@Ardanis Words that tear down will always be of lesser value than those that build up.
I think the issue here is the majority of reasoned criticism and also reasoned praise for the game being drowned out in an argument that goes well beyond the scope of the game, a very ugly argument at that between extremes.
SoD seems fine from what I played of it, but just fine. It didn't seem great and definitely had its share of missed opportunities and questionable choices, the big one for me being the characterisation of Imoen because there's just no way the character she was in BG1 and BG2 originally wouldn't want to go with her closest friend and confidante, and frankly after reading the argument about why the excluded her, it made absolutely no sense to me considering you can kill her in the original game at any time.
"BG2 expansion that was planned while SoD was being made was cancelled by those in creative control for another project (the PS:T one which was then cancelled for unknown reasons). Foley, in the interview explained how the BG2 expansion was going to play out and what it would have involved."
"Yes, this is correct"
"f it was due to Latina getting BG3, that makes no sense as BG3 is 100s of years in the future"
"However, people wonder - what does stop Beamdog from working on an expansion now, considering the Planescape game got cancelled"
"WotC is stopping them obviously. It’s why I asked Foley if he’d be interested in writing an unofficial expansion mod for BG2"
"Yes."
"WotC is stopping them." Yup, totally all Beamdog's decision. @DinoDin DId you even read this?
Right on, I misunderstood which interview you had meant, as I had read apparently the older one in the Wild Surge pdf you linked to.
Again though, your original contention was that BG3 was killing BGEE content. That goalpost has now moved to past controversy about SoD is killing BGEE content.
@DinoDin No, the goal post has not changed. WotC is blocking further content because of the existence of the new BG"3". You could make the argument that Beamdog lost development rights as part of the aftermath of SoD. But the fact remains that nothing new for BG can be developed becuase WotC wants Larian's project to replace the old BG. Its what they do with every new editon and product. The old is essentially erased from existence in favor of pushing the new.
I’m still very much looking forward to Baldur’s Gate 3 but reading about this whole situation after what @ThacoBell brought to my attention has made me feel very sad for the state of what the future holds for the Enhanced Editions
@DinoDin No, the goal post has not changed. WotC is blocking further content because of the existence of the new BG"3". You could make the argument that Beamdog lost development rights as part of the aftermath of SoD. But the fact remains that nothing new for BG can be developed becuase WotC wants Larian's project to replace the old BG. Its what they do with every new editon and product. The old is essentially erased from existence in favor of pushing the new.
Again. You do not have evidence. You are merely spreading rumors as if they were facts. You have one guy saying WotC is blocking the content... for unstated reasons. You are conjecturing beyond that. It's fine to conjecture, but this is a public space, you should really not pretend to know things for a fact that you do not know for a fact.
A look at the timeline doesn't add evidence to this BG3-is-to-blame hypothesis. SoD was released in March 2016. OS2 was released in September 2017, and only after that game did WotC sign a contract for BG3. In the interim Beamdog released two D&D-related EE's!
Lastly, I'll repeat. If WotC signed a contract with Beamdog for another BGEE DLC. They cannot just unilaterally tear up a contract at a later date. If no contract was ever signed, this means that more BGEE DLC content has always been a rumor.
no it's clear thats what wotc did. if you go to any other place where bg is discussed you will see people blaming beam dog for killing the franchise due to the drama that happend. so wotc may not want beamdog to do anything bg related or new due to the backlash. so that caused a bg 2 expansion and and a pst game from not being made.
for all we know those people that hate beamdog [ rpgcodex gog just to name two] must be very happy beamdog lost the rights to bg as to them beamdog is trash and ruined everything they loved about the series.
@DinoDin No, I HAVE provided proof. We have direct confirmation that this is EXACTLY what happened. You simply refuse to go look at said proof, instead choosing to plug your ears and go "nyah, nyah, you're wrong."
"Lastly, I'll repeat. If WotC signed a contract with Beamdog for another BGEE DLC. They cannot just unilaterally tear up a contract at a later date."
