You're right, that's most certainly a factor, and with that in mind, I'm very grateful for their initial ignorance on which game design approach sold more games.
I don't dislike BG1 per se, its technically one of the more interesting segments of the game for me. But if we're comparing cities, Athkatla on its own is far more interesting. It has its own identity, while BG is just another large medieval town. Athkatla has an interesting look and flavor all its own, BG is only interesting becuase of what's happening there. Take the quests away, and BG just doesn't stand out in comparison.
I don't dislike BG1 per se, its technically one of the more interesting segments of the game for me. But if we're comparing cities, Athkatla on its own is far more interesting. It has its own identity, while BG is just another large medieval town. Athkatla has an interesting look and flavor all its own, BG is only interesting becuase of what's happening there. Take the quests away, and BG just doesn't stand out in comparison.
Yep. As the article Julius linked to notes, one of the keys to Athkatla, for me, is that it focuses on a theme for the city. Coin becomes such a critical factor in quests ranging from the main plot to even companion sidequests (Jaheira and Ployer), to random non-quest ambushes (muggers). This, along with the peculiar art style, makes the city feel like it has a culture, a history. Which breathes far more life into it, for me, than the ability to walk into every house does.
Meh, that is how I feel about Athkatla. The art gets boring after a while. The only thing that stands out to me is that none of the areas are really connected and when fully revealed each district map neighbours completely the wrong districts compared to the city map and some neighbour the same one on different sides. XD
But to reach their own. The game is still good despite of that.
If you read the thoughts on the designer on BG2 it is pretty clear that they put a very strong focus on the Strongholds. I think this is the main reason we got 8 large independent quest modules for them. So I actually think in that sense it was a conscious choice and later Bioware games followed that pattern due to how successful BG 2 was.
thats also the reason bioware said no other game they were gonna make was gonna have as much content as bg 2 did. if anything it has alittle to much content alot of people are never gonna see.
my issue is due to game of thrones people seem to not want fr style fantasy anymore.
i was watching chris davis's crpg series and he goes on how people might not be able to enjoy simple high fantasy due to game of thrones.
That's ridiculous. I've been on the low fantasy gritty realism train for years and years and all it took for me to reawaken my joy for high fantasy was PF: Kingmaker.
They don't scratch the same itch, but they both scratch itches.
Then again, my favourite parts of GoT was the greater lore and mythological aspects of the story (I haven't read the books, but I went on a great ASoIaF wiki adventure after seeing the first tv season and finding the excellent GoTmod for Crusader Kings 2), which was basically absent from much of the show.
I've also come to the (pretty elitist, so I'm hesitant to share it ) conclusion that GoT is one of those things that people tend to like pretty intensely, but they don't develop a very good sense of why they like it. So they just narrow it down to buzzwords like "grim n gritty" and such without thinking much of it.
Probably because all heroes can die.
I could never get into the series. Too gruesome and too much sex. Got boring after 1 episode. My friends said I would like it and I stuck to it while my wife watched all seasons, but no... Not for me. Too many characters, nothing happening for quite some episodes... Bleh.
Game of Thrones was "okay-ish", until D&D went against JRR Martin's books. Every season past the 5th one got worse with each passing episode. And don't get me even started with season 8. My brain's still in partial meltdown...
One of the greatest departures from the A Song of Ice and Fire books was how little to no magic was shown inside the show. Heck, the worldbuilding inside the books can be classified as a high magic fantasy setting. The Others have magic, the Children of the Forest have magic, dragons have magic and of course humans as well. Not to mentioning all the cosmic horror themes with their respectively "Great Old Ones magic". Remember Euron Greyjoy? Inside the books he owns the Dragonbender horn, can summon krakens and his one and only twisted wish is to become a God in the flesh. What has D&D done with that character? Devolving him into a skirt chaser! Bah!
