Except that all the dragons, devils, etc. don't give a damn about you, they want to kill mind flayers!
On BG1, we survive an assassination attempt by Sarevok and several of his henchmen who individually are much stronger than the character.
Except that all the dragons, devils, etc. don't give a damn about you, they want to kill mind flayers!
On BG1, we survive an assassination attempt by Sarevok and several of his henchmen who individually are much stronger than the character.
- and who let you escape despite the fact that you're their number 1 target in all of this. Apparently they are unable to track a scared level 1 character running away in the light night-wilderness outside of Candlekeep...
It´s like a trailer at what is to come, dragons, demons, ilithids... Makes you feel you are in D&D... without making you enter into a suicide fight at level 1. You are merely passing by, take a look in awe and then run away from there until you level up ten levels or so
But the PC is literally right in the middle of all those extremely dangerous foes. You are literally surrounded by mind flayers, red dragons, and powerful devils. So to just say hey the PC got lucky and managed to escape is not at all realistic or believable. Imagine if Candlekeep had been surrounded by similar foes at the beginning of BG1 and yet somehow Charname managed to survive and escape. Most people would have considered that to be ridiculous BS. We consider Charname to have been lucky he survived because he survived wolves, not mind flayers.
I think all those monsters should be so rare that the average commoner in Faerun doubts their existence, and believes stories about them to be tall tales told by bragging adventurers. When a writer goes over the top with all that, my suspension of disbelief gets strained.
After a calm tutorial section in BG1, the new character encounters *one* overwhelmingly powerful bad guy and his party to establish the dramatic tension and suspense.
At the start of BG2, a new player meets a mysterious torturer and his golem, after awakening in a cage, in pain and having trouble remembering how he got there. After being taunted by his torturer, he hears the golem announce that the complex is under attack by an unknown third party.
At the beginning of Star Wars, we see *one* star destroyer attack *one* small, relatively defenseless starship carrying the woman who is set up to be the protagonist. (Before we meet the other one, who is a nobody youth down on the planet below.) If the movie had begun with the attack on the Death Star, we would have been overwhelmed with too much action, and unattached to anything that was going on. (Later Star Wars movies suffered in quality when they forgot good pacing like this.)
One of my favorite opening hooks ever was Might and Magic 6. We see *one* red dragon flying over the sea, which then lands among a group of devils. The leader points at our party, and the dragon breathes a fireball towards us as we flee, jumping down a well in desperation to escape. The party leader discovers an escape through a cave by swimming through a short distance. (This entire sequence is a cutscene. Actually playing the game in combat against those enemies at level one would be suicide.)
One of my problems with newer games (and movies and TV, for that matter), is that writers nowadays seem to want to pull out all the stops in the first scene, and keep it going through the whole story. Bigger, better, brighter, faster, right out the gate. I think that messes up the pacing a bit, and causes a kind of inflation in audience sensitivity where nothing is exciting any more.
Maybe Larian was going for the same sort of story arc as in my examples above? (Opening overwhelming threat as a hook followed by a more appropriately mundane beginning.) Whether they succeeded at good pacing in the attempt is debatable. I'm still open to being convinced that their story works.
I've got a bigger problem right now with their character writing. Since the main response to that I hear right now is "It's early access, the good characters haven't been released yet", when it's not "Shut up and keep your place, we don't want your kind here", I guess I'll take another look when these supposed other characters show up for me to preview.
It´s like a trailer at what is to come, dragons, demons, ilithids... Makes you feel you are in D&D... without making you enter into a suicide fight at level 1. You are merely passing by, take a look in awe and then run away from there until you level up ten levels or so
But the PC is literally right in the middle of all those extremely dangerous foes. You are literally surrounded by mind flayers, red dragons, and powerful devils. So to just say hey the PC got lucky and managed to escape is not at all realistic or believable. Imagine if Candlekeep had been surrounded by similar foes at the beginning of BG1 and yet somehow Charname managed to survive and escape. Most people would have considered that to be ridiculous BS. We consider Charname to have been lucky he survived because he survived wolves, not mind flayers.