Now who's the one running without evidence? A contract can say anything. WotC could very easily have a clause that gives them the right to terminate any and all projects at their discretion. Its real easy. There is no rule or law that prevents this..
Except the "yes" in your proof is taken out of context, it's not even the entire sentence. No offense, but it lines up with your "hate speech" statement - if you've already decided how something is, then sure, you can twist uh, I mean interpret, uh, I mean find facts to back it up with. But if in doing so you're turning a blind eye to other facts, then you're basically being prejudiced.
@DinoDin No, I HAVE provided proof. We have direct confirmation that this is EXACTLY what happened. You simply refuse to go look at said proof, instead choosing to plug your ears and go "nyah, nyah, you're wrong."
"Lastly, I'll repeat. If WotC signed a contract with Beamdog for another BGEE DLC. They cannot just unilaterally tear up a contract at a later date."
Now who's the one running without evidence? A contract can say anything. WotC could very easily have a clause that gives them the right to terminate any and all projects at their discretion. Its real easy. There is no rule or law that prevents this..
Again, it's not proof that any project was cancelled because of BG3. You don't even have proof that WotC ever approved of any further Beamdog BG content. And you're now further inventing extraordinary language in a contract in order for your theory to stand up. A contract you have not ever provided evidence even existed.
SoD seems fine from what I played of it, but just fine. It didn't seem great and definitely had its share of missed opportunities and questionable choices, the big one for me being the characterisation of Imoen because there's just no way the character she was in BG1 and BG2 originally wouldn't want to go with her closest friend and confidante, and frankly after reading the argument about why the excluded her, it made absolutely no sense to me considering you can kill her in the original game at any time.
This was basically my verdict on SoD as well. I thought it was enjoyable enough, and I would definitely recommend it to anybody who's a fan of the original BG series. It wasn't perfect; there were several missed opportunities and dialogues that could have gone better or been expanded upon (one of my biggest gripes is how you never get the chance to reconcile with Shael if you've been mostly Good during your playthrough but aren't romancing her), but all-in-all, it's a solid, entertaining expansion.
I actually found Safana's characterization in SoD to be the most divergent from what we know of her in BG1. She always struck me as being a sort of "liberated femme fatale"; she knows what she wants, what she's good at, and she doesn't care about what society thinks of her methods and attitude because she LIKES who she is, dangit. As a result, the way her romance plays out struck me as kinda odd, but perhaps this was Beamdog's attempt to try and reconcile Safana's transition from who she was in BG1 to the traitor in BG2 willing to sell you out.
Interestingly, I actually didn't find Imoen's refusal to accompany you in SoD that unusual because I've been playing with the Imoen Romance mod for BG2, and if you look at it through the lens of "Imoen's trying to sort out her feelings about you", it kind of makes sense that she'd want some distance to think things over, and learning magic gives her something else to focus on. (Although I changed Imoen back into a Thief in BG2 because I'm already a Mage and I don't need both her AND Aerie fighting with me over spell scrolls. XD) But even disregarding that, if you were an Evil character in BG1 then it also makes sense that Imoen might have become disquieted by your behaviour and actions and wanted to try forging her own path away from you. If you were Good/Neutral, perhaps Imoen felt a bit trapped under your shadow and wanted to strike out on her own for a while, before realizing that she missed you too much/couldn't abandon you to the Dukes' justice and steps in to save you.
imoen was just effected by poison and charname's reasoning is they don't not want her to be in harms way. imoen even says at the end of the game she wishes she was with you and may explain abit why she is more head strong at the start off bg 2 [ besides being tortured] she wants to protect you for once. then the whole spellhold thing happen. she resides that mabey it is best for charname to do the decision making not her. it's character development
it's even more noticeable if you play the series with the bg 1 npc project and imoen romance. imoen has an arc that spans the whole series and she is just as much important of a character in the story as you are.
@Zaxares, @megamike15 There are ways to try to rationalise it via role play, but really in my experience of these games it just felt wrong. And they didn't have a very good reason for not letting you optionally recruit her. BG2 basically ignored it if you kill Minsc and Jaheira or other characters, I know Imoen's a bit more important to BG2's plot but hey, they ignored it if you killed her in BG1 too.
