Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General "So what is BG then?" This is what I think it is.

I'm going to do this in list form, and it may be disorganised because Im not good at this.

I am one of the people who is disappointed and thinks this is a DOS3. One of the things people ask is, "so what is BG to you then?" I had to think awhile to put it down, but there are just elements that make the game what it was that were not shown off. all they showed was combat, which i will come back to. So these are what was missing, or what i think better represent what BG is?

1) BG isn't just a FR setting. BG is *the* western cRPG that set the standards for every western cRPG that followed. In this way, BG is a cRPG, and as a cRPG what BG is is a RTwP party based RPG. That is its technical definition. This is not to judge RTwP or TB as better or worse, it just is what it is. Again, I will come back to combat later.

2) Narrated prologues and epilogues and dreams. Part of the magic of the BG formula was the feeling of being led through an adventure by a GM, filling in exposition as needed. These narrated segments are something Pillars of Eternity picked up on and did very well.

3) Isometric perspective. While 3D promises better environments, I find that 3D environments are actually just thinly hidden tracks with well rendered rails. Part of the formula of BG are the expansive - HAND PAINTED - 2d isometric landscapes. Again, Pillars shows that this can be updated beautifully like with Unity. It is the artistry of those landscapes that contribute to the formula of what BG is.

4) The music was flat and uninspired. For the last 20 years, the "bum ba bum da DUMMM ba ba dummm" of BG that is omnipresent while rolling your abilities is one of those sounds that is always in my head when idle thinking. That is what music with soul does. I don't even remember the music from the BG3 trailer.

5) 6 member parties. You know darn right that the 4 member party is to make combat quicker because of how slow TB games can be. But there is another point overlooked. The 6-member party gives you broader access to lore and companion side quests at once, allowing for a more congruent story. Never forget: D&D is a collaborative story telling game first, a table top strategy second.

6) The tone of the lighting and assets. People say "but it is pre-alpha!" but I ask, is this your first rodeo? How many games have you ever seen substantially change? Further - this is the product THEY CHOSE to demonstrate. This is the product THEY CHOSE to say "This is OUR baldur's gate" ... so if all of the assets would change, why make the announcement?

That brings us to combat. The live stream was a "gameplay reveal", and so I am willing to concede that all that is being shown is gameplay, so let us separate everything else from the table and talk about gameplay.

It took 28 minutes to kill the BG equivalent of rats in the store house. Let us have that sink in. What is going to happen when you are up against a boss with a small battallion of guards at his beck and call? take three days?

Okay, so you might say "but that is what D&D is like, it can take multiple sessions!" and I agree, but this is a computer game, not actual D&D, and I think you might not want "actual" D&D in a computer game. D&D has real life interaction and social fun of being with friends. And yes, online play is available (and hopefully we see more about the GM tools), but the experience of the computer games is the single player campaign. A single player doesn't need to take multiple sessions for one encounter, the ideal would be an evening of play, so to speak (that is, it make take days of trying and failing to learn something, but the actual encounter shouldn't be more than a sitting for a cRPG).

This is one of the things that RTwP innovated. And this begins my main defense of RTwP. As I see it, RTwP is actually the new technology still in its infancy. I agree that the first BG has massive pathing and AI issues. I agree that in games like IWD their solution was just bigger, Diablo-like trash encounters. I agree that combat was almost pointless in PST. I agree that melee is often relegated to auto swing robots (even though Pillars did alleviate this some with active abilities like knockdowns). But all of these things are design dependent and can improve with time and feedback.

RTwP brought the older TB mechanics of the SSI forward into the real time, dynamic capabilities of computer gaming. And for this, BG is a computer game first, a dnd game second, and forgotten realms game last of all. BG brought D&D to a new audience: computer gamers, the people playing Myst and Dune and Warcraft and Starcraft and DOOM - gamers who ostensibly play games in Real-Time.

