Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Which one of BG3, PoE, PK the worthy successor ?

Hi,

I need to tell it. I read the forum for few days and I feel the need to post caus there is a big misunderstanding.

We have, here a game "BG3" which proclaimed himself as the successor of BG1 and 2.

So let's take a minute and let's see what defined BG1 and 2 and what BG3 does. Let's try at least

And just to be clear, it's not about "whine whine, I want a game like this" it's all about "you said you are the successor of BG, so let's see if it's the case".

What was BG1 and 2 about the Lore :
it's D&D, faerun, drizzt, baldur's gate, illithid, etc etc.
What is BG3 :
I'm not an expert ( I read some forgotten realms, playde some games though) but I think we can agree it's ok.

What was BG1 and 2 about the story telling :
beginning as an orphan, looking for help (jaheira and viconia), helping some people here and there. having bad dreams, following leads until we discovered our story was linked to the political trouble in place (the 1). Then kidnapped, tortured, soul-extracted, escaped then cahsing for our soul, etc etc (2), Then Tob a good end for the sons of Bhaal.
What is BG3 (for what we know) :
a bunch of guys infected by tadpole but not transforming, looking for a cure (but we feel like we have time). What is this tadpole ? Why ? Who ? ho and a talkative skeletton staying in our camp.
Won't judge so far. Can't say I'm surprised or really exciting by the story but maybe I'm just to old to be easily surprised. So, I won't judge, I'll wait to be surprised.
Personnaly (as a fictive dev) I would have respect more the "you're the one" but it's incompatible with the "origin character" so it's really about a dev choice. Even if I'm not strongly against the origin character, it's a fact it didn't respect the BG'story concept. But it's not dramatic. I just appreciate the sensation to feel truly unique (at first so)

What BG1 and 2 was about the companion :
People you met during your adventure, one by one, in a lot of different places, some of them really (too) late in the game.
They was cool, some was pretty casual, some was pretty insane or funny in their way.
There was a lot and there was 5 of them accompanying you.
What as BG3 :
for now a lot (5) of mates in the first minutes of the game. All with more or less crazy story.
I think I can understand people who asked for less "amazing background" people. It's not unacceptable but it's important to listen to the players and so, yeah I get it. Could appreciate to have just a guy/girl adventurous and lost in the story.
That said, I think we shouldn't met them so fast. It feels too much the "here is your mates for the beginning".
Taht said, I would criticise the interaction with the companion, even if it's pretty good in general there are really disturbing facts.
Like when I was talking with shadowheart about Shar. I choose to speak about the persecution they suffer, you know, in a compassionate way. Well no, she disapproved and end the discussion ! Can't get why. There was nothing negative in the sentence, it was mroe like a "let's talk about it" but no.
Or like she said we should hurry up instead of helping the tieffelins and I said "well we could help them", she disapproved... So I reload, I try the "yes you're so right, let's them all die" and she approves... I found it stupid cause I'm going to help them anyway and shadowheart will help me and wont say a word about it ! xD
It' s perfect exemple of a stupid "approves/disapproved" talk. There is too much disapproved/approves everywhere and sometimes for stupid things (just a sentence).
It would have been smarter to have a disapproved AFTER we actually helped the tieffelin. It woule make sens...
Finally, the worst is the "romance". I still don't understand why all the men propose me to have sex...
As I still don't understand why they are all bisexual and multiracially open. I doesn't make sens. It makes them shallow.

What was BG1 and 2 about NPCs :
There was a lot of interaction and dialogues. There was a lot of stories, etc etc. Wont talk ad vitam aeternam about it.

What is BG3 :
I wont judge the interactions here, even if sometimes, yeah it feels frustrating like this little tieffelin I saved from death and who didn't car at all, who's insolent and who's I can't punish properly. I just had to accept she bad-talked to me...

But here, I would pay particular attention to one thing. The glorious "let's go close to the NPC to see their faces even if I don't care at all".
Before, it was text, some 3D-iso moving characters and our imagination.
With BG3, it's the "zoom on all the faces". And yeah, it's cool sometimes. many time even.
But I'll give two exemple who perfectly illustrate the "sometimes what is better is the ennemy of what is good"
First, the merchant. I don't really care about their faces...
Second, the party at the camp. There was this tieffelin who talk to you and say "come, let's dance" after what you see him wlak, do a discutable movement with his arms and say "ok it's good enough, the party was cool, let's talk about something else".
And I was like... Dude... Just let the camera in the sky and let me imagine the party instead of showing me this 3 seconds "dance", it's pityful.
So, this is exactly when "what is better is the ennemy of what is good" !

What was BG1 and 2 about fights :
the fights in BG1 and 2 was epic. It was RTwP. We could make it turn-based, but it was RTwP and so it was epic, nervous. You had to pause and pause and pause again. You listen to the warcry, the arrows and spells, you made your wizard run away, your warriors charged or retreat. It was intense.
Will ever remember lots of fights against sarevok, against, the five brothers, against the dragon, against the vampires, against so many people (against Drizzt hehe)
To win, you had to used the good spells. Mayb it was not THE strategic game of the centuries but damn, you had to make a good used of buff, debuff, control and defense-suppressor to win the big fights.
We feel strong, we feel challenged, we feel satisfied and sometimes epic.

What is BG3 :
It's turn-based and only turn-based and it's a mistake. No, more, it's a fault.
As good as turn-based game can be, there are not as epic as the RTwP are.
It's sometimes to long and unepic, absolutely unepic.
as much as the turn-based battles are appropriate for important fights, it's a true pain in the "back" when it's about trashy fights. I will never forget this 20-30 minutes fights against the goblins. It was as long as boring and the reason why the game would need of an RTwP option so we could "skip" this pointless fights and even feel pleasure in it, pleasure in mercilessly and fastly ravaging this camp.

Larian said turn-based was "more strategic". Well... I can understand why they said it even if it's, from my point of viem, a little pretentious.
More, here, it didn't feel correct.
More strategic then BG1 and 2 ? I don't have this feeling. I was closer to feel like a "try and die" game than a "more strategic RPG" and here is why.
When the "strategic elements" of Larian you have to used to win become the only elements to win, it's no more strategie, it's a pattern. Because once you get barrels and reliefs are "strategic", well... it's not really strategic, it become a rigid pattern. Every fights are "go as high as possible" and if it's too hard ? So "reunite barrels", etc etc. I don't think it's one big of a strategy when there is finally few strategies and some unavoidable tricks...

More, having to use the environment to win cause you're to weak otherwhise, it's not really epic. It may be fun, but not "dat" epic.
Make me feel more like a duplicitous than a hero.

Look at the minotaur. Where was the fun ? They cross half of the map in one turn, focus the wizard and killed them in one or two shot.
After a lot of try to "fair" fights and a lot of deaths, what did I do ? I put 3 barrels in order to make them explode and one shot the guys. What a strategy... What a fight... So epic... Wouhou... :-|

What was BG1 and 2 about loots :
There was some chess to open, some was empty, some was full, some was really good. The really good one appeared at the end of dungeon or in secret places.
What is BG3 :
Chess everywhere ! 95% of them are useless, if you're not carefull you will fill your inventory with spoons ! Some chess are called "marvellous", "golden", "put-random-cool-adjectives" but still give crap !
It just disgust you to open containers anymore (and yet I played DOS1 and 2. And in all the games I open all the containers, I'm kind of a squirrel, I take, I take, I take and I keep everything until the end. I even ended Red Dead Redemption nightmares without having used 80% of the stuff I had in my inventory not cause I am some kind of "hardcore gamer" just cause I'm like "keep it for later, who knows what could happen...").



After having played for more than 80 hours, after having read some threads here and after having think about it, I had this feeling and this need to share this one with you.
For now, PoE 2 and Pathfinder feels more like BG than BG3 himself.

So, here's my conclusion. Larian can keep doing as they want, people can keep saying everything is fine (especially the all turn-based mod), I don't really care.
But, in fact, as it is right now, BG3 won't feel as BG as PoE or Pathfinder feel.
And it's a bit sad.

Just to be clear, it's not about "whine whine, I want a game like this" it's all about "you said you are the successor of BG, here is why you don't feel like it".

For me (just for me. if you disagree more power to you)The short answer is "none of the above". Sure, kingmaker and Poe had the looks of BG and the gameplay mechanics are closer, but that doesn't mean they are any better than bg3. Both are solid games with okayish story and characters, but they have their own problems on that regard. As for Baldur's Gate 3, we'll just have to wait and see.

This is, in my opinion, a very important issue. But out of all the things that could be improved in BG3, this is what is going to be the hardest to do... if they acknowledge this problem and aim to rectify it.

The thing is - it's so incredibly difficult to capture a "feel" of a game. People often dismiss this as "you just want an Infinity Engine clone, get on with the times, it's 2020". But that's not what most BG fans want. IE games weren't all the same. Each series felt different. BG and P:T were on the same engine, yes, one could feel some familiarity between them, but they each had their own "feel". It wasn't one thing that made BG "BG". Replicating the game engine could give some nostalgia vibes, but would hardly solve the problem (not that the game engine is a point of discussion, obviously). I believe a game can be both modern and a proper sequel to entries from 20 years back.

So what were the elements?

The story: Larian said the BG3 is a "proper sequel" story-wise and I'm inclined to believe them. I like the whole illithid tadpole plot, and I'm eager to learn more about it and the forces behind it. The main plot both is linked to the original saga (per what we're told) and since the beginning brings familiarity. Illithids have been encountered multiple times in BG2 and there's the recurring theme of "something alien" being a part of the protagonists - it can be embraced or rejected. At the same time, there's a new spin to it. I think the core idea behind the main story is solid.

The companions: I'm a bit torn on this; I don't mind companions initially hostile to the PC (especially that we got the "more evil" ones for EA start), but I expect I'll only like one of them. I respect Larian's "quality over quantity" approach, but having only 8 companions to choose from (as it's been hinted) is a problem. That's about half of what BG2 had, and even there it wasn't a huge choice if you wanted to roleplay your PC and not just pick characters based on one criterion. I think BG2 struck a good balance between quality and quantity. Regarding the companions' "specialness" - I don't mind them being very special, I prefer this to Average Joes. One thing would be that it strains suspension of disbelief that those people with crazy backstories would just by coincidence all be taken by illithids, but it could be explained without much problem, I think. From what I understand, there's a lot to improve about the specifics of companion interaction, however. I've seen a lot of good ideas on this forum.

I agree on the combat system, though, and many "game-y" elements. But still, I don't think it's impossible to have both TB and proper BG "feel". It just becomes harder to achieve.

