Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The elephant in the room that nobody is talking about

Ok. Here comes a list.

Baldur’s Gate 1
Baldur’s Gate 2
Planescape Torment
Icewind Dale 1
Icewind Dale 2
Temple of Elemental Evil
Pillars of Eternity 1
Pillars of Eternity 2
Pathfinder Kingmaker
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous
Solasta
Fallout 1
Fallout 2
Atom
Might & Magic (entire series)
Wizardry (entire series)
Darklands
Realms of Arkania

I could probably go on for a while. I’m struggling more to remember series I played than to include them to this list, frankly.

Point is: they are all RPGs with a day/night rotation that for one reason or another didn’t really bother to include anything resembling complex NPC scheduling.
As I said the feature is more a rarity than a real expectation for most players.


Now if you want to make the questionable (if not downright spurious) claim that people were angry about it and protested that such a half-assed implementations could as well be removed from these games, you are going to be the one that will need to prove it mentioning a sizable sample of users saying so.

“Exceptional claims need exceptional evidence” and all that jazz.
Otherwise I’ll stand my original point that many ( most, really) would be fine with it.
Especially when the alternative offered would be no day/night cycle at all.

i see you didn't put Divinity Original Sin 2 on that list. hmph!

In 2008, it was a way to market games. But that faded after a while. It was no longer really the "hot thing" and a lot of people did not like it due to not being able to find things at night. But here is an article that goes over it I found just googling it:
https://www.vg247.com/2020/06/18/game-developers-still-turned-day-night-cycles/

It's not even a "way to market games" these days, it's pretty much a basic expectation of most open world titles.
Even (and maybe ESPECIALLY) outside of the RPG genre, in fact.

The article linked (which is not really saying a whole lot to begin with) basically reinforces their relevance outside of being "marketing tools", by the way.

Adding to the list with older day/night cycles (of some form or the other) RPGS.

Arcanum (freeking A++ AMAZING GAME. Dynamic dialogue+story content, real-time, turn-based, and a FASTER VERSION OF TURN BASED. Super interesting world and system, incredible music) (2001)
Ultima 7 black gate/serpent isles (1992)
Nox (2000)
Betrayal at Krondor (1993) (The first 3D/dynamically?)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003)
Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (2004)
Gothic series (2001-)
Neverwinter Nights series (2002-)
Pool of Radiance Ruins of Myth Drannor (2001)

Ultima VII, Arcanum and Gothic HAD some NPC scheduling, though.
I was specifically listing games that didn’t.


Also, Bloodlines had no day/night cycle. It was set on a perpetual night (not canonically, but in practice).

I honestly can’t remember what Kotor and both the NWN did with day/night (if they had it at all) despise playing them years ago.

There's no day night cycle in KOTOR; there isn't a clock. It's just always bright or always dark depending on the planet. NWN has a clock and passing time but IIRC at least for NWN it's mostly cosmetic. Time of day doesn't provide context for any quests or events. I don't recall if shops are closed at night either. But I'd take a cosmetic day/night cycle and passing time over not having a sense of time at all any day. At the very least, I can do things like pulling out the torch walking edgy-looking on the streets, or eating food at 8pm and resting at 11pm and all that rp stuff and pretend that I have a normal eating/sleeping schedule cause in real life I barely have one.

Mutant Year Zero had flashlight it was cool for darker areas. It had massive impact on atmosphere.

All the Elder Scrolls have a day/night cicle (some even seasons). I remember that you could enter, in Daggerfall's huge dungeons, in day (or night) and get out in night (or day).

In Daggerfall it was a factor to account for in case you decided to have the "sunlight damage" malus or to become a vampire, after the sunfall cities had their gates closed, in small villages there was no one on the road, shops were all closed. In skyrim too (with the exeption that vampires could walk in daylight :S ).

In FF XV night even had different and more dangerous monsters.

Yes, Day/Night Cycle would be such a perk for the atmosphere and the immersivity.
It would be so BEAUTIFUL (Skyrim is so beautiful because of that...)

Since Larian said they actually want to hear what we have to say on matters, I'll go ahead and agree that I believe a Day/night cycle would add plenty to the game. I'll also throw in that caves need to be darker.

Lol. Welcome to the club. There is a mega thread. Please go out there and add a note so they see it.