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Originally Posted by eRe4s3r
The problem with the RPG's like Skyrim, Dragon Age and Mass Effect is not that they are bad RPG's, it's that they are 90% flashy and only 10% substance. Doesn't mean I don't like playing them, but for me games like BG2 and NWN fill a certain mood that NO rpg of the newer kind can even approach.

D:OS certainly does not compare well to BG2 but it never wanted to do that either. In itself it's a decent game. One that might have benefited from more focused writing but that's how Larian rolls.

This article is also directly countered by the big 3, Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Torment 2 that are coming. These games are made on-demand which is fantastic, because it proves, there is indeed demand for the "older style" RPG's. Whether they are good or not we'll see when they release. But fact is that gamers are not all over BG2 / NWN wink

IN the end, more RPG is ALWAYS better imo.

Equally I don't understand why it's a binary choice in the eyes of Bioware/Gamespot. I like BG2, no I adore it. Same for NWN with modules. BUt I also liked Mass Effect and Dragon Age Origins, I like good games first, good RPG's second.


This is it I suppose. Those kind of RPGs peaked in the late 90s/early 2000s, maybe its because they had such an impact on me because i was so young it has "ruined" in regards to modern RPGs and I find it hard to be satisfied with modern RPGS. Though I did REALLY enjoy Mass Effect 1 and was hoping they would expand upon the RPG elements but ultimately they focused more on the shooting and we got 1 good-average game then an honestly terrible game.

I am looking forward to Wasteland 2 because, again, I didnt care much for Fall Out 3. I enjoyed FO3 but I loved the original 2 games and knew of original Wasteland but never played it, so wasteland 2 looks to be the spiritual successor to original fallouts, with obvious reason.

I will still end up getting DA:I because it cant be worse than DA:2.

Last edited by fossilfern; 04/08/14 07:47 PM.
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Originally Posted by Fireblade
DA:O wasn't too bad of a game IMO, but it's no D:OS. Its main downside is that realtime-with-pause-combat just blows.


Speak for yourself. I prefer real time pause combat and Dragon Age: Origins was the perfect blend of modern with old school RPG features. DA2 and ME3 weren't good though. ME2 was great as far as action-RPG's are concerned.

People are making too many judgements on Inquisition though which isn't released. Most of all, it's not a traditional-RPG but an ACTION-RPG. Bioware no longer develop CRPG's but action-RPG's and there's a clear difference.

Originally Posted by eRe4s3r
The problem with the RPG's like Skyrim, Dragon Age and Mass Effect is not that they are bad RPG's, it's that they are 90% flashy and only 10% substance. Doesn't mean I don't like playing them, but for me games like BG2 and NWN fill a certain mood that NO rpg of the newer kind can even approach.



LOL? Dragon Age and Mass Effect are nothing like Skyrim. Skyrim is bland, empty and your character's dialogue is lacking. In Dragon Age and Mass Effect, dialogue is the key focus outside of combat. In Mass Effect 1 you can literally spend hours conversing with people and the same goes for Origins where you can forge a personality with the dialogue system (hell, you can still do that in DA2).

Even the later titles in these series (DA2 and ME3) resemble older RPG's more than Skyrim because your choices have consequences in the plot even if they don't matter much in the end. Skyrim's just a sandbox RPG that's linear when it comes to quests and the main plot. Everything you do in Skyrim has no consequence and role-playing is meaningless. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are more direct RPG's (with Origins being a traditional RPG as opposed to its sequel which delved into action-RPG territory and dumbed down features).

Last edited by Demonic; 04/08/14 08:19 PM.
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Originally Posted by Demonic

Originally Posted by eRe4s3r
The problem with the RPG's like Skyrim, Dragon Age and Mass Effect is not that they are bad RPG's, it's that they are 90% flashy and only 10% substance. Doesn't mean I don't like playing them, but for me games like BG2 and NWN fill a certain mood that NO rpg of the newer kind can even approach.



LOL? Dragon Age and Mass Effect are nothing like Skyrim.


Ehm yeah... I was not comparing Skyrim to Mass Effect or DA:O ;p

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Originally Posted by Fireblade

It's not necessarily that they even think people don't want it anymore, but they think that not enough people want it. And for their purposes, they're right. Larian is obviously making great profits off D:OS, but they're a 40-person company. EA has 10,000 employees, these kind of profits aren't worth their time. They're targetting the mass market, the unwashed masses (aka: console players). If you're looking for the D:OS kind of RPGs, there's no point in even paying attention to BioWare anymore.