A very important part - and also hard to capture - would be the "atmosphere", but I won't try to comment on this, not having played the game. From what I gather, it's good, but not reminiscent of the original saga.

All in all, I don't think the problem lies with any particular part; the lack of BG "feel" many people report is probably the combination of many elements that differ from the originals (even if each one is fine on its own) and the execution of specific pieces.

I think we should continue discussing the issue in a constructive way in order to identify the source(s) of the problem and try to come up with good, viable solutions. There's already a couple of threads with good ideas for this.

The way I see it there are two general categories of "sequels", (meaning a game that shares a name with previous titles but with a +1 numerical in the title).

It can be a story sequel and in that case the story is what matters. This will not be possible to properly judge untill we know what the story is so not untill release.

The second way a game can be a sequel is to have similar but still further developed mechanics. This would be a kind of weird goal when following up on 20 year old games. I think BG3 visualized as a modern rpg is a better idea than BG3 visualized as a retro game.

I ever like to read your comment, they are ever poised and interesting.

I think one of the elements missing is this famous "epicness" I talk everytime.

When I think about BG, BG1 and the beginning. I have still memorable memory like this time I had my wizard running in circle chased by a kobold one of his mates try to stop by cutting his road. It was as stupid as funny as "epic".
Remembered tons of goblins rushing on me and me having warriors stopping them and suddenly one leave the pack to go on my backlane.
And it was just little silly fights.
Cause theyre was the great one.
I remembered the first "big" fight against the guy in the mines.
Having to cast skeletton to keep his own busy, leaving time for me to kill him, etc.
Or the fight against the drow girl's of bhaal, managing my spells, my movement was indeed a lot of strategy, of stress, of joy and rewards. It was, most of all, epic in many ways.

All this moment which I "feel" close to lose, close to fail, close to die, made my party epic, fun and memorable.

I miss this feel in BG3. Sometimes, yeah, I feel it a little.
But most of the time it's more a "damn I miss, let's see if the ennemy will miss too" and my memory will be like "remember this fight against the three goblin in the secret passage ? I killed them in two round, surprised them and hit hit hit hit. They don't move. Don't have a chance. Hmmm..."
I would have prefered to saw them run and shout at me and actually shoot at me.
I could have another memory "remember the gob etc ? Yeah. I rush on them. They faced 4 freaking heros but they prefered killed the unconscious druid they had captured cause... you know... it's logic and all fun." T.T

This is the feel I would like to find again and ths is why PoE and Pathfinder, in my point of view, feel much closer to the "BG spirit" than BG3 which feel much closer to the "Divinity spirit".

And Abits, it's not bout which one is the best game, it's about which one is the best successor of BG.

For now, for me, it's not BG3.

But as said, Uncle Lester, wait and see... (and maybe cross a couple of fingers)

Skalewag, what you described in your second option is exactly what games like PoE, Pathfinder or DAO did.
Look at DAO, it's far from "retro" however it tries to follow the path created by BG in this time.
Why respect the mechanics mean the game should be "retro" or bad ? I'm not sure I undertand you.
More, I would like you give me some "game +1" who didn't respect the mechanics from his origins ?
I thik it's hard to find.
HoMM, AoE, Battelfield, Witcher, Last of Us,... can't find one who deliberately and completely changed the mechanics.

It's an easy call for me as someone who started playing BG1 from when it was first released and who loves the original BG games passionately. The PoE games and the Pathfinder games are now my go-to games to play again and again as successors to the original BG (and all IE) games. BG3 is on a path to, at best, being a so-so game for me.

None of them are half decent successors. The industry lacks half decent writers and doesn't care about story or lore. All of these games have made enormous concessions in the name of accessibility and mainstream appeal and are hollow shells of the games that preceded them.

I think it's cool we have so many options now days. People don't appreciate it enough. On the other hand, I would take one bg2 over Poe, pathfinder and divinity.

I'm not sure which surprised me more: that I read OP's rambling, typo laden screed or that most of it is spot on.

They all tried and failed in different ways. Though if I had to choose I would say among recent titles PF:KM did it best.

It's a shame the story was overall lacking and the companions not as strong as they could have been (though some stand out positively).

I really hope the next pathfinder game will be what bg2 was to bg1. You can practically smell the potential there

I've played BG1 last month again for the first time since the 90s... I did play other games based on the system in the meantime, so the combat was fresh in mind - and it was awful. I hated D&D, the way spells were handled, the squishiness of the mages, the boring and utterly simplistic gameplay in combat for the non-spell-caster classes... so yeah, I didn't miss D&D's 'action' and not dynamic fights and the RTwP back there was probably one of the worst gameplay experiences in my 30+ years of playing video games. D&D for me definitely never meshed with realtime and the difference is hugely visible in DAO contrary to any infinitey engine game. The whole system there is designed to work in real time and it shows the way abilities work, characters are designed,... simply everything. It even showed more for me in PoE2 when they added turn-base-combat all of a sudden I enjoyed PoE-combat - not because of being turn-based vs real-time debate, but because the system in its roots was designed for turn-based-combat being a D&D copy.

The thing about BG1 that shocked me was actually how horrible the dialogs in BG1 were. Most were written tongue in cheek, with horrible amateurish comedy and over the top acting not fitting the story at all - things I didn't notice back then being younger and completely unexperienced with RPGs. These days I cringe at every response I get to select. The main protagonist sounds like a caricature of an absolutely bland hero.


I do remember BG 1&2 foundly, they were the groundwork that got me hooked to RPGs and now in my 30s I'm working in the video game industry because of the love for the games they made possible and influenced. This doesn't change how deeply flawed many things about BG1&2 are from a modern perspective. PoE1 is a perfect example of that - they did a game that felt closest to a BG to me to the point I was bored by it because it felt too similar/familiar with no understanding for what were design decisions back then and what were technological limitations. PoE2 was gameplaywise a much better game (storytelling in both I wouldn't call great).

So I don't care which one is the 'worthy successor'. Times have changed too much. I don't need a BG-clone, neither from a UI perspective nor its poor game mechanics. I also don't need to get the old companions back because that series got a fine ending. BG3 to me looks like a flawed game at this point that has the chance to really shine if they fix their balance and follow 5e a bit more at the expanse of DOS.

Personally, I count Dragon Age: Origins as the succesor that came the closest in terms of feel, but that has cinematics and view-your-character-in-detail and all that. I personally enjoy this, but if it *must* be an isometric one, then yes, Pathfinder comes close. I do enjoy that, mind you, and am looking forward to Wrath of the Righteous. I played this Pen-and-Paper, but never finished it. Can't wait to get my hands on it.

But, you have to understand what they made in the 90's: The best possible computer D&D experience they could make at, and for the time. That is was Larian is attempting for the 2020's, and so far, I genuinely like what I see. From a system and storytelling perspective, I think it certainly gained a *lot*. It genuinely matters what race and class you play now, and I genuinely appreciate the game for that. And yet, yes, the feel is different from the originals. Those felt more... real, or something. Humble. But that was a different time; humble and quiet is regarded as 'boring' nowadays. So your level one tutorial mission involves escaping both an illithid starship *and* the Hells in one go... You go from mountains to swamp to underdark to druid grove to Githyanki all in the opening act...There is *lots* going on, and it feels like it's on steroids.. Whilst I appreciate all this content, it's not the same as wandering the Cloakwood picking off the spiders for an hour. But here's the fun thing: The old ones aren't gone. They are still there, ready to be played. I think I'll do just that, now, actually.


Yes, Icewind Dale was fun too.

+10000000

A better question is who took the most advantage of the path that BG and other 90s games (and this is true for a lot of genres, the 90s were a heydey) paved for other games of its kind. Spiritual successors are hard - theyre emotional and pedantic by nature. Was Torchlight 2 more Diablo 3 than Diablo 3 was?

From what I can get a read on for your initial post you are looking for something evocative of a bygone era that also combines the fit and finish of a published game made by: You guessed it; Pillars of Eternity was done by Black Isle successor, Obsidian. Obsidian has a good number of the same people who:

Developed
Fallout (1997)
Fallout 2 (1998)
Planescape: Torment (1999)
Icewind Dale (2000)
Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter (2001)
Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter - Trials of the Luremaster (2001)
Icewind Dale II (2002)
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (2004)

Published
Baldur's Gate (1998)
Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (1999)
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (2001)
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (2004)
Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal (2001)
Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader (2003)

Not a bad resume for the competition to D&D EA newcomer Larian of BG3 when it comes to D&D chops.

Not a pissing contest, this anecdotal and not a representation of what people's preferences should be etc etc. Trying to avoid the inevitable "You forgot game x, invalidated, bad list!" and "HA ONLY 100 hours I have 123,123123123123 eons!1!!"

140 Hours-Torment: Tides of Numenera
150 Hours- PoE 1
180 Hours- PoE 2
200 Hours- Planescape: Torment (thats in the last year, not the 1998 hours)
200 Hours- Each Dragon Age
230 Hours- Baldur's Gate 3
400 hours - Pathfinder: Kingmaker
800 Hours- Divinity Original Sin 2

If we look at that list, we see something. Some of my favorite titles in my many moons of gaming...I didn't play the games I remember so fondly and have memories of playing for SO LONG....nearly as long as I thought I had.

Torment & PoE were, to use the successor thing, good successors of the genre. It had been pretty quiet before them. Numenera was a Kickstarter by InXile Entertainment - Bards Tale and Wasteland makers. The thing is though, for how RICH and GOOD PoE and Numenera were, for how many times i've replayed them, done all the things, just squeezed everything out of them I possibly could because I was having so much fun and played until I had taken everything I could from them....least played games. Once you beat them a few times, its done, its over. There is no mystery, there arent other paths, there arent secrets to find. You beat the game - Fin.

Pathfinder:Kingmaker interesting how many hours I have in it. Its with Divinity Original Sin 2 and Baldurs Gate 3 for a reason - Lots of things to do, different choices, metric S-ton of waiting for things to load, reload, and starting the game over. I did not like these games as much as the ones I loved but I played them a lot more. Even scraping out load times and the Pathfinder "Crap, well...guess I have to start over" factors, they are more interesting for you to root around in like a truffle pig. They target the part of your brain that makes you remove every speck of black in a Diablo 2 map so you know you got all the treasure and XP. What was Diablo 2's story? I dunno a fat butcher and then you fight satan or something. Played it a lot though.