You are in the middle of it. You certainly aren't remotely capable of fighting any of them. As I have mentioned before, the last battle on the ship is SPECIFICALLY designed to force you to kill low-level mobs AND move towards the helm of the ship before these infinitely more powerful creatures can catch you.
I'm on the fence. My main beef is just that Baldur's Gate III, as it currently stands, is confusing. Like, who is this game for?
A lot of olde-school BG/Infinity fans are (obviously) gonna be turned off by turn-based combat and other changes
A lot of newcomers are probably gonna be turned off by that big fat III in the name
So who's their target consumer base audience here?
my honest guess is that WoTC like making money, so when they sat at a board meeting one day, they were spitting out ideas on how to make said money
and then they came up with the same idea that every other big company does to cash in a quick buck; find an old popular franchise that people still know/ or talk about and use the name and have a new company take over the project and = win
that is how i see it, i understand that companies need to make money and all, which is fair, but i feel as if they did it in the most soulless way possible, where they completely alienated the baldur's gate name because they knew it would bring in gamers and then they looked at companies who are successful now adays and since OS 1 & 2 did well they choose Larian
now, even though i have nothing against Larian, i remember hearing that half the team at the time of making BG3 either never played bg1 & 2 or even heard of it. Right there, to me that is the first red flag
and then Larian kept making it look like they were going to be as faithful to the original games as possible as to not alienate older fans, but the more i saw, the more i knew that this was just marketing hog-wash
in all seriousness, calling this game BG3 to be honest is a travesty in my opinion, if they wanted to make this game, they should have called it something else, but i blame the pure laziness of WotC just wanting to cash in and make a quick buck
at least now i know how other people feel when they have franchises that they loved the originals on, and big time corporations came in and used a popular name soley for making money and didn't really give a damn if older fans liked the new stuff or not
Please don't warm up the discussion of "BG3 shouldn't be called BG3" again. We've had countless iterations of that one, and I doubt anything new can be added.
As for the other points, why should a game be made solely for one audience?
1. Early Access players on this forum and those who follow their information are proof that liking the Infinity Engine games and being interested in BG3 aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Personal opinions may vary, of course, but it doesn't look as if BG3 couldn't possibly appeal to anyone who liked the old games.
2. Turn-based can put off some people. I was sceptical too, at first, but playing DOS:EE I realized that I can separate the story immersion from the strategic situation in combat and see some advantages in TB compared to constant pausing and micromanagement. Again, your impression may be different, but I wouldn't generalize. Tabletop is turn-based too, after all.
3. The Witcher 3 sold over 30 million times, has a 3 in its name too. I doubt everyone who bought it played the old ones.
4. Let's face it, game developers must appeal to a large audience if they don't want to lose a lot of money, as there's a lot of competition out there and many people prefer cheap or free-to-play content nowadays, preferably with monthly new content coming in. And the fanbase of the Infinity Engine games is a small niche community.
We obviously love those games, otherwise we wouldn't be here, but to expect developers to tailor a game to the tastes of a small group of players is unrealistic.
5. With the time and money that is needed to develop a great game, I don't think it's fair to accuse a company of wanting to make a big cash grab. Developing a big game nowadays is a high financial risk, look at CDPR.
I think I can understand a bit where people are coming from with high expectations for a sequel who now feel disappointed, but I think it's important to look at our expectations and see if they're maybe not realistic. If anything, even if someone doesn't like how BG3 will turn out, if it's successful, I see more RPGs coming our way in the next decade.
that is how i see it, i understand that companies need to make money and all, which is fair, but i feel as if they did it in the most soulless way possible, where they completely alienated the baldur's gate name because they knew it would bring in gamers and then they looked at companies who are successful now adays and since OS 1 & 2 did well they choose Larian
now, even though i have nothing against Larian, i remember hearing that half the team at the time of making BG3 either never played bg1 & 2 or even heard of it. Right there, to me that is the first red flag
I don't think this is right. I just wanna note that when OS1 first came out, a big reason why it first started to snowball in popularity is because a significant chunk of old BG fans fell in love with the game. I can speak for myself that the game felt a smart progression on the base style of isometric, party-based, CRPG's.
