SCS and Ascension, so you're probably playing the game about the way I do. Which is kind of insane, since I just reloaded approximately 10 times to beat the Skeleton party in the Forest of Mir just now (admittedly, I also tend to reload on any character death unless I perceive the fight as a "boss battle").
Other side question - do you usually go fight Aec'Letec? I shudder to think of doing that fight, on SCS, on a no reload run...
Aec'Letec himself isn't buffed by SCS, and there are some fairly safe ways to tackle him in a no-reload run (I usually fight him) - using six potions of magic shielding and six potions of mirrored eyes plus offensive potion buffs will make your party quite safe while you kill the cultists one by one.
Aec'Letec himself isn't buffed by SCS, and there are some fairly safe ways to tackle him in a no-reload run (I usually fight him) - using six potions of magic shielding and six potions of mirrored eyes plus offensive potion buffs will make your party quite safe while you kill the cultists one by one.
But you only know this because you've fought him before and know about his death gaze. You've all reloaded many times before everywhere, that's how you can play a so-risky, no-reload game now. How many people here would play BG in an "Iron Man" mode if they were playing for the first time? I think they would very quickly start saving, once they lost a mid-level character to some crazy accident.
Well Shoal might be more dangerous than Aec first time out . As noted earlier some of us have completed no-reloaded unseen content. @semiticgod did a boosted up version of IWD as well I think.
Mostly luck? Getting through both SoD and @sarevok57's IWD mega mod with no metagame knowledge by relying on luck is simply not statistically realistic. We're talking about dozens of fights, involving thousands of dice rolls, over two entire games, for tens of hours of gameplay. If you roll a d6 a thousand times and add up the results, even good luck is not going to get you much higher than the average of 3500. Over the course of thousands of iterations, dice rolls balance out--which means you're going to encounter about as many bad rolls as good rolls.
That's why a good no-reloader designs strategies which minimize the role of luck. No-reload play is very much about identifying, predicting, and countering potentially fatal dice rolls.
If anyone is skeptical, you can see both of those runs documented in the no-reload thread. The blind IWD run with the IWD Mega Mod begins here; the blind SoD run begins here. It's not just an endless series of high dice rolls; these games are a lot more complicated than that.
In fact, you'll notice my party failed important saving throws in the very first fight of both runs. No-reload play is also very much about adapting to bad situations and figuring out how to recover when everything goes to hell.
My first introduction to no-reloads was Nuzlocke, no-reloads with Pokemon games, so I'll be making a few comparisons with that.
No one's saying that it's a good idea to try no-reloading before you understand the Infinity Engine: that'd be like trying to Nuzlocke a Pokemon game without knowing that, say, Fire is effective against steel. But once you understand the engine, it's not impossible to blindly go through a hack, or in BG's case an expansion or mod, simply because you already understand what's possible and what's not. So yeah, I would never advocate for someone who had never played the game to try to no-reload it. Experience the story, play with the NPC reactions, try to figure out what the heck a Demilich howl is and how to avoid it, learn to cheese the Beholders before they utterly destroy you. But once you understand how the basic game works? It then becomes more reasonable to go through uncharted territory.
Another thing is, regarding Aec'latec and other hard encounters: I skip them. I've never tried to no-reload them, simply because I don't consider the risk worth the reward. So in my current no-reload, I've skipped over the Twisted Rune and the Beholder Hive in the Underdark simply because I don't think I'm equipped to handle them.
Oh, and to answer the question in the OP: I usually roll something new in Candlekeep, maybe with a different mod layout, determined to get past my previous point. Once I finished the game after reloading, simply to get a feel of ToB with SCS installed so that I have a better idea of what lay ahead.
Mostly luck? Getting through both SoD and @sarevok57's IWD mega mod with no metagame knowledge by relying on luck is simply not statistically realistic. We're talking about dozens of fights, involving thousands of dice rolls, over two entire games, for tens of hours of gameplay.
You're making good points, but behind the luck is the knowing how all of that works. You are well-prepared by this point, and have been for a long time. These are old games, and you've just mastered them. It's still largely simple luck that you haven't failed some kind of disintegration roll or such, but what I mean is that you know what to expect and how to respond. You make it seem as if the challenges in store for us in those games are strange and unexpected, but they are anything but, especially with Beamdog's products.