I don't think it's high magic at all, magic is much too low key to be so. But I agree that one could say it becomes subsequently higher magic (especially considering magic doesn't really "awake" until the red comet/Daenarys hatches the dragons) as the story progresses.
Low magic doesn't mean no magic. It means a difference in how magic is depicted. Elves (Children of the Forest) and demons being magical does not preclude a setting from being low magic.
@scriver That's the case in the Game of Throne TV show, yes. Magic inside the A Song of Ice and Fire books is a completely different beast altogether. According to an interview, D&D were explicitly against exploring the deeper aspects of the books magic because they couldn't "understand" it and instead opted to turn it into more or less a footnote. The books have a far more fleshed out magic system than the show ever hinted at. One could even call it commonplace if you look in the right places.
Game of Thrones is overrated. There isn't a single likeable character, so when people do start dying, there's no reason to care. Actually, there was 1 character I didn't hate or feel apathetic about, but his death was so certain, I pictured him as Sean Bean in my head before the tv series was ever a thing.
@scriver That's the case in the Game of Throne TV show, yes. Magic inside the A Song of Ice and Fire books is a completely different beast altogether. According to an interview, D&D were explicitly against exploring the deeper aspects of the books magic because they couldn't "understand" it and instead opted to turn it into more or less a footnote. The books have a far more fleshed out magic system than the show ever hinted at. One could even call it commonplace if you look in the right places.
I know what the difference between the tv series and the books. The books are definitely not high magic.
my issue is due to game of thrones people seem to not want fr style fantasy anymore.
i was watching chris davis's crpg series and he goes on how people might not be able to enjoy simple high fantasy due to game of thrones.
Can't really agree. I think GoT merely opened up new avenues within the sword&sorcery subgenre of fantasy. I mean, the LotR movies aren't *that* old, and the Hobbit movies made money despite being low quality movies. Tabletop roleplaying is probably at an all time high in terms of popularity, and most of those adventures still adhere closer to a LotR model than GoT. This is bleeding into all sorts of popular culture such as TV shows like Stranger Things.
I think there's always going to be an appetite for fantasy setting stories with your typical high fantasy plot arcs (good v evil). Even if the setting isn't quite FR-ish. We see these again and again in action movies, animated movies, softer scifi like most of the Star Wars films.
During the early days of self-quarantine at Larian Studios, the independent video game developer founded in Ghent, Belgium, morale remained high. Designers and engineers, many of whom worked remotely (the company has 300 employees across five countries), were able to continue to do so, building levels and writing code from their homes.
“The very first week, it went really well,” said Swen Vincke, the chief executive at Larian, which makes popular role-playing games like Divinity: Original Sin and the upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3. “Everyone had all the information they needed to just smoothly go work from home.”
But as the company entered the second and third weeks of social isolation amid the coronavirus pandemic, problems began to emerge. Parents have to work while caring for young children. Some employees have found themselves working limited or unusual hours, which has led to reduced productivity and communication struggles. And with Larian’s external partners closing or transitioning to remote work, everything has slowed down.
“We started seeing more stress on the leads in terms of communication,” Mr. Vincke said. “We’d spend all of our days just communicating — trying to solve problems, organize things, give direction.”
You'd think vidya gaems would be one of the industries that could easily be converted to working from home, but maybe it involves too much data for that?
I have no idea how game developers work in that sense, but I would very much understand if all their working data was on a network *not* connected to the outside.
"The challenges began to mount as the process dragged on, however, as employees have been forced to make more long-term adjustments to their schedules and external partners working on the game made similar changes.
A potentially even bigger problem for some games, including Baldur's Gate 3, is that aspects of development like motion capture are impossible to do while working remotely, and even voice acting is effectively off the table because of inconsistencies in recording quality from place to place. Vincke said he hopes to get back into a mocap studio soon—with all necessary precautions taken, naturally—but at the moment, "We don't have a solution for it."