I know the series doesn't appeal to everyone and there are even aspects of it that I'm not fond of. But BG fans were among the early fans of these games. It's perfectly natural for WotC to have chosen them.
And frankly, regardless of which game company was chosen, there would have been issues among the diverse BG fanbase. SoD was divisive. Not everyone likes Obsidian. I think it's worth noting that regardless of who was picked to helm this title, some part of the community would be taking this exact view you're outlining.
Not to be tautological or anything, but I think the audience for this game are "Modern CRPG players". That group includes a lot of different sorts of people (Old BG players, Old Goldbox players, DOS1&2 fans, PoE fans, etc) - and as with all things, not all of them will like the game equally.
The biggest chunk of that group are DOS1&2 players, because the DOS series was more successful than any other CRPG game in recent memory.
So it makes sense that they'd ask the most successful studio to make BG3.
I do think it's incorrect to assume this was a cashgrab. WotC has owned the rights to make a BG3 for years now, and elected not to do so. That implies they were not just rushing out to capitalize on the franchise name.
I agree that D:OS2 has been the most successful cRPG in recent times, and as such from a financial standpoint it makes sense for WotC to have them make a D&D game. Furthermore, WotC has been doing extremely well financially in recent years with over 15 million people playing D&D 5e worldwide, so I don't see why they would make such a decision just as a "cash grab." But I strongly disagree that the D:OS2 sales success makes Larian the best studio (creatively speaking) to make BG3 specifically, as I utterly reject the notion that the D:OS games have anything in common with BG1&2 (beyond surface commonalities, which is to say the differences between the two far, far, far outweigh any similarities). People can certainly like both the original BG games and the D:OS games. But that is a contradiction in preferences. For me, for example, it is precisely because I love the original BG games/all the IE games that I loathe the D:OS games, because playing D:OS felt nothing like playing those old games.
I don't want to split hairs with you, I'd just like to point out that liking both the old BG and the DOS games isn't necessarily a contradiction in preferences but rather a love for variety.
To put it simply, I don't think enjoying to eat fried potatoes with garlic and also liking chocolate cake is a contradiction in preferences, although both are different foods.
I don't want to convince anyone to like DOS, but not everyone dislikes something just because it's different from something else. To use one specific game as a point of reference to compare everything else to is going to make it very difficult to like something.
But I suppose it depends if you expect a similarly designed game, or if you just expect it to engage you and give you the same feeling.
I wonder how much of that is just nostalgia, though. I wonder what we would really think about BG if we played it for the first time now instead of having that cozy sense of familiarity that comes with the years.
I'm still holding out hope that Larian will make it work, since they've at least claimed they wouldn't call it Baldur's Gate III if it didn't tie into the plot of the originals. I also see, for example, JoCat (prominent figure in the D&D5e community) playing and loving BG3 but trying and not getting into BG1. I guess what I'm wondering is more, like, do that many people just not care that this is a sequel?
@Arvia I definitely prefer RTWP overall, but I don't hate TB. I was really feeling the slower pace in my recent Fallout 1 playthrough, though, when I was in a battle with ~15 combatants. I am open-minded towards turn-based D&D video game (you're right, tabletop is turn-based too), but I dread the thought of any combat with more than a dozen or so characters involved...wonder if this is why they went with a party of four? And to be fair, Fallout 1/2 is pretty slow even on max speed.
I'm watching BG3 with serious interest (a close friend of mine greatly enjoys it), but I'm not buying the game at least until it's finished.