EA may have 10,000 employees, but EA has never produced a single game that took 10,000 people to produce...;) Lol! If EA ever tried to put that many people on a game it would never get finished, and if it did get finished it would most likely be terrible...:D

The "mass market" is usually not what EA thinks it is, and that has been proven time and again. The great thing about software is that once you have assembled enough people to make a decent game, it really doesn't matter if you add 1,000 more or 10,000 more people--indeed, all that would do is serve to make things much, much worse.

EA executives have made comments in the recent past concerning consoles that are so stupid and so wrong it's difficult to believe the people who made those statements have jobs in the industry. They also fib quite vociferously when they want, such as the massive fibbing they did surrounding the release of SIM City.

If ever there is a company Larian should not emulate, it would be EA, imo.

Edit: wanted to add that I rather liked DA:O...thought it was very refreshing at the time, in fact. DAII looked and sounded so different and so poor that I never bought it and never will. I await DAIII with hope, but skepticism, nonetheless. If there's a way to mess up something, EA will find it and then spend $30M telling folks how wonderful it should have been....;)

Not smart--great games sell themselves, pretty much. "Too many Chiefs, too few Indians" is as true today as it ever was.





Last edited by Waltc; 05/08/14 06:10 PM.

I'm never wrong about anything, and so if you see an error in any of my posts you will know immediately that I did not write it...;)
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Originally Posted by fossilfern
I will still end up getting DA:I because it cant be worse than DA:2.
For heaven's sake, why do this?

If you found DA2 a disappointment, then at the very least hold off on DA3 until you've seen proper reviews (i.e. not Gamespot...) indicating an improvement. Buying titles on the basis of "it can only get better" just encourages poor publishers to continue being incompetent, rather than allowing them to go bust and make room for newer, more innovative competition.

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What EA fails to understand is that the world has moved past bad games, not past game archetypes.

It's big publishers that are trying to pigeon-hole games in archetypes, so that their MBA executives can make spreadsheets that add up to a nice, tidy, bottom line. Thus, in the case of EA, we have the butchering of DA:O into the "button-mashing-aka-visceral-combat" DAII, or "the let's-cash-out-of-the-franchise-and-move-on" MEIII.

Well, with tools such as Kickstarter and even Steam's "Early Access", the world has moved past that. The games we play don't have to be pigeonholed into "cRPGs" or "aRPGs" or "fast-paced" or "linear" or "open world" or "console-ports". Developers can make the game they want, the way they want it. And guess what, more often than not, the outcome is pretty astounding. What "mainstream" publisher would have picked up "Don't Starve" ? Or "Banished" ? Or D:OS for that matter. The video on Torment's webpage is pretty representative or that corporate mentality.

Frankly, I can't wait for Wastelands 2, Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera. Not because they are "classic cRPGs", but because they are made with making the game good in mind not whether they can fit the "c/aRPG" or "console compatible" or "fast paced" pigeonhole in mind.

It's not a matter of budget. Just look at big publishers that develop their own games like Bethesda and CD Projekt. Maybe they are not for everyone, but TES series or the Witcher are solid games and classics in their own right.

Yes, the world has moved on and it was about time if you ask me.


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Originally Posted by Stargazer
Originally Posted by fossilfern
I will still end up getting DA:I because it cant be worse than DA:2.
For heaven's sake, why do this?

If you found DA2 a disappointment, then at the very least hold off on DA3 until you've seen proper reviews (i.e. not Gamespot...) indicating an improvement. Buying titles on the basis of "it can only get better" just encourages poor publishers to continue being incompetent, rather than allowing them to go bust and make room for newer, more innovative competition.


its going to be bought pre-owned on the XBO. I havnt pre-ordered or anything I am just more frustrated at Bioware but its clear that they wont be going back to the old kind of cRPGs. I am cautiously optimistic about the game but I think it will be average at best.

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Puting Mass Effect, skyrim and Dragon Age on the same sentence and comparing them is just wrong. Even tough they are labeled as "RPGs", they are so diferent it's not even worth trying to compare them in any way.


RPG is just way too broad of a therm. I wish people would stop using that label witout context or witout a sub-genre right next to it. Makes no sense.

ME3 is a great game. Skyrim is a great game. D:OS is a great game, Dragon Age Origins is a great game.
Diablo 3 is also a great game. All "RPGs" (i guess) but completely diferent, but all great.

