On the story of Infinity Engine in the context of RtwP/TB legacy of original games
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,724
I've been researching this topic for a while since it seems not to go away.
Infinity Engine is a game engine which allows the creation of isometric role-playing video games. It was originally developed by BioWare for a prototype RTS game codenamed Battleground Infinity, which was ultimately re-engineered to become the first installment of the Baldur's Gate series.
According to BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, it wasn't originally conceived as a single-player game at all.
At GDC Europe 2010, the duo described the original title that Baldur's Gate's once was as Battleground: Infinity, a massively multiplayer online game. Muzyka described the concept as: "A pantheon of all these gods across all of these mythologies, it was crazy ambitious."
At the time when BioWare was shopping Infinity around to publishers, the MMOG genre was still trying to grow out of its text-based, multi-user dungeon beginnings. Publisher Interplay saw Infinity's tech demo and suggested changing it into a Dungeons & Dragons licensed single-player game.
https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/102831-BioWares-Baldurs-Gate-Was-Almost-Massively-Multiplayer
Baldur’s Gate was originally known as Battleground Infinity, a “multi-religion Ragnarok RPG”, before it used the Dungeons & Dragons licensing.
When reminiscing about the history of Baldur’s Gate, Trent Ostner said on Twitter “To imagine Battleground Infinity, just get a fork and poke yourself in the eye with it while saying “smite” in a really bad deep voice.”
“Battleground Infinity was a hacked Direct X demo. The Infinity Engine was a from-scratch effort. IE had thread blocking issues.
“Battleground Infinity was the original concept for the game that became Baldur’s Gate. It was to be a multi-religion Ragnarok RPG
“Baldur’s Gate happened when Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Fame saw the demo and suggested we use the D&D license Interplay had the rights to
“Still {Battleground Infinity was} nothing compared to the horrible that was “Five Fingers of Death”.
https://gamingbolt.com/get-a-fork-and-poke-yourself-in-the-eye-trent-oster-on-biowares-first-rpg
Baldur's Gate began life as Battlegrounds: Infinity, a tech demo of an engine devised by Scott Greig, one of BioWare's first employees. Around the same time, the developer's publisher, Interplay, secured the Dungeons & Dragons licence from TSR, and were keen to publish a video game that emulated the famous world.
"My first week [at BioWare] was the Shattered Steel launch party," says Luke Kristjanson, writer and narrative designer on BioWare's breakthrough hit. "It had started as a pitch/demo for an original fantasy IP game. As I heard it, they took the pitch to Interplay and said, 'we like D&D, so it's similar to that'." That Battleground Infinity demo became the basis of the famous Infinity engine, and when Interplay suggested BioWare utilise its D&D licence, the pieces fell into place.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-30-how-bioware-revolutionised-the-rpg
With a solid licence secured and campaign setting in hand, the small but steadily growing team at BioWare got to work completing the transformation of their prototype RTS technology into an isometric role-playing game, aiming high from the get-go. “From the outset the BG games were intended to be the next-generation of the venerated Gold Box games,” says Chris. “At the same time, the RTS genre was proving what you could do strategically in a real-time environment. It seemed like a natural idea to marry the real-time strategy of RTS games with the depth and party-based play of past-gen RPGs – and of course, it worked out very well once we figured out pausing with the spacebar.”
https://www.gamesradar.com/making-of-baldurs-gate/
Ohlen's commitment to creating a game that balanced between action and traditional RPG resulted in the tactical pause, a mode where the player could stop the action while they selected weapons and targets, or mull over tactics. It was a system born from the clash between Ohlen's love of the real-time strategy genre and Muzyka's favoured turn-based style. "It was our way to both win," smiles Ohlen. "We had a real-time game that satisfied fans of RTS, but one that also satisfied turn-based fans."