Party of four is probably more related to what the standard is for modules in tabletop 5th edition. Also of course might explain another reason WotC was attracted to Larian.
Sigh...you may have a point there. Honestly, the party of four may actually be a bigger turn-off for me than TB combat, as I find 4-man parties too restrictive even in a game like D&D 5e where classes are much looser. Take Dragon Age; when I was playing it years ago, I remember agonizing over which three of my friends to take with me, and when I got a 5th party member in Pillars of Eternity (which, ironically, I played before BG) I was overjoyed and instantly fell in love.
Sigh...you may have a point there. Honestly, the party of four may actually be a bigger turn-off for me than TB combat, as I find 4-man parties too restrictive even in a game like D&D 5e where classes are much looser. Take Dragon Age; when I was playing it years ago, I remember agonizing over which three of my friends to take with me, and when I got a 5th party member in Pillars of Eternity (which, ironically, I played before BG) I was overjoyed and instantly fell in love.
I feel this for sure. I dont know about anyone else, but as soon as I decide to replay any part of the BG franchise, I immediately start with "Okay - who am I bringing?' and decide my class/alignment from there.
With that said, I'd be lying if I said I wasnt excited by the prospect of actually having to choose and whittle down my choices. Making tough choices can be agonizing, but that can also be rewarding. My biggest fear at the moment is that the structure/style of the game will force you to bring certain roles, and in doing so - constrain your ability to pick freely (I dont know that this is the case, but hypothetically - let's say Shadowheart is the only healer in the whole game you can bring. If the game requires you to have a healer, than your options are: Have Shadowheart, or roll a class that can heal. I wouldnt be in love with that. Realistically, there will probably be a second healer, but even then that's not ideal. It puts you in PF:KM territory).
My take is that there are some excellent strategic questions that a player has to answer with the six man setup in these kinds of RPG's. And they just dont happen with the same depth with four.
That being said, it's turn-based combat. What a character can do in a single turn has greatly expanded since 2nd edition. And monsters have added more abilities. Six-man combat with commensurate encounters in TB combat would have dragged. So, I think it's the right call given the other systems in the game.
A BPM says though, I hope Larian is putting serious thought into the NPC loadout.
Even If have some issues about the BG3 game and some executive decisions of Larian about the game, honestly the forced companions and lack of options for a role part is the least of my worries.
Of course, I would like to have more companions and NPCs, which would be always welcome, but one thing 5e has is that the classes, races, and character creation, in general, are very flexible. It´s easy to create a character that fulfils a role or two, even if it´s from a class that traditionally you do not think it´s suitable for the job.
Shadowheart, for example, is a healer-support but also doubles as a scout/lockpicker/trap disarmer or she can be build as an off-tank or sniper in a pinch if needed. Just because of her subclass and background.
Shadowheart, for example, is a healer-support but also doubles as a scout/lockpicker/trap disarmer or she can be build as an off-tank or sniper in a pinch if needed. Just because of her subclass and background.
Yeah - this was one of the things I realized about her that makes her intriguing - her ability to cover the lockpicking role that is traditionally a requirement in CRPGs is going to be a boon for parties that bring her. There are other healer archetypes that exist in 5e, so you can cover that role in a variety of ways (Bards Druids and Clerics can cover it by default, you can make a Warlock into a healer, as well as Sorcerer). Maybe even Ranger and Paladin.
It'll be interesting to see what the remaining companions end up being
I also tend to have a hard time deciding who I take along and who I leave behind even in BG2 with a party of 6. I don't mind it, though, if a game forces me to step out of my comfort zone. If I can only pick 3 companions, it might actually make a second or third playthrough more interesting.
To be honest, the original BG games also have a serious lack of thieves, especially BG2, and almost force you to take Yoshimo/Imoen (unless you prefer Jan) or play a thief yourself. So if 5e gives you more flexibility with classes, you're probably not forced to take along a character you dislike just for pragmatic reasons, at least not for long.
