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.

Last edited by KingNothing69; 26/10/20 01:58 AM.