Watch 10 minutes of the console gameplay
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,753
in News
The IGN team tried their hands at the early builds of Baldur's Gate I & II and Planescape Torment / Icewind Dale Enhanced Editions on PS4 (games release on Oct 15)!
Watch 10 minutes of the console gameplay here-->
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/09/18/check-out-baldurs-gate-1-2-and-icewind-dale-enhanced-edition-gameplay-on-ps4
Watch 10 minutes of the console gameplay here-->
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/09/18/check-out-baldurs-gate-1-2-and-icewind-dale-enhanced-edition-gameplay-on-ps4
4
Comments
The game works pretty well on controllers. Interesting.
I really wish an UI that allows you to cast spells more easily. I mean, i liked most UI for most games that i have played, but play as any spontaneous caster on BG/IWD is hard because your spells are in a single line and if you forget the icon, you need to pause and spell by spell, put the mouse above the spell and wait few seconds to read the name and do it with every in game spell.... In therms of UI : NWN1 > ToEE > NWN2 > IE games(BG/IWD).
I really wish to see how an solo sorcerer will play on console ports UI.
As someone who is currently in the middle of a solo sorcerer playthrough of BG Saga, I agree to this %100. However, based on the circumstances we have now, it looks very unlikely for me that Beamdog will change the spellcasting UI, like ever.
That's why I'm looking forward to Bubb's spell menu mod v2.5 compatibility. It has an extended version which increases the quality of life of a spellcaster massively. Unfortunately it's not yet compatible with 2.5, but I think it's close. And it's our best chance of having an awesome spellcasting UI as far as I know.
I'll be doing a Cleric/Mage run only after that mod is out. I can't imagine playing a Cleric/Mage with the current UI, and that's the main reason I don't take Aerie in my parties.
In case anyone is interested, the mod is this one: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/68958/mod-bubbs-spell-menu-update-v2-0
Back on the topic, I watched the video and it looks quite smooth considering how hard I imagined it would be to use the controllers for this purpose. Looks great to me.
I hope the console version increases the recognition of IE games and brings more attention towards them. And wish it brings a lot of sales and success to Beamdog.
Nothing that I wasn't expecting, though.
The Dragonspear UI++ mod is pretty great if you want a better UI for your game.
A clear example when the party went through a door, game auto-paused, controller jumped over the enemy so player could click attack, manually unpause, first 2 players moved to attack, two behind went back into the corridor, one turned and came back, the other went down the corridor and then came back. With a keyboard and mouse you had to anticipate this and always cycle through each character once combat starts in a situation like this.
Another is where they killed an enemy. The cursor appeared over the loot but because you know control all the party they moved back and forth over the loot twice before the main character was over it and the loot screen popped up.
Before people got on the defensive really watch that video to see what I'm talking about and thats just the opening super easy early sections where you don't need spells and abilities. You'd end up not wanting to cast spells or use abilities cause of having to go into so many menus. You have to spend a good bit of time micro managing your party while paused but with a controller that would take much longer. Think about when you enter a room and suddenly a trap shows up on the floor and in a chest so you pause, stop everyone from moving, select thief on their own, get thief to disarm the ground trap, disarm the chest, unlock the chest, open the chest to find a magical item, go into inventory, give item to mage, mage identifies, mage gives weapon to fighter, cycle to fighter inventory, equip weapon, back to game. I can't imagine how that would be enjoyable using a controller.
Good luck to the console releases and I hope they do well but this really isn't a controller friendly game.
"Of the challenges we faced, small text wasn’t that big of an issue for us, as we supported text scaling from previous iterations. The biggest challenge for us, really, was adapting a very “late ‘90s” user interface, built for mouse and keyboard with nested menus and scores of buttons, to work with controllers that ostensibly have 14 buttons and a couple analog sticks. We wanted to be sure that the game played well, and didn’t feel like a chore to play. We rewrote our movement code to let players take control of the party movement using the analog stick, instead of pointing and clicking, and changed those banks of buttons into radial menus. To make interacting with a game world that had a lot of pixel hunting, we improved highlighting of in-game objects and a system that snaps the cursor to important game elements, like characters, objects and transition points. We had to make a lot of design decisions to solve issues that seem so harmless when you have the fine control of a mouse and keyboard."
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/09/feature_beamdog_on_bringing_baldurs_gate_and_classic_dandd_rpgs_to_switch
"The main control difference for the IE games is that we have implemented an analog control mode that allows you to directly control the movement of your party in formation. To compliment this, we have improved highlighting of interactable objects in-game, and have a system that snaps the cursor to important objects, characters, and transition points, which can be interacted with using the interaction button on the controller. The player can switch between this analog drive mode and a virtual mouse “tactics mode” for fine targeting of spells. Most of the HUD buttons have been consolidated into radials, and party management is achieved by cycling through with the shoulder buttons, and through a party radial, that allows for creating custom party member groups, much like control groups in RTSes."
https://www.beamdog.com/news/beamdog-q-april-2019/
Maybe the IGN folks didn't show it all correctly (after all, they didn't seem to play well, attacking without weapons and armour, and not using spells).
