1) Tell a good story
2) Be fun
3) Have rules that do not stand in the way of fun.
A good story will hook you into the game and you'll be eager to know what is actually happening. It should happen at the very beginning or risk the player just quitting.
Interesting companions are part of telling a good story.
If a game requires me to use a spreadsheet to calculate the most optimized character ever to even have a chance of finishing it then those are the rules standing in the way of fun. It's no longer a game but a chore.
And if possible have a nice soundtrack according to the time period the game portraits. I love good soundtracks
Regarding BG III, The story of BG I & II are actually about Bhaal's plan to resurrect. The Bhaalspawn were just tools in that plan and as we know from subsequent editions that plan eventually succeed. Even if Charname eventually ascends to godhood it is just a question of time for Bhaal to take over control of his mind. So as far as the story involves consequence of the resurrection of Bhaal or any new plan of his I see no problem with a game called Baldur's Gate III.
another thing is people are alot more judgmental of a game if you call it a spiritual successor.
this is why tides of numenera is heavily criticized. they said it was a spiritual successor to planescape torment. and when the game came out it turned out to be a mediocre retelling of planescape and not a game that tried to do it's own thing.
This is exactly it. If T:ToN had been exactly the same game it is, but with zero references to anything about PsT, I am 100% certain a lot more people would've liked the game. Ditto for inXile's other recent game, BT4. And this is what I'm saying about Larian's game. The exact same game but with no reference to the Baldur's Gate franchise I would be quite open to even if it had elements (TB for example) that I did not like. But if they call it BG3 and then go against the basic elements of the original games, then I and surely a great many others have every reason to be upset.
I don't know about that. While T:TON has an awesome setting and story, it has pretty much zero replayability. It's worth playing, but if you play as a chatty nano, you'll pretty much see everything the game has to offer.
@BuffaloSolider95, give the sequel a shot when it's on sale. I didn't care for the first one, in fact I rage quit it, but I'm glad I gave the second one a shot. There's a lot more depth to the story, at least compared to what I saw of the first one. They also made the fights feel a lot less tedious and don't tend to drag on forever without a good reason or being a unique fight. There's a lot of dark personal stories to all the companions, too.
I can't even begin to understand where this hostility to turn-based CRPGs is coming from. Until Dungeon Master and Diablo (respectively) nearly every one in existence was turn-based. Wizardry, Ultima, Might & Magic, the entire Gold Box series etc etc etc.
Until Dungeon Master and Diablo is a weird statement, since they were 10 years apart.
Ultima was indeed turn-based until U7. Gold Box was always turn-based.
But Wizardry always was phase-based, which is not the same thing at all. Might and Magic was phase-based until MM3, when it became turn-based. Bard's Tale was also phase-based.
In fact, phase-based was very popular in the past, the reason it is not anymore is that it is difficult to combine with tactical movement of individual party members.
You might say this is semantics, but as I pointed out before there is a large difference between RTwP and phase-based combat on one hand and turn-based combat on the other. With turn-based, you never waste attacks or spells since you can pick your target only when you attack. Deciding whether to focus on one dangerous enemy at the expense of risking wasting attacks and spells always was an important tactical part of phase-based and RTwP games.
I understand what you are saying about being phase-based (in which a large group of monsters attack then all the party members attack) but this is comparing an apple to a slightly different type of apple. It is in every way both sides taking turns, it just doesn't break it down to individual units, but rather Side A and Side B. You can't select individual monsters to attack but you CAN select which group to hit. So yes, I would have to argue this is semantics.
The reason I bring up Dungeon Master and Diablo despite the gap between them is that with the first, it was the first time a tile-based game was having you perform actions in real-time, and Diablo was basically the first to do it from an isometric perspective, in an even more "real-time" way. I think both are clearly the major exmaples of the shift in both of them. After Dungeon Master, the blobber went from the Wizardry/Might and Magic style to stuff like Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore. Diablo created an entire genre and opened the door to the isometric perspective.
No, characters do not need to act as a group for phase-based combat.
