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Little disappointed with bg2ee.

patrickontoastpatrickontoast Member Posts: 1
in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
First off I love this game, I've spent at least a couple hundred hours playing it. Then I bought bgee. And what bugs me is the assumptions the developers made regarding my choice of companions. Imoen for instance, in bg2ee she's too child-like for my taste("this place is just too darn creepy...")so I would never have traveled with her. Same with Minsc. If you close your eyes and listen to him talk it's not difficult to imagine him as a disney cartoon character.And Jaheira talks to you as if you were a 6 year old.

So I rejected all of them in bgee(premonition), and yet there they are in bg2ee. Also it bugs me that Imoen who is so easy to dislike(I can't even roleplay liking her) plays such an important role in bg2ee.
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Comments

  • ArunsunArunsun Member Posts: 1,592
    Most of us here will agree with you, but what you have to keep in mind is that the developpers had deadlines. Writing dialogues and coding take time, imagine what writing dialogues/banters for most BG1 NPCs that'd had followed you and gotten captured would have taken. You might not know of a the mod called "unfinished business", but basically it's a fan mod that completes and make available a lot of quests that were not finished during the original development. And there are a lot of them. So deadlines were definitely a thing
    They also had engine limitations, meaning they could not deal with that many NPCs combinations and possible outcomes so easily. The game is 15yo, had to work on computers back then.
    Besides, BG2 was designed to be playable as a stand-alone game. So they had to create a standard starting point. So they chose to use the most popular characters.

    What they could have done that would not had taken too much time would have been creating more than one standard party, and give you one based on alignment, but then again there'd be unconsistencies.

    As for Imoen's importance, well, she is definitely important but you can play without her at all, and hardly mentioning her either. Most dialogues that concern you recovering her from Spellhold or getting her soul back also have options that do not mention her but rather say that you want revenge from Irenicus.
  • GallengerGallenger Member Posts: 400
    At the time it made sense - their audience was far younger, in general, and Imoen and Minsc were far more popular than they are now because they very easily appeal to a younger audience. For example if you were to hop in a time machine, Quayle was down-right *hated* in general as an NPC despite his being one of the better ones in the game lol. There were entire fan-pages devoted to Minsc and Boo however lol. You might be able to see some of this if Planet Baldur's Gate is still alive and you go back to posts from say 2000 or 2001. They didn't just stick characters in there that everybody hated to humor themselves. But times and tastes have changed in the last 15 years or so.

    Also the reason Minsc probably reminds you of a Disney character is because of his voice actor, Jim Cummings, has performed in NUMEROUS Disney productions - he's the voice of Pete, Dark-wing Duck, and at times, Tigger and Winnie the Pooh, and tons and tons of other characters.
  • unavailableunavailable Member Posts: 268
    I wanted BG2EE to make the outside areas of athkatla as relevant to the main plot as Athkatla. Maybe bring in more options for evil characters too, like siding with the slavers
    Arunsun said:

    Most of us here will agree with you, but what you have to keep in mind is that the developpers had deadlines. Writing dialogues and coding take time, imagine what writing dialogues/banters for most BG1 NPCs that'd had followed you and gotten captured would have taken. You might not know of a the mod called "unfinished business", but basically it's a fan mod that completes and make available a lot of quests that were not finished during the original development. And there are a lot of them. So deadlines were definitely a thing
    They also had engine limitations, meaning they could not deal with that many NPCs combinations and possible outcomes so easily. The game is 15yo, had to work on computers back then.
    Besides, BG2 was designed to be playable as a stand-alone game. So they had to create a standard starting point. So they chose to use the most popular characters.

    What they could have done that would not had taken too much time would have been creating more than one standard party, and give you one based on alignment, but then again there'd be unconsistencies.

    As for Imoen's importance, well, she is definitely important but you can play without her at all, and hardly mentioning her either. Most dialogues that concern you recovering her from Spellhold or getting her soul back also have options that do not mention her but rather say that you want revenge from Irenicus.

    Even with unfinished business installed, I still can't help but feel the game is half baked. No less so than most other games, but still...
  • xzar_montyxzar_monty Member Posts: 631
    I think that Minsc is (nearly) everybody's favorite - but only for a short time. I remember being thrilled by him, but boy does he get old quickly. I only had him in my first playthrough, and after that I've never even considered taking him with me.