I honestly think that BG is responsible for planting the seed that finally made D&D popular with 5e because it proved the style of gameplay could be appealing to more than just TTG purists. I honestly think it is the minority of TTG purists who have pushed the recent sentiment that all of a sudden RTwP games are bad games, as if to completely ignore the 20 year legacy of BG, the people who criticized back in 1998 that real time would never work. DOS3 is their ultimate revenge!

Some final small points that didn't need to have big text:
- there is nothing wrong with updating to 5e. the combat system underneath is largely irrelevant, but D&D is 5e right now, so lets play the new D&D.
- there is nothing wrong with TB, either - but the TB would need to still match the aesthetics of previous BG games, like the Shadowrun games by Hairbrained for example. I would even be really happy with a hex-based TB system with 60 degree camera incremental turns to survey the field.

Bottom line: BG is a computer game. the "game" part is the RTwP or the TB part. I like both. I think both are fun. I think that RTwP has a place and that it is still growing as a new technology. We need to embrace it as the change instead of stay mired in just TB ways of thinking. This is a computer game, not the TTG.

Thanks for letting me ramble a little.

Found some neat articles, sorry for bumping my own thread, i didn't know where else to put them.



https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/116864/Analysis_TurnBased_Versus_RealTime.php
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JonShafer/20130107/184429/TurnBased_VS_RealTime.php



https://www.theringer.com/2018/12/21/18150363/baldurs-gate-bioware-1998-video-games

Xcom is turn based with 6 people in the party and it was best seller? Turn based is fine. 4 people in party not so much

They would go . Here

Can't say I agree. Many TB came before the BG1/2. The pendulum swung in the RTwP direction, but it has started to swing back toward TB (as DOS2 massive success proves).



DOS2 used narration. As much as BG games? Maybe not, but it's there



While DOS2 and BG3 might not be exactly Isometric, they aren't exactly 3D either. Even so, I don't think the isometric style of BG1/2 has any more or less of a place today than does the maze-like style of games like Wizardry or Might & Magic. It's just dated.



Music can take a little while to sink in, especially if it has substance. I don't remember the music from the demo either, but the music from DOS2 was stellar in my opinion. So, hopefully, they can do the same in BG3



Perhaps, but I am not so sure. At some point, too many party members would require that many more mobs and you end up with super long turns. Is 4 where the line must be drawn? I doubt it. Also, "D&D is a collaborative story telling game first, a table top strategy second" isn't necessarily true. Some people find it so, others find it equal, while still more find it the opposite.



This is just don't get. What you might call "dark" or "gritty" I just call crappy. Graphics have just gotten better. If part of that means the availability of a wider and deeper color selection, as exists in life, then good. If you think the world of BG is supposed to be dark and gloomy, I would again say no; it just looked that way because of the graphical limitations back then. Faerun isn't Hades.



Have you played DOS2? Battles don't take hours, even the biggest of them. Sure, they take longer than what is found in action games and RTwP games; but in my opinion, it just makes that much more meaningful.



BG's legacy might be 20 years old, but D&D's legacy is much older. BG isn't the benchmark you think it is. D&D is the benchmark. Since Baldur's Gate games are D&D games, it seems perfectly fine to me to go back to the roots of the game with TB.

With all that being said, thank you for the detailed post.

Decent post OP.

RTwP and TB are both fine, as long as implementation is fine.

visually, game looks good, but can be improved, not in terms of graphical fidelity or effect, but "feel". Work on UI and icons.

Aside from that, what I've seen so far from the companions leaves me cold.

Where do you get this notion that Baldur's gate 1 & 2 graphics where "hand painted"? They were mostly pre rendered 3D graphics that look very dated today with some copy pasted sprites added and touching up done in Photoshop.

3D allows for very dynamic environments that you can interact with. BG3 also takes advantage of verticality which adds an extra dimension to the combat.

I will try to find information. But the Infinity Engine of BG1/2 uses pre-rendered 2D backgrounds, which are painted with hand-drawn textures. For example, you can see repeating textures in grass, but those textures are hand-painted. You can see that the trees are hand painted 2d artwork that is then painted into the environment with a brush. Then, after the 2D environments are painted, another coder goes around and draws the collision maps which block out the base of trees (you can see this collision map in the "map overlay" think in the EE), or the depths of walls. Then, the "z axis" stuff is layered and opaqued above so that it fades out when you walk "beneath it".