I'm curious, though: do those who criticize the shown gameplay play games on consoles or on PC? There's an old dispute between PC and console players, and no game will be able to solve that.
Ah yes, it's because of people who play on PC hating consoles that the controls are clunky. It's not as if there are an absolute ton of PC games that use a controller and use it well, it's all bias to your control scheme! And even if they are not biased they all went out and bought consoles not to play games, but rather to be able to compare UI/controls so they can support their "PC is superior" claim.
What a joke. All you have to look at is the Switch ports which have been fantastic for any number of games to know this isn't the case.
I agree that it is possible those showing the videos may not have been used to playing the game with that control set, so it was not shown in a positive light. Yes, Infinity engine games do not lend themselves to be easily controlled because of the variety of movement and actions when thinking of conventional controls (just porting over some mouse movements instead of creating a control scheme that uses the strength of the controller). And last but not least we only see the effect in-game of using the control, not someone actually using the controller so we don't know how it actually play vs what we see. Seeing how someone plays on a screen is entirely different than when you are using the controller to play it yourself.
I love playing FIFA, but doing so in a keyboard and mouse is a nightmare. Same goes for playing Dragon Age - witch has a lot less micromanaging than BG - with a controller.
But, of course, that's a subjective matter. I'm giving my opinion based on what I saw in that video, though.
And about the IGN folks playing poorly, I thought that the idea was to achieve a bigger marketshare and new players usually play poorly - heck, even veterans will have to relearn how to play the game, so that's a very poor and weak argument IMHO.
Anyway, good luck. The baby is born so Beamdog has no option but to cherish it.
Thats really cool they put in all that work but as a result it created additional problems, two I listed in my post. My criticism was for BG itself. It's my favourite game and I love it but lets not kid ourselves, it is incredibly tedious at times(see my trap paragraph). When you end up in a complicated fight there is a lot of preparing, fighting and then dealing with healing + loot. On a controller that is going to take so much longer. Beamdog did so much to reduce this with the enhanced editions, adding in features that really speeds up so much of the micro managing.
They weren't showing the combat correctly which I presume is down to playing the game for the first time. BG has a big learning curve at the start because of all the menus and options but thats what every knew player is going to experience when they start the game.
I played PC for years until I moved to Mac. I've mostly played console for the last decade except for any old school RPGs which I play on my Mac. Again I'm criticising Baldurs Gates gameplay and how its not something that would work smoothly with a controller.
thats not compatible with bg 2 tho.
The latest version is compatible dude, go check it out it's awesome.
Regarding the video, I agree that the guys playing it didn't do the game justice at all. I definitely enjoyed my time with both Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin on console, i'm really hoping Baldur's Gate can do the same as well, but at the same time I am worried that I can't go back to playing vanilla version of BG anymore lol, these mods really add new life to these games.
i did not know that when i posted that. i have it now and yes it is awesome much better then the normal ui.
although it looks like its running at around 30 fps, and 30 fps nauseates me, but i suppose because you are using a controller instead of a mouse and key board, it makes things a bit easier i suppose
what can also help with the controller scheme is if the console versions allow scripts for your party members, especially ones that can be made on PC and transferred over, some of the scripts i have for my games are almost so good i just have to unpause the game and the party takes care of the rest, so that would be a bonus if that is implemented
but other than that, not too shabby, although i never play consoles so i will never get these versions, its looked a bit better than i thought
- you need to realize that a players mileage will vary in this regard, based on their dexterity and familiarity with using a controller. I know people who move the cursor like this using a mouse, because all they've ever known is console gaming and only use a PC for basically checking email and social media/YouTube.
I have played BG for 18 years or so. On a pc and a laptop at first - with BGT and BWS setup. Now I play the EE’s on a iPhone 6s (and on a tiny iPhone 5 before that).
Beamdog has made the management on the phone pure bliss - debunking a pathfinder bug/problem is no problem. I am not going back to a pc / lab top from here - the phone is just that much more convenient.
But I am going to buy the console games as well:
1) As a parent I have a responsibility for bringing the greatest game ever to the next generation - and we have to find the kids on what ever platform they are on
(it’s your duty and you know it!!!)
2) If controls are half as good on the console as it is on a tiny phone, its going to be awesome. And with Beamdog on board, I am positive they will be!!
So buying the great games for the third platform is an obvious choice for me.
Will you be able to transfer character from BG1 to BG2 on PS4 console? Just not sure how that would look like in the menus?
Maybe same as EE versions cause that was very nicely made.