Larian makes replayable games, they make a game that you can beat 4, 5, 6 ways and still say "Oh wow, never knew you could do that...kind of want to restart and make that my main fighting style now...". Larian hits some weird rat-at-the-feeder-bar combined with an almost Bethesda-esque delight in "breaking" their games; though they probably put that in there because if you want to do that, why stop you. You'll dump time into their games, a LOT of time.

You'll also be having fun, enjoying yourself. PoE and Torment and Numenera were all SHORT games. Try stretching them out and think of how HUGE you are expecting the BG3 world to be compared so those. PoE was a little blurb of land, PoE 2 was a smattering of islands that you could go top to bottom in about 1.5 minutes.

This is trading off that intense, suck you into the world, man I wish more games were like! feeling for something that rates lower in all of the areas except complexity, replayability, graphics, multiplayer, and ability to keep producing content.

The real question is: How do you take what BG3 is already and what we are told it will be and lift the areas it struggles in relative to the Bruce Lee 2" punch emotional jolts the other games gave us as a flash in the pan.

The answer: The only thing we can do is make suggestions and feedback regarding specific elements of things that were enjoyable in the other games and how one might incorporate them into this. That with a HEALTHY dose of optimism they read, care, or have the capability of making the changes suggested.

The challenging thing about reading your post is you could have never mentioned ANY of the other games and just written the BG3 comments and about as much content could be taken out of it, suggestion-wise.

For instance



Whilst appreciating the protection from latin, you need to talk Ad Somethingnum about it before worrying about crossing the bridge to eternity and beyond. Right now my counter to that example is: BG3 has a lot of interaction and dialogue. There is something about it that is different though, no? They don't feel natural. Older games you felt like a troop of idiots BSing with each other and now its some trigger you are in charge of managing and should take care of before moving on. What do you remember from the old games that made it a more seamless portion of the game instead of a person waiting at the camp with an "!" over their head that you go "ugh, I dont want to talk to them... fine".

Yes, I have high hopes for WotR. Owlcat seems like they took the lessons of their original release to heart. Most of what I've seen on their Kickstarter so far seems very promising.

In any case, Owlcat sticking so much closer to the original formula has a lot more chance of replicating the feel of the older games. If they can improve their writing, they can realistically reach for that potential.

PoE. Absolutely and without a doubt. I didn't understand the mechanics, but I was drawn to the people and the story, just like with BG2.

This, 100%. I tried to play BG2 again a few months ago and was like...yeah this is dated as hell and tedious. Younger, I spent I dont know, 6 hours straight fighting an ankheg at like level 2 until I figured out if I ran around a certain tree enough it would get stuck in it - a bug bug. Then I just turned on autoattack and walked away because I had to roll basically a natural 20 to hit it. got ankheg armor when I got to BG though with the carapace and was godmode for SO long. The exact same stuff you do in this game. Gamers in the 90s had no expectations and were blown away. The developers were a bunch of nerds with nerd humor and it was a cult community that we all grew up with and slowly ventured onto the internet with. It was a life journey coupled with a game journey and we were all babes. Now its an isolated "install. Play. Blow my mind. I hope you hired the best writers EVER!" *table flip* mentality where people wonder why they don't have the imagination and zeal of a 10 year old anymore.

They do as those others are older in feel which is more like the source games.

It's like choosing conservatism or being progressive, one has charm, the other is fresh. So I dunno 20+ years later fresh isn't a bad choice. To me it seems BG3 is taking the genre into Dragon Age'ness.

How I feel is DnD and games like this are under-represented. We've seen this genre have a rebirth but it hasn't all been hits. To me that is telling me the formula still needs worked vs resting on laurels, taking more steps to modernize seems to be needed and a smart move. Not saying traditional iso crpgs shouldn't be made, but I'd really like a couple dev-houses to take on the challenge of modernism.

I still would like a first person realtime dungeon crawler sp/coop (not mmo) that attempts a sim-like experience of really walking through dungeons and doing battle. If you go back 30 years you would think that would have been a huge genre in our future cards, it never happened. So as we sit here with isometric, it isn't my choice of pov for venturing, but it is what we keep getting delivered. Since their engine is true 3d, they have the artists and they are making the camera more cinematic, let your hair down and let us run a more immersive pov venturing, keep modernizing areas as you go along.

Without judging the games on there own merits, I can only say that P:K is the game that gave me the most BG feels.

If I'm going to be going by mechanics, Icewind Dale? Exact same engine, after all. I didn't come away from PK feeling like, "Yes, the Baldur's Gate game I've been waiting for". In fact, I never finished it, the story just couldn't keep me interested enough to progress. I don't have enough experience with PoE for the same reason. As another frame of reference, I have no idea what's going to happen later, or who's going to be introduced to us later to tie this game to BG. I have the DnD feel. For the dizzying array of "this isn't DnD" posts floating around these forums, there's a lot of complaints about the DnD based mechanics, like dialog rolls etc. All based on what amounts to playing through the Nashkell mines in BG.

Being fair, some of the critiques I'm solidly behind, like the lack of active rolls where they would make sense, Perception/Investigation checks, for example, or hotkeys for chaining/unchaining the party. Others come down to "but the dialog didn't go the way I wanted, and it's not fair not DnD", or "but some players are just going to keep reloading saves to get what they want". I've bad news for that latter crowd there: People have been doing that for as long as save games have been a thing. If you find yourself in a MP game where it's happening, leave the group. For what's happening in SP, it just doesn't matter. It's kind of funny, because BG is where we all learned "Save early, save often, save before and save after". Now it seems like the argument is "but Player Y is going to be able to beat this encounter because they reload saves until they do, and it breaks my immersion".

Sorry, tangent. I haven't played enough of this game to claim "worthy successor", because there isn't enough of this game available right now to make that determination. I can't look at Let's Plays on YouTube to find out how the game ends, just what happens at the end of Act I, and so I'm judging an incomplete project vs a project that I spent thousands of hours in, and that's not a fair comparison, by any metric. So I am not ready to proclaim this "the next big thing", and I'm not ready to throw it under the bus either. I'm taking it for what it is, a chance to get in on the ground floor of the development of a game that's part of a franchise that took up a big chunk of my life, in a good way, as far as I'm concerned. I want it to succeed, but I'm going to be just as critical of it if it doesn't as I am ambivalent about it now. The only difference I see is that I'm willing to give it a chance to at least get out of development first.

I love BG1 & 2 but I don't need BG3 to be a modern clone of it.

I want a great game!

BG3 does seems to be nailing lore and story, still needs more polish as work.

I love that it turn based, I hate RTwP and was so happy when Pathfinder Kingmaker added turnbase mode. I think POE2 did that also?

I not too happy about the mechanics of BG3 and hope that they can be address before final release.

Now, that I really want is a modern version of Planescape Torrent! ( The one from InXile just sucked )

Pathfinder Kingmaker is Eurojank.
Pillars of Eternity 1 has an absolutely awful start, with PoE2 being better but I'd imagine many folk didn't give it a chance after how bad PoE1. Myself included till my friend gifted it to me.

As I spoke before about these games: They are incredibly flawed. Pathfinder Kingmaker is a buggy, frustrating mess with broken quests that can easily break if you do them in the "wrong" order or leave you absolutely confused because the quest text tells you to do thing A but it actually wants you to do a completely unrelated thing F. Because it has a script trigger to move the story forward even if it makes no logical or fantastical sense as to why.

It also over did the Alignment choices to the point that they are either incredibly silly or nonsensical. Like saying things moves your alignment instead of doing things. So you can act like a goody two shoes and game goes "Yes you are actually a good person for saying these things".

Don't get me wrong Pathfinder Kingmaker is a fun game if you are hardcore enough to look past its many, many flaws. And I can say I enjoyed parts of it to the point of wanting to see how the devs improve with WotR. It will be great to see and I'm looking forward to it. But it's way too flawed and many people seem to look past that because its a cRPG.

I'm not entirely sure what is the point of even finding a "worthy successor" from the games mentioned. I personally just want a good cRPG that does what it set out to do. At the moment BG3 fails in what it set out to do which was being a faithful 5e game set in FR and a sequel to BG2. Will this change? Maybe. It's Early Access so it might.

Thx you all for your participation,
I did my best to answer to all of you.

Kanisatha
As someone else said, DAO could be consider as one worthy to compete too.
But yeah, pathfinder is the closer to the BG feeling for me.

Argonaut,
I appreciate some interaction with my companion ni deadfire and kingmaker as some quests. I wouldn't be so harsh. ^^

Abits, yep it's really cool to have all this games and I try to appreciate all of them for their qualities. This is why my post is not about which one is the best but which one is the closest to the BG spirit.
I'm waiting a lot from Pahtfinder 2 just like you !

vel,
I'm sorry, I'm french and I can't imagine all the mistakes I did when I wrote.
But to be honest it's already hard and long to write so much I don't have the energy to read and correct myself again. So, excuse my bad grammar, syntax and.... typo laden. I did and I'll do my best and will try to improve.
I just want to share my opinion in the language the dev can "easily" read (despite my mistakes).

Leuenherz,
Yep, I agree. Pathfinder have this same feeling. The wild world, the companions interesting and diversified.
There is ever some way to improve but I think the game was really good which is fun cause it was too a pretty hard game from my point of view.
The biggest fail for me was the management of the realm, really attractive but so hard I had to put the difficult at the lowest after tragically failing.

biomag, I get it but I think you're way to harsh why the game. BG was and is ever pleasnt to play for me. It could be better but it wasn't bad to the point you are saying. For example, saying "the squishiness of the mages" seems a little strange. It was part of the gameplay ! I mean, wow... you would have tank magician ? Ok, why not, but it wont fit in BG1 or 2.
But ok, you didn't like replaying it. I like replaying it so I don't know what to answer to your all-out criticism.
I mean the dialog wasn't THAT bad. Edwin and minsc would have not became memorable if their was this bad. It's a nonsense.
To conclude, you say you don't care which one is "worthy successor", etc.
First, I don't ask for a BG-clone.
Second, I wouldn't care here if the game wasn't called BG3 and proclaimed as a successor.
If Larian said "guys ? We are going to do a game in the forgotten realm and it's gonna be turn-based." I would have said "ok cool ! I'm waiting for it !"
but they didn't say that, they said "we are going BG3 and it's gonna be legend.... wait for it... dary."
So the question "Is BG3 a worthy successor of BG1 and 2 (and ToB) ?" is a legitimate question and more a central question.
No one forced them to do BG3. Absolutely no one.
They decided it and they proclaimed it. They didn't say "it's a game in Faerun.", they didn't say "it's gonna be close to the city of baldur's gate", they said "it's gonna be BG3".
So yeah, "caring to know if it's a worhty successor is what matters here. cause if ti doesn't matter it means it's just about getting a licence, to get the hype and money.


rodeolifant, I was thinking about a fight in BG1 but yeah ID was cool even if it lacks of a strong story.