There is no shame to someone who enjoyed the complexity of D:OS to also say they liked the cinematic experience of ME3 or the brainless action of Diablo 3. They are completely diferent experiences, i loved them all at diferent times.


Somedays i play D:OS for 10 hours straight. Somedays i can't touch it because i feel in a diferent mood and i want diablo3 to have some fun just killing stuff. All fun.

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Frankly, I like both new school RPGs (ME, Skyrim, or DA) and old school RPGs (BG, Fallout 1&2, PT).

Running campaign on Kickstarter right now myself and being log time DM of NWN PWs, I can tell that I really miss NWN and BG roleplay of the past day. And such games like Divinity or Avernum: Escape From the Pit (recommend you to play, btw) always brings nostalgia breeze...

I know that that genre of old school RPGs is not relatively enough for the large developers/publishers - but that is indie exists for smile

Last edited by MrNixon; 05/08/14 01:38 PM.
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Originally Posted by MrNixon


Sneaky pitch wink Looks very interesting though, love the desolate feel from the landscape and that the camera looks to be rotatable 360 degrees.

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I was very interested in DA:I, but the more I see and hear about the game the less and less interested I am in it. I had a lot of hope after the Dragon Age 2 fiasco, but it was naiv of me to think that Bioware would actually try to completely fix what they broke.

BioWare should also stop pandering to those weirdos on their forums too. They are fucking their games up even by listening to them.

Originally Posted by Fireblade
DA:O wasn't too bad of a game IMO, but it's no D:OS. Its main downside is that realtime-with-pause-combat just blows.

No, no it doesn't. RTwP is awesome, as is TB.

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Originally Posted by dlux
I was very interested in DA:I, but the more I see and hear about the game the less and less interested I am in it. I had a lot of hope after the Dragon Age 2 fiasco, but it was naiv of me to think that Bioware would actually try to completely fix what they broke.

BioWare should also stop pandering to those weirdos on their forums too. They are fucking their games up even by listening to them.

No, no it doesn't. RTwP is awesome, as is TB.


What weirdos, what are they saying? I never go on the Bioware forums because I am sure its full of man children.

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Originally Posted by fossilfern
Originally Posted by dlux
I was very interested in DA:I, but the more I see and hear about the game the less and less interested I am in it. I had a lot of hope after the Dragon Age 2 fiasco, but it was naiv of me to think that Bioware would actually try to completely fix what they broke.

BioWare should also stop pandering to those weirdos on their forums too. They are fucking their games up even by listening to them.

No, no it doesn't. RTwP is awesome, as is TB.


What weirdos, what are they saying? I never go on the Bioware forums because I am sure its full of man children.

They want to have their PCs be able to have sex with anything that moves in Bioware's games.

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Originally Posted by dlux
They want to have their PCs be able to have sex with anything that moves in Bioware's games.


Sounds about right for the newer wave of Bioware fans.

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Originally Posted by dlux
Originally Posted by fossilfern
Originally Posted by dlux
I was very interested in DA:I, but the more I see and hear about the game the less and less interested I am in it. I had a lot of hope after the Dragon Age 2 fiasco, but it was naiv of me to think that Bioware would actually try to completely fix what they broke.

BioWare should also stop pandering to those weirdos on their forums too. They are fucking their games up even by listening to them.

No, no it doesn't. RTwP is awesome, as is TB.


What weirdos, what are they saying? I never go on the Bioware forums because I am sure its full of man children.

They want to have their PCs be able to have sex with anything that moves in Bioware's games.


Trust me if DA:I turns out to be a half-decent game or better than it's predecessor no one will care about the itchy-pants stuff. The only reason it's a giant target now is because DA II wasn't really a fantastic game or at least not what older fans were hoping for so it's easy to claim Bioware are focusing on their fans that want more romance/lifestyle options.

But even if that is the case there's nothing terribly wrong with that. Some people will always want more combat/puzzles/and action while others will want more story, character involvements etc and there's nothing wrong with either. Now a truly great rpg would give us all of those so everyone would get what they want. Still waiting on that one myself.

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Originally Posted by fossilfern
we've moved on from Baldur's Gate."

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dragon-age-inquisition-the-baldurs-gate-legacy-and/1100-6421016/

Just want to leave this article here. For a while now I have felt that Bioware seem to lack the ability to make an engaging RPG since Dragon Age Origins and after the awful DA 2 and ME3 (even ME2 in some respects) Bioware just seem to want to appeal to the "masses".

