Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides The Turn-Based/Real Time with Pause topic

Eh? This makes no sense.

You’re saying Dragon Age and many JRPGs moved towards action RPG because that’s where the bigger market is, which is fair enough. So then how is it “playing safe” to go the other way and make BG3 even more tactical and even closer to the tabletop game?

Dragon Age games are one way of “moving the genre forward” from the old Baldurs Gate games. They are still real time with pause, but with 3D graphics, fully voiced dialogue, cinematics, and a more action feel. I like them, although IMO they made some mistakes in Inquisition.

What Larian have done with Baldurs Gate is also moving forward, just in a different direction. You wanted something else, which is fine, but just personal preference. There’s no need to keep dumping on the developers.

Honestly this is a great time for RPG fans in general. A few years ago people were predicting that mainstream single player RPS were a dying breed, and building games around things like micro transactions were the only way developers could justify the costs. BioWare certainly headed in that direction, but they may turn it around for DA4 after the reaction they’ve had recently. The Witcher 3 however had phenomenal success, and with Cyberpunk, CDRP seem to be going much more RPG. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 looks interesting too. Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder revived the old Infinity Engine style, while Larian are completely revamping turn based RPGs. Then we have the likes of Disco Elysium snapping up awards for doing things differently again.

The genre is flourishing at the moment, with different developers taking different approaches, so there’s basically something for everyone.

I think it’s more about having complete control over what everyone is doing, and not having to worry about characters charging forward and attacking the wrong enemy, wasting their best spell or whatever. Some of that can be managed with behaviors and scripts, but not all of it.

Real time is great for blasting through simple fights, but the more challenging the fight, the more you have to use the pause and micromanage your party anyway. Which is usually fine, but can feel like you are fighting the AI.

Larian are making a game with more complex environments, objects to interact with, and options for both the player and enemy to use that to their advantage. IMO the more of all that they have the more frustrating it would be trying to control it with real time with pause.

It doesn’t mean you always have to do something fancy or agonize over every more. In both DOS and XCom games, I’m usually thinking about options as the enemies move and take my turns pretty quickly unless I get into trouble and have to stop to think about it. It’s probably not optimal, but it’s faster than watching Sven play who explains everything he’s doing.

In the DOS games I spent waaayyy more time managing my bloody inventory than in combat anyway. I think there will be be a lot less of all that in BG3 though.

I’m actually fine with either combat system, but for what Larian are trying to do, turn based just makes more sense to me.