    My abiding favorites are Aerie and Jan. I agree that Aerie is naive, even ridiculously so, but perhaps I just have a soft spot for that and do not wish to see her come to any harm. (So I'm not romancing her, either.) And Jan... he's just seriously good. There was magic in the air when his stuff was written.

    (But there was no longer magic in the air when the exact same thing was tried in Icewind Dale 2, and with the same voice actor. All of it was absolutely gone.)
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    with how much i see people complain about certain party members [ aerie, minsc, Jaheaira, etc.] it seems the only way to make them happy is to just make your own party.

    I swear the baldurs gate series is the only place where i see so much " this character annoys me.' ," why am i forced to use this person?', " why does she get so much focus?" . " why do i start the game with these people i murdered them?"

  • xzar_montyxzar_monty Member Posts: 631
    @Kilivitz: There is a vast gulf between not being impressed by Minsc and actually hating him. A very, very, very, very vast gulf indeed.
  • KuronaKurona Member Posts: 881
    megamike15 said:

    I swear the baldurs gate series is the only place where i see so much " this character annoys me.' ," why am i forced to use this person?', " why does she get so much focus?" . " why do i start the game with these people i murdered them?"

    I've seen much worse with the Dragon Age fandom (see Leliana). Hell, even the Elder Scrolls: "why can't I kill Serana immediately? I'm a vampire hunter!"

    Railroading in general is a pretty divisive in RPGs. Either you would have done by yourself what the plot dictates, which makes it painless to you and not forced, or you wouldn't have and it's guaranteed to annoy you.
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    thats why it never bothers me. rpgs are about telling a story if the plot requires i need certain characters then so be it. but i did not have a fit because i was forced to use minsc my last run in both sod or bg2. i just used him briefly got to the point where i could replace him with who i wanted and moved on with the game.
  • batoorbatoor Member Posts: 676
    Well I think of it this way.. If PoE 2 ends up doing that I'll be bothered.

    But BG2 came out at a different time, though I didnt play it at the time of it's release. Besides it's really only in the starter dungeon and then you can tell the loony to go stick it. Not that I dislike minsc that much, I just don't care for him.

    Even Edwin and Viconias conversations do allow some form of dialogue to fit with your headcanon of the first game. Edwin has a few things to say about Bhaalspawn and Sarevok

    Even PsT does something slightly similar with Morte in the start, though I must say Morte is much much better.
  • PteranPteran Member Posts: 388
    I'd just like to point out that your complaints about the characters are from the original game. That's just how those characters were written. It has nothing to do with Beamdog or their work on the EEs. Did you never use them when you played the non-EE versions?
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    They could be a new player.
  • QuickbladeQuickblade Member Posts: 957
    Yeah, Imoen saying "This place is just too darn creepy, I really want out of here" is from the original, and heck, I think it might have been the first non-dialogue NPC speeches I ever heard in BG2.

    I don't HATE Minsc, but I find him just too hammy to have in my party for long, he grates on my nerves. He gets the boot as soon as my party needs to boot someone from the active 6 and then I never invite him again. And I've never liked him, not even with Boo.

    I do wish though, that BG1 NPCs you meet (joinable or not), you could say "XXX, didn't I kill you/aren't you dead?", and have them go "Yeah, you DID kill me! (I got better though)". Usually it's some mumbling about "Eh, I don't really remember". Yeah, I'm looking at you Xzar.
  • KuronaKurona Member Posts: 881
    edited November 2016
    megamike15 said:

    thats why it never bothers me. rpgs are about telling a story if the plot requires i need certain characters then so be it.

    It wasn't really the case before BG2 though. There's a reason why RPG Codex branded the game as being "BioWare's decline" and this is because CRPGs traditionally favor freedom of exploration and role-building above storytelling. BG2 is way more liberal than its predecessor when it comes to take away player control and agency for the sake of plot and returning players might not have expected it.

    In this specific case the game is solid, so it's less likely to be a dealbreaker.
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    rpg codex are a bunch of elitest pricks. they are the 4 chan of rpgs.

    so i tend to not care what they think.
  • KuronaKurona Member Posts: 881
    edited November 2016
    Gallenger said:

    It's pretty funny to brand BG2 as the decline of Bioware since they only made 2 games prior, one of which was not an RPG, but a mech-warrior-like in Shattered Steel lol. So they made one RPG and then began the decline! lol.

