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

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?