People wouldn't want a BG clone either. If something like BG2 was released today, people would have all sorts of rightful complaints about its shortcomings. BG games do not have great roleplaying options in the dialogue. The reputation system is a very crude world reaction system. The game world isn't all that interactive. Trap disarming is literally just sitting and waiting on a stat check timer. The overwhelming majority of quests are fetch or kill quests. Level ups for alot of classes involve almost no hard choices, in fact the game itself has very little decision making compared to the newer RPG's like PoE, OS, etc.
The combat system still holds up well, but even there, overall encounter design is lacking. There are a lot, a lot of what today would be call "trash mob" fights. You can even see this by comparing what SoD did to what's in the base games. I still love the games, but I expect a much more sophisticated experience from CRPG's today.
And the interview goes into details about why clinging to the past is not a good recipe.
Nobody wants to learn anything from the past because they smugly think they know better. Yet a lot of the older games I choose to play now, I choose to play because I consider them completely, objectively better than games made now, and don't bother to sway me from that view because that is it and it will not change.
All Larian are doing so far is telling me "yeah we don't care about the old games and we don't respect them and we don't respect their fans". It wouldn't be difficult for them to use language that would be more reassuring for us, but they don't care.
At least if they said that openly it'd be honest of them.
And the interview goes into details about why clinging to the past is not a good recipe.
All Larian are doing so far is telling me "yeah we don't care about the old games and we don't respect them and we don't respect their fans". It wouldn't be difficult for them to use language that would be more reassuring for us, but they don't care.
No, that is not what they tell.
Although it may be that they don't respect grumpy old men who have found their maximum fun in the past. But who does anyway. They can keep playing the old stuff and are not relevant for the market.
People wouldn't want a BG clone either. If something like BG2 was released today, people would have all sorts of rightful complaints about its shortcomings. (...).
No, i agree that people will criticize BG, but not for this reasons.
See pathfinder kingmaker? Received a lot of dumb critique like
"i can't kill an insect swarm with an axe in an optional quest, this game is awful" "skeletons are too resistant to slashing" "i attacked an huge wather elemental with my lv 1 party and got destroyed"
"i created an wizard with 8 int and this is awful, his IQ should be tied to the jacket that he is wearing like d3"
I entered an dungeon without any supply and got forced to backtrack to the city
I saw game journalists with this type of critique everywhere.
D&D already tried to ""modernize"" on 4e and bring a lot of mmoish stuff to pnp and the result? Now we have Pathfinder and before 5e, the most successful pnp rpg was pathfinder
D&D already tried to ""modernize"" on the single player market and bring a lot of mmoish and what is the result? Sword Coast Legends.
D&D already tried to ""modernize"" on MMO market and the result? neverwinter mmo, an very awful generic game
Vaas Montenegro needs to teach this game devs the definition of insanity...
Most of P:K's complaints at launch were rightfully about showstopping bugs. I personally had a playthrough that was literally bug-blocked until a months-later patch. That's unacceptably bad design imo. Games journalists were absolutely right to slam that game at launch.
And again this is just a fascinating irony that some folks here will kind of want to have it both ways with their criticisms. Games journalists are bad because they're uncritical of modern games. Games journalists shouldn't have criticized P:K. Moreover, the insect swarm enemy is exactly a kind of encounter that never existed in the BG games.
It's hard to not see some pretty broadly held human biases playing out here. Generation after generation of humans have criticized the art and media popular when they're older adults, complaining that nothing is as good as it was when they were young. Many many lawns need to be gotten off of. There's also a survivorship bias, where people don't remember all the mediocre games of the past and compare every game of today with only the greatest games of the past. Ironically, CRPG's in the era when BG launched were in a godawful lull.
Swarm is a new "rule" that increases the gameplay value, increase the tactical aspect, the immersion and depth. The way that your char progress, making the past lv 10 experience much more harder kinda limits the power creep and is one reason that i love P:K. But for Larien, leveling is "too slow for a video game", so, probably will be the mindset everyone at lv cap and lv cap meaning nothing present in many modern games like d3. Why even have an level if the level doesn't represent anything?