    The Codex isn't exactly known for its measure or its subtelty. But they accurately pointed the moment the "BioWare formula" was born.
    Gallenger said:

    RPGs that are true sequels will always run into this kind of problem because it's just so difficult to account for player choice in the subsequent installment. Yes, you can do superficial things like add or subtract NPCs here and there or dialogues here and there, but really nothing beyond that has ever been done and certainly not in the time of BG2/late 90's early 2000's. There were *plenty* of cRPGs in the 80's and early 90's that were based off of books that rail-roaded you into having certain companions so as to conform to the source material as well - it's hardly a BG2 invention.

    You can't exactly compare a game following a book to the sequel of an original title. BG1 borrows a setting but it has no source material to follow. Players made their choice of companions then in the sequel the DM said "lol no, you travelled with this bunch instead". Then, at various points the game feature cutscenes where you can't do anything but watch events unfold -- things you were more likely to find in Final Fantasy than in a CRPG.

    I'm not saying it's bad mind you (I actually like BG2 more than BG1), it's just a different design philosophy than the more freeform BG1.

    Edit: From a corporate standpoint, it was understandable to take the most popular (at the time) characters and put them in the sequel so you can use their return as a selling point.

  • InKalInKal Member Posts: 196
    edited November 2016
    I started playing (and actually bought the game) after patch 1.3.

    Imma kinda smart.
    Kilivitz said:

    Ah, Minsc haters. They're a pretty loud vocal minority.

    But not as loud as MINSC!

    pretty loud vocal minority meet my sword!!

    sword meet pretty loud vocal minority!!
  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    I think BG2 is let down in some places by the writing.
    Just a few lines added here and there and some cut/altered would make a hell of a difference.

    No big changes, just a bit more polish and editing.

    When first playing mods, the only one I initially chose was NPC project because of the universal praise it recieved on forums.
    Would love to see the same for BG2.

  • GallengerGallenger Member Posts: 400
    BG2 was just a massive undertaking that was stupendously expensive to make from what I've managed to hear over the years, especially compared to it's predecessor that was basically just a proof of concept that was turned into a full-fledged game. You can tell in places that something went weird with the team so you get a disconnect in tone and "feel" from time to time. I don't think we'll ever see so many different player strongholds in a game again (given how much time it probably took to make them and the probability that your player base will only see 1-2). The old IE games - with perhaps the exception of Torment, do have "cold" feeling NPCs - because having especially verbose NPCs, that just wasn't something that had been done a lot before - half the time NPCs were an afterthought in development (fallout 1 in particular). They did totally call it on the in-engine cutscenes though since virtually every RPG now has oodles and oodles of them lol.

    It was originally called "Infinite Battle" or something akin to that (hence Infinity Engine) and the "feel" they were going for was a mix of classic RPGs played through the medium of RTS games. IWD is probably closer to what was initially intended for the Infinity Engine, but we ended up getting so much out of it lol. Another funny trivia fact is that Feargus Urquhart is the fellow who decided the game should be called Baldur's Gate - apparently the folks at Bioware also thought that was a silly name lol.

    If you want to point fingers at games that made more recent non-IE style RPGs the way they are (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Witcher) I'd actually point less to BG2 and more to KOTOR. KOTOR was the invention and implementation of the formula that's persisted to this day. Although a major portion of the KOTOR formula: starting tutorial area ---) starting non-tutorial area --- ) 3-5 independent areas you travel to in any order you want ---) reconvening area --- ) Finale likely was created because of BG2. Because after you leave Irenicus' dungeon players can definitely feel completely overwhelmed by the total amount of stuff they get to do and the quest "get money for Imoen" is basically the only guide you've got lol. One of the more interesting things about watching let's plays or reading peoples AARs as it were is seeing how they cope with that "wow so much to do" feeling you get about 10 minutes after leaving the dungeon - almost everybody is different lol.
  • unavailableunavailable Member Posts: 268
    edited November 2016
    Gallenger said:

    BG2 was just a massive undertaking that was stupendously expensive to make from what I've managed to hear over the years, especially compared to it's predecessor that was basically just a proof of concept that was turned into a full-fledged game. You can tell in places that something went weird with the team so you get a disconnect in tone and "feel" from time to time. I don't think we'll ever see so many different player strongholds in a game again (given how much time it probably took to make them and the probability that your player base will only see 1-2). The old IE games - with perhaps the exception of Torment, do have "cold" feeling NPCs - because having especially verbose NPCs, that just wasn't something that had been done a lot before - half the time NPCs were an afterthought in development (fallout 1 in particular). They did totally call it on the in-engine cutscenes though since virtually every RPG now has oodles and oodles of them lol.