@Ardanis The entire sentence is "Yes and *insert identifying comment that could get person in trouble*"
Nothing in the second half of that sentence contradicts the "yes".
You wanna go down this hole? Wanna explain why people being upset that a trans character simply exists is any different than racists frothing at the mouth because they saw a black person? Or how calling for the lynching of the writer who dared to create said character isn't hate speech? Heck, wanna try and define why wanting trans people to not exist and calling for the death of people who support them isn't hate speech? Or why these opinions are of equal value to non-murderous ones?
@DinoDin "Again, it's not proof that any project was cancelled because of BG3. You don't even have proof that WotC ever approved of any further Beamdog BG content."
Really? How is a Beamdog employee saying that WotC stopped Beamdog from creating any new expanson for BG because Larian is making a BG3 not proof? Also, WotC has to approve every instance of new content for BG that Beamdog makes. Its been explicitly stated many times in the past by Beamdog that this is the case. But again, you just have to cover your ears.
an example of wotc having the final say for beamdog would be rassad's quest. beamdog was not allowed to have a certain character be killed at all because he is a major character in fr lore and wotc told them no. which is odd because bioware could get away with killing canon fr chracters back in the day.
The entire sentence is "Yes and *insert identifying comment that could get person in trouble*"
Nothing in the second half of that sentence contradicts the "yes".
I do not claim to know for a fact that my understanding was accurate, but there is far too large a room for such interpretation. Large enough to not present yours as proof.
There is no hole to go down. If all you focus on is a small group without sense of restrain and ignore the levelheaded critique, then I do not see how such position is any bit different from calls to remove minority XYZ from existence (after all, they also focus on selected misdeeds by individuals and extrapolate that to the whole group). Or how bashing WotC for doing something you personally disagree with, i.e. alleged catering to hate, is any bit different from calls to fire a writer who wrote something they didn't like.
PS We may be talking about different, if related, things. You don't like the idea of gas chambers for XYZ, I get it. I however see it as a part of bigger picture, where intolerance breeds intolerance. Whether it's directed towards race, gender or opinion is irrelevant.
Geez, I wish we could all be arguing about the merits of an already-released BG2 expansion instead. They could have really created some fiendish encounters for high-level characters!
@Ardanis Ah, moving the goalposts. I was talking about the "fans" who were so upset by the existence of a trans character that they started talking about murdering a writer, and that this "controversy" was so important that WotC picked another company over Beamdog. You said that I was being narrow minded by calling literal calls for murder "hate speech." I asked you to defend your position and demonstrate why these things were not hate speech. But NOW its about legitimate critiscism of SoD? Right.
This is getting ridiculous. If the only thing you picked up about controversy were the few nasty remarks from people with tongues too loose, then it's on you. If the only thing you picked up from the "leak" was how to arrange the words to fit your conspiracy theory, then again it's on you. I don't really care, to be honest, to dictate someone else how they should think, but I do feel a little compelled to offer some counterweight to bias and prejudice, so that whoever is reading this thread can think for themselves and make their own conclusions instead of taking a word for it that WotC is the Satan reincarnate.
Geez, I wish we could all be arguing about the merits of an already-released BG2 expansion instead. They could have really created some fiendish encounters for high-level characters!
well it's already been agreed upon that with out mods tob is not really that great.
@Zaxares, @megamike15 There are ways to try to rationalise it via role play, but really in my experience of these games it just felt wrong. And they didn't have a very good reason for not letting you optionally recruit her. BG2 basically ignored it if you kill Minsc and Jaheira or other characters, I know Imoen's a bit more important to BG2's plot but hey, they ignored it if you killed her in BG1 too.
Meh, this canon thing about the BG series never bothered me. These games were made when CRPG's didn't obsess as much about reactivity as they do nowadays. IMO, they don't actually suffer because of it. The Pillars-Deadfire saga has tons of reactivity, and even has pretty decent storytelling. But I don't think its story benefits a ton from the extreme reactivity it has.