Anyway, most of bugs are fixed now and most journalists complained by dumb reasons and criticized so heavily that they re made most initial encounters to make then less hard. As for comparing average games for today standards with good 90s/00s games, i will be honest. I rather play M&M IX(an awful game) than D:OS2.
Just looking at the metacritic page, it's clear that your emphasis on certain criticisms, simply isn't true. The game first off, got mostly positive reviews. And the things it's most knocked for are 1. bugs, 2. uninteresting kingdom building part, 3. vanilla setting and story. Nobody is emphasizing the things you say they're emphasizing. As I've said in other threads, folks need to stop misrepresenting what other people say.
In fact not a single review here gave it below a 50/100:
Games journalists are bad because they're uncritical of modern games..
That's really being nice, I'd say they're bad because they're very clearly corrupted and exist within a symbiotic relationship with the corporations that produce the material they're supposed to be critiquing, and there's just a disconcerting amount of evidence that its standard practice across the industry. We have absolutely no reason to trust the vast majority of games journalists.
And for everything else you said on this matter, we're discussing less general things here.
Games journalists are bad because they're uncritical of modern games..
That's really being nice, I'd say they're bad because they're very clearly corrupted and exist within a symbiotic relationship with the corporations that produce the material they're supposed to be critiquing, and there's just a disconcerting amount of evidence that its standard practice across the industry. We have absolutely no reason to trust the vast majority of games journalists.
Yup, and especially true with respect to how they write about anything related to Larian. They're total Larian sycophants whereby Larian can do no wrong. If tomorrow it is revealed that Larian makes coats out of puppies, gaming reviewers and reporters everywhere will write glowingly and reverently about how Larian has taken making coats out of puppies to a whole new level that nobody had ever thought of before, and what an amazing breakthrough this is for the whole gaming industry.
I really don't think this is the case in today's worlds. I don't think the vast majority of game journalists are "corrupted and exist within a symbiotic relationship with the corporations". This sounds very creepy and preconceived.
I really don't think this is the case in today's worlds. I don't think the vast majority of game journalists are "corrupted and exist within a symbiotic relationship with the corporations". This sounds very creepy and preconceived.
Gamespot fired Jeff Gerstmann over his review for a game they were blatantly being paid to advertise. It was an incident that to this day, calls the whole industry into question.
Not sure if citing a 12-year-old event to indict an entire industry is reasonable. Especially since a number of now-prominent review sites didn't even exist back then.
That happened in 2007. Quite the last century in gaming and IT terms. In our era, we have Jason's (who is, btw, a fan of BG2 and DOS2) articles about BioWare and other "corporations".
the interview goes into details about why clinging to the past is not a good recipe.
What are you reading?? The interview(s) utterly lack any such details.
- "The Dungeons & Dragons tabletop ruleset evolved, paving the way for even more intricate gameplay and deeper customization options"
- "The Divinity: Original Sin titles take a lot of inspiration from classic BioWare games, but Larian doesn’t want to simply recreate the gameplay from the first two titles. "
- “I’d like to believe we’ve done our best to not just rely on older design choices. We’ve been able to expand the computer RPG genre to try to experiment with new ideas."
- “We love those games, but they were made 20 years ago.”
- “[Baldur’s Gate] was revolutionary for its time. But if you just copy what it did, it won’t have the same effect."
That happened in 2007. Quite the last century in gaming and IT terms. In our era, we have Jason's (who is, btw, a fan of BG2 and DOS2) articles about BioWare and other "corporations".
the interview goes into details about why clinging to the past is not a good recipe.
What are you reading?? The interview(s) utterly lack any such details.
- "The Dungeons & Dragons tabletop ruleset evolved, paving the way for even more intricate gameplay and deeper customization options"
- "The Divinity: Original Sin titles take a lot of inspiration from classic BioWare games, but Larian doesn’t want to simply recreate the gameplay from the first two titles. "
- “I’d like to believe we’ve done our best to not just rely on older design choices. We’ve been able to expand the computer RPG genre to try to experiment with new ideas."
- “We love those games, but they were made 20 years ago.”
- “[Baldur’s Gate] was revolutionary for its time. But if you just copy what it did, it won’t have the same effect."
All of those are different ways to state
...clinging to the past is not a good recipe.
But none of it is an argument (let alone a detailled one) about why the statement is true.