    It was originally called "Infinite Battle" or something akin to that (hence Infinity Engine) and the "feel" they were going for was a mix of classic RPGs played through the medium of RTS games. IWD is probably closer to what was initially intended for the Infinity Engine, but we ended up getting so much out of it lol. Another funny trivia fact is that Feargus Urquhart is the fellow who decided the game should be called Baldur's Gate - apparently the folks at Bioware also thought that was a silly name lol.

    If you want to point fingers at games that made more recent non-IE style RPGs the way they are (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Witcher) I'd actually point less to BG2 and more to KOTOR. KOTOR was the invention and implementation of the formula that's persisted to this day. Although a major portion of the KOTOR formula: starting tutorial area ---) starting non-tutorial area --- ) 3-5 independent areas you travel to in any order you want ---) reconvening area --- ) Finale likely was created because of BG2. Because after you leave Irenicus' dungeon players can definitely feel completely overwhelmed by the total amount of stuff they get to do and the quest "get money for Imoen" is basically the only guide you've got lol. One of the more interesting things about watching let's plays or reading peoples AARs as it were is seeing how they cope with that "wow so much to do" feeling you get about 10 minutes after leaving the dungeon - almost everybody is different lol.

    ToB and KotOR weren't so different actually, and ToB was such a huge shift in plot focus (or rather BGII was where it derailed, and ToB is what brought the bhaal destiny back to the front) and pacing that I can't really think of it as anything less than BGIII. BGII was kind of like that, but more like an open world and though you got a lot of direction you also had the freedom to ignore most of the people telling you what to do.
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    technically neverwinter nights started the formula. character types started in bg2 the structure started in the oc of nwn. and everything else was in kotor.

    sort of like how everything we know about obsidian started in planescape.
  • TenreccTenrecc Member Posts: 265
    patrickontoast said:

    So I rejected all of them in bgee(premonition), and yet there they are in bg2ee. Also it bugs me that Imoen who is so easy to dislike(I can't even roleplay liking her) plays such an important role in bg2ee.

    Well, Minsc was always a huge crowd favourite due to his quirkiness, Imoen is a huge player in the overarching storyline, and in BG2 you end up with Jaheira, Minsc and Imoen from the bat, so they had to be incorporated somehow.

    I'm really not sure what you were expecting. Their hands was really tied on this one.
  • unavailableunavailable Member Posts: 268
    Tenrecc said:

    patrickontoast said:

    So I rejected all of them in bgee(premonition), and yet there they are in bg2ee. Also it bugs me that Imoen who is so easy to dislike(I can't even roleplay liking her) plays such an important role in bg2ee.

    Well, Minsc was always a huge crowd favourite due to his quirkiness, Imoen is a huge player in the overarching storyline, and in BG2 you end up with Jaheira, Minsc and Imoen from the bat, so they had to be incorporated somehow.

    I'm really not sure what you were expecting. Their hands was really tied on this one.
    Minsc just makes me think of jar jar of the star wars prequels. Dumb, enthusiastic, and unreliable.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    unavailable said:

    Tenrecc said:

    patrickontoast said:

    So I rejected all of them in bgee(premonition), and yet there they are in bg2ee. Also it bugs me that Imoen who is so easy to dislike(I can't even roleplay liking her) plays such an important role in bg2ee.

    Well, Minsc was always a huge crowd favourite due to his quirkiness, Imoen is a huge player in the overarching storyline, and in BG2 you end up with Jaheira, Minsc and Imoen from the bat, so they had to be incorporated somehow.

    I'm really not sure what you were expecting. Their hands was really tied on this one.
    Minsc just makes me think of jar jar of the star wars prequels. Dumb, enthusiastic, and unreliable.
    You take that back!
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    if your going to compare anyone to jarjar minsc is not it
  • NimranNimran Member Posts: 4,875
    And don't even think about comparing Noober to Jar Jar either!
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