@DinoDin "Again, it's not proof that any project was cancelled because of BG3. You don't even have proof that WotC ever approved of any further Beamdog BG content."
Really? How is a Beamdog employee saying that WotC stopped Beamdog from creating any new expanson for BG because Larian is making a BG3 not proof? Also, WotC has to approve every instance of new content for BG that Beamdog makes. Its been explicitly stated many times in the past by Beamdog that this is the case. But again, you just have to cover your ears.
You still haven't supplied evidence of of "because Larian is making a BG3". I'm tired of discussing it, and I respect you. But I don't understand why you're failing to see the "because Larian" part of your original claim. Nowhere in any quoted text has that been mentioned. If I missed something, please, find me the relevant quote.
If you can't do this, I really think you ought to think a little more about posting your own personal theories (which I'm not saying are impossible) as if they were facts. This is a public place after all.
Meh, this canon thing about the BG series never bothered me. These games were made when CRPG's didn't obsess as much about reactivity as they do nowadays. IMO, they don't actually suffer because of it. The Pillars-Deadfire saga has tons of reactivity, and even has pretty decent storytelling. But I don't think its story benefits a ton from the extreme reactivity it has.
It's not as big an issue for a D&D game, I feel, mostly because stuff like raising the dead is fairly commonplace in a high magic world like Faerun. So even if somebody is dead, that doesn't mean they'll STAY dead. It would be a different case for a low-magic world, or a science-fiction one.
Meh, this canon thing about the BG series never bothered me. These games were made when CRPG's didn't obsess as much about reactivity as they do nowadays. IMO, they don't actually suffer because of it. The Pillars-Deadfire saga has tons of reactivity, and even has pretty decent storytelling. But I don't think its story benefits a ton from the extreme reactivity it has.
It's not as big an issue for a D&D game, I feel, mostly because stuff like raising the dead is fairly commonplace in a high magic world like Faerun. So even if somebody is dead, that doesn't mean they'll STAY dead. It would be a different case for a low-magic world, or a science-fiction one.
Even with BG2/ToB specifically I never found it to be much of an issue. Even taking the most heavy-handed part of the canon, the Imoen relationship, worst case is you play with her thru Irenicus' dungeon, meet her later at Spellhold only to dump her quickly. And that's basically it. You don't even necessarily have to RP trying to save Imoen, as you always have the dialogue choices of being more focused on revenge.
And the lesser parts of the canon like Minsc and Jaheira play an even smaller role.
@Ardanis "This is getting ridiculous. If the only thing you picked up about controversy were the few nasty remarks from people with tongues too loose, then it's on you."
That IS all that the controversy was. Bigots cried foul and sent bomb reviews and death threats to people entirely because of the existance of a fictional trans character. If you want to defend these people, that's on you. I'm tired of you moving the goal posts, so I will not be responding to you again.
@DinoDin You know, I can only point at the evidence and say "there it is" and have you continually turn away and shout, "Nu-uh" so many times. Its there if you would bother to look at it. It should also be noted the most of the others who doubted it have not once come back to refute it after seeing it. I am done with with your willful ignorance and mental gymnastics. The evidence speaks for itself.
That IS all that the controversy was. Bigots cried foul and sent bomb reviews and death threats to people entirely because of the existance of a fictional trans character. If you want to defend these people, that's on you. I'm tired of you moving the goal posts, so I will not be responding to you again.
My intent was not so much as to convince you, but to demonstrate your bias and subjectivity. Thank you for confirming that, as well as the unwillingness to look at the facts which contradict your feelings. After all, who am I to argue against your authority on what makes a proof or what controversy involved
Since BG3 will be ages after BG2, will be any significant change on the social structure or on technology?
Technology almost certainly not, FR is supposed to remain a high-fantasy, i.e. swords and spells kind of setting.