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-30-how-bioware-revolutionised-the-rpg
During the production of Shattered Steel, Urquhart was promoted to division chief for the newly created Interplay TSR Division, which would eventually be called Black Isle Studios. “When Shattered Steel was being completed,” recalls Chris Parker, producer of Black Isle Studios at Baldur's Gate and currently director of the project for South Park: The Stick of Truth in Obsidian, “Feargus, Ray and Greg met to talk about the upcoming possibilities and they had a moment of chocolate and peanut butter: Feargus had the D&D license and BioWare had an RTS-style role-playing game.”
https://www.playerzdominiance.com/the-creation-of-baldurs-gate-the-game-that/
Earlier RPGs, including the Ultima games, had been difficult to control, making it complicated for players to select multiple members of their parties and tell them what to do. But Blizzard Entertainment had released Warcraft and Warcraft II in 1994 and 1995, respectively, and those two titles, along with Westwood Studios’ Command & Conquer series, headlined a mid-’90s RTS boom based on mouse-first management rather than keyboard commands. BioWare borrowed that mouse-aided design, transplanting a new interface into an old genre where it was sorely needed. “Basically, you swipe the interface from a real-time-strategy game and plug it into a role-playing game,” Greig says. “That solved the party mechanics.”
It didn’t address a second problem: Mixing real-time management of up to five party members with the complexity of the D&D rule set made the action chaotic. “It became pretty obvious pretty quick that there was no way you were gonna be able to play the depths of D&D in real time without ever pausing the game,” Oster says. “That’s when we came up with the ‘pause and play’ plan.” That addition enabled players to stop in the middle of the game, queue up commands to their party, and then restart the real-time action. Although Baldur’s Gate didn’t invent this “active pause” approach, it did help popularize it. “When you play Fallout to this day with the V.A.T.S. system for the slow-motion targeting, I think you can trace the origins of all that back to the ‘pause and play’ idea,” Greig says.
https://www.theringer.com/2018/12/21/18150363/baldurs-gate-bioware-1998-video-games
Tl;Dr. Original BG1 and BG2 were RtwP games because of the popularity of the RTS genre at that time, because of the prototype engine and also because of a compromise between the tastes of their creators (RTS vs TB). The choice wasn't made because the developers thought RtwP was better.
The question about the legacy of these games and what kind of influence its combat mode had is another story. But the BG creators wanted to develop the game as they envisioned, they wanted to be inventive and believed in their concept. Which is, to me, the only approach any game developer should take. Yes, even Larian.
Infinity Engine is a game engine which allows the creation of isometric role-playing video games. It was originally developed by BioWare for a prototype RTS game codenamed Battleground Infinity, which was ultimately re-engineered to become the first installment of the Baldur's Gate series.
According to BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, it wasn't originally conceived as a single-player game at all.
At GDC Europe 2010, the duo described the original title that Baldur's Gate's once was as Battleground: Infinity, a massively multiplayer online game. Muzyka described the concept as: "A pantheon of all these gods across all of these mythologies, it was crazy ambitious."
At the time when BioWare was shopping Infinity around to publishers, the MMOG genre was still trying to grow out of its text-based, multi-user dungeon beginnings. Publisher Interplay saw Infinity's tech demo and suggested changing it into a Dungeons & Dragons licensed single-player game.
https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/102831-BioWares-Baldurs-Gate-Was-Almost-Massively-Multiplayer
Baldur’s Gate was originally known as Battleground Infinity, a “multi-religion Ragnarok RPG”, before it used the Dungeons & Dragons licensing.
When reminiscing about the history of Baldur’s Gate, Trent Ostner said on Twitter “To imagine Battleground Infinity, just get a fork and poke yourself in the eye with it while saying “smite” in a really bad deep voice.”
“Battleground Infinity was a hacked Direct X demo. The Infinity Engine was a from-scratch effort. IE had thread blocking issues.
“Battleground Infinity was the original concept for the game that became Baldur’s Gate. It was to be a multi-religion Ragnarok RPG
“Baldur’s Gate happened when Feargus Urquhart of Obsidian Fame saw the demo and suggested we use the D&D license Interplay had the rights to
“Still {Battleground Infinity was} nothing compared to the horrible that was “Five Fingers of Death”.
https://gamingbolt.com/get-a-fork-and-poke-yourself-in-the-eye-trent-oster-on-biowares-first-rpg
Baldur's Gate began life as Battlegrounds: Infinity, a tech demo of an engine devised by Scott Greig, one of BioWare's first employees. Around the same time, the developer's publisher, Interplay, secured the Dungeons & Dragons licence from TSR, and were keen to publish a video game that emulated the famous world.