And yes, I do suspect a larger party would draw out TB combat. If DOS serves as an example, a large group of enemies doesn't slow it down that much, because obviously the engine is faster than a player thinking about strategy and picking commands.
Party size (within reason) and the speed of combat are separate things, and the speed of combat being dependent on party size represents a flaw in game design. As a simple example, Skyrim has party size of one, and its combat is very tedious and drags on for me.
If I ever play this game, a very big 'if', I will only play it with the availability of a mod that allows me to have a party of six, because party size four is a deal-breaker. Then, with a party of six, if the combat drags, I won't accept my bigger party size as a valid excuse for why combat is dragging, because combat should not drag even with a party of six. So I will consider that a major strike against the game.
You're free to play the game however you want, but if combat is designed to feel like it's flowing at a good pace with 4 characters, and then you artificially change that limit - the pace of combat dragging will be because of that change.
To put it another way, if I wanted to have 100 characters in my party and the combat dragged - I would probably consider it the fault of me increasing my party size to 100 rather than a game flaw for not having foreseen that a player would want to bring 100 characters, and accommodate that preference.
Just seems weird to even consider buying a game when you're throwing so many caveats on it. Why not just not buy it and move on with your life?
I didn't particularly like that Deadfire dropped its party size. But I went ahead and bought the game anyways. And frankly, the five person party ended up being just fine -- I had other issues that ended up turning me off from the game. But it would have been incredibly foolish, imo, to have bought Deadfire and then only played it modded for six people and then later complain about that.
You're free to play the game however you want, but if combat is designed to feel like it's flowing at a good pace with 4 characters, and then you artificially change that limit - the pace of combat dragging will be because of that change.
To put it another way, if I wanted to have 100 characters in my party and the combat dragged - I would probably consider it the fault of me increasing my party size to 100 rather than a game flaw for not having foreseen that a player would want to bring 100 characters, and accommodate that preference.
Going from 4 to 6 and going from 4 to 100 are not the same in any way, shape or form, something I explictley stipulated in my post. So, thanks for the strawman.
Nobody is trying to decide for you. Even if I wanted to decide for you, I can't. But it just seems like a rather unproductive addition to these discussions to continue to inject your parochial demands about these games. That's all.
I never really loved Planescape: Torment despite its universal praise. But I'm not sitting in the forum topic banging on about how the Enhanced Edition really ought to include some very particular and unrealistic settings just for me. Because doing that would be, imo, inconsiderate to the other members of this community.
You're free to play the game however you want, but if combat is designed to feel like it's flowing at a good pace with 4 characters, and then you artificially change that limit - the pace of combat dragging will be because of that change.
To put it another way, if I wanted to have 100 characters in my party and the combat dragged - I would probably consider it the fault of me increasing my party size to 100 rather than a game flaw for not having foreseen that a player would want to bring 100 characters, and accommodate that preference.
Going from 4 to 6 and going from 4 to 100 are not the same in any way, shape or form, something I explictley stipulated in my post. So, thanks for the strawman.
Wasnt a strawman, it was taking your argument to its logical extreme in order to demonstrate the issues with that line of argumentation.
You're free to play the game however you want, but if combat is designed to feel like it's flowing at a good pace with 4 characters, and then you artificially change that limit - the pace of combat dragging will be because of that change.
To put it another way, if I wanted to have 100 characters in my party and the combat dragged - I would probably consider it the fault of me increasing my party size to 100 rather than a game flaw for not having foreseen that a player would want to bring 100 characters, and accommodate that preference.
Going from 4 to 6 and going from 4 to 100 are not the same in any way, shape or form, something I explictley stipulated in my post. So, thanks for the strawman.
Wasnt a strawman, it was taking your argument to its logical extreme in order to demonstrate the issues with that line of argumentation.
Extreme? Definitely. Logical? No, not even in the slightest.