For now, Larian is still running at 70-80 percent of its usual productivity, and while a release date still hasn't been announced, Vincke said that Baldur's Gate 3 remains on for 2020. "Development is proceeding," he said. "We're just slowed down."
You overestimate the efficiency you can reach on short term from changing to office work to teleworking.
While as SW engineer you can work on code you still need to
- interact with your colleagues on push / pull requests
- alignments in implementation
- external dependencies on other resources (art work etc)
- access your data on a shared drive while everyone is oversaturating the business network traffic
- etc etc.
Not to mention generic issues
- Calls take longer than meetings and are less efficient
- Everyone needs to transfer from normal wow to something else
- Some people are phone-shy while if you could drop by them physically they would immediately help
- Some people just don't respond quickly to email or messages.
- Rediscussions on scope due to decreased efficiency and replanning work
Just to name some examples that impact.
For the 10 sw team I collaborate with we requested their impact due to forced teleworking and it ranges between 60% and 85% efficiency compared to before the situation and a reduction in delivery scope ranging between 10 and 30%.
This is huge.
A quick change is not feasible for large companies since none of them is fully prepared for something like this. It will pick up on efficiency and deliveries again in 2-3 months but until then it is a gradual learn-by-experience change in wow to cope.
You'd think vidya gaems would be one of the industries that could easily be converted to working from home, but maybe it involves too much data for that?
Haha, yeah, I'm surprised they kept that in since it's such an obvious example of play-experience visuals rather than trailer/cut-scene visuals.
I'm actually pondering whether to get this now or wait for the real release. Feeling the hype, I guess. Have they announced if EA is going to be exclusive for any platform? I loathe downloading new platforms, so that would probably be the thing keeping me from jumping in.
Comments
Yep. As the article Julius linked to notes, one of the keys to Athkatla, for me, is that it focuses on a theme for the city. Coin becomes such a critical factor in quests ranging from the main plot to even companion sidequests (Jaheira and Ployer), to random non-quest ambushes (muggers). This, along with the peculiar art style, makes the city feel like it has a culture, a history. Which breathes far more life into it, for me, than the ability to walk into every house does.
But to reach their own. The game is still good despite of that.
thats also the reason bioware said no other game they were gonna make was gonna have as much content as bg 2 did. if anything it has alittle to much content alot of people are never gonna see.
i was watching chris davis's crpg series and he goes on how people might not be able to enjoy simple high fantasy due to game of thrones.
Except in the Battle of the Bastards
That's ridiculous. I've been on the low fantasy gritty realism train for years and years and all it took for me to reawaken my joy for high fantasy was PF: Kingmaker.
They don't scratch the same itch, but they both scratch itches.
Then again, my favourite parts of GoT was the greater lore and mythological aspects of the story (I haven't read the books, but I went on a great ASoIaF wiki adventure after seeing the first tv season and finding the excellent GoTmod for Crusader Kings 2), which was basically absent from much of the show.
I've also come to the (pretty elitist, so I'm hesitant to share it
I could never get into the series. Too gruesome and too much sex. Got boring after 1 episode. My friends said I would like it and I stuck to it while my wife watched all seasons, but no... Not for me. Too many characters, nothing happening for quite some episodes... Bleh.
But i understand people like it a lot
One of the greatest departures from the A Song of Ice and Fire books was how little to no magic was shown inside the show. Heck, the worldbuilding inside the books can be classified as a high magic fantasy setting. The Others have magic, the Children of the Forest have magic, dragons have magic and of course humans as well. Not to mentioning all the cosmic horror themes with their respectively "Great Old Ones magic". Remember Euron Greyjoy? Inside the books he owns the Dragonbender horn, can summon krakens and his one and only twisted wish is to become a God in the flesh. What has D&D done with that character? Devolving him into a skirt chaser! Bah!
Low magic doesn't mean no magic. It means a difference in how magic is depicted. Elves (Children of the Forest) and demons being magical does not preclude a setting from being low magic.