Divinity Original Sin has been on the top sellers on Steam for over a month and the same goes for GOG.com but Bioware seems to think people don't want that anymore? And they also want Dragon Age to be mentioned in the same breath as Skyrim, a game that I feel is the weakest in the main series and alot of other Elder Scrolls player seem to think so also.

Bioware were one of my favourite developers back in the day but its sad to see them just be completely incapable to make a decent RPG anymore.


Let's give Bioware a chance with Inquisition. It looks like it might be a solid game. They've brought the isometric camera back too.

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Originally Posted by Tombeatster

For me there are different types of games for whatever mood I am in. I love Divinity:OS and I also enjoyed Skyrim and DA II has it's charms even if I like it less than the aforesaid. I don't see why I can't have both? I mean a hardcore rpg for when I am in that mood and some big eye candy like Skyrim for when I want that sort of thing (and sometimes I do). I don't get this "it has to be one or the other" sort of thing.



Where do I cosign? Honestly I get tired of people bashing or downing a company because they didn't want to follow a specific set up they did in the past. I remember people was down talking dragon commander because it was made how it is now instead of just another rpg.

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Originally Posted by Tombeatster
I think this is some very silly commentary from the Bioware guy. I've seen a lot of silly commentary though recently vis a vis this DA vs Witcher vs Baldur's Gate style rpg's and I just can't get with any of it.

For me there are different types of games for whatever mood I am in. I love Divinity:OS and I also enjoyed Skyrim and DA II has it's charms even if I like it less than the aforesaid. I don't see why I can't have both? I mean a hardcore rpg for when I am in that mood and some big eye candy like Skyrim for when I want that sort of thing (and sometimes I do). I don't get this "it has to be one or the other" sort of thing.


I feel the same way and yet I think what Bioware is saying, is that they are going where the money is -- the newer generation of gamers/game enthusiasts.

It is such a vocal group too. I go on one forum and they bash D:OS or another and they bash Baldur's Gate and so on.

It's not a normal sharing of opinions and preferences. Not new on forums, but you would think RPGers are more similar given the limited choices.

Anyway, apparently, the bigger developers are less in-tune with the silent majority which I have strong hunch may enjoy a multitude of games, both old and new -- and if we're not the majority there is at least a plurality they should pay attention to.

I am looking even less forward to Inquisitions now. Bioware still lost it, if this is the face of it. frown

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People hate Bioware because of a variety of factors.

1 - the Mass Effect 3 debacle. Bioware sold that series on the premise that "you make important choices which affect future games - you determine the outcome of your story". What they delivered was a series which turned from a crunchy rpg into a shooter, and ended with a choice between three different colors of unsatisfying.
2 - the perversion of their own IP. Knights of the Old republic started as a solid rpg. Obsidian followed it up with an extremely well written and thought provoking sequel. Lots of people wanted a Kotor3. Instead they got a terrible mmo which went free to play a couple months after it released. Dragon Age: Origins was advertised as the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. Well it wasn't that good, but it was still a pretty good knockoff. Dragon Age 2 completely abandoned those roots, and was widely considered an awful sequel. Lest we forget, Dragon Age 2's producer at Bioware literally explained that they were targeting the Call of Duty audience.
3 - the superiority complex. Not only has Bioware disappointed many of their former fans, but they are trying to convince us that those fans are idiots for being disappointed. Didn't like the ending for Mass Effect 3? You're just entitled, you can't appreciate the author's message. Didn't like Dragon Age 2? Well too bad, because Neverwinter Nights' formula is outdated, nobody likes that any more, you're just old fashioned and have nostalgia.

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Instead of just giving fans what they want, Bioware is now making games that they think might sell better than their past titles. Dragon Age: Origins is a great and critically acclaimed game, it of course has some flaws, but it sold like 6 to 8 million copies. I personally had a blast playing it.

Could Bioware have ever reached the esteemed mark of 20 million sold copies if they would have simply continued down the beaten path? Probably, but then came EA. I don't think that DA:I will come even close to selling 6 to 8 million copies, especially not after the DA2 and ME3 fiascos.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is not visually appealing, the combat seems to simply consist of attack spamming (button mashing) with little to no tactics and the inventory (possibly even more) is suffering from very extreme consolitis. It is just another game for the bargain bin if you ask me.
Maybe it isn't a bad game, but they are certainly putting a lot of effort into making it look that way.

/rant

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