With BG3 around the corner and the last Larian livestream for it out a week or so ago, wanted to see people's opinions on the game again. I've not played any of the previous Baldur's Gate games so I wanted some insight from BG veterans.
Comments
On BG1, we survive an assassination attempt by Sarevok and several of his henchmen who individually are much stronger than the character.
- and who let you escape despite the fact that you're their number 1 target in all of this. Apparently they are unable to track a scared level 1 character running away in the light night-wilderness outside of Candlekeep...
I think all those monsters should be so rare that the average commoner in Faerun doubts their existence, and believes stories about them to be tall tales told by bragging adventurers. When a writer goes over the top with all that, my suspension of disbelief gets strained.
After a calm tutorial section in BG1, the new character encounters *one* overwhelmingly powerful bad guy and his party to establish the dramatic tension and suspense.
At the start of BG2, a new player meets a mysterious torturer and his golem, after awakening in a cage, in pain and having trouble remembering how he got there. After being taunted by his torturer, he hears the golem announce that the complex is under attack by an unknown third party.
At the beginning of Star Wars, we see *one* star destroyer attack *one* small, relatively defenseless starship carrying the woman who is set up to be the protagonist. (Before we meet the other one, who is a nobody youth down on the planet below.) If the movie had begun with the attack on the Death Star, we would have been overwhelmed with too much action, and unattached to anything that was going on. (Later Star Wars movies suffered in quality when they forgot good pacing like this.)
One of my favorite opening hooks ever was Might and Magic 6. We see *one* red dragon flying over the sea, which then lands among a group of devils. The leader points at our party, and the dragon breathes a fireball towards us as we flee, jumping down a well in desperation to escape. The party leader discovers an escape through a cave by swimming through a short distance. (This entire sequence is a cutscene. Actually playing the game in combat against those enemies at level one would be suicide.)
One of my problems with newer games (and movies and TV, for that matter), is that writers nowadays seem to want to pull out all the stops in the first scene, and keep it going through the whole story. Bigger, better, brighter, faster, right out the gate. I think that messes up the pacing a bit, and causes a kind of inflation in audience sensitivity where nothing is exciting any more.
Maybe Larian was going for the same sort of story arc as in my examples above? (Opening overwhelming threat as a hook followed by a more appropriately mundane beginning.) Whether they succeeded at good pacing in the attempt is debatable. I'm still open to being convinced that their story works.
I've got a bigger problem right now with their character writing. Since the main response to that I hear right now is "It's early access, the good characters haven't been released yet", when it's not "Shut up and keep your place, we don't want your kind here", I guess I'll take another look when these supposed other characters show up for me to preview.
You are in the middle of it. You certainly aren't remotely capable of fighting any of them. As I have mentioned before, the last battle on the ship is SPECIFICALLY designed to force you to kill low-level mobs AND move towards the helm of the ship before these infinitely more powerful creatures can catch you.
I'm on the fence. My main beef is just that Baldur's Gate III, as it currently stands, is confusing. Like, who is this game for?
So who's their target consumer base audience here?
fans of dos 2 that never played the originals.
my honest guess is that WoTC like making money, so when they sat at a board meeting one day, they were spitting out ideas on how to make said money
and then they came up with the same idea that every other big company does to cash in a quick buck; find an old popular franchise that people still know/ or talk about and use the name and have a new company take over the project and = win
that is how i see it, i understand that companies need to make money and all, which is fair, but i feel as if they did it in the most soulless way possible, where they completely alienated the baldur's gate name because they knew it would bring in gamers and then they looked at companies who are successful now adays and since OS 1 & 2 did well they choose Larian
now, even though i have nothing against Larian, i remember hearing that half the team at the time of making BG3 either never played bg1 & 2 or even heard of it. Right there, to me that is the first red flag
and then Larian kept making it look like they were going to be as faithful to the original games as possible as to not alienate older fans, but the more i saw, the more i knew that this was just marketing hog-wash
in all seriousness, calling this game BG3 to be honest is a travesty in my opinion, if they wanted to make this game, they should have called it something else, but i blame the pure laziness of WotC just wanting to cash in and make a quick buck
at least now i know how other people feel when they have franchises that they loved the originals on, and big time corporations came in and used a popular name soley for making money and didn't really give a damn if older fans liked the new stuff or not
As for the other points, why should a game be made solely for one audience?