Orbax
i really did my best to read and understand everything you read but to be honest it's late and I'm french so... sry ! xD
But I think I get it and it was itneresting. Maybe you're right about not talking about the other games but I would try to make people realize BG3 was missing a point.

About the NPCs...
I wouldn't begin a big argue for many reasons : the efforts I have to put to write in english, the difficulty to compare a game to an EA, et caetera ( ;p ).
More I save my opinion for later even if I already point some things I don't appreciate in BG3.
But I would like to talk about it, later, for fun and to exchange our poitn of view. But, in french, it would be much more easy for me ! xD
(But I would say I ever think the romance in BG2 was pretty good, without talking about the NPC mods which came later)

About the ankheg you rushed in a hard zone for a beginner ! It's normal to have been raped by it. xD
Personnaly, the first time I enter the Nashkell's mine I have been killed by kobolds I was traumatized. I did all the other map, thinking Nashkell was the ultimate goal ! I even kill basilics ! Imagine my level when I go back to the mines... ^^

Horrorscope
I have no problem with 3D and cinematics ? è_ê
Maybe I miss the point here, my bad so. ^^" (tired french guy)

Dulany67,
Same here and this is why I hope Larian will think twice reading the forum...
I don't say it's all wrong, I say they're missing something.

Haha, I figured there was a language barrier a bit there, but your english is better than my japanese so you win!

It wasn't so much that you shouldn't talk about other games, it was more that you skimmed over the BG1/2 parts with a general "they were more fun and I liked them" statement and then dived into what you didn't like in BG3, but what wasn't covered were the things you liked to the level of detail you did about things you didn't like on BG3. A list of lists like

Things I liked about personalities of
- Boo and Minsc
- My babe Imoen!
- Jaheira
- Xzar

Things I didn't like about personalities of
- Boo and Minsc
- My babe Imoen!
- Jaheira
- Xzar


Things I liked about story of
- Boo and Minsc
- My babe Imoen!
- Jaheira
- Xzar

Things I didn't like about story of
- Boo and Minsc
- My babe Imoen!
- Jaheira
- Xzar

Because if Imoen was, and she WAS, adorable and awesome and fun because the voice acting was enthusiastic, her personality of highly engaging and excited, and also not being that great in battle and dying a lot too made a loveable, squishy, ridiculous character that brought energy to the party. Everyone in the BG3 party currently drains the energy. They are there to deflate you and one of the things in pnp D&D is to make a character who loves adventure! Its an adventure! game. Having people that are worried about blowing up at any second.... it still is nice having someone who is a Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter or Minsc who you will never be able to put down and brings that smile to your face. That is missing in BG3 - Gale is not Steve Irwin and definitely not a Minsc!

Stuff like that is nice to hear about because theres a lot to dislike about certain things right now, but being able to point to what mechanic worked in the other ones would be very interesting to see your perspective on, I can tell youre passionate about it!

I'm not critizing the game for its time. Back then it was a standout game. But as time passed people build on its successes and flaws and improved the games. By today's standards it would be just a niche game, nowhere near the top. Honestly even PoE writting is not worse than BG, its just people remembering it more fondly. Edwin and Minsc were entertaining characters, but look just up what people write about Jaheira or others. And while the story was very dark, the characters were more on the comdey side of things - again the main protagonist in BG1 had some of the worst dialog options I've seen, purely making fun of whatever archetype you were playing. Back then we all enjoyed it. These days we expect top notch story telling and immersion, the demands from player side are much, much higher - and rightfully so. We've learned from previous games, books, movies, series,... and we creators also want to apply this knowledge to achieve something that will move the needle to the next level. You see the same evolution in movies and seires - compare a 'good' action sequence in a movie from the 80/90s with what is critically acclaimed now.

Even the system BG was based on - D&D 2e - didn't survive the test of time and was changed before BG2 was out. Why? Because it needed improvement. It was not a system made for video games and it made the whole combat chunky and people not coming from D&D couldn't relate to the spell system at all. I don't know anybody outside of D&D-fans who thinks that its magic system has any merit or logic that was easy to grasp. 5e is the evolution of these mechanics and you see that it has higher appeal and bigger reach than 3.5e ever had. 5e addresses issues with the extremely limited amount of spells for casters that made a mage utterly useless and just an arrow magnets in BG1 (also being potential 1-shot-kills). It also adds abilities with limited usages for melee and ranged low level classes to not be so monotone to use. Still shoehorning it into a video game and making it a RTwP is once again forcing a cube through a circle-shaped opening. How would bonus actions even work in a real time with pause? Why are we even bothering with using D&D 5e at all if we want a real-time game? Why not develop a system that is made for real time like Dragon Age Origins did? Just becuase of the story background? So we sacrifice gameplay to keep names?


Larian said they would make a new BG3 based on D&D5e with turn-based combat. So they took the original games rule-system at its current incarnation (same that was done for BG2 switching to 3.5 and later BG1 EE with adapting it to 3.5, Icewind Dale 2 using 4e,...), which seems also to be a license requirement, and put it into the BG setting a 100 years later. Regarding the story we can't judge if it will fit BG1 & 2 because we don't know enough yet.

A lot of the stuff that gets thrown here around being it a successor seems to me purely subjective.

I don't know how the game will feel in the end. For me personally, BG as Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights are primarly D&D games. Not just backgroundwise, but also based on their rules and the oddities that result from that. If the game doesn't try to get the best D&D feeling of that timeperiod in there, they are not successors. RtWP was an adpation that might have made sense with the 2e and 3.5e rules, even 4e - though none of those games felt to me like a Pen&Paper experience. They just felt like video games very clunky combat systems with very annoying mechanics that were neither fluid nor particulary deep beyond spells (I don't consider 'stressful' to be a thing in RTwP - you can pause and give orders, what's more difficult about that than real turn-base? you can even move simultaniously to avoid being reached - i never could run in circles around my party in a turn based game to avoid be reached by the ai chasing a mage for example, while that is an exploit you could do in BG). All those games were to me inferior to DAO when it came to fighting. Also PoE2 with turnbase was far more engaging to me. Would I want the Total War series to turn turn-based in battle? Nope. Would I want X-Com to switch to real time? Nope. The difference being that some games excel in character micro management and thus work better in turn-based systems, while others are just mainly macromanaget and can remain fluid in RtWP.


Sorry for the long-winded answer here.

The launch version was broken, but the patched version available today is mostly Ok. I beat it twice and noticed no bugs.



PoE2 has no story. There is no antagonist, no player agency, no twists or reveals (Pathfinder Kingmaker has a secret ending that is not easy to unlock, just as an example), no narrative structure (unless the whole main plot is seen as a prologue or maybe as a first act). This applies to the main quest, which is a series of talks with zero consequences and zero surprises, and the semi-open world. You sail somewhere, kill everything, get the McGuffin. Nothing more there. PoE throws walls and walls of text at you with world building exposition. Then the successor is published and: Nope. Nothing. Then extensions and DLCs are published, and again: Nothing to talk about. One DLC is even just a combat arena, literally. This is kinda relevant for a story driven game in a story driven genre.

Then fights in PoE2 are not really interesting, meaning diverse or challenging. Of course the vanilla game on default difficulty can be beaten on auto-mode, but even on the highest difficulty all fights can be handled by the same sequence of actions and abilities. One aspect of Pathfinder Kingmaker that reminded me of BG:2 was that I had to choose the right spells, positioning and focus on enemies for each type of encounter. And boy does Pathfinder Kingmaker have difficult fights. And boy is the highest difficulty actually difficult. (And unlike PoE2, in Pathfinder it makes a huge difference if you excel in a fight or barely survive, because of how resource management is handled.) Until you have figured out how to power play, and this again reminded me of BG:2, and Westley Weimer's Tactics mod.

And so PoE2 falls flat in the story section, in the combat section and in the exploration section, and that's IMHO the reason PoE2 was not a success (relative to the expectations of the publisher), and Pathfinder Kingmaker was one, despite the awful state it was published in.

Something I put in the Survey thread:

Something you should also look at as you cite other games for their mastery of the craft is copies sold.


Dragon Age - 3.2 million
BG 2 - 2 million
Pathfinder Kingmaker - 1.2 million
DOS2 - 1 million (as of november 2017)
Icewind Dale - 1 million
POE 2 - 700,000
Pillars of eternity 1 - 500,000
Baldurs gate 1 - 500,000
Planescape: Torment - 400,000
Torment: Tides of Numenera - 250,000
Wasteland - 250,000
Icewind Dale - 150,000

Yes I forgot about Dragon Age. That's definitely a worthy successor game too.

And I also agree Owlcat learned a lot from making their first game They were super-good about taking feedback to heart and not letting their ego get in the way of learning those hard lessons. So I also have high expectations for their second game (which I backed as well).

D:OS2 is over 2 million. And latest numbers I have seen for P:Km is 1.4 M, and for PoE1 close to 1 M. BG1 with the EE is also @ 1 M.

Yeah, I just googled [Game Name] number of copies sold and google put up a number. Almost all of them are from within the first year or their release so its a bit wonky. The main point was that Larian punching in the heavyweights of this genre and isn't tuin at the robes of the greats saying "Notice me, Senpai!". They kind of are because of the 5e focus, but it was more that as we talk about the games it isn't a Pater Jackson going from zombie slasher films to LOTR director miracle story hope. Its a good studio and it isn't some slackass group whos CEO is the son of Mearls or something.

There are no Goblins in BG1.

I remember the day I got the call from some guy who wanted to give me a copy of BG1 after I had sent in the survey I got from buying Fallout 1. I'm glad that the guy on the phone (Interplay? BioWare? I don't remember) was able to convince my mom that it wasn't a scam. When the game finally came it was glorious. PC games back in the day used to have great packaging and BG1's packaging was stellar. It was colorful, came with a great big manual, a map, and nine million CDs.