EDIT: Though I agree that the corruption of gamejournalism is overstated, especially when justified by 10 year old single incident. I mean, which industry does not have a scandal every 10 years??
Though some of them depend too closely on the goodwill of the publisher (i.e. for early access) for my comfort.
I agree with those statements, they seem true to me. The Why part is due to: classic games released 20 years ago, the ruleset of DnD evolving, their wish to find their way to make an RPG.
I also agreed with the following post by @Ardanis:
It never could be in the first place:
1) If it's old school isometric, then it belongs in past millennia.
2) If it's top view with free camera, then it has bad controls.
3) If it's third-person, then it is for action gameplay.
So, does it really matter what they choose to call it.
Many franchises had changed significantly at some point(s). How many of us who played MM6-9 had also played MM1-5? Certainly not me.
But if they abandon the guaranteed to fail clinging to the past, they have at least a chance to produce something of its own value.
I agree with those statements, they seem true to me. The Why part is due to: classic games released 20 years ago, the ruleset of DnD evolving, their wish to find their way to make an RPG.
And agreeing with the statements is fine. But calling it a detailled explanation of the why, I still disagree with.
Besides, I think the detractors are painted as more reactionary here than I feel is justified.
Looking at old games there is a lot that can be improved, but also a lot of traditions that have sort of stood the test of time and proven themself.
Here are things I would love to have in a successor to BG:
NPC schedules
More reactivity to your decisions and actions
Modern graphics
Here is what I don't need, but would not mind and be perfectly willing to try out:
Switch to 5th edition
Different perspective
New characters and new story
Turn-based combat
But here are things I feel where the change is not an improvement, and in fact detrimental:
Deviation from the PnP rules in seemingly arbitrary way, i.e. questioning level-up frequency, spell slots and to-hit rules
Making the setting grimdark, with unnecessary gore in the trailer
Possibility of using some Larian ideas I do not like, i.e. magic item inflation, where you replace your items all the time
Even if you doubt game journalists, you can just look up sales numbers, or the number of people currently playing to see what is appeals to the broadest player base in your genre. The question is what is market are you aiming for (as a game dev), because that is what you need to base your recipe on.
As much as that is logical and makes sense and all that, and its the nature of the world, the nature of the capitalist market, I understand all that.
It still results in largely soulless, hollow material, and it's still no shield from criticism, even assuming the subject is actually accepted by the market, odds are it might be rejected for being too safe and not distinguishing itself at all.
Agreed, @Ammar. And, some on the pro side are conveniently disregarding that those of us on the other side have a range of views and it's not just a monolithic skepticism. For me, I am ok with old rules, with new rules, with borrowed rules, and even with blue rules. I am being very specific in saying I do not want D:OS2 rules. So it's less about Larian deviating from what worked in the original BG games and more about them drawing on the (wrong) conclusion that: D:OS2 was amazing/awesome/perfect; EVERYONE loved it; so we should borrow as much as possible from D:OS2 (even if it means shoehorning it into D&D rules); and, if we make BG3 as similar in gameplay as possible to D:OS2 then it will be an amazing/awesome/perfect game just like D:OS2.
Here are things I would love to have in a successor to BG:
NPC schedules
More reactivity to your decisions and actions
Modern graphics
Here is what I don't need, but would not mind and be perfectly willing to try out:
Switch to 5th edition
Different perspective
New characters and new story
Turn-based combat
But here are things I feel where the change is not an improvement, and in fact detrimental:
Deviation from the PnP rules in seemingly arbitrary way, i.e. questioning level-up frequency, spell slots and to-hit rules
Making the setting grimdark, with unnecessary gore in the trailer
Possibility of using some Larian ideas I do not like, i.e. magic item inflation, where you replace your items all the time
I think I literally agree with everything in this post. I think the chief difference is: I'm willing to give Larian the benefit of the doubt because some of those negatives aren't well fleshed out, and (in my opinion) Larian has a good track record and makes good games.
Deviations from PnP is not something I'm in favor of... unless it makes the game more fun to play.
Grimdark doesn't fit the tone of Faerun... but I don't really know how grim or dark the game will be.
Item replacement - I like BGs model more than D:OS, but we don't really know how quickly items will be replaced. If it's in between these two, I'd move it to the middle list.