I don't want to trash the company any more on their own website, though they are extra-careful not to antagonize the audience with real novelty. But even staying out of their material, suppose you've run into trolls for the first time without knowledge from PnP or manuals or guides or boards that they recover from anything except fire and acid. Because trolls in fantasy literature and fairy tales are not like D&D trolls at all. So you don't know anything about them being green and regenerating, only when you meet them you see that they refuse to die. How are you going to beat them? Well, perhaps you could do it by trying out every spell, maybe you would come across something with fire and it would do the job, a real discovery to be proud of and remember. But it's like expecting a caveman to learn to use fire from the very first lightning bolt to fall (no offense). It took our ancestors millennia to make that discovery, after they tried and failed over and over again - and died, because they were on a no-reload run. If you or I were to butt into trolls as completely strange enemies on a no-reload run, they would most likely tear us apart before we could "unlock" their weaknesses. And if they didn't, the next enemy or trap would. Ever played the Tomb of Horrors? I haven't, but I've read it. Random death, because you meet something you don't know, or just random - that's what real novelty feels like.
With these games, it's not like that at all. Here there is an illusion of a qualitative challenge, when all that's called for is quantitative investment of wits and time. Everybody has wits, everybody has time, nothing special. They are already invested, too - we've traipsed all over these games with saves, and some, like yourself, traipsed so much more than others that they felt confident enough to risk going without. The reality of no-reload play, which I respect as well as any other kind in principle, but it disturbs me, is triple-layered like a cake: it seems like a terribly bold venture for those who embark on it, but underneath there is a soft cushion of thorough familiarity, and buttressing that a sort of tacit agreement between players and designers to stick to what they both understand. They make what we expect them to make for us to play as they expect us to play. A little mutual masturbation. And according to this tacit agreement, we are supposed to act as if we are surprised by these adventures, and they are supposed to act as if they will challenge us for real. Just as we all pretend that what the Bhaalspawn does is heroic, when he simply kills everyone in his meandering way.
But even though you've mastered this game environment, no one quite completely governs it, not even the designers. There are random flukes that don't care for your mastery or the ceremonious illusion of complete control. That's why I call success on no-reload runs a matter of dumb luck, that you haven't fallen into those cracks as you were leaping smoothly over abysses.
So in my current no-reload, I've skipped over the Twisted Rune and the Beholder Hive in the Underdark simply because I don't think I'm equipped to handle them.
Well, I have never done a no reload, but I know this; Minsc + oil of speed +2 magical maces + scroll of immunity to magic = a lot of dead beholders
@chimeric it appears that you are hijacking your own thread as this post is not related to the original post. However, to give a response:
1) As has been said multiple times on this thread, no-reload play does not have to involve any luck at all. Some players (like myself) may choose to rely on a certain amount of luck in order to provide a bit of extra spice to the gameplay, but it is undoubtedly possible to complete the games with absolutely no reliance on luck at all.
2) The reason for 1) being possible is in fact included in your post, i.e. that players understand the possibilities within the game well enough to guard against them - whether or not they know the particular bit of content they're playing.
3) In order to be careful to that extent though you do need to either know the content or be prepared to short-circuit it. The reason for that is that there are opportunities to die a scripted death in the game, e.g. the encounter with Shoal. To avoid that sort of situation you need to be prepared to avoid encounters you don't already know the details of. In a normal game context it makes sense for instance for the main character to have every conversation (as sometimes only the main character is able to trigger content). In a 'purist' no-reload of unknown content you would not do that because of the possibility of instant death or being the focus of a dangerous ambush.
4) You seem to suggest that knowing the game is somehow bad and taking advantage of that knowledge is a dubious practice. As has been touched on earlier in the thread, no-reload play is just one means of bringing back excitement and challenge into a game that you know well. I fail to see why you should think this is a problem.
5) I don't think anyone playing no-reload has claimed that this is a superior way of playing the game - it's just a different way of playing it. Yes, it is much more appropriate for people who already know the game, but why is that a bad thing? You may choose to enjoy the game by playing with unknown mods for instance to explore the imagination of the designer (and that's fine), but why denigrate people who choose to play a different way?
6) As for the designers, it seems entirely reasonable to me that they should design according to the spirit and rules of the game. There have been plenty of mods that go beyond that for those that like to experience new challenges (Tactics for example), but I think most players expect that a game will stick to its own rules. That doesn't mean there's no opportunity for novelty - there's plenty of that in SoD. It just means that content doesn't arbitrarily breach the rules of the game (and hence it is possible to no-reload it if you're sufficiently careful).
7) Beamdog is a commercial company. If they produce content that very few people wish to experience then they won't last long. Hence it's no surprise if they make games they think people wish to play. From the controversies around some of their decisions though it seems pretty clear to me that they have been prepared to push the boundaries a bit in terms of what people are expecting.