Other than watching a few episodes of the D&D cartoon, I don't think I had much exposure to D&D other than occasionally seeing a painting on a magazine or book or whatever and thinking that it looked really cool (shout outs to Larry Elmore). I don't think I knew about the tabletop game at all, but BG1 let me in to that world. I started learning more about the Forgotten Realms through the manual and all of the fantastic lore that was in the game. Even the equipment had stories to tell! And it looked great with that aged medieval scroll look with those cool illuminated initials (the fancy looking first letters) and your character model would change with your equipment (something not too common back then: Diablo 1 only had light, medium, and heavy armor avatars for its characters). The characters were interesting and the plot had me intrigued. I was hooked. And to this day I'm still astonished how BioWare managed to make such a great time the first time around. There's a good GDC talk with the BioWare doctors on YouTube that talks about how a bunch of people that made BG1 had never made a game before -- some hadn't even used computers before! Isn't that wild?

At any rate, the games that have succeeded best at giving me the feeling of the classic Infinity Engine games (BG1, BG2, IWD1, IWD2, PST) have been Pillars of Eternity 2 and Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I love Dragon Age, but they felt to me like a different kind of RPG.

While I enjoyed the first PoE, it felt a tad... bland? Basic? PoE 2 feels fresher, more colorful, more expansive, and more developed as far getting a feeling for the world. It also has some good characters who I find interesting. Amazingly it features both RTwP and TB combat and the console versions have controller support, but I don't think that's been ported to the PC version yet. Anyway, solid game. Really good. I love Obsidian's games.

Kingmaker I think succeeds more at bringing me into the world of Golarian than either PoE does with their setting. I've never played Pathfinder tabletop and had no idea about the lore, but Kingmaker has made me a fan and now I'm reading the Inner Sea World Guide as well as the original Adventure Path. Creating characters in Kingmaker is a lot of fun, gives you a ton of options, and it gives you a peak of your potential down the line. The game also has a bunch of great options built-in that probably would have been mods back in the day. The difficulty has a bunch of customization options and so does the dialogue. If you don't want to see the tags in dialogue for what alignment a dialogue choice is associated with or what skill check will be rolled, you can change that. This game also gives you the choice between RTwP and TB combat and it features controller support for the PC version. I'm about 5/6ths of the way through the game and I have thoroughly enjoyed it -- although I have installed mods to help me deal with anxiety inducing timed events and quests. The Kingdom management stuff is something new that I don't mind (kinda sorta reminds me of the De'arnise Keep stronghold quests in BG2) and that has difficulty options and mods as well. Several of the characters are going to stick with me in my memory and it's been cool to compare the story against the original Adventure Path. I'm very hopeful for Wrath of the Righteous as well.

BG3? Feels totally different as far as mechanics, presentation, attitude... I won't bitch about the controls and camera any more than I already have, but we all know Larian has a lot of work ahead of them. I don't mind the move to a closer camera in dialogue but the animations I'm sure aren't finished as people are constantly teleporting and twitching about... It just looks odd right now -- especially the creepy silent protagonist. The UI in general is lacking charm, general utility, and a look that says "fantasy RPG" to me. I have not made my mind up on the story and characters yet.

In general, BG3 is the future RPG I feel least optimistic about right now compared to Cyberpunk or Pathfinder WotR or Obsidian's next RPG Avowed (which is just a CG trailer at this point). Larian potentially made a mistake when they stuck that 3 on the end of Baldur's Gate. If it had a different subtitle, I wouldn't have quite so many expectations (many of which I think can be realistically met). I have put maybe 70 hours total into the entire Divinity franchise and to me they're just okay, so my experience with Larian hasn't exactly been stellar after all these years. I certainly don't want Larian to fail and I don't want there to be a "bad" Baldur's Gate game. Hopefully there is tremendous progress made during Early Access and one day I'll actually enjoy playing BG3 and I'll feel like a fool for ever having any doubts.

Well I wasn't trying to put Larian on a pedestal or put them down. Just only updating some of the numbers without any commentary one way or the other.

My personal take always is that if a game turns a reasonable amount of profit for its developer then that is sufficient from a business standpoint. Not all games can or should be sales bonanzas, and there should be space for games that satisfy even small niche audiences so that everyone gets to have that game they love playing. Put another way, all cRPGs should not be D:OS2. There are many gamers out there who didn't like D:OS2, and they too should get games to enjoy just like anyone else.

Pathfinder has the most content and deepest customization but it's not based on the same rulesets as the old games. If you ask which one is the best, then it's gonna be Pathfinder. Anyone that found it too slow or boring obviously doesn't like "True Crpgs" in the first place and could care even less about D&D.

Oh, for sure, I wasn't trying to imply you were doing that, the correction was welcome

Theyre in an interesting spot with 5 locations and 300 employees now. To give you an idea of that Redbox, a 2.2 billion dollar a year company, has 2 locations and 200ish people? They need copies out the door. So you have to ask WHO they are targeting. There are, by their guestimate, 40 million D&D players worldwide. The cross section that games and knows larian and is aware of something like this is questionable. But if they target the 2.5 million DOS2 purchasers and its "Different enough" - youre right, that is pure business. I know they probably have it in their heart somewhere to be good to D&D, but I don't think its a passion of theirs and if it falls by the wayside as they target THEIR group and then see how many D&D folks they can hook...I just haven't seen the flame for D&D. They have a neat story and have an audience, but if the option is decrease sales and bear the D&D torch or make a boatload of money...I haven't seen a company yet choose not money.

These aren't the small groups of dude like Carmack writing the book on rounded architecture and specular lighting as they put out shareware. Regardless of opinion, John Roberts of Star Citizen is PASSIONATE about it, and dude has chops - helped write directx codecs, personally helped take the CryEngine from 32 to 64 bit and then migrated to Amazon Lumberyard. Those are the nerds you want when youre going for cult classics and rabid (and you ignore size) fanbases because you had a friggin vision and could personally do it. Larian seems fun, and their studio can obviously produce good content. I think the question is going to be whether or not they WANT to be a successor. I threw up the numbers mainly to say they COULD and they are technically in the genre with DOS2 and drew a crowd. I also wanted to point out that some of these games didn't "do well" even though the people on this forum are probably the hard core fans and loved them. I cant play some anymore, some from 1998 like torment I still get a kick out of. Numenera was straight up OG, it was the same developers and they wanted to make another one.

The other recent games had their charms, I liked being a pirate in PoE2 more than I liked playing the game - unless Im a ranger, go straight to Nekataka, go southwest and get the bow that bounces between all enemies close to each other and is a game breaker. spiritual successors? I havent seen one other than Numenera and it succeeded itself but was a short ass game, as much as I loved it. I just feel like we are ultimately getting a tradeoff here for scope and story for mechanics and soul. Im currently at 233 hours in EA so its not like I hate it, but ive seen a few false prophets in the last 5 years, and Im not seeing this as the messiah yet.

But, like I said, I think its good to take of the rose tinted glasses when referencing some of these other games that were when we were young, when there was a game drought, and when there was a severe genre drought for this and we were dying in the desert and found water which was now the most amazing thing EVER. I can wax eloquent on the pros and lots of cons of these recent games and, other than graphics, its hard to remember anything bad about the old games. In context, they were perfect. Objectively, I think its more helpful to verbalize specifics about the old games because otherwise its just kind of masturbatical and going down memory lane saying "Man, that game made me feel good and I liked it and this doesnt".

No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample. Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule: "no Scotsman would do such a thing" followed by "Well I am a Scotsman and I did that" leads to "Well, no TRUE Scotsman would do such a thing"; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group.

Sorry, I like bustin your balls for some reason. Pathfinder is slow relative to similar games. The fire rate for rangers, the hit/miss and difficult encounters you can get ambushed with. Its a slow crawl, it just is. Its a game you sit down and play for at least 2 hours otherwise you don't get a lot done. It works though, because its immersive and the slow rate is balanced by the number of things youre managing both micro to the party and the land management, as well as your broader decisions on what to pursue next. It picks up speed later as you level. I can hop in Ghost of Tsushima for 30 minutes and take over a fort. With Pathfinder, 30 minutes is enough to pick what building to make next, survive a road encounter, and MAYBE clear a larger fight in one of the zones. Patience isn't something you normally tell gamers to have and it stuck to its guns and said "well...this is how it works so you know, deal with it." If you beat the ame, and restart you just writhe with impatience again because ughhhhh its so sloowwwww. You just have to go in with a certain mindset and take it for what it is, and it isn't bad, just...not what youre used to.

Planescape : Torment didn't have much success when it was first released but it's gradually gained a legendary status over the years, to the point many players consider it the best rpg ever . I think it's wrong to consider that BG2 would be below Dragon age because of copies sold. When DA got released, it was ten years later than baldur's gate and the number of players and money invested in marketing has increased. As a player that did and appreciated all these games, except Wasteland I would not rank them the way they are ranked by copies sold.

I forgot to mention, because I said it in another thread, COD as of 2016 had 250 million copies sold so I said take it with a grain of salt when considering people's tastes as a barometer. This was more encapsulating it in a narrow genre with few contenders and just pointing out that they weren't some tiny group punching way above their weight and some of the other ames werent quite as popular as people make them to be.

Sorry to burst your bubble sonny but you have never made me raise an eyebrow in here. Being an exception to the rule doesn't necessarily make you special if that's what you're thinking. Most people never liked D&D because of how slow and complex it was and most casual players are just like that, it's not just about not having enough time. They were always like that. Then WOTC went and tried dumbing it down to make it more appealing to a bigger audience ( which is the very same people i am referring to ) and only makes sense from a business standpoint. It was always a niche but now they are trying to mainstream it which also points to Larian's Goofiness and Explosion Gratification Abuse. Michael Bay sells, always. So if you have a game that can be beaten by my blindfolded dog because of how exploitable or easy it is and has a constant over the top coating of goofiness and exagerated gimmicks, instead of a well thought out balanced system ( Doesn't necessarily have to be a D&D ruleset copypasta )....WELL. The only way i see it not selling is if the graphics were really ugly and the gameplay too slow for ADD zoomer kids ( Most of the complaints ). So my intuition points to Larian making it exactly like a D:OS 3 if all they want is sells.

I understand your point but compairing numbers is quite the shortcut.

Game weren't as popular and mainstream twenty years ago. They also used to be much more expensive. The industry has expanded since then.

Again, merely a point of reference. Theres not a lot of statistics for games other than copies sold and user ratings. I can't go to spiritualsuccessorstobaldursgate2andother90sgames.com and have it adjust for gamer population inflation and what it probably would have sold and been rated at given todays environment. The point I made across several posts was pretty basic and was in acknowledgement of the limitations of what could be teased from that.