Edit - this doesn't dismiss any of your concerns and isn't meant to. I just think it's interestin how our perspective might be similar, but our reaction to it is different.
I agree with those statements, they seem true to me. The Why part is due to: classic games released 20 years ago, the ruleset of DnD evolving, their wish to find their way to make an RPG.
And agreeing with the statements is fine. But calling it a detailled explanation of the why, I still disagree with.
Besides, I think the detractors are painted as more reactionary here than I feel is justified.
Looking at old games there is a lot that can be improved, but also a lot of traditions that have sort of stood the test of time and proven themself.
Here are things I would love to have in a successor to BG:
NPC schedules
More reactivity to your decisions and actions
Modern graphics
Here is what I don't need, but would not mind and be perfectly willing to try out:
Switch to 5th edition
Different perspective
New characters and new story
Turn-based combat
But here are things I feel where the change is not an improvement, and in fact detrimental: [*] Deviation from the PnP rules in seemingly arbitrary way, i.e. questioning level-up frequency, spell slots and to-hit rules [*] Making the setting grimdark, with unnecessary gore in the trailer
[*] Possibility of using some Larian ideas I do not like, i.e. magic item inflation, where you replace your items all the time
About the detrimental things, i strongly agree. I mean, epic spells like Raise Island, spells like Wish or that allow fly, visit astral plane, etc are almost impossible to implement like pnp. This type of things needs to be changed because not even the most advanced IA and the best natural language processing technology can act can replace an GM. Even teleport needs to be far more limited than on pnp.
This are types of things that needs "adaptations" because "doesnt work on a game", missing, leveling and spell slots are not. In fact, games from 20years ago shows that it can and will work. If your PC only hit 5% of time, is because you are an bad GM and trowed death knights with plate armor and buffs against an party that can't really deal with him. Make armor more rarer or something similar. Don't re write the rules to allow an lv 1 fighter to mever miss an enemy in full plate armor with buffs and tower shields but require the enemy to be impaled in the face by 40 spears to die.
Even non D&D games that stepped away from missed resulted on long boring spongee fights.
Compare Morrowind to Oblivion.
And even very action games worked better with spell slots. See Dark Souls. When they substituted the spell slots to an mana bar, becomed spam chaos bed vestiges 24/7. "add cooldown", then will be "spam the same rotation 24/7", will solve nothing.
*Controversial opinion time* I actually found Dragon Age 2 to at least be a more interesting a game than Origins, and for a game that had to be delivered in 11 months, which was really incredibly unfair, the product the devs managed to put out was in fact, really impressive, especially given they produced a much better looking game artistically (and it was good looking, when the last game was butt ugly even by the standards of the time it was released). I didn't hate my time with it, although it was obviously a bit janky to say the least when it came to inter-character relationships
Merril: "You smashed the Mirror. I hate you I hate you I hate you"
Next scene, she walks into my bedroom and we have fantasy lesbian sex.
Still a more likeable and relateable character than Morrigan XD
don't get me wrong. i did like da 2 at the time. my reasoning for ignoring it has more to do with the 3rd game and the most likely to get cancelled 4th game. the mmo lite elements rubbed me the wrong way and with david gaider leaveing bioware i have no hopes for 4 [ and this is not even going into Andromeda and anthem]. so i just decided to ignore the sequels alll together and just say da is just origins.
This is exciting! I just hope and pray that they're able to update the core elements of gameplay and storytelling that made BG/SoA/ToB great to 5E mechanics and the 4th Edition campaign setting, i.e., post-Spellplague/Sundering.
It's okay if it's a brand new story, that's probably wise. The Bhaalspawn saga is played out.
But again, what made the original series such an immense, soul deep pleasure they need to recapture that, to put that lightning in a bottle, and infuse it into a 3D engine game set 100 years later in a way that other successors to the BG games set in FR have never quite managed.
Wow, I have to find out more about the Sundering. Is there a good synopsis of it out there? Maybe Jorphdan on YT has a video dedicated to it, have to check now.
I'm not really up on what happened to all the gods during the Spellplague and Sundering.