From what I see, there are three kinds of no-reloads: 1) Blind or True no reload - the best imo 2) Restartitis excuse - quite common actually ;PP 3) No chance to fail no-reload (show off) - quite rare and kinda paradoxical because it requires a shitload of reload runs to successfully pull off (and quite inhuman skillz too)
and the countless combinations of them
"With these games, it's not like that at all. Here there is an illusion of a qualitative challenge, when all that's called for is quantitative investment of wits and time. Everybody has wits, everybody has time, nothing special. They are already invested, too - we've traipsed all over these games with saves, and some, like yourself, traipsed so much more than others that they felt confident enough to risk going without. The reality of no-reload play, which I respect as well as any other kind in principle, but it disturbs me, is triple-layered like a cake: it seems like a terribly bold venture for those who embark on it, but underneath there is a soft cushion of thorough familiarity, and buttressing that a sort of tacit agreement between players and designers to stick to what they both understand. They make what we expect them to make for us to play as they expect us to play. A little mutual masturbation. And according to this tacit agreement, we are supposed to act as if we are surprised by these adventures, and they are supposed to act as if they will challenge us for real. Just as we all pretend that what the Bhaalspawn does is heroic, when he simply kills everyone in his meandering way."
hmm... you touched interesting subject here. I will try to elaborate as clear as my broken english will let me: BG (and computer games in general) is not a "pure" game like for example Chess is. Chess has rather simple rules but the more you get into the game, more you play, more you know it, the more you see how deep and challenging it is, how many possibilities it has and how many combinations you can do with these rather simple rules. Pure game - GENIUS! Baldurs Gate is almost polar opposite. Rules are rather complicated, overcomplicated to the point of being obnoxious but the game is actually quite simple and easy not to mention full of cheese and broken crap. Why? Ha! Imo thats the very nature of these kind of games being actually more like "simulations" than "games". I mean in this particular case you have the simulation (made by the so called THAC0, saving throw or/and AC, right?) of the "real life" combat situation/decision. And it is quite clear now that from these standpoint (actually I don't know what standpoint means and I am using the word intuitionally like a woman ;pppppppPP) the "show off" approach is the most problematic: by making your save 100% you kinda WIN even before the fight starts, but the crushing knowledge of the game rules and the beautifull flow of the battle still stands.
Comments
If I am in a very bad and evil mood, I start a career in show business.
I don't know what happened - have I gotten old and cagey or... I don't want to blame myself completely. Part of the problem has got to be with the whole real-life environment nowadays... I just don't find the sort of laid-back ease outside of games that I remember. Even touching on how games are used. I mean, we spend so much time struggling with copy protection, and where to find torrents, and whether our computers will even shoulder the system requirements, and we get to browse Google so FREAKING MUCH for answers. Or to submit feedback. This is a bit of a tangent, stay with me: recently I found a couple of flaws with the Enhanced Edition engine and I wrote about them here on the "Troubleshooting" forum. That should be enough for Beamdog to take notice and take heed. But they've designed a whole submission process out there on something called "redmine," where, of course, I would need to register to just file my request, and then they have a form to fill and a step-by-step procedure... Yeah, for them it's a logical and orderly way of getting their information, but who is paying the price? The person reporting the bug has to spend his time going through the motions, as if he's a company employee, when in fact he generously donates his discovery. I can explain my bug in one sentence, except they aren't listening unless I fill out the form. This is just an example. I feel that we all get involved in way too much of peripheral business like this.
Given this kind of junk now filling my life, is it any wonder that I approach a new box thinking "Let's see how these developers are going to rip me off, hopefully not too badly, they will be following some trend or other, and their marketing dept. will be the real designers... They're going to make me jump through a few hoops, no doubt about it. Well, maybe there will be good balance between boredom and enjoyment." But the truth is, this kind of balance is always bad.
I guess the word that I have for games these days and the environment outside of games is "unforgiving." It's just harsh, somehow even playing the Infinity oldies is harsh. Too much smarts crammed in, too many angles to cover. Maybe that's why people go on these no-reload runs... personal quests, that's all I can call them. It's an unconscious effort to avoid many "accessory features," dungeons created to challenge and make players invest their hours rather than to be fun (like Durlag's Tower underground, what a grind in every way). By avoiding everything except what they feel they just can't give up on, people dump a lot of the junk gameplay they would otherwise have to acknowledge and engage in.
Side question - how much of the game do you have mentally mapped out, and how much do you use online guides for? For example - I casually remember where something like 50% of the traps are in SoA - but hell if I remember where or what the other half are. Do you have an idea of what spells a given wizard has ("I need free action to deal with this mage, and high fire protection to deal with that mage...).