What characterizes phase-based combat is that you need to give all your characters their individual order at the same time.
Let's look at an example: party of two mages is fighting two clumped group of enemies (whether an entire group acts as one is irrelevant here). Turn-based combat could look like this: Mage A fireballs the first enemy group. If it is neutralized then Mage B will fireball the 2nd enemy group. But if the first group is still in fighting shape then Mage B will likely fireball the first group again to finish it off (dead enemies do no damage). So Mage B can take the optimal decision depending on the outcome of Mage A.
With phase-based you need to decide beforehand whether both mages fireball the same group or whether they split their attack. If you want to not risk having two enemy formations able to attack you, then both will decide fireball the same enemy group. The actions are then evaluated in order of initiative roll, but you can't change orders anymore. So what might happen is that Mage B gets to act first, kills the entire first enemy group and then Mage A fireballs the dead group again, wasting a spell.
And this situation is what turn-based combat does not model well. In combat many things happen almost at once, but in turn-based combat whenever your character (or tactical group) makes a decision he has perfect knowledge and can take into account events that happened a split-second before.
There's a reason we're still here 20 years after BG was released. It's not because of the engine, or RTwP combat, or the engine, or the ruleset, or the engine.
It's because both entries in the series told an engaging story with fun and interesting companions. If BG3 does that it will not matter if it's set in Waterdeep or Kara-Tur, in the Time of Troubles or the current 5e timeline, whether it's turn-based or RTwP, or whether it's 2e or 5e.
Did I mention it's not the engine?
I agree, but what people don't seem to get is that an engaging story is not just about the plot. The plot is fairly simple in Baldur's Gate. But let's not kid ourselves. This isn't Dostoevsky, this isn't highbrow stuff, it's a light hearted adventure romp, but one that can be enjoyed by 12 year-olds, or 50 year-olds.
It has the right blend of voice acting, music and stylistic tone to make it an enjoyable ride. I also think the combat mechanics are a HUGE part of why I still play it 20 years later. I loved Ultima VII as a kid, but I wouldn't be abel to sit through that combat system again. BG's still holds up, and developers are trying to emulate certain aspects of it.
That's what I think is missing from DOS. It's not a problem with the plot or plot elements, its the juvenile style and tone, both in terms of the dialogue, as well as the visual aesthetics. Whereas BG reminds me of Xena/Hercules in terms of tone, DOS reminds me of the children's cartoons I watched when I was 8 years old.
If you're only measure of a more mature style and tone is violence and gore, I don't what to say.
In point of fact, he did not measure anything in "only" terms of violence/gore. He just demonstrated an example of a potentially mature aspect of the game.
i know that baldurs gate is the name of the city. but the baldurs gate series was not about the city itself. it was the focal poiint of the first game and sod but not the overalll story line. it's like how planescape torment may be set in sigil but the story is not about sigil.
And what about the NPCs? No one cares about the companions in DOS, which there are only 4 of, and they are all annoying as hell and stupid. In BG, there are 30 companions, and everyone has their favorites. The characters and the world of BG is far more interesting.
aSoIaF isn't popular just because it's dark fantasy with blood and gore. It has a tremendous amount of detail and characters that you can get lost in, all with interesting development, complex motivations that makes them more "adult." In DOS one of your quests is to play matchmaker to a couple of cats.
Interesting is a subjective term, so people will have different views on what is interesting to them.
The story of those 2 cats is a metaphor about marriages being completed only after you provide nice gifts to another side.
And one of these two cats can later tell you a story about his previous master who used to rape young girls for fun.
Companions in DOS give you difficult moral choices, and you learn them while progressing through a game. Choosing the final result for Madora was very difficult for me as a player, between justice and forgiveness.
And in DOS2 the companions are developed much deeper, and judging by the fan art are one of the most popular and well written among rpg companions.
Those 30 companions had very little depth, and some them barely had anything going on at all. Granted what they did with a handful of them, was quite a lot for the amount of lines they had, but most of them were forgettable trash with no story to them, or just emasculating jokes. There's a reason the roster was reduced drastically in BG2, so they could give each NPC more depth and content.