There's political symbolism in just about everything, but there are graceful, thoughtful and clever ways to handle it, and then there's drawing a direct parallel between the bad guys in your story and the Nazis. I hope the game is going to be less overt about it than the writer was in that interview.
Comments
The combat system still holds up well, but even there, overall encounter design is lacking. There are a lot, a lot of what today would be call "trash mob" fights. You can even see this by comparing what SoD did to what's in the base games. I still love the games, but I expect a much more sophisticated experience from CRPG's today.
Nobody wants to learn anything from the past because they smugly think they know better. Yet a lot of the older games I choose to play now, I choose to play because I consider them completely, objectively better than games made now, and don't bother to sway me from that view because that is it and it will not change.
All Larian are doing so far is telling me "yeah we don't care about the old games and we don't respect them and we don't respect their fans". It wouldn't be difficult for them to use language that would be more reassuring for us, but they don't care.
At least if they said that openly it'd be honest of them.
No, that is not what they tell.
Although it may be that they don't respect grumpy old men who have found their maximum fun in the past. But who does anyway. They can keep playing the old stuff and are not relevant for the market.
No, i agree that people will criticize BG, but not for this reasons.
See pathfinder kingmaker? Received a lot of dumb critique like
"i can't kill an insect swarm with an axe in an optional quest, this game is awful"
"skeletons are too resistant to slashing"
"i attacked an huge wather elemental with my lv 1 party and got destroyed"
"i created an wizard with 8 int and this is awful, his IQ should be tied to the jacket that he is wearing like d3"
I entered an dungeon without any supply and got forced to backtrack to the city
I saw game journalists with this type of critique everywhere.
D&D already tried to ""modernize"" on 4e and bring a lot of mmoish stuff to pnp and the result? Now we have Pathfinder and before 5e, the most successful pnp rpg was pathfinder
D&D already tried to ""modernize"" on the single player market and bring a lot of mmoish and what is the result? Sword Coast Legends.
D&D already tried to ""modernize"" on MMO market and the result? neverwinter mmo, an very awful generic game
Vaas Montenegro needs to teach this game devs the definition of insanity...
And again this is just a fascinating irony that some folks here will kind of want to have it both ways with their criticisms. Games journalists are bad because they're uncritical of modern games. Games journalists shouldn't have criticized P:K. Moreover, the insect swarm enemy is exactly a kind of encounter that never existed in the BG games.
It's hard to not see some pretty broadly held human biases playing out here. Generation after generation of humans have criticized the art and media popular when they're older adults, complaining that nothing is as good as it was when they were young. Many many lawns need to be gotten off of. There's also a survivorship bias, where people don't remember all the mediocre games of the past and compare every game of today with only the greatest games of the past. Ironically, CRPG's in the era when BG launched were in a godawful lull.
Anyway, most of bugs are fixed now and most journalists complained by dumb reasons and criticized so heavily that they re made most initial encounters to make then less hard. As for comparing average games for today standards with good 90s/00s games, i will be honest. I rather play M&M IX(an awful game) than D:OS2.
In fact not a single review here gave it below a 50/100:
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/pathfinder-kingmaker/critic-reviews
That's really being nice, I'd say they're bad because they're very clearly corrupted and exist within a symbiotic relationship with the corporations that produce the material they're supposed to be critiquing, and there's just a disconcerting amount of evidence that its standard practice across the industry. We have absolutely no reason to trust the vast majority of games journalists.
And for everything else you said on this matter, we're discussing less general things here.
Yup, and especially true with respect to how they write about anything related to Larian. They're total Larian sycophants whereby Larian can do no wrong. If tomorrow it is revealed that Larian makes coats out of puppies, gaming reviewers and reporters everywhere will write glowingly and reverently about how Larian has taken making coats out of puppies to a whole new level that nobody had ever thought of before, and what an amazing breakthrough this is for the whole gaming industry.
Gamespot fired Jeff Gerstmann over his review for a game they were blatantly being paid to advertise. It was an incident that to this day, calls the whole industry into question.
- "The Dungeons & Dragons tabletop ruleset evolved, paving the way for even more intricate gameplay and deeper customization options"
- "The Divinity: Original Sin titles take a lot of inspiration from classic BioWare games, but Larian doesn’t want to simply recreate the gameplay from the first two titles. "
- “I’d like to believe we’ve done our best to not just rely on older design choices. We’ve been able to expand the computer RPG genre to try to experiment with new ideas."