Lastly - Do you guys cheese much? I try not to cheese too much, but I end up doing it a fair amount, especially when fighting 4 or 5 mages at once, without that many spell-protection lowering spells even memorized...
I'm currently playing a whole bunch of mods installed using BWS, but the mods I always play with are SCS (with nearly every option installed) and Ascension.
Other side question - do you usually go fight Aec'Letec? I shudder to think of doing that fight, on SCS, on a no reload run...
That's why a good no-reloader designs strategies which minimize the role of luck. No-reload play is very much about identifying, predicting, and countering potentially fatal dice rolls.
If anyone is skeptical, you can see both of those runs documented in the no-reload thread. The blind IWD run with the IWD Mega Mod begins here; the blind SoD run begins here. It's not just an endless series of high dice rolls; these games are a lot more complicated than that.
In fact, you'll notice my party failed important saving throws in the very first fight of both runs. No-reload play is also very much about adapting to bad situations and figuring out how to recover when everything goes to hell.
No one's saying that it's a good idea to try no-reloading before you understand the Infinity Engine: that'd be like trying to Nuzlocke a Pokemon game without knowing that, say, Fire is effective against steel. But once you understand the engine, it's not impossible to blindly go through a hack, or in BG's case an expansion or mod, simply because you already understand what's possible and what's not. So yeah, I would never advocate for someone who had never played the game to try to no-reload it. Experience the story, play with the NPC reactions, try to figure out what the heck a Demilich howl is and how to avoid it, learn to cheese the Beholders before they utterly destroy you. But once you understand how the basic game works? It then becomes more reasonable to go through uncharted territory.
Another thing is, regarding Aec'latec and other hard encounters: I skip them. I've never tried to no-reload them, simply because I don't consider the risk worth the reward. So in my current no-reload, I've skipped over the Twisted Rune and the Beholder Hive in the Underdark simply because I don't think I'm equipped to handle them.
Oh, and to answer the question in the OP: I usually roll something new in Candlekeep, maybe with a different mod layout, determined to get past my previous point. Once I finished the game after reloading, simply to get a feel of ToB with SCS installed so that I have a better idea of what lay ahead.
I don't want to trash the company any more on their own website, though they are extra-careful not to antagonize the audience with real novelty. But even staying out of their material, suppose you've run into trolls for the first time without knowledge from PnP or manuals or guides or boards that they recover from anything except fire and acid. Because trolls in fantasy literature and fairy tales are not like D&D trolls at all. So you don't know anything about them being green and regenerating, only when you meet them you see that they refuse to die. How are you going to beat them? Well, perhaps you could do it by trying out every spell, maybe you would come across something with fire and it would do the job, a real discovery to be proud of and remember. But it's like expecting a caveman to learn to use fire from the very first lightning bolt to fall (no offense). It took our ancestors millennia to make that discovery, after they tried and failed over and over again - and died, because they were on a no-reload run. If you or I were to butt into trolls as completely strange enemies on a no-reload run, they would most likely tear us apart before we could "unlock" their weaknesses. And if they didn't, the next enemy or trap would. Ever played the Tomb of Horrors? I haven't, but I've read it. Random death, because you meet something you don't know, or just random - that's what real novelty feels like.
With these games, it's not like that at all. Here there is an illusion of a qualitative challenge, when all that's called for is quantitative investment of wits and time. Everybody has wits, everybody has time, nothing special. They are already invested, too - we've traipsed all over these games with saves, and some, like yourself, traipsed so much more than others that they felt confident enough to risk going without. The reality of no-reload play, which I respect as well as any other kind in principle, but it disturbs me, is triple-layered like a cake: it seems like a terribly bold venture for those who embark on it, but underneath there is a soft cushion of thorough familiarity, and buttressing that a sort of tacit agreement between players and designers to stick to what they both understand. They make what we expect them to make for us to play as they expect us to play. A little mutual masturbation. And according to this tacit agreement, we are supposed to act as if we are surprised by these adventures, and they are supposed to act as if they will challenge us for real. Just as we all pretend that what the Bhaalspawn does is heroic, when he simply kills everyone in his meandering way.
But even though you've mastered this game environment, no one quite completely governs it, not even the designers. There are random flukes that don't care for your mastery or the ceremonious illusion of complete control. That's why I call success on no-reload runs a matter of dumb luck, that you haven't fallen into those cracks as you were leaping smoothly over abysses.