DOS:2 has 6 companions (5 if you play as one of them), but they all have extremely complex backstories with personal journeys that happen as the game unfolds. The story in the second one was a lot more gripping and oozing with fascinating lore, stories and unique characters that make the world far more interesting to me than in the first one.
I'd say just based off of playing Original Sin 1 and 2, and honestly not really liking either, I am not particularly hyped for the idea of Larian doing Baldur's Gate 3. Unless they show that its going to be a very, very different product that can directly relate to the original games.
I'd say just based off of playing Original Sin 1 and 2, and honestly not really liking either, I am not particularly hyped for the idea of Larian doing Baldur's Gate 3. Unless they show that its going to be a very, very different product that can directly relate to the original games.
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My fear is that this game will be more like "sword coast legends 2" with barely any resemblence with the original source and much focused on console market, with cooldowns and etc.
I'd say just based off of playing Original Sin 1 and 2, and honestly not really liking either, I am not particularly hyped for the idea of Larian doing Baldur's Gate 3. Unless they show that its going to be a very, very different product that can directly relate to the original games.
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My fear is that this game will be more like "sword coast legends 2" with barely any resemblence with the original source and much focused on console market, with cooldowns and etc.
There is no way Larian will make a game as bad as Sword Coast Legends, which is (by leaps and bounds) the worst release of the CRPG revival of the past 5 or 6 years.
I'd say just based off of playing Original Sin 1 and 2, and honestly not really liking either, I am not particularly hyped for the idea of Larian doing Baldur's Gate 3. Unless they show that its going to be a very, very different product that can directly relate to the original games.
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My fear is that this game will be more like "sword coast legends 2" with barely any resemblence with the original source and much focused on console market, with cooldowns and etc.
There is no way Larian will make a game as bad as Sword Coast Legends, which is (by leaps and bounds) the worst release of the CRPG revival of the past 5 or 6 years.
Honestly, SCL looks more interesting than DOS2. Yes, both has cooldowns, but at least on SCL you don't spend 5000 years on an turn due slow as hell animations.
I'd say just based off of playing Original Sin 1 and 2, and honestly not really liking either, I am not particularly hyped for the idea of Larian doing Baldur's Gate 3. Unless they show that its going to be a very, very different product that can directly relate to the original games.
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My fear is that this game will be more like "sword coast legends 2" with barely any resemblence with the original source and much focused on console market, with cooldowns and etc.
There is no way Larian will make a game as bad as Sword Coast Legends, which is (by leaps and bounds) the worst release of the CRPG revival of the past 5 or 6 years.
people said the same thing about Andromeda. how bioware could not make a game worse then that. then anthem happened.
I understand what you are saying about being phase-based (in which a large group of monsters attack then all the party members attack) but this is comparing an apple to a slightly different type of apple. It is in every way both sides taking turns, it just doesn't break it down to individual units, but rather Side A and Side B. You can't select individual monsters to attack but you CAN select which group to hit. So yes, I would have to argue this is semantics.
Phase-based is when you give orders and select skills to use in advance, then hit "begin turn" and characters try following those orders to the best of their ability. E.g. if fighter was ordered to perform melee attack but the target was killed by another party member before he got the initiative, then (depending on complexity of the system) he may attack another nearest target or switch to ranged if there's no one left in vicinity.
I understand what you are saying about being phase-based (in which a large group of monsters attack then all the party members attack) but this is comparing an apple to a slightly different type of apple. It is in every way both sides taking turns, it just doesn't break it down to individual units, but rather Side A and Side B. You can't select individual monsters to attack but you CAN select which group to hit. So yes, I would have to argue this is semantics.
Phase-based is when you give orders and select skills to use in advance, then hit "begin turn" and characters try following those orders to the best of their ability. E.g. if fighter was ordered to perform melee attack but the target was killed by another party member before he got the initiative, then (depending on complexity of the system) he may attack another nearest target or switch to ranged if there's no one left in vicinity.
