Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Dragon age Origins - Next gen RPG

Hi,
So i loaded up Dragon age Origins and after the first two minutes the character movement, camera and controls feel like "next level" stuff compared to BG3.

The buildings even have roof! In BG3 we cant know for sure
[img]https://imgur.com/gallery/zr1Dubd[/img]

You're insane, in a bad way.

No, I really like BG3, but he's right.

Hardly relevant as DA:O exploration is on a flat plane with little to nothing to interact with in small, almost linear maps. Control scheme and UI in BG3 might need improvements, but DA:O wouldn't cut it either. Also DA:O feels more dated then games from 90s

I have 2 runs through BG3 now and really enjoy the game, but this stuff needs to be better in my opinion

Indeed! I am merely talking about the controls and camera here.

I think bg3 environments look much better. Other than that yeah, right now bg3 is a worse version of Dao. But that's hardly fair with the game being EA and everything. If the final product will be half as good as DAO I'll be very happy

Whoever read this forum for the last month or so may have noticed that I hate the current control scheme in BG3 like few other people on the planet (see signature), but among all the possible choices DA: Origins is possibly the last one I'd pick as a model of how to improve things.
Examples like PoE 1 and 2, Pathfinder Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous would be so much better.

Not really too much related with the topic at hand, but: I also installed DA:O few days ago and man, it was ROUGH going back to it after all this time. I didn't realize how much old it looked by modern standards.

People always bag on how DA:O looks but I don't get it. I was playing it not that long ago, and I think it still looks fine.

It was never a massive looker when it was a fresh release either, to be perfectly honest.
But still, that was a dark era when party based RPGs were almost gone entirely and so contextually it was the unquestioned "king of the genre" in term of budget/production value.

But going back to it now? It looks PLAIN. Character models are especially dull, but even a lot of its scenarios are fairly shabby.

I dunno, I played Oranges again earlier this year and was pleasantly surprised by it not looking nearly as dated nor feeling as clunky as I'd managed to remember. Whereas DA2 was uglier and more annoying than I recalled... :|

Edit: okay, I looked at the screenshots and they are a bit potato, but IMHO they're well within the bounds of being playable. It's a subjective thing but for me they're a big improvement over, say, VtM Bloodlines which was right on the threshold.

The only thing i liked about Origins camera was being able to drop floor effects well off screen with camera edge panning. Something they removed in 2 and 3 because console players cried about it.

I agree DA:O doesn't look amazing (iirc looked dated on release), but I wouldn't say it's off-putting. I played it for the first time like two years ago. Nothing wrong with controls, too, they were pretty nice... unlike the next installments, which drove me crazy, especially Inquisition.

For all of DAO’s technical and design issues, they really nailed the camera. It seems like such a simple thing, but if you compare it so something like NWN2 then you understand how bad it could have been. I really hope that Larian works in their own camera and controls. I do t hate them, but I don’t love them either.

Dunno about graphics and visuals, a matter of taste I suppose. The biggest disadvantage of 3d graphics is how quickly they become dated (there are many examples, I think the best one is the comparison between xneogears and ffviii, two games who came out relatively close to each other) . I think regardless of graphics, Dragon Age Origins brought a great cinematic value to this genre. Something that kinda started with mass effect, but here is shown in a dnd like setting.

Ok. I have only one question: how did you manage to be unsure about roofs existence, while we can even climb on them? Like really comparing the game where roofs are just shown, aside from very few scripted moments, with the game where roofs are a surface to walk on as well as the ground... And saying that... Wow!

Ironically, DA:O had the best control scheme of the Dragon Age games, so it really is possible for "progress" to follow a negative slope.

Dragon Age: Origins is legitimately my favorite game of all time, but even I don't think the camera or character controls are that spectacular, at least compared to today's standards. Comparing it to BG3 in this area also feels strange to me, since they are pretty different games, at least from a design standpoint. Being able to see the ceiling in BG3 wouldn't really add anything to the interiors imo.

Well, that's mostly because Bioware decided that the first one was popular by accident and no one actually liked tactical gameplay, so they made increasing efforts into turning the titles in the series in action RPGs.


I'm trying not to be too judgmental here, but... Really?
What did you love about it so much? I'm not even sure I'd put it in a top 20 of the genre, let alone as my favorite game of all time in general.



But you ARE able to see the ceiling in BG3. You are even able to climb on it. Well, when there's one.

Yeah, everything I say about Origins is to be taken with a grain of salt. I feel in general I am able to be objective (I dislike Kingmaker for example, but I am not blind to its appeal). Origins, one the other hand, wound me with disappointment and I can help myself stabbing it back.

Considering how much Larian was pushing for zoomed in camera, I think something like WASDa controls in BG3 would be very welcome. Other then that... BG3 needs a more efficient, precise and reliable party management scheme. I wonder what it is in traditional control scheme (Infinity Engine, PoEs, Kingmaker) that Larian doesn’t like so much. Out of those mentioned I would point to PoEs as a masterclass of the UI design (Kingmaker’s custom quick bars requires too much maintenance with constantly changing spells for my taste, and some crucial buttons are too small and too easy to misclick). I really don’t see what D:OS2/BG3 does, that PoE control scheme could’t do. Maybe 3D is the issue, but I don’t see why it would be.