- “We love those games, but they were made 20 years ago.”
- “[Baldur’s Gate] was revolutionary for its time. But if you just copy what it did, it won’t have the same effect."
All of those are different ways to state
But none of it is an argument (let alone a detailled one) about why the statement is true.
EDIT: Though I agree that the corruption of gamejournalism is overstated, especially when justified by 10 year old single incident. I mean, which industry does not have a scandal every 10 years??
Though some of them depend too closely on the goodwill of the publisher (i.e. for early access) for my comfort.
I also agreed with the following post by @Ardanis:
And agreeing with the statements is fine. But calling it a detailled explanation of the why, I still disagree with.
Besides, I think the detractors are painted as more reactionary here than I feel is justified.
Looking at old games there is a lot that can be improved, but also a lot of traditions that have sort of stood the test of time and proven themself.
Here are things I would love to have in a successor to BG:
Here is what I don't need, but would not mind and be perfectly willing to try out:
But here are things I feel where the change is not an improvement, and in fact detrimental:
As much as that is logical and makes sense and all that, and its the nature of the world, the nature of the capitalist market, I understand all that.
It still results in largely soulless, hollow material, and it's still no shield from criticism, even assuming the subject is actually accepted by the market, odds are it might be rejected for being too safe and not distinguishing itself at all.
I think I literally agree with everything in this post. I think the chief difference is: I'm willing to give Larian the benefit of the doubt because some of those negatives aren't well fleshed out, and (in my opinion) Larian has a good track record and makes good games.
Deviations from PnP is not something I'm in favor of... unless it makes the game more fun to play.
Grimdark doesn't fit the tone of Faerun... but I don't really know how grim or dark the game will be.
Item replacement - I like BGs model more than D:OS, but we don't really know how quickly items will be replaced. If it's in between these two, I'd move it to the middle list.
Edit - this doesn't dismiss any of your concerns and isn't meant to. I just think it's interestin how our perspective might be similar, but our reaction to it is different.
About the detrimental things, i strongly agree. I mean, epic spells like Raise Island, spells like Wish or that allow fly, visit astral plane, etc are almost impossible to implement like pnp. This type of things needs to be changed because not even the most advanced IA and the best natural language processing technology can act can replace an GM. Even teleport needs to be far more limited than on pnp.
This are types of things that needs "adaptations" because "doesnt work on a game", missing, leveling and spell slots are not. In fact, games from 20years ago shows that it can and will work. If your PC only hit 5% of time, is because you are an bad GM and trowed death knights with plate armor and buffs against an party that can't really deal with him. Make armor more rarer or something similar. Don't re write the rules to allow an lv 1 fighter to mever miss an enemy in full plate armor with buffs and tower shields but require the enemy to be impaled in the face by 40 spears to die.
Even non D&D games that stepped away from missed resulted on long boring spongee fights.
Compare Morrowind to Oblivion.
And even very action games worked better with spell slots. See Dark Souls. When they substituted the spell slots to an mana bar, becomed spam chaos bed vestiges 24/7. "add cooldown", then will be "spam the same rotation 24/7", will solve nothing.
don't get me wrong. i did like da 2 at the time. my reasoning for ignoring it has more to do with the 3rd game and the most likely to get cancelled 4th game. the mmo lite elements rubbed me the wrong way and with david gaider leaveing bioware i have no hopes for 4 [ and this is not even going into Andromeda and anthem]. so i just decided to ignore the sequels alll together and just say da is just origins.
It's okay if it's a brand new story, that's probably wise. The Bhaalspawn saga is played out.
But again, what made the original series such an immense, soul deep pleasure they need to recapture that, to put that lightning in a bottle, and infuse it into a 3D engine game set 100 years later in a way that other successors to the BG games set in FR have never quite managed.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
Edit: Nevermind I think I get it. A lot of what is being described happened after the Second Sundering.
I'm not really up on what happened to all the gods during the Spellplague and Sundering.
Edit:
Edit: Sorry, Googled it:
http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=82&page=1
Holy crap! WotC scrapped their forums?