I know what type of games he was talking about. The point is, you are taking turns as teams rather than individuals. But to say early phased/team combat isn't turn-based simply doesn't pass water with me. You are still alternating attacks with the enemy. The fact that they are issued in bulk and can be overidden by the actions of previous party members doesn't change that, it just makes it less precise.
and this is not jut me being negative for the sake of being negative. or not giving it a chance. this has happend before. so many times in this last decade developers have tried to revive something from the old days and it has fallen flat.
hey i'd like to be wrong. but the pattern has showed me when people try to make something like the old game and not something 100% original it is not as good.
it's the difference between say a shovel knight to a pillars of eternity.
@JuliusBorisov Yeah no. BG 1 and 2 were about Gorion's Ward. Not about the city, and certainly not about Bhaal. Bhaal was just a faceless antagonist and wasn't even a character. With the game being marketed as "BG3", that carries the expectation of continuing the story. Except the BG story is already finished.
If I had my way they'd still use the infinity engine, but the main thing BG3 needs to be is based around 2D backgrounds and isometric gameplay or its just a hard pass for me. And thing is, people would defend a hypothetical BG3 that is nothing like the old games as having to be that way to attract new fans, but chances are the result of that it would fail to attract new fans and it would fail to satisfy existing fans. Is that a reason not to try? I'd say its a reason not to call the game Baldur's Gate 3. Call it "Baldur's Gate: Insert Subtitle Here" and the game is upfront that its using the universe but doing its own thing, I think people would be understanding of that. But call it "Baldur's Gate 3" and its really either recapture the lightning in that battle by being as authentic as possible to deserve that name, or it will probably crash and burn.
Not really my kind of game, and they obviously were really ARPG's, but they got decent reviews at the time. So I don't think its that big of a deal that another game use the title. Even if it has a 3 at the end.
And how do you think it would have gone over if they called Dark Alliance "BG3?"
The 3 denotes more than "just another game in and around the same fictional locale." It denotes a continuation of the first two. Tonthe extent that ends up being false, it will generate bad will and be seen as callously cashing in on something people have hoped for, but which is not this.
Call it "Baldur's Gate: Return of Bhaal." Call it whatever makes sense. "3" does not really make sense.
Also: there's not really any problem with changing the game format. Fallout 3 wasn't what people were hoping for, but it was a great game in its own right. Dark Alliance and Sword Coast Legends aren't great, but being different from BG is not what makes them not great.
Want to make a BG game in the Fallout 4 engine? Sure, why not. Want to make a BG game in tbe Shadow Over Mystara engine? That would be amazeballs.
But if they don't do that kind of change - if they claim they will make it similar in form and function to the old games, and then they go ahead and make it dissimilar in key ways... that will be seen as a failure. And an avoidable failure! Fans will read that as "we made it different for no reason other than we felt like it, but, even knowing that, we marketed it as not being different."
I tell you, that is just begging for a backlash. And given how many devs in this very thread are blithely brushing off people making this point... again, call me a cynic, but I fully expect those other devs to walk right into this trap. (A trap of their own creation, for no reason except the desire to use a name with more perceived monetary value.)
If Dark Alliance had been called BG3: Dark Alliance life would have gone on. It came out only a few months after Throne of Bhaal. The game simply would not have had the huge gap in time that a series like Fallout saw (10 years between Fallout 2 and 3) for there to be the same kind of anticipation/letdown. There probably would have been more backlash over how quickly it came out after Throne of Bhaal, but that comes down more to timing and ToBs rushed development than anything.
Should Neverwinter Nights 2 not been called what it's called? It's story really has nothing to do with the first game. Even the city is completely different. The gameplay between the two games, including how you control your party and the UI, are very different.