I really hope it has no influence on bg3
I know what the difference between the tv series and the books. The books are definitely not high magic.
Can't really agree. I think GoT merely opened up new avenues within the sword&sorcery subgenre of fantasy. I mean, the LotR movies aren't *that* old, and the Hobbit movies made money despite being low quality movies. Tabletop roleplaying is probably at an all time high in terms of popularity, and most of those adventures still adhere closer to a LotR model than GoT. This is bleeding into all sorts of popular culture such as TV shows like Stranger Things.
I think there's always going to be an appetite for fantasy setting stories with your typical high fantasy plot arcs (good v evil). Even if the setting isn't quite FR-ish. We see these again and again in action movies, animated movies, softer scifi like most of the Star Wars films.
During the early days of self-quarantine at Larian Studios, the independent video game developer founded in Ghent, Belgium, morale remained high. Designers and engineers, many of whom worked remotely (the company has 300 employees across five countries), were able to continue to do so, building levels and writing code from their homes.
“The very first week, it went really well,” said Swen Vincke, the chief executive at Larian, which makes popular role-playing games like Divinity: Original Sin and the upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3. “Everyone had all the information they needed to just smoothly go work from home.”
But as the company entered the second and third weeks of social isolation amid the coronavirus pandemic, problems began to emerge. Parents have to work while caring for young children. Some employees have found themselves working limited or unusual hours, which has led to reduced productivity and communication struggles. And with Larian’s external partners closing or transitioning to remote work, everything has slowed down.
“We started seeing more stress on the leads in terms of communication,” Mr. Vincke said. “We’d spend all of our days just communicating — trying to solve problems, organize things, give direction.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/technology/personaltech/coronavirus-video-game-production.html
"The challenges began to mount as the process dragged on, however, as employees have been forced to make more long-term adjustments to their schedules and external partners working on the game made similar changes.
A potentially even bigger problem for some games, including Baldur's Gate 3, is that aspects of development like motion capture are impossible to do while working remotely, and even voice acting is effectively off the table because of inconsistencies in recording quality from place to place. Vincke said he hopes to get back into a mocap studio soon—with all necessary precautions taken, naturally—but at the moment, "We don't have a solution for it."
For now, Larian is still running at 70-80 percent of its usual productivity, and while a release date still hasn't been announced, Vincke said that Baldur's Gate 3 remains on for 2020. "Development is proceeding," he said. "We're just slowed down."
While as SW engineer you can work on code you still need to
- interact with your colleagues on push / pull requests
- alignments in implementation
- external dependencies on other resources (art work etc)
- access your data on a shared drive while everyone is oversaturating the business network traffic
- etc etc.
Not to mention generic issues
- Calls take longer than meetings and are less efficient
- Everyone needs to transfer from normal wow to something else
- Some people are phone-shy while if you could drop by them physically they would immediately help
- Some people just don't respond quickly to email or messages.
- Rediscussions on scope due to decreased efficiency and replanning work
Just to name some examples that impact.
For the 10 sw team I collaborate with we requested their impact due to forced teleworking and it ranges between 60% and 85% efficiency compared to before the situation and a reduction in delivery scope ranging between 10 and 30%.
This is huge.
A quick change is not feasible for large companies since none of them is fully prepared for something like this. It will pick up on efficiency and deliveries again in 2-3 months but until then it is a gradual learn-by-experience change in wow to cope.
i approve on your pronunciation of vidgeo gaimes
A tentative guess is the announcement of the BG3 Open Beta on June, 6 during the Guerrilla Collective Showcase Day 1.
I'm actually pondering whether to get this now or wait for the real release. Feeling the hype, I guess. Have they announced if EA is going to be exclusive for any platform? I loathe downloading new platforms, so that would probably be the thing keeping me from jumping in.
Also, what was this about? Was it about
the release of the June 6th date trailer?