"My first week [at BioWare] was the Shattered Steel launch party," says Luke Kristjanson, writer and narrative designer on BioWare's breakthrough hit. "It had started as a pitch/demo for an original fantasy IP game. As I heard it, they took the pitch to Interplay and said, 'we like D&D, so it's similar to that'." That Battleground Infinity demo became the basis of the famous Infinity engine, and when Interplay suggested BioWare utilise its D&D licence, the pieces fell into place.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-30-how-bioware-revolutionised-the-rpg
With a solid licence secured and campaign setting in hand, the small but steadily growing team at BioWare got to work completing the transformation of their prototype RTS technology into an isometric role-playing game, aiming high from the get-go. “From the outset the BG games were intended to be the next-generation of the venerated Gold Box games,” says Chris. “At the same time, the RTS genre was proving what you could do strategically in a real-time environment. It seemed like a natural idea to marry the real-time strategy of RTS games with the depth and party-based play of past-gen RPGs – and of course, it worked out very well once we figured out pausing with the spacebar.”
https://www.gamesradar.com/making-of-baldurs-gate/
Ohlen's commitment to creating a game that balanced between action and traditional RPG resulted in the tactical pause, a mode where the player could stop the action while they selected weapons and targets, or mull over tactics. It was a system born from the clash between Ohlen's love of the real-time strategy genre and Muzyka's favoured turn-based style. "It was our way to both win," smiles Ohlen. "We had a real-time game that satisfied fans of RTS, but one that also satisfied turn-based fans."
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-09-30-how-bioware-revolutionised-the-rpg
During the production of Shattered Steel, Urquhart was promoted to division chief for the newly created Interplay TSR Division, which would eventually be called Black Isle Studios. “When Shattered Steel was being completed,” recalls Chris Parker, producer of Black Isle Studios at Baldur's Gate and currently director of the project for South Park: The Stick of Truth in Obsidian, “Feargus, Ray and Greg met to talk about the upcoming possibilities and they had a moment of chocolate and peanut butter: Feargus had the D&D license and BioWare had an RTS-style role-playing game.”
https://www.playerzdominiance.com/the-creation-of-baldurs-gate-the-game-that/
Earlier RPGs, including the Ultima games, had been difficult to control, making it complicated for players to select multiple members of their parties and tell them what to do. But Blizzard Entertainment had released Warcraft and Warcraft II in 1994 and 1995, respectively, and those two titles, along with Westwood Studios’ Command & Conquer series, headlined a mid-’90s RTS boom based on mouse-first management rather than keyboard commands. BioWare borrowed that mouse-aided design, transplanting a new interface into an old genre where it was sorely needed. “Basically, you swipe the interface from a real-time-strategy game and plug it into a role-playing game,” Greig says. “That solved the party mechanics.”
It didn’t address a second problem: Mixing real-time management of up to five party members with the complexity of the D&D rule set made the action chaotic. “It became pretty obvious pretty quick that there was no way you were gonna be able to play the depths of D&D in real time without ever pausing the game,” Oster says. “That’s when we came up with the ‘pause and play’ plan.” That addition enabled players to stop in the middle of the game, queue up commands to their party, and then restart the real-time action. Although Baldur’s Gate didn’t invent this “active pause” approach, it did help popularize it. “When you play Fallout to this day with the V.A.T.S. system for the slow-motion targeting, I think you can trace the origins of all that back to the ‘pause and play’ idea,” Greig says.
https://www.theringer.com/2018/12/21/18150363/baldurs-gate-bioware-1998-video-games
Tl;Dr. Original BG1 and BG2 were RtwP games because of the popularity of the RTS genre at that time, because of the prototype engine and also because of a compromise between the tastes of their creators (RTS vs TB). The choice wasn't made because the developers thought RtwP was better.
The question about the legacy of these games and what kind of influence its combat mode had is another story. But the BG creators wanted to develop the game as they envisioned, they wanted to be inventive and believed in their concept. Which is, to me, the only approach any game developer should take. Yes, even Larian.
Post edited by JuliusBorisov on
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