The realistic alternative would be to produce a Baldur's Gate video game without ever putting that 3 there. Realistically though it's better to just put the 3 - especially since Larian doesn't seem likely to change the format to the same degree that Dark Alliance did. Otherwise you end up in a weird situation where if it's a success, and they choose to make another game after it, they keep avoiding putting down that 3. Better to just do it and get it over with. If it's a full blown CRPG with Baldur's Gate in the title people are going to be critiquing it to how well it stacks up to the earlier games regardless.
Should Neverwinter Nights 2 not been called what it's called? It's story really has nothing to do with the first game. Even the city is completely different. The gameplay between the two games, including how you control your party and the UI, are very different.
Actually, I am one of those people who agrees ... that NwN2 should have been called something else because it is far too different from NwN1. And this is why there is a huge chasm between the fans of each of those two games, with fans of one of them having very strong negative feelings of the other game and vice versa.
Comments
1) Tell a good story
2) Be fun
3) Have rules that do not stand in the way of fun.
A good story will hook you into the game and you'll be eager to know what is actually happening. It should happen at the very beginning or risk the player just quitting.
Interesting companions are part of telling a good story.
If a game requires me to use a spreadsheet to calculate the most optimized character ever to even have a chance of finishing it then those are the rules standing in the way of fun. It's no longer a game but a chore.
And if possible have a nice soundtrack according to the time period the game portraits. I love good soundtracks
Regarding BG III, The story of BG I & II are actually about Bhaal's plan to resurrect. The Bhaalspawn were just tools in that plan and as we know from subsequent editions that plan eventually succeed. Even if Charname eventually ascends to godhood it is just a question of time for Bhaal to take over control of his mind. So as far as the story involves consequence of the resurrection of Bhaal or any new plan of his I see no problem with a game called Baldur's Gate III.
To add to this (for anyone wanting to learn more about the city).
I don't know about that. While T:TON has an awesome setting and story, it has pretty much zero replayability. It's worth playing, but if you play as a chatty nano, you'll pretty much see everything the game has to offer.
@BuffaloSolider95, give the sequel a shot when it's on sale. I didn't care for the first one, in fact I rage quit it, but I'm glad I gave the second one a shot. There's a lot more depth to the story, at least compared to what I saw of the first one. They also made the fights feel a lot less tedious and don't tend to drag on forever without a good reason or being a unique fight. There's a lot of dark personal stories to all the companions, too.
No, characters do not need to act as a group for phase-based combat.
What characterizes phase-based combat is that you need to give all your characters their individual order at the same time.
Let's look at an example: party of two mages is fighting two clumped group of enemies (whether an entire group acts as one is irrelevant here). Turn-based combat could look like this: Mage A fireballs the first enemy group. If it is neutralized then Mage B will fireball the 2nd enemy group. But if the first group is still in fighting shape then Mage B will likely fireball the first group again to finish it off (dead enemies do no damage). So Mage B can take the optimal decision depending on the outcome of Mage A.
With phase-based you need to decide beforehand whether both mages fireball the same group or whether they split their attack. If you want to not risk having two enemy formations able to attack you, then both will decide fireball the same enemy group. The actions are then evaluated in order of initiative roll, but you can't change orders anymore. So what might happen is that Mage B gets to act first, kills the entire first enemy group and then Mage A fireballs the dead group again, wasting a spell.
And this situation is what turn-based combat does not model well. In combat many things happen almost at once, but in turn-based combat whenever your character (or tactical group) makes a decision he has perfect knowledge and can take into account events that happened a split-second before.
I agree, but what people don't seem to get is that an engaging story is not just about the plot. The plot is fairly simple in Baldur's Gate. But let's not kid ourselves. This isn't Dostoevsky, this isn't highbrow stuff, it's a light hearted adventure romp, but one that can be enjoyed by 12 year-olds, or 50 year-olds.
It has the right blend of voice acting, music and stylistic tone to make it an enjoyable ride. I also think the combat mechanics are a HUGE part of why I still play it 20 years later. I loved Ultima VII as a kid, but I wouldn't be abel to sit through that combat system again. BG's still holds up, and developers are trying to emulate certain aspects of it.
