After Baldur's Gate, is there anything out there worth playing?
Ballad
Member Posts: 205
As per topic.
I've been playing Baldur's Gate for the better part of 17 years now, and I have long felt like it's time to move on. Yet whenever I try something new, I find myself wishing I was playing BG instead. And it is making me legitimately depressed.
As much as it pains me to admit it, I've grown up. And like most grown-ups, my days are packed with work, family and social obligations and the like. Unsurprisingly, I've become very stingy with my free time. Whenever I do get the chance to sit down and play, I want to make sure I enjoy it to the fullest. And this is when my dilemma sets in.
Most of the time, I find myself making the conservative choice of simply starting a new playthrough of Baldur's Gate. Looking for and trying out new options just strikes me as a daunting task that's most likely to end in disappointment, a true fool's errand.
My disappointment with some (relatively) recent, hyped-up titles such as Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera have admittedly contributed to my cynicism. I genuinely tried my best to enjoy Pillars, but after 60 hours and 10 levels, it just came off as bland, soulless imitation of its spiritual predecessor. With TToN, I couldn't even get past the 10 hour mark. I found myself exausted by the dull verbosity and the general blandness of it before I could even get a proper feel for the story.
Shame on me, I know, but I just couldn't justify spending several month's worth of free nights on something with the initial fun-factor of perusing a phone book.
In fact, the last time I genuinely enjoyed playing a new title was when Mass Effect 3 came out. But even that was more than five years ago.
So why not just keep playing BG then, you might ask? Well, there is something in me, some remnant of sanity from my younger days, that is desperately thirsty for new and fresh gaming experiences. No matter how I look at it, there is something profoundly sad about being hooked on a game that is almost two decades old. My dad likes to watch reruns of old TV shows like M*A*S*H, and I always thought that made him seem old and boring. But now I find myself doing the same thing with a crpg from 1998. Like father, like son I guess.
Any insight/words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.
I've been playing Baldur's Gate for the better part of 17 years now, and I have long felt like it's time to move on. Yet whenever I try something new, I find myself wishing I was playing BG instead. And it is making me legitimately depressed.
As much as it pains me to admit it, I've grown up. And like most grown-ups, my days are packed with work, family and social obligations and the like. Unsurprisingly, I've become very stingy with my free time. Whenever I do get the chance to sit down and play, I want to make sure I enjoy it to the fullest. And this is when my dilemma sets in.
Most of the time, I find myself making the conservative choice of simply starting a new playthrough of Baldur's Gate. Looking for and trying out new options just strikes me as a daunting task that's most likely to end in disappointment, a true fool's errand.
My disappointment with some (relatively) recent, hyped-up titles such as Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera have admittedly contributed to my cynicism. I genuinely tried my best to enjoy Pillars, but after 60 hours and 10 levels, it just came off as bland, soulless imitation of its spiritual predecessor. With TToN, I couldn't even get past the 10 hour mark. I found myself exausted by the dull verbosity and the general blandness of it before I could even get a proper feel for the story.
Shame on me, I know, but I just couldn't justify spending several month's worth of free nights on something with the initial fun-factor of perusing a phone book.
In fact, the last time I genuinely enjoyed playing a new title was when Mass Effect 3 came out. But even that was more than five years ago.
So why not just keep playing BG then, you might ask? Well, there is something in me, some remnant of sanity from my younger days, that is desperately thirsty for new and fresh gaming experiences. No matter how I look at it, there is something profoundly sad about being hooked on a game that is almost two decades old. My dad likes to watch reruns of old TV shows like M*A*S*H, and I always thought that made him seem old and boring. But now I find myself doing the same thing with a crpg from 1998. Like father, like son I guess.
Any insight/words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.
9
Comments
Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 are pretty good as well. 1 is basically standard Bioware fare with a Star Wars setting and 2 is made by obsidian, so more of a personal story.
Jade Empire is a Kung Fu flick as an action RPG.