Each "tile" of the map is about one screen size at medium zoom, they painted the maps one "tile" at a time, and every map is a large 2D planar environment with what is called "trompe l'oiel" or trick of the eye to make it seem 3d.

I've studied BG in art history class in university. I am from Edmonton, so I kind of had more direct access to old Bioware before they dissolved and became an E.A. cancer mill.

I could answer each point separately, but I think the main problem that no one that doesn't like Larian's spin on BG mentions when they talk about what they miss is that every person has a very different list... I really liked that companions started to talk to each other out of the blue, Irenicus, I really liked the character creator, I loved the music, and I really loved to issue orders to everyone at the same pause and then watch them work together to obliterate the enemy. I hated the mind flayers though...
The point is that like I said in a different thread, I'm pretty sure there is a perfect version of BG3 in your mind, but this is how you see the perfect BG3. There are people who will agree with you and other people who will think you got it all wrong.

Which is fine that we have different opinions. But the actual product that is Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 has technical definitions and elements and components that make it what it is.

If Michelangelo was paid for a mural on the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel, but handed them a diorama instead, he would have been beheaded.

Larian has promised a mural (BG3) but is offering a diorama (DOS3). Off with their heads! (well no, not really, but you get my idea I hope!)

And again, we go back to the question of whether we are getting diorama or a mural. You didn't convince me, but I guess it's fine to agree to disagree.

Well, I mean, a mural is 2d and a diorama is 3d, so I am not sure much opinion is needed to see which is which in the analogy.

I agree that the textures for BG2 look hand-drawn. And for 1998, that's fine. But for a game in 2020? Really?

Well naturally technology improves over time. Have you ever seen an artist painting on one of those MS Studio screens? It is sublime! No reason why things can't be just as artful today.

They can be. But that doesn't mean they should be.

There is a lot of subjectivity afoot with the complaints against what we saw in BG3 demo. Art appreciation is about as subjective as you can get. If Larian presented a product that used... let's say an antique art style, I am confident the blowback would dwarf what is going on now.

Oh for sure, and I think I made it clear that is my my opinion on what it was that made "BG" so special. I am definitely interjecting my own expertise as an art critic as well, but trying not to be pedantic or "herp derp, i have a degree". We all have taste that differs. Everything I posted in the OP is my taste.

3d models and environments can be done very well, I think Pillars did a great job. But still, Pillars looks like BG ... BG3 does not. Pillars is 3d rendered in Unity, but even Obsidian talked about how they made hand painted and rendered objects for their game world. You can especially see it in the opening scene with the Adra machine right after Odema's camp is raided.

edit: some people call BG outdated, but I would argue that it is the hand painted beauty of the art that makes it ageless. It won't ever change, unlike early 3d games like the first Tomb Raider or the action RPG "Die By The Sword". BG has *never* aged, by those technical standards.

Your fondness for the game might not have aged; but the game itself has.

And sure, there is a lot of opinion going on. Nothing wrong there. I don't care for the look of PoE. It looks outdated. DOS to me looks substantially superior.

It's a bit of a tangent, so I'll just note that "superior" graphics are not a measure of quality.

Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made. It was filmed in 24 fps on a black and white strip transfer in 4:3 resolution which was then letterboxed.

Clash of the Titans is one of the worst films ever made. It was filmed in fully rendered digital 60fps 4K HDR, 16:10 anamorphic widescreen.

Yeah, I hear you. I go for movies with more substance than a lot of CGI nonsense. But you cannot dismiss the draw of quality. Some might think silent movies are where it's at; but it just wouldn't be realistic to expect any serious funding for a movie like that now (or box office success).

Right. And I think Pillars of Eternity is a prime example of how the quality of the artwork can be improved with modern technology while still maintaining a sense of veritas to the original inspiration.