That's what I think is missing from DOS. It's not a problem with the plot or plot elements, its the juvenile style and tone, both in terms of the dialogue, as well as the visual aesthetics. Whereas BG reminds me of Xena/Hercules in terms of tone, DOS reminds me of the children's cartoons I watched when I was 8 years old.
Here's an example of humor from D:OS
In point of fact, he did not measure anything in "only" terms of violence/gore. He just demonstrated an example of a potentially mature aspect of the game.
aSoIaF isn't popular just because it's dark fantasy with blood and gore. It has a tremendous amount of detail and characters that you can get lost in, all with interesting development, complex motivations that makes them more "adult." In DOS one of your quests is to play matchmaker to a couple of cats.
The story of those 2 cats is a metaphor about marriages being completed only after you provide nice gifts to another side.
And one of these two cats can later tell you a story about his previous master who used to rape young girls for fun.
Companions in DOS give you difficult moral choices, and you learn them while progressing through a game. Choosing the final result for Madora was very difficult for me as a player, between justice and forgiveness.
And in DOS2 the companions are developed much deeper, and judging by the fan art are one of the most popular and well written among rpg companions.
DOS:2 has 6 companions (5 if you play as one of them), but they all have extremely complex backstories with personal journeys that happen as the game unfolds. The story in the second one was a lot more gripping and oozing with fascinating lore, stories and unique characters that make the world far more interesting to me than in the first one.
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My fear is that this game will be more like "sword coast legends 2" with barely any resemblence with the original source and much focused on console market, with cooldowns and etc.
There is no way Larian will make a game as bad as Sword Coast Legends, which is (by leaps and bounds) the worst release of the CRPG revival of the past 5 or 6 years.
Honestly, SCL looks more interesting than DOS2. Yes, both has cooldowns, but at least on SCL you don't spend 5000 years on an turn due slow as hell animations.
people said the same thing about Andromeda. how bioware could not make a game worse then that. then anthem happened.
I know what type of games he was talking about. The point is, you are taking turns as teams rather than individuals. But to say early phased/team combat isn't turn-based simply doesn't pass water with me. You are still alternating attacks with the enemy. The fact that they are issued in bulk and can be overidden by the actions of previous party members doesn't change that, it just makes it less precise.
hey i'd like to be wrong. but the pattern has showed me when people try to make something like the old game and not something 100% original it is not as good.
it's the difference between say a shovel knight to a pillars of eternity.
@JuliusBorisov Yeah no. BG 1 and 2 were about Gorion's Ward. Not about the city, and certainly not about Bhaal. Bhaal was just a faceless antagonist and wasn't even a character. With the game being marketed as "BG3", that carries the expectation of continuing the story. Except the BG story is already finished.
shovel knight was the good example.
If Dark Alliance had been called BG3: Dark Alliance life would have gone on. It came out only a few months after Throne of Bhaal. The game simply would not have had the huge gap in time that a series like Fallout saw (10 years between Fallout 2 and 3) for there to be the same kind of anticipation/letdown. There probably would have been more backlash over how quickly it came out after Throne of Bhaal, but that comes down more to timing and ToBs rushed development than anything.
Should Neverwinter Nights 2 not been called what it's called? It's story really has nothing to do with the first game. Even the city is completely different. The gameplay between the two games, including how you control your party and the UI, are very different.
The realistic alternative would be to produce a Baldur's Gate video game without ever putting that 3 there. Realistically though it's better to just put the 3 - especially since Larian doesn't seem likely to change the format to the same degree that Dark Alliance did. Otherwise you end up in a weird situation where if it's a success, and they choose to make another game after it, they keep avoiding putting down that 3. Better to just do it and get it over with. If it's a full blown CRPG with Baldur's Gate in the title people are going to be critiquing it to how well it stacks up to the earlier games regardless.
Actually, I am one of those people who agrees ... that NwN2 should have been called something else because it is far too different from NwN1. And this is why there is a huge chasm between the fans of each of those two games, with fans of one of them having very strong negative feelings of the other game and vice versa.