and then the EEs came out and freshened up the game a bit ( because since bg1 vanilla was so old it was struggling to keep up with newer hardware although bg2 had no problem )
and although i didnt play them as religiously as i did back in the day i was still going strong from 2012 to about earlier this year
but when 2017 came by, i started losing my lust for the BG series, i loved the BG series like a mother would lover their child but as what happened to you, i wanted something new, i wanted to move on to something better
but then i had the exact same problem, everytime i tried something new, i just couldnt hold up to the BG series, and i would find myself getting bored and just wanting to go back to the BG series
but it's been months since last i played a BG game, everytime i start a game i just cant even finish the character creation screen, i get mid way, and then just turn the game off, i cant do it anymore, and even mods cant save me, i find them to unbalancing and game breaking and some making the game unnecessarily harder than it needs to be, bleh, the best part about the BG series for me is that is was just fine the way it was with no mods added to make it better
but alas, i have found something that cures the itch a little bit, although not to the extent that BG does, but i have been enjoying myself with it so far and that is: Neverwinter Nights 2 Storm of Zehir
although the main problem with this game is that it's a very niche game, and it might be hard to cater to certain people, but it caters to me just perfectly, it's funny, in the beginning i never liked it, it looked like too much thinking too much effort too much bleh, but i persisted and i tried it again and again and again, and finally i got a hang off what was going on and quite enjoyed myself, even funnier is that a lot of people dont like this game for certain aspects and the ironic thing is; those things that the people dont like is what i like about this game
so if you are looking for something new, try out NWN2 SoZ, i think i bought the whole NWN2 collection on GoG.com for like 10 bucks? something cheap like that
but with that all said and done the only other thing that could be happening is that you are becoming an adult and video games just dont appease you any more, because you are growing out of them ( i think that is the problem that i am having at 30 )
from what i can recall back in the day when games were made, they were made to be fun especially in times when hardware was a huge limitation on what developers could, and fun was a big selling point of a game, and that's probably the reason why a lot of people are nostalgic for those older games, remembering how much fun they were back in the day
now a days i feel games arent made for fun any more, the are solely made for corporate greed and money, its all about the money, money money money, keep bringing in that money, now while i do agree companies need to make money to keep the game train going, it feels to me they are just sucking the money out of you, with games that are soulless bland and mediocre, with the selling point of games looking pretty
but i dont know, maybe i have no idea what im talking about and perhaps im just full of hot air, so my advice; give SoZ a try, if it can fill your niche than A+, if not, i got nothing
Neverwinter's Night 2 is worth trying out, if you haven't already - I really enjoy it. I also agree with KotOR 1 and 2. Then there is IWD 1-2, of course, as well as the original Planescape: Torment, if you missed them. I enjoyed Dragon Age 1 with expansion but not the others. A friend of mind really liked Tyranny but I haven't tried it myself yet.
Let me know if you find a solution!
As for advice, well, the only thing I might say is don't feel guilty about still enjoying BG. And as others have said, keep trying other games. You might try looking beyond RPGs, too. There are some atmospheric survival horror games out there, etc., and it looks like there are quite a few indie developers if you don't like commercial fare. I'd be trying a lot of these myself (e.g. Soma), if the first-person perspective didn't make me car sick (one of the reasons I prefer isometric and 3rd person in general).
Edit: I also enjoyed Jade Empire, I forgot to mention. But as with KotOR, I had no desire to play it twice.
Anyways, I am not here to push my RPG preferences, but to suggest two great indie games; the Eschalon series and Paper Sorcerer.
Dragon Age Origins
Vampire Bloodlines
And that's it.
As for the OP. I have heard very good things about the Geneforge and Avernum series but have not played them yet myself.Have you tried the Ultima series? 4-6 is one of the better deconstructions of rpgs I've ever seen. with 7 and its expansion also being very good.
Also for me, nothing really comes close. Everything is 3D now (which sucks, looking at nwn series) or has different controls or features I cannot agree with (combat, gear and lore puking in PoE) or a story I find boring (divinity, PoE).
Sure bg can be improved but I'd rather play our clunky bg than games that state they are a spiritual successor where I have yet to discover any spirit (TToN, PoE).
It is probably just me though. I never play games anymore unless it is one of the old bg, Iwd, pst. I like SoD though and that is new. Modding is where it is at for me. Making the game feel new and fun in different ways.
After playing the Pillars 2 beta I'm also super excited for that release. Instead of "dumbing down" they've actually added more skills and the ability to multiclass, which definitely adds to the replay value for me. It feels a bit closer to the old Fallout games with the increased number of skills and the way those skills opens up for more options of solving quests.
But always read POE as,
Pillar of Autumn.
I think maybe I have just disqualified myself from the club.
For example, Divinity: Original Sin II got 93 there, while BG2 got 95.
j/k, never heard of Pillars of Autumn.
Halo, Combat Evolved.
Dominated this household for years...and years....and still does as far as my youngest son is concerned. He tells me about the latest Halo game, I tell him about BG.
Shame on me.
Also, as an amateur historian of sorts, I love the lore, because I recognize the constituent parts and how they make a whole, but not always in such obvious ways. There's lots of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon influences everywhere, and when you combine that with a grasp of history and see the parallels, it's fascinating. The Eastern Reach is a North America analogue, which makes the Glanfathans Native Americans, while the Aedyrans who settle and found the Dyrwood are the Anglo-Americans. But then you notice that the Glanfathans themselves have the most obvious Celtic influences, and Aedyr actually seems Germanic in its culture, which reminds you of the post-Roman settlement of England by Saxons and Angles and Jutes, and you see the cycle of colonization and forced assimilation. And that's just the broad contours of that, you can keep looking deeper and deeper and it's just engrossing, at least for me.