As for social structure, I think there has been quite a bit of discussion on this before. According to WotC the city of Baldur's Gate is now supposed to be the "Gotham" of FR, which means lots of crime, corruption slums and a huge contrast between the rich and poor. Personally not a fan of this, as I am already concerned after the trailer that BG 3 will be grimdark & a Gotham kind of setting will not help.
Comments
I think the issue here is the majority of reasoned criticism and also reasoned praise for the game being drowned out in an argument that goes well beyond the scope of the game, a very ugly argument at that between extremes.
SoD seems fine from what I played of it, but just fine. It didn't seem great and definitely had its share of missed opportunities and questionable choices, the big one for me being the characterisation of Imoen because there's just no way the character she was in BG1 and BG2 originally wouldn't want to go with her closest friend and confidante, and frankly after reading the argument about why the excluded her, it made absolutely no sense to me considering you can kill her in the original game at any time.
Right on, I misunderstood which interview you had meant, as I had read apparently the older one in the Wild Surge pdf you linked to.
Again though, your original contention was that BG3 was killing BGEE content. That goalpost has now moved to past controversy about SoD is killing BGEE content.
Again. You do not have evidence. You are merely spreading rumors as if they were facts. You have one guy saying WotC is blocking the content... for unstated reasons. You are conjecturing beyond that. It's fine to conjecture, but this is a public space, you should really not pretend to know things for a fact that you do not know for a fact.
A look at the timeline doesn't add evidence to this BG3-is-to-blame hypothesis. SoD was released in March 2016. OS2 was released in September 2017, and only after that game did WotC sign a contract for BG3. In the interim Beamdog released two D&D-related EE's!
Lastly, I'll repeat. If WotC signed a contract with Beamdog for another BGEE DLC. They cannot just unilaterally tear up a contract at a later date. If no contract was ever signed, this means that more BGEE DLC content has always been a rumor.
for all we know those people that hate beamdog [ rpgcodex gog just to name two] must be very happy beamdog lost the rights to bg as to them beamdog is trash and ruined everything they loved about the series.
"Lastly, I'll repeat. If WotC signed a contract with Beamdog for another BGEE DLC. They cannot just unilaterally tear up a contract at a later date."
Now who's the one running without evidence? A contract can say anything. WotC could very easily have a clause that gives them the right to terminate any and all projects at their discretion. Its real easy. There is no rule or law that prevents this..
Again, it's not proof that any project was cancelled because of BG3. You don't even have proof that WotC ever approved of any further Beamdog BG content. And you're now further inventing extraordinary language in a contract in order for your theory to stand up. A contract you have not ever provided evidence even existed.
This was basically my verdict on SoD as well. I thought it was enjoyable enough, and I would definitely recommend it to anybody who's a fan of the original BG series. It wasn't perfect; there were several missed opportunities and dialogues that could have gone better or been expanded upon (one of my biggest gripes is how you never get the chance to reconcile with Shael if you've been mostly Good during your playthrough but aren't romancing her), but all-in-all, it's a solid, entertaining expansion.
I actually found Safana's characterization in SoD to be the most divergent from what we know of her in BG1. She always struck me as being a sort of "liberated femme fatale"; she knows what she wants, what she's good at, and she doesn't care about what society thinks of her methods and attitude because she LIKES who she is, dangit. As a result, the way her romance plays out struck me as kinda odd, but perhaps this was Beamdog's attempt to try and reconcile Safana's transition from who she was in BG1 to the traitor in BG2 willing to sell you out.
Interestingly, I actually didn't find Imoen's refusal to accompany you in SoD that unusual because I've been playing with the Imoen Romance mod for BG2, and if you look at it through the lens of "Imoen's trying to sort out her feelings about you", it kind of makes sense that she'd want some distance to think things over, and learning magic gives her something else to focus on. (Although I changed Imoen back into a Thief in BG2 because I'm already a Mage and I don't need both her AND Aerie fighting with me over spell scrolls. XD) But even disregarding that, if you were an Evil character in BG1 then it also makes sense that Imoen might have become disquieted by your behaviour and actions and wanted to try forging her own path away from you. If you were Good/Neutral, perhaps Imoen felt a bit trapped under your shadow and wanted to strike out on her own for a while, before realizing that she missed you too much/couldn't abandon you to the Dukes' justice and steps in to save you.
it's even more noticeable if you play the series with the bg 1 npc project and imoen romance. imoen has an arc that spans the whole series and she is just as much important of a character in the story as you are.
