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

Well for me turn based makes it feel more like a true D&D game.
But the realtime pauze mechanic pushes you more to improvise which I love aswell so either way is fine with me.

Though If we add in dice rolls etc. and a potential D&D 5e GM mode as gamemode I think it's better to go for a Turn based system for Larian.

I'd prefer a good story over gameplay, but I would prefer real time. Real time makes everything seem more at stake if that makes sense. Turn based is more true to d&d but turn based really just comes across like a mobile game, or something like chess.

Also for me personally, turn based isn't the most fun to play. I like real time games like Doom Eternal, Modern Warfare and Age of Empires 2. I also love BG2 and a good story.

When Bioware made the original BG an RTWP title, one of their reasons was that it made for more cinematic and immersive experience.

There were undoubtedly a number of reasons for their decision, but one was probably just hardware progression. As the average PC became more capable, new features could be added that were otherwise impossible. Real time and 3D have now become standard capabilities, but they were not always easy, or even possible, to implement with PC hardware, even at low resolution.

More at stake? No, it doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe I need to wait for some Hollywood remake of the Seventh Seal where the main character challenges Death to an online shooter battle royale?

Yes, and as I clearly mention in the quote you take of me, cinematic and immersive combat was just ONE of their reasons.

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013661/Baldur-s-G...-

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131493/baldurs_gate_ii_the_anatomy_of_a_.php

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131477/interview_with_black_isle_studios_.php?page=3

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

I am trying to find a really good article on gamasutra about the origins of the first BG, but internet cookies are making it difficult. I had it on the steam forums, but a bunch of angry forum users ganged up to get me banned and all my posts deleted because I kept posting links to real articles about Bioware. They said I was "spamming" and "trolling"

"It was the company's next game, however, that set the stage for what BioWare would be known for: 1998's Baldur's Gate, a story-driven role-playing game based in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, was praised for its intricately crafted narrative and its mature themes."

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177892/BioWares_founding_doctors_leave_video_games_behind.php

The entire impetus behind Bioware (pre EA) was interactive storytelling. not multiplayer, that came later as internet capabilities improved and coop was gaining popularity.

Nothing says "cinematic" more than hitting the pause key every 2 seconds to adjust the orders of your teammates.

nothing says dramatic over generalization like hyperbole.

I skimmed through the articles, and watched the GDC interview (mostly because "making of Baldur's Gate" is actually I would love to learn more about). Maybe it's hidden somewhere deeper into articles but I can't find anything that would support your statement (nor that RTwP was integral to BG experience for Bioware). I would not confuse personal thoughts and impressions (ours or author's of the article), with creators intent or their creative decisions - making a project and looking and final work are quite different things (meaning what benefit you think RTwP brings, might not overlap with reasons it was done that way).

Just to be clear, I am talking about quotes from the devs themselves. I actually didn't find a single thing about them talking about reasons for making the game RTwP (beside adding pause to make it managable). If anything project that later turned into BG, did originate as MMO thing - Bioware seems to have history of grand ideas and scaling down concept (Mass Effect) - but as such from dev point of view BG3 having a strong focus on multiplayer isn't necessary an incorrect take. And while most of Bioware classics were indeed single-player focused storydriven games, BG1&2 did have a multiplayer feature, and project that came after that was... multiplayer, player content driven experiment called Neverwinter Nights. And while Bioware never did a turn-based game - was it really against their core values?

From the GDC talk I took those Bioware ideals:
-Always Better - try to make the next project the new best thing you have done
-four pillars of bioware (BG specifically): explorations (something interesting on every corner), progression, tactical combat, storytelling.

It's quite possible BG3 might fit all of those. I personally expressed my worries regarding storytelling, as that is where D:OS1&2 were lagging behind IMO, but there is nothing stopping Larian from killing it this time around.

So while it might not be "greater BG" I might have imagined when hearing the name, it doesn't seem to betray Bioware's design philosophy.

yeah, there is one article that was on gamasutra that seems to be lost now that I had posted on another forum. It is an interview with James Ohlen and Trent Oster talking about the influences behind Baldur's Gate design and the obvious influences of RTS games at the time like C&C and Diablo.