1. Early Access players on this forum and those who follow their information are proof that liking the Infinity Engine games and being interested in BG3 aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Personal opinions may vary, of course, but it doesn't look as if BG3 couldn't possibly appeal to anyone who liked the old games.
2. Turn-based can put off some people. I was sceptical too, at first, but playing DOS:EE I realized that I can separate the story immersion from the strategic situation in combat and see some advantages in TB compared to constant pausing and micromanagement. Again, your impression may be different, but I wouldn't generalize. Tabletop is turn-based too, after all.
3. The Witcher 3 sold over 30 million times, has a 3 in its name too. I doubt everyone who bought it played the old ones.
4. Let's face it, game developers must appeal to a large audience if they don't want to lose a lot of money, as there's a lot of competition out there and many people prefer cheap or free-to-play content nowadays, preferably with monthly new content coming in. And the fanbase of the Infinity Engine games is a small niche community.
We obviously love those games, otherwise we wouldn't be here, but to expect developers to tailor a game to the tastes of a small group of players is unrealistic.
5. With the time and money that is needed to develop a great game, I don't think it's fair to accuse a company of wanting to make a big cash grab. Developing a big game nowadays is a high financial risk, look at CDPR.
I think I can understand a bit where people are coming from with high expectations for a sequel who now feel disappointed, but I think it's important to look at our expectations and see if they're maybe not realistic. If anything, even if someone doesn't like how BG3 will turn out, if it's successful, I see more RPGs coming our way in the next decade.
I don't think this is right. I just wanna note that when OS1 first came out, a big reason why it first started to snowball in popularity is because a significant chunk of old BG fans fell in love with the game. I can speak for myself that the game felt a smart progression on the base style of isometric, party-based, CRPG's.
I know the series doesn't appeal to everyone and there are even aspects of it that I'm not fond of. But BG fans were among the early fans of these games. It's perfectly natural for WotC to have chosen them.
And frankly, regardless of which game company was chosen, there would have been issues among the diverse BG fanbase. SoD was divisive. Not everyone likes Obsidian. I think it's worth noting that regardless of who was picked to helm this title, some part of the community would be taking this exact view you're outlining.
The biggest chunk of that group are DOS1&2 players, because the DOS series was more successful than any other CRPG game in recent memory.
So it makes sense that they'd ask the most successful studio to make BG3.
I do think it's incorrect to assume this was a cashgrab. WotC has owned the rights to make a BG3 for years now, and elected not to do so. That implies they were not just rushing out to capitalize on the franchise name.
To put it simply, I don't think enjoying to eat fried potatoes with garlic and also liking chocolate cake is a contradiction in preferences, although both are different foods.
I don't want to convince anyone to like DOS, but not everyone dislikes something just because it's different from something else. To use one specific game as a point of reference to compare everything else to is going to make it very difficult to like something.
But I suppose it depends if you expect a similarly designed game, or if you just expect it to engage you and give you the same feeling.
I wonder how much of that is just nostalgia, though. I wonder what we would really think about BG if we played it for the first time now instead of having that cozy sense of familiarity that comes with the years.
@Arvia I definitely prefer RTWP overall, but I don't hate TB. I was really feeling the slower pace in my recent Fallout 1 playthrough, though, when I was in a battle with ~15 combatants. I am open-minded towards turn-based D&D video game (you're right, tabletop is turn-based too), but I dread the thought of any combat with more than a dozen or so characters involved...wonder if this is why they went with a party of four? And to be fair, Fallout 1/2 is pretty slow even on max speed.