Thanks! I can't say I like the idea of that expansion much but more content is more content I guess!
Nothing in the second half of that sentence contradicts the "yes".
You wanna go down this hole? Wanna explain why people being upset that a trans character simply exists is any different than racists frothing at the mouth because they saw a black person? Or how calling for the lynching of the writer who dared to create said character isn't hate speech? Heck, wanna try and define why wanting trans people to not exist and calling for the death of people who support them isn't hate speech? Or why these opinions are of equal value to non-murderous ones?
@DinoDin "Again, it's not proof that any project was cancelled because of BG3. You don't even have proof that WotC ever approved of any further Beamdog BG content."
Really? How is a Beamdog employee saying that WotC stopped Beamdog from creating any new expanson for BG because Larian is making a BG3 not proof? Also, WotC has to approve every instance of new content for BG that Beamdog makes. Its been explicitly stated many times in the past by Beamdog that this is the case. But again, you just have to cover your ears.
Offtopic here
PS We may be talking about different, if related, things. You don't like the idea of gas chambers for XYZ, I get it. I however see it as a part of bigger picture, where intolerance breeds intolerance. Whether it's directed towards race, gender or opinion is irrelevant.
well it's already been agreed upon that with out mods tob is not really that great.
Meh, this canon thing about the BG series never bothered me. These games were made when CRPG's didn't obsess as much about reactivity as they do nowadays. IMO, they don't actually suffer because of it. The Pillars-Deadfire saga has tons of reactivity, and even has pretty decent storytelling. But I don't think its story benefits a ton from the extreme reactivity it has.
You still haven't supplied evidence of of "because Larian is making a BG3". I'm tired of discussing it, and I respect you. But I don't understand why you're failing to see the "because Larian" part of your original claim. Nowhere in any quoted text has that been mentioned. If I missed something, please, find me the relevant quote.
If you can't do this, I really think you ought to think a little more about posting your own personal theories (which I'm not saying are impossible) as if they were facts. This is a public place after all.
It's not as big an issue for a D&D game, I feel, mostly because stuff like raising the dead is fairly commonplace in a high magic world like Faerun. So even if somebody is dead, that doesn't mean they'll STAY dead. It would be a different case for a low-magic world, or a science-fiction one.
Even with BG2/ToB specifically I never found it to be much of an issue. Even taking the most heavy-handed part of the canon, the Imoen relationship, worst case is you play with her thru Irenicus' dungeon, meet her later at Spellhold only to dump her quickly. And that's basically it. You don't even necessarily have to RP trying to save Imoen, as you always have the dialogue choices of being more focused on revenge.
And the lesser parts of the canon like Minsc and Jaheira play an even smaller role.
That IS all that the controversy was. Bigots cried foul and sent bomb reviews and death threats to people entirely because of the existance of a fictional trans character. If you want to defend these people, that's on you. I'm tired of you moving the goal posts, so I will not be responding to you again.
@DinoDin You know, I can only point at the evidence and say "there it is" and have you continually turn away and shout, "Nu-uh" so many times. Its there if you would bother to look at it. It should also be noted the most of the others who doubted it have not once come back to refute it after seeing it. I am done with with your willful ignorance and mental gymnastics. The evidence speaks for itself.
Technology almost certainly not, FR is supposed to remain a high-fantasy, i.e. swords and spells kind of setting.
As for social structure, I think there has been quite a bit of discussion on this before. According to WotC the city of Baldur's Gate is now supposed to be the "Gotham" of FR, which means lots of crime, corruption slums and a huge contrast between the rich and poor. Personally not a fan of this, as I am already concerned after the trailer that BG 3 will be grimdark & a Gotham kind of setting will not help.