Yeah but stats can mean anything out of context. If you just throw some random number and don't take into account the parameters, then the conclusion you make from the stat doesn't describe reality. If you know your point is incomplete you should look for more infos IMO. I tried to find some stats for gamer populations but I only have up to 2014 for now. Anyways, just in six years (2014-2021), the number of player increased from 1.8 Billions to 2.8 Billions. Imagine in twenty.

And a lot of those players don't have the same expectations as previous gens. If we went and enumerated all the variables and factors other than I JUST FEEL THE NEED TO CONSUME ANYTHING THAT HAS A NEW LABEL, well...

Lol, well I can't think of another way to say it, but I don't think we are in disagreement about anything.

Ahah yeah there is that too.





I guess yeah. Just nitpicking.

The question is, why should this "succession" matter? Different people understand different things under this term. First you need to to survey what people actually consider a successor:

1. D&D rule set?
2. Continuation of the story?
3. Gameplay mechanics?
4. Infinity engine?

For me personally, "succession" doesn't matter as long as the plot is interesting and gameplay is fun.

Also people succumb to their nostalgia where they remember only positive experience and forget about bad one. Try to play BG1 and BG2 now and you'll find out that not everything in those games is nice and peachy. I remember that I was annoyed that in BG2 every quest must have been resolved by combat. There were no peaceful solutions. You could pick a side but it was obligatory to destroy the opponents. Games evolve, things change. Devs should take the positive from the past and make new game better than before. Cloning experience won't work.

Worthy successor? Any great CRPG game (PoE 1 is not a good game in my experience, btw).

I just reinstalled and played POE yesterday.

The RT combat is such a mess.

You gotta "predict" area spells, but then the AI and your characters move "erratically". So annoying to press space bar space bar space bar.

You can say it's "tactical" and "deeper", I'll just stick to turn based.

You know, there is a reason why both PoE2 and PK released turn mode later...

Some of us are the previous gens. It's funny, I collect game boxes from when I was buying all these games. I have 3 copies of BG, 2 copies of BG 2, with one being a Collector's Edition. All my IWD boxes, multiples of NWN and NWN 2, NWN because I needed a copy for keeping a server running, and another to play on another computer. I didn't have to have my mom's permission to buy 'em either, I was in my 30s. Some of us feel the need to consume things we enjoy, no matter what some random on the internet thinks about it.

I'm sure the Witcher series is really good. I own all three, Enhanced Editions even, and multiple times, but I have never finished one of those games. Geralt is too dry a character for my tastes, but, CDPR does right by gamers, and so, I support them, to the point where I have already pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077, and am now just waiting for the release date, so I can do any patching and downloading, and get busy playing. If everything goes right, maybe on my Series X, but if not, it'll be on my XBox 1, and I'll be kicking it in my recliner, trying out that new label. I've heard that Oblivion is really good too, but it's way to dry for my tastes. I did make it through Skyrim though. I'm not as impressed with it as some of my friends were, but, I did manage to finish it.

You see, despite all the "no true Scotsman" that you ran with earlier, people have different tastes. The fact that you had to resort to a fallacy to try to support whatever it is you're trying to support speaks volumes though. I can't say if I like or dislike BG 3 yet, I simply don't have enough of the game to make that determination. When I think about what I do have, I also have to consider that it's more or less in an Alpha state, and that it was presented as a "playable demo", so I could offer any relevant feedback, and maybe have a say in how it gets developed. This isn't my first rodeo with things like this. I was invited to participate in the Aion closed betas, and the closed beta for swtor. I declined swtor's offer, I like Star Wars ok, but I'm not one of it's biggest fans. I played Aion from the second closed beta until just after it went F2P, and my sub was active when that happened. I've played a wide variety of games, because I found them fun. I took them for what they were, instead of trying to make them what I thought they should be, and you'd be surprised how much fun you can have in a game when you do that.

No this is a sequel to Baldur's Gate, not a "successor"
Successor tends to be used about the same style of game but in a different game (aka Spiritual Successor)

This is a sequel, it's the continuation of the world that was established in Baldur's Gate. Fallout 3 wasn't a successor to the Fallout games, but it was a sequel.

PS: Please write out the names of games at least once. Not everyone knows what PoE or PK is.

Gameplay wise Pillars of eternity 1/2 doesnt get any closer to BG/BG2. Looks similar and plays similar. Of course stuff like the story/characters isnt up to BGs level I think.
Kingmaker is an odd ball. I view it more as a DnD simulator. And I LOVE DnD 3.75 (pathfinder). So complicated and detailed my god.

Oh man, I am so happy that I don't care about BG1/2. I could have been playing them, as I am old enough, just never got around to it. Although I would probably still dont be like some others here. For Morrowind is pretty much one of my favorite games of all time and I still like Skyrim. I have certain opinions why Morrowind is better than Skyrim, but imagine me being salty af just because they did some things differently

Comparing Morrowind/Skyrim to Baldurs gate is like comparing Doom to Final Fantasy VI and saying both have shooting actions so they are action games. Technically yeaaa BUT....

I am comparing the way I handle nostalgia and change in game series. At the moment there is a LOT of salt on the forums about almost every change from BG1/2 to BG3. I just am lucky that I am not one of those people and can enjoy BG3 for the great game it probably will be.

Generally a great attitude. Just don't throw the baby with the bathwater. And I think the best comparison here is fallout 3 Vs fallout 1-2

I'm not throwing anything out. I just say that I am not one of these persons, who don't understand that new games often vary in mechanics and systems from older entries in the same game series. The fact is: 20 years ago games were built simpler and also often in a very similar engine, maybe a few tweaks. See BG1/2, Diablo1/2 and many other games of this generation. But modern games have much more possibilities and that can be used to create great systems. But doing something different always has potential to do something people don't like. I for one think Fallout 4 is not very much an RPG anymore, but i appreciate the settlement system. I hope that FO5 will have this kind of player impact in the world, while also having way better RPG elements.

Some people here are just being salty because there is no hamster in this game (yet), which I just find are weird expectations.

I definitely agree that people should think really hard what is absolutely a must when creating a sequel to a game and what is not. The best example that comes to mind to me is the day/night cycle. I can't see any reason to keep it other than nostalgia

I never really played the first two when they first came out. I tried to play them a few years ago for the first time, but not being a fan of that type of gameplay, and the fact they were so dated, I couldn't get into them and just played PnP some more. So, I don't want to comment too much on the differences between 3 and the other two. I will say, that I don't think its necessarily bad that BG3 is turn-based. After all, the first two games came out so long ago, BG3 is not exactly a 'natural progression' in the series. Its more like a reboot. I'm also not a game developer so I don't know how well the rest of the elements in BG3 would mesh if they made it exactly like the originals.

However, I agree that some elements in BG3's gameplay is wonky, and you're right that there is not a sense of epicness. I too think a little too much emphasis is placed on environmental factors. And if the strategy part of that was working perfectly as intended, that would be just fine, as that a very important tactical element to any kind of "real battle" which is knowing ones environment. But at the end of the day, this is DnD, not some kind of Ghost Recon game or RL tactical simulator. And anybody that's played PnP knows that sometimes you can just bullrush a battle, get a handful of lucky dice rolls and massacre the opposition, or lose a battle you should have won because of said rolls. What I am driving at is that DnD is not all about placing your miniatures perfectly on the grid(if you use them, which I don't because I hate it) and having an expectation that perfect tactics, or perfect cheese tactics will be the only way to win any encounter no matter how big or small.

Witcher3 - a story driven RPG with memorable quests, engaging characters and massive hand crafted world that kept on giving. Big world to explore with something interesting in every corner. Playing it felt like playing BG2 for the first time.

So far out of he bunch PoE1&2 are my favourite - as far as nostalgia I thought PoE1 hit it really well as a successor to Infinity Engines as a whole. I also think they address some issues I have with DND adapted to RTwP, even though they create some problems of their own. Still, mimicking a 20years old game is what’s holding it’s back as well - still PoE are the series I see most potential in, at least for myself. It also happens to hit my personal tastes - like BG, but appealing to 30years old me, rather then the 13 years old me.

Kingmaker - not a fan. It’s combat is the most literal adaptation of BG approach but it’s not awkward d20 rolls that made me love BGs. Kingmaker campaign is simply too poor - from companions to “story”, to god-awful pacing, to how much of time it wastes without creating systemic consistency, immersion or fun. It’s a tedious experience that rarely flows and mercilessly stretches a small amount of content through tedious and poor design. There is good stuff in Kingmaker, but I feel it completely misses what makes an RPGs work - for me it is the 2nd RPG (another being original Neverwinter Nights), which I found little to no joy in. To me Kingmaker is best summarised by its “procedural dungeon” DLC - bland, lifeless, cruel adventure with bizzare spikes in difficulty, and no flair - not something that reminds me of BG1&2 at all.

BG3 - it looks good! Larian approach to what makes an RPG is fresh and still interesting. And i don’t think they yet reached their full potential. D:OS2 wasn’t for me, BG3 still might not be, but it looks far better. As to it’s relations to BG - I don’t see much. It doesn’t look/feel like it, and I think Larian’s priorities and completely different hen Biowares.

This is a great great point. on the surface, The Witcher 3 is nothing like BG at all. but upon closer inspection, there are a lot of similarities. And there is no way the Witcher 3 could have been as great as it is without BG. but unlike the other wannabes, CD project knew execlty what parts of BG they need, and what parts they should innovate. Instead of coping BG they built upon it.

This!
I have to confess I haven't really enjoyed Witcher 1&2 that much, but 3 caught me completely unprepared.

Still if we can only choose one, I'd go with DAO.
And I agree nostalgia aside not many people here would actually enjoy too literal rendition of BG.

Baldur's Gate 1+2 were a fairly faithful adaptation of a tabletop. Hundreds of spells, class combinations, options galore.

The Witcher 3 meanwhile in comparison for all its qualities is an action adventure Netflix movie that outside of its combat witcher senses itself. I see no connection to Baldur's Gate in it whatsoever anymore.

To me the truly next Baldur's Gate won't look 100% like it though. It's not yet arrived. Why? Because you know all its tricks it has on offer already, and have seen it numerous times. Dragon Age too is basically a streamlined for the bigger markets BG given a cinematic coat of paint. I'm waiting for the game that for instance may not merely copy but redefine what party AI / interaction can be (with actually AI in general being underused, e.g. how about a Thief who on the occasion can't keep his his hands off objects in the game world?) and generally still carries that torch of bringing the tabletop feel to a PC. Mind, I still enjoyed PoE, Pathfinder et all very much.