They felt that, when trying to tell a story, combat should be part of that narrative, and shouldn't take you out of it. They felt that the flow of exploration in to combat with their active pause (it wasn't "RTWP" back then) system allowed for a more cinematic experience of the story being told. Baldur's Gate was a single player story experience, much like reading a D&D novel, only it was interactive. That was the feeling they were going for. Most importantly, they were trying to do something different from the litany of gold box turn based games.

If the goal is for a multiplayer game first, then sure turn based makes sense, but it is a departure from the spirit of D&D being a "collaborative story-telling" game (because even in COOP you're still playing a severely pre defined and scripted program vs the free flow of table top D&D), and from BG's clear focus on narrative and character development ... it wasn't a combat simulator.

Okay, let me put it this way. Imagine an encounter for example, a hero has been ambushed by a few Werewolves. What's more realistic, the werewolves attacking the hero while at the same time he tries to fight back (real-time) or each werewolf attacks one after the other and after they've attacked they stand still and let the hero make a turn (turn-based)?

Turn based is way better for me, who likes to solo as a pure caster, real time its impossible, always have to build a battle mage sort of.

That is a good point, turn based is better as a caster/magic user. From a fighting perspective what do you prefer more? Do you still prefer turnbased or real time, when using a fighter?

Larian seems to be adding other actions into combat though (push and jump) setting reactions. I would agree that the major downside of turn-based cRPG (speaking from Pathfinder experience) is that it reveals how little decisions there are to make. Buffs were cast before the fight (though that is something Larian might address as well) and all is left is swinging at enemies. With melee combat one can’t really even change a target without loosing a whole or a big chunk of the turn. In addition in P:K most enemies in the encounter are the same, so switching targets would be counterproductive anyway.

Still, the last one is something one can be fixed with a better encounter, and all classes seem to have more active abilities then just those that come from their class.

Great points made. It's good to hear Larian is tweaking some things to make it feel more natural and improve things. I suppose both systems are not perfect and have their upsides and downsides.

That's why the system used in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 is so good in my opinion, because it's a perfect mixture of both which satisfies fans of both styles.

Yes I had this same discussion with another poster in another thread here. I agree that if you have a caster-heavy party then RTwP can get to be overwhelming at times, and so TB may work better for those players. But by contrast, for players who favor melee-heavy parties, like me for example, and keeping in mind what @Wormerine said as well, RTwP is so much better whereas TB is extremely boring to just keep clicking 'attack' again and again round after round. So ideally, for me, yes I want RTwP over TB, but at the same time I also want there to be far fewer active abilities (including spells) available to characters in the game. Whenever I have the choice, I always pick passives over actives for my abilities.

That said, I still believe very strongly that even for casters, being able to cast offensive spells while the enemy is moving is exactly how things should be in a "good" combat system. TB fans always use the example of a wizard casting the 'fireball' spell and complain that it is "unfair" or whatever that by the time their spell goes off the enemies have moved out of the AoE of the spell, and possibly even allies have moved into it. For me, that is *exactly* how it should be for casting a fireball, where making that judgment, in real time, of where the enemy and your allies are going to be when the spell goes off is part of the expectations of the combat system.

Muzyka was a TB fan, Ohlen (avid player of RTS), wasn't. They butted heads and Ohlen won.

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-history-of-baldurs-gate/
https://www.shacknews.com/article/1...ty-engine-era-of-rpgs?page=8#detail-view



"Feeling of real" is naturally, rather subjective.

Yeah, no it wasn't against their core values at all to make a TB game, but the ultimate direction/goal of BG became to make a real time cinematic story experience (and of course, the results of that goal are as varied as the people who play the game - although it says something that people are still playing it 20 years later).

Alright, real time combat is generally more realistic, but I don’t equate realism with stakes.

Turn based combat can have a lot riding on a single action. For example I’ve played a few ironman campaigns in XCom games, where a blunder can snowball from losing a couple of soldiers, to failing a critical mission to losing the whole campaign. The states there are pretty high.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that any system is inherently better than another. I like action games and tactical games, and games with no combat at all. It would be a massive shame if all developers decided any one system was ideal and just made those. Whether any are more realistic doesn’t bother me.