I'm watching BG3 with serious interest (a close friend of mine greatly enjoys it), but I'm not buying the game at least until it's finished.
I feel this for sure. I dont know about anyone else, but as soon as I decide to replay any part of the BG franchise, I immediately start with "Okay - who am I bringing?' and decide my class/alignment from there.
With that said, I'd be lying if I said I wasnt excited by the prospect of actually having to choose and whittle down my choices. Making tough choices can be agonizing, but that can also be rewarding. My biggest fear at the moment is that the structure/style of the game will force you to bring certain roles, and in doing so - constrain your ability to pick freely (I dont know that this is the case, but hypothetically - let's say Shadowheart is the only healer in the whole game you can bring. If the game requires you to have a healer, than your options are: Have Shadowheart, or roll a class that can heal. I wouldnt be in love with that. Realistically, there will probably be a second healer, but even then that's not ideal. It puts you in PF:KM territory).
That being said, it's turn-based combat. What a character can do in a single turn has greatly expanded since 2nd edition. And monsters have added more abilities. Six-man combat with commensurate encounters in TB combat would have dragged. So, I think it's the right call given the other systems in the game.
A BPM says though, I hope Larian is putting serious thought into the NPC loadout.
Of course, I would like to have more companions and NPCs, which would be always welcome, but one thing 5e has is that the classes, races, and character creation, in general, are very flexible. It´s easy to create a character that fulfils a role or two, even if it´s from a class that traditionally you do not think it´s suitable for the job.
Shadowheart, for example, is a healer-support but also doubles as a scout/lockpicker/trap disarmer or she can be build as an off-tank or sniper in a pinch if needed. Just because of her subclass and background.
Yeah - this was one of the things I realized about her that makes her intriguing - her ability to cover the lockpicking role that is traditionally a requirement in CRPGs is going to be a boon for parties that bring her. There are other healer archetypes that exist in 5e, so you can cover that role in a variety of ways (Bards Druids and Clerics can cover it by default, you can make a Warlock into a healer, as well as Sorcerer). Maybe even Ranger and Paladin.
It'll be interesting to see what the remaining companions end up being
To be honest, the original BG games also have a serious lack of thieves, especially BG2, and almost force you to take Yoshimo/Imoen (unless you prefer Jan) or play a thief yourself. So if 5e gives you more flexibility with classes, you're probably not forced to take along a character you dislike just for pragmatic reasons, at least not for long.
And yes, I do suspect a larger party would draw out TB combat. If DOS serves as an example, a large group of enemies doesn't slow it down that much, because obviously the engine is faster than a player thinking about strategy and picking commands.
If I ever play this game, a very big 'if', I will only play it with the availability of a mod that allows me to have a party of six, because party size four is a deal-breaker. Then, with a party of six, if the combat drags, I won't accept my bigger party size as a valid excuse for why combat is dragging, because combat should not drag even with a party of six. So I will consider that a major strike against the game.
To put it another way, if I wanted to have 100 characters in my party and the combat dragged - I would probably consider it the fault of me increasing my party size to 100 rather than a game flaw for not having foreseen that a player would want to bring 100 characters, and accommodate that preference.
I didn't particularly like that Deadfire dropped its party size. But I went ahead and bought the game anyways. And frankly, the five person party ended up being just fine -- I had other issues that ended up turning me off from the game. But it would have been incredibly foolish, imo, to have bought Deadfire and then only played it modded for six people and then later complain about that.
I never really loved Planescape: Torment despite its universal praise. But I'm not sitting in the forum topic banging on about how the Enhanced Edition really ought to include some very particular and unrealistic settings just for me. Because doing that would be, imo, inconsiderate to the other members of this community.
Wasnt a strawman, it was taking your argument to its logical extreme in order to demonstrate the issues with that line of argumentation.