I guess that it's (again) a question of what is the "spirit of baldur's gate". you can certainly argue that baldur's gate is highly regarded because mechanics much more than story. I disagree, but that's a valid opinion.

another example of really great and memorable RPGs, that what made them great is less controversial (I think) - Fallout 1-2, Planescape:Torment. Do you honestly think people like these games so much after all these years because of RTwp (never played too much of fallout, but as far as I remember it wasn't even a thing there)?

It's a combination of both to me for sure. The Witcher 3 is a wholly different beast to all of those games mentioned in the thread title. It's so heavy on non-interactive cutscenes that at times its more an interactive movie than a game. That brings it more closely related to newer Bioware games post their D&D games era, so if cinematic storytelling is your forte, the successors to Baldur's Gate have already arrived in numbers and needn't arrive anymore.

Fallout is likewise reknown for its skill system, player choice and how its quests can be tackled in numerous ways.

I'm not sure how Baldur's Gate cutscenes are any more interactive than the witcher's ones, but I get that it's very different game. I also think it is a very reasonable end result of years of change in the RPG video game genre. like you said it yourself, the witcher 3 came after Bioware started with this direction. But unlike something like Dragon Age Inquisition, I think the witcher 3 was much more in line with the goal each game like this should hold in very hard regard (if not the highest) - give us a good story, give us choices, give us a well-defined world with awesome things to do outside of the story.

Well, I personally barely consider WItcher 3 to be an RPG, for a start (and that's none to do with camera perspectives, that you are playing a fixed character, the action combat or anything). Certainly not in the way Attic, Sir-Tech, Origin, Black Isle, oldschool Bioware or nowadays parts of Obsidian would envision it. To me it's a cinematic action-adventure game with some superficial and streamlined RPG *features*, but having learned my lesson from Looking Glass*, I'm not going to discuss genre definitions (which is futile anyways).

* http://web.archive.org/web/19980224020118/www.lglass.com/p_info/dark/manifesto.html

I can see how you would say it, and I don't think you are alone at this at all. it's a matter of priorities I guess.

I suppose it depends what one is remembering BGs for. I remember BGs for being undercover agent in the underdark, exploring trolls-hideout, talking to companions, finding the serial-killer - getting locked in the Spellhold, watching Cutscenes with Irenicus.

I didn’t find Baldur’s Gate very reactive nor offer much freedom or reactivity. Played it many times, with different characters and vast majority of playthroughs are the same. There are small things I find every time, but nothing substantial. While BGs offer you a lot of freedom on how you explore, what you find there is pretty static - ways we can approach quests or dialogue options we get don’t change. Unlike Fallout1&2 where each character has a rather unique path to experience. Troll fortress, Fircraags lair, Spellhold: they play out the same way no matter who you are. And things that do (like not following sabotage quest in draw city) just arent as fun when it done as intended.

I used to think that Bioware “sold out” starting with a KOTOR, but honestly, looking at other RPGs at its time (Planescape, Fallouts1&2) I think BG strength was always presentation, linear story telling and “Hollywood adventure” over depth or reactivity. While we can define class of our Bhaalspawn and if he is good or bad, whatever choices we make are overridden by narrative thrust on us. Geralt gives us even less choice in character creation (and frankly I would rather have w3 drop “RPG” systems like leveling up - it only made combat weaker), but makes up in moment to moment decision making. It focuse on what I think made BGs great - and I am sure that W3 has far more sophisticated and reactive quest design then Baldur’s Gate2.

I just don’t think that deep, reactive, systemic design is really following what BG1&2 was going for - or at least what we got in the end. Biowares initial ambitions might have been different, just as they were with Miss Effects.

I was merely trying to say that Fallout likewise isn't only remembered for its story, certainly not by me.

I personally really don't get any BG vibes from The Witcher 3. The devs may have started out by heavily modifying a Bioware engine for the first Witcher, but that's about the only connection I see. With Bioware you could really see that they were coming from a tabletop background, and that there was more to it than just the storytelling (which other games have too). Something that is also touched upon in this series of articles.

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





In The Witcher I'm technically oft watching a series of very long cutscenes, and they don't even have that much dialogue choice. Mechanically, it's also a simple game, one that plays much more akin to something like Assassin's Creed than say Pillars Of Eternity, New Vegas or even BG 3 EA now (which is naturally a big reason of its successs). None of this is a dig at The Witcher as such. However, that's me.

When all done I expect BG3 to be better than PoE 1 and 2 and Pathfinder Kingmaker. Will it be better than Dragon Age Origins?

Nostalgia can only take you so far. I uniquely love BG1 (and I mean 1 and not really BG2) because it was the first true RPG I ever played. But now, even though I have the IE EEs on my machine, if I'm going to spend time replaying a game I'd much rather replay a more recent RPG (and yes, this includes games like Witcher 3 and even DA:I).

I think ultimately it comes down to what each of us sees as the core/defining characteristics of a *role-playing* game, something I've brought up in other threads. Is it gameplay rules and mechanics that defines an RPG for you? Or is it story, storytelling, characters, character development, and world-building? Obviously many people are going to be looking for both, but which is the more important side of a game for you as an RPG fan? Taking Witcher 3 as a great example, I really, intensely dislike the gameplay mechanics of that game. But that doesn't matter to me. I just so love the story, storytelling, characters, character development, and world-building that I am able to make myself tolerate the gameplay mechanics just so I can enjoy the things in that game that make it a fantastic role-playing experience for me.

Play it on hardest mode and actually HAVE to utilize magic abilities effectively, mutagens, armor crafting, and weapon crafting haha. Its simple on normal modes because you can walk through the game without ever making anything and you forget you have magic 90% of the time. They have a pretty deep series of questlines for Witcher School armors and weapons that become less of a "completionist" OCD run and are a significant step towards progressing. The AC series is fun because you can cheese it with stealth and Perfect Parry-Instakills regardless of difficulty. No proverbial cheese in Witcher that I am aware of. I reject your opinion and replace it with my own.

Worst case scenario Morrigan Rule 34 on your other monitor/phone whilst playing.

People seem to forget that CD project's first project wasn't the Witcher, but actually the translation of BG into polish. I really don't see how can you deny the connection between the Witcher series and Bioware. Sure, somewhere along the way the apprentice became the master (I think the differences between DAI and Witcher 3, two games with very similar goals, proves it), but that's the greatness of cd project. There is a learning curve in every game they make, and you can see it quite clearly. While Bioware kinda stayed in a sort of weird stagnation that eventually lead to major deterioration, they innovated with each new entry.

About gameplay Vs story - I don't see how Kotor 2 or fallout New Vegas are any less RPGs than pillars of eternity. Sure the combat is super different, but think about what you actually do in the game outside of it and tell me it's not an RPG.

IMHO:

Baldur's Gate 1 is viewed as much better in retrospect than it was due to a combination of nostalgia, how good BG2 was, and the fact that anyone within the last 15 years or so played it ported into the much superior BG2 engine (first through mods, and more recently through BGEE). The plot of the game was cliché, the NPCs were as shallow as they come (you couldn't even talk to party members), and a lot of the minor encounters you have wandering through the forest have really jokey dialogue which seems out of place. A big part of what made it work so well though was that the CRPG genre had basically died in the mid 1990s, with Diablo clones becoming so omnipresent that even the Ultima series was dumbed down into a more action-heavy format. Baldur's Gate, despite its flaws, was far and away the most user-friendly and best put together adaptation of D&D on a computer till that date. And then BG2 happened, of course, and the rest is history.

In terms of successors - I do feel like in terms of story Dragon Age: Origins is the obvious choice. While the world is quite different and the mechanics work differently, some of the same creative folks were still involved, and we know Bioware wanted to do more D&D work, but lost the license for some reason. In general it feels like a deepening of what they had begun attempting to do with Baldur's Gate 2 in terms of development of companions, choices with in-game repercussions, etc.

I like the Pillars of Eternity games, but they honestly have never given me a strong BG vibe. If anything they remind me a good deal of Arcanum - perhaps even the old Fallouts a bit more.

I've only played a bit of Pathfinder: Kingmaker to date. It's a pretty good adaptation of paper and pen, but it doesn't feel very BG to me in particlar.

So far, aside from the lore of Forgotten Realms, very little of BG3 reminds me of the first two. I'm not sure if it's because there was a desire to set the game in the "present" of D&D (which is well past the time of the Bhaalspawn) or there were contractual reasons (like, does Bioware retain rights to the original characters, even if they lost rights to D&D?) But in terms of game mechanics it's clearly not trying to recreate the "classic era" either.

...and this is the problem with this kind of conversation, the highly subjective nature of what makes a game "good". I can barely sit down and play TW 3, I own it, own the two that came before as well, on PC and XBox, caveat, I don't have The Witcher on XBox, I don't think it's available, or I just never found it, but I've never been able to finish any of them. I have multiple finishes on DA I. The BSN blew up around release of DA 2 and how bad it was, bad enough that I took it at face value, and didn't get DA 2 for a year. When I finally did get it, due to burn out on everything else I was playing, I was disappointed with myself for taking a forum at face value. It was, very definitely different, but it wasn't really all that bad. I had some of the same complaints, reused environments, wave combat, etc., but overall, it wasn't that it was "bad" that was the problem, it was that it wasn't "The Warden", from people that are "expert" writers, complaining that the Warden couldn't be in two places at the same time, and refusing to acknowledge that "The Warden" could, in fact, die. The irony? This same group of strong writers condemning DA 2 were singing it's praises as the best thing since sliced bread during the development of DA I.

We had the "but the Inquisitor is the "Old God Baby", has to be" discussion every Friday, how it had to be the Warden every Wednesday, and how the first games were going to be infinitely better, no matter what, because they weren't planning to do one or the other, or both, of those options. For all the lamenting that Hawke was a generic character throughout DA 2's cycle, suddenly Hawke was a unique and special character come Inquisition. This, along with things like "you have to accept the NPCs for who they are" when someone was bashing Zevran for being bisexual, as they download the "make Alistair gay" mod, or the "but I'm not looking for a happy ending to ME 3", as they download the MeHeM mod. What does that mean? Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod. The hour and a half long Andromeda review on YouTube, that, 45 minutes claims "Mass Effect is Shepard's story, and nothing else will qualify as Mass Effect". Gee, could have given me that at the beginning of the review, so that if I decided to watch it anyway, I'd at least be informed that your opinions are colored by that position.