Minsc + oil of speed +2 magical maces + scroll of immunity to magic = a lot of dead beholders
Also works on (most) liches
1) As has been said multiple times on this thread, no-reload play does not have to involve any luck at all. Some players (like myself) may choose to rely on a certain amount of luck in order to provide a bit of extra spice to the gameplay, but it is undoubtedly possible to complete the games with absolutely no reliance on luck at all.
2) The reason for 1) being possible is in fact included in your post, i.e. that players understand the possibilities within the game well enough to guard against them - whether or not they know the particular bit of content they're playing.
3) In order to be careful to that extent though you do need to either know the content or be prepared to short-circuit it. The reason for that is that there are opportunities to die a scripted death in the game, e.g. the encounter with Shoal. To avoid that sort of situation you need to be prepared to avoid encounters you don't already know the details of. In a normal game context it makes sense for instance for the main character to have every conversation (as sometimes only the main character is able to trigger content). In a 'purist' no-reload of unknown content you would not do that because of the possibility of instant death or being the focus of a dangerous ambush.
4) You seem to suggest that knowing the game is somehow bad and taking advantage of that knowledge is a dubious practice. As has been touched on earlier in the thread, no-reload play is just one means of bringing back excitement and challenge into a game that you know well. I fail to see why you should think this is a problem.
5) I don't think anyone playing no-reload has claimed that this is a superior way of playing the game - it's just a different way of playing it. Yes, it is much more appropriate for people who already know the game, but why is that a bad thing? You may choose to enjoy the game by playing with unknown mods for instance to explore the imagination of the designer (and that's fine), but why denigrate people who choose to play a different way?
6) As for the designers, it seems entirely reasonable to me that they should design according to the spirit and rules of the game. There have been plenty of mods that go beyond that for those that like to experience new challenges (Tactics for example), but I think most players expect that a game will stick to its own rules. That doesn't mean there's no opportunity for novelty - there's plenty of that in SoD. It just means that content doesn't arbitrarily breach the rules of the game (and hence it is possible to no-reload it if you're sufficiently careful).
7) Beamdog is a commercial company. If they produce content that very few people wish to experience then they won't last long. Hence it's no surprise if they make games they think people wish to play. From the controversies around some of their decisions though it seems pretty clear to me that they have been prepared to push the boundaries a bit in terms of what people are expecting.
1) Blind or True no reload - the best imo
2) Restartitis excuse - quite common actually ;PP
3) No chance to fail no-reload (show off) - quite rare and kinda paradoxical because it requires a shitload of reload runs to successfully pull off (and quite inhuman skillz too)
and the countless combinations of them
"With these games, it's not like that at all. Here there is an illusion of a qualitative challenge, when all that's called for is quantitative investment of wits and time. Everybody has wits, everybody has time, nothing special. They are already invested, too - we've traipsed all over these games with saves, and some, like yourself, traipsed so much more than others that they felt confident enough to risk going without. The reality of no-reload play, which I respect as well as any other kind in principle, but it disturbs me, is triple-layered like a cake: it seems like a terribly bold venture for those who embark on it, but underneath there is a soft cushion of thorough familiarity, and buttressing that a sort of tacit agreement between players and designers to stick to what they both understand. They make what we expect them to make for us to play as they expect us to play. A little mutual masturbation. And according to this tacit agreement, we are supposed to act as if we are surprised by these adventures, and they are supposed to act as if they will challenge us for real. Just as we all pretend that what the Bhaalspawn does is heroic, when he simply kills everyone in his meandering way."
hmm... you touched interesting subject here. I will try to elaborate as clear as my broken english will let me:
BG (and computer games in general) is not a "pure" game like for example Chess is. Chess has rather simple rules but the more you get into the game, more you play, more you know it, the more you see how deep and challenging it is, how many possibilities it has and how many combinations you can do with these rather simple rules. Pure game - GENIUS!
Baldurs Gate is almost polar opposite. Rules are rather complicated, overcomplicated to the point of being obnoxious but the game is actually quite simple and easy not to mention full of cheese and broken crap. Why? Ha! Imo thats the very nature of these kind of games being actually more like "simulations" than "games". I mean in this particular case you have the simulation (made by the so called THAC0, saving throw or/and AC, right?) of the "real life" combat situation/decision. And it is quite clear now that from these standpoint (actually I don't know what standpoint means and I am using the word intuitionally like a woman ;pppppppPP) the "show off" approach is the most problematic: by making your save 100% you kinda WIN even before the fight starts, but the crushing knowledge of the game rules and the beautifull flow of the battle still stands.