For all that, with the exception of facial animations, Andromeda wasn't all that bad. It was colored by "not Shepard", deja vu to "not the Warden", eh? Some of the hilarious glitches I saw on YouTube I could never recreate, despite spending hours trying. But as far as some of the other complaints? "They left a lot of threads hanging"? Of course they did, there were supposed to be more games, unfortunately they shot themselves in the foot with how they handled development, and that may, or may not be a thing, they're currently pulling a Skyrim, and re-releasing the original trilogy for every conceivable platform... I, for one, would very much like to see where they were going to go, but...

Damn, that's a lot to say "personal tastes vary, and barring some really buggy crap, on a full release, instead of an EA situation, where that's to be expected, good or bad can be very subjective".

Yeah grain of salt and all that. I personally think that da2 was really unique game, and although it had major problems, it is such a departure from the things Bioware usually did back than I was fascinated by it.

Abou DAi - it's super boring imo and even if you can stomach the story, there is both much and nothing to do other than that. You can go to many places and do many things, but it's just busy work with nothing particularly interesting happening.

The main issue with Dragon Age 2 is IMHO they put 2 in the title. It was supposed to be a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. Although it had more to do with DA:O than BG3 has with BG1/2, it's more a side story taking place in the same universe than a proper sequel. It should have been titled Kirkwall: A Dragon Age Adventure or somesuch.

There were some elements of the game I liked - in theory. I like the idea that it was all being retold by Varric, who may be an unreliable narrator. That made things like the "waves of enemies" tolerable from an immersion perspective (even if I hated it from a mechanical perspective). I liked the idea of a smaller-scale story, set in one area over a long period of time.

But beyond the mechanical issues in the game (enemy waves and the stupid area recycling) the main reason I think the game was so poorly received is the lack of choice.

Dragon Age: Origins arguably had the most substantive choices available of any RPG. Just counting the different endgame variables involving who ends up ruling (Alistair+Anora, Alistair alone, Anora alone, Hero+Alistair, and Hero+Anora) along with the ways to defeat the Archdemon (You die, Alistair dies, Loghain dies, Dark ritual) there are 20 different "main endings." Plus of course dozens of other variables. In contrast, Dragon Age 2 railroaded you via Anders' actions no matter what you did. Doesn't matter how much tension you attempted to diffuse. Doesn't matter if you romanced Anders. All of your choices are for naught. It was an RPG written by someone who wanted to write a goddamned book - who was so in love with their own story they were unwilling to let the player tell their own story.

Which would have been fine, if it wasn't called Dragon Age 2. It was implied to be a sequel of the first game, when the direction they chose in terms of the fundamentals of game design was about as diametrically opposed as possible while still being recognizably a CRPG.

Totally agree. That's why it is a very good thing that the RPG genre is so very broad and includes a pretty wide range of different types of games that can satisfy many different tastes and preferences. And I also agree about DA2. I very much enjoyed playing that game, as I did DA:I, and am really looking forward to DA4 in the hope that through Anthem Bioware has learned its lesson and there's a chance some form of the old Bioware will be back.

Do you guys still think there is hope for Bioware to come back?

I read an interesting critique of the game, which pointed out that the offscreen adventures your advisors have sound infinitely more fun than you traipsing around the forest collecting mosaic pieces and wine bottles. Which is - you know - a weird thing for the inquisitor to be doing.

I'm not sure how much of this has to do with Bioware chasing Bethesda's boring-ass single-player MMO format, and how much is just low-quality padding due to lack of time, since actual quality content would require more hours of work. Even Dragon Age: Origins had a bunch of stupid bulletin-board style MMO quests.

I'm pretty sure everything about it is Bioware chasing Bethesda, they just did a poor job at that, and should have stuck to their strengths. I would have been much more happy with a smaller game with more to do.

My personal arguments were never about any game being good/bad. There are games that I consider to be RPGs proper that I'd happily call pretty bad -- I likewise never called the Witcher a bad game. That said, I can definitely make a connection between "Nu"-Bioware (post their D&Dish games) and The Witcher though. Everything that came before, it's difficult. There's a German Channel on the Tube called DevPlay where the (in)famous argument was made by one German games developer that: "The RPG is dead -- there are only action-adventures anymore." Every time I fire up a game like The Witcher (3), I have to think of that quote.

As said, don't want to get into a debate about genre definitions though, that's futile. To me it's just that BG and Witcher 3 are worlds apart, right form their core vision of what they were trying to accomplish. This is nothing bad, as diversity is a good thing. However, if it is widely considered that they belong to the same genre, they couldn't be much more different games. And this goes all across the board, in terms of their storytelling technique, presentation, systems, gameplay, generally mechanics, pacing, the entire package.

Not that any of that matters.

I have to disagre. The fact that a German gamer guy said it doesn't make it true. You can call it action RPG and pretend it's completely different but I don't buy it. And even if you define RPG as narrowly as RPG with a RTwP or turn base, it's in the title. You have many games that are "real rpg" even today. And just for curiousity, where would you put Kotor and dragon age? Why they are less RPG? I hope it's not because they are not dnd based, since many of the games in the title are not dnd based as well.

No

+1

I would like to share my own experience after reading all of you.

Pathfinder kingmaker is, for now, the game the closest to the BG-feel and here is why for me.

First I would like to talk about the level-up aspect of the game.
I remember the first time I play, it was so hard at the beginning. But at the same time I was really charmed by all the possibility I have to develop my team.
Each level let you free to choose where you go and after few games I became familiar with the gameplay and so I could tried many funny things.
And each charm had his charm, his particularity. So this is one of the reason which make me play again and again.

What make me leave the game first was the realm management. I was SO happy to have a realm to manage ! This is why I couldn't get how, despite of all my efforts and vigilance, I ended up ruined, game over. So harsh. It's, maybe one of the biggest fail for me. All the game I played after I put the realm difficulty at the lowest and I found it still not dat easy...

The combat are the second point which give me this BG-feel. I played RTwP (cause obviously I like it) and it was just like BG. The fight begin, everybody move and shot and fight and I pause, think, give orders and let's go (before I pause one sec later xD).
This point, I insist is crucial for a game who would be a successor (or wathever the name you want to use. Someone said me BG3 was not a successor but a sequel. I don't really get the point but maybe it's the langage barrier). I really appreciate, from BG1 to pathfinder, the flow you can have with RTwP. It feels so more real (can't get the people who said turn-based is more real. :-/)
So I enjoyed the fights in pathfinder cause there was intense, hard, with lot of spells and move from all the party.

The story. Honestly, I think I'm in a way really demanding about this point however I'm ever surprised by how people easily trash-talked about the story of the games.
People should remember that it's hard and harder to create original synopsis and it's not really a problem. I mean, a lot of really great stories have a pretty basic synopsis. What matters is how the story is narrated.
So, I appreciate pathfinder, appreciate the treason, when we had to choose between two companion quests. I appreciate the narrative, the bitch who played with me, etc etc.
Sure, there is ever a moment when you think "I would have had the opportunity to do it" but we have to be humble and a little cooperative sometimes.
By the way, I ever loved the story of BG1, loved the one of PoE 2, really loved the one of the Witcher 3... Well.. Wait... I'm looking for a story I didn't appreciate.
I know ! Assassin's creed story are the worst ! I love the games but can't stand the narrative which is dramatic fro my point of view.
About BG3, I'll wait to see. As I already said, the story looks classic at first but we could be surprised so I'll be patient and won't judge on EA a "looks-like-pretty-classic-story". MAybe it'll be awesome, maybe it'll be "meh". Wait and see !

In pathfinder I really appreciate the companions ! there was interesting, some archetype and some others who was not. They had good side quests and even some amazing surprise (Ho Tristan why... :'( ). Even the romance was good, they came step by step and we could feel the companions know what they want.
And yeah it's a direct critics against BG3. The romance so far are really deceiving. I give a staff to Gale so two days later he wanna blow mine ? Seriously ? I let Astarion suck my neck so two days later he wanna... well you get it. This is not romance, this is strange nymphomania.
Well.. Maybe it's cause of the tadpole !!! What a twistplot.

In Pathfinder, I love the freedom we had to explore. It's ever a little confusing but this is a big part of the pleasure.
This is something BG3 doesn't give me but it's still EA, so maybe with more content we will be able to travel wherever we want ? I hope so. For now, it's a little to directive.

To conclude, for me, the BG-spirit is a good balance between :
- character with lot of classes and level-up possibilities
- freedom to explore
- flowless fights (not fast and furious, but at least not slow and tedious)
- strong main story, well-narrated
- memorable companions

Maybe I forgot something, but at the moment this is the 4 major elements I'm looking for.

😭

All I know is kingmaker is the best CRPG I've ever played and I'm about 10x more excited for WOTR than BG3 full release.

Yes I agree with this, but I'd also add that by the time Bioware made DA:I they had been working on six games in the same family-line: BG1, BG2, NwN1, DA:O, DA2, and DA:I. I think they were burned out and their creative juices had run dry by then. They needed to go do some other things, make some other types of games -- even if only RPGs in a different type of setting than high fantasy. So to answer @Abits' question, I do have some hope that the huge turnover of personnel at Bioware in recent months has been good for them. They badly needed new blood. Let's keep in mind that when they made BG1 they were still very much a nobody, a studio most gamers had never heard of. So it is very possible their next game can be akin to starting fresh. Since I love the DA franchise, its lore and its setting, I am keeping my hopes alive.

I'll buy Dragon Age: Dread Wolf Rising if it ever shows up. But that's probably their last shot as a studio within EA. If it has the same response as Andromeda and Anthem, EA is going to disband the studio totally.

Man though, it's taking them some time. DA:I came out in 2014! I mean, Dragon Age II had too quick of a development cycle (like a year and a half) - which is part of why it was a failure. But they turned around DA:I after only about 3.5 years. It's closing in on twice as long now, and we've only seen a handful of very crude renderings. Of course, part of that is because the original game development was halted to help move along Andromeda/Anthem, and EA at one point canceled entirely because the game had no live-service component. Last I've heard it's going to be live-service now, which will probably kill the franchise for good.

There is no way EA will let Bioware go back to its roots. Instead it will further push the "shooter with sex scenes" gameplay the later Mass Effect titles had.

Based on how da2 came out maybe they should take their time. I don't care if I have to wait another 3 years if it means getting some semblance of Bioware back

Again, EA now only wants to do "live service" games. This means some combination of microtransactions, lootboxes, releasing a buggy, unfinished game at launch which will be finished a year later with DLC, etc. There will be some component beyond forking out the $50-$60 at launch, that's for sure.

While this model is compatible with some styles of RPG, I do not think it's compatible with the sort of story-heavy RPGs that Bioware cut its teeth on.