I really like Pathfinder world building. They have towns and people and lore and so forth. I love how in Kingmaker I built more villages and I could go visit them and their people. I like how in WotR I visit lots of locations, each with their own stories and history.
I do not fully get that from BG3. Instead I get questions. Lots of questions. Why were fishermen on the shore? Where was their village? Did the nautiloid crash into it? I don't see signs of a village. Moonhaven is desolate, and it has been for 130 years. So... And here's this grove that's got druids, maybe twenty total. No gardens. No nothing. Where do they get food? Hunting? Hunting what? Where are all the animals? Foraging? Foraging what? There are hardly any plants to eat in the area. No night. No time. No weather. Fires burn forever. People have the same convos.
Remember, I LOVE BG3. I'm just saying that Pathfinder feels more like a vast world and more alive to me. BG3 feels very unreal with everything smashed together, no animals roaming, no commoners, etc.
Seeing Larian's world design I'm always puzzled that Vincke sees Ultima 7 as his "dream RPG". If WOTR feels natural -- Ultima 7 is basically a world simulation. NPCs live their lives too, day turns to night, enemy encounters feel natural and can be comparably rare (like facing a wolf in the wilderness). The only thing the DOS games too take from Ultima (7) is that you can basically pick up everything. And the top down perspective. The maps in BG3 are just as compressed, with druid groves sitting right next to dungeons sitting right next to goblin camps sitting right next to swamps, where the game suddenly changes to night time. It's dense, it's packed for sure. But it's basically a D&D theme park.
However, what I like more in BG3 than in DOS is that each map isn't essentially one combat parcour, ideally meant to be tackled in a very specific way. https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....6DD195AD430C7FE5EC87F8AE67A996550F93337/ Part of that is down to D&D: Gear doesn't have levels on its own, with a lvl 2 sword in DOS basically doing double the amount of damage than a lvl 1 sword. A sword's a sword, end of. Plus, not every path to every destination in BG3 has enemy mobs gate keeping that destination from going there. (Additionally, depending on your character, some enemies may not even turn hostile). In that regard, Owlcat could take a few cues, certainly. They seem to be a developer that thinks padding the game's length by placing another couple mobs onto the maps, and then some more, is decent design.
If their Warhammer game is going to be turn-based exclusively, they'll have to change that. Or else they risk mass-alienating players quickly.
Originally Posted by Brainer
And while most RPGs are much the same in how their locations don't really change as time/story progresses, in Kingmaker's case it's especially noticeable, because it keeps harping on about how you are restoring and taming the land but it stays just as wild as it's previously been.
It's one reason why I'd love more devs to tackle smaller and more confined spaces. It's less expensive to show change and impact on locations and characters that are finite than in a quest that sees you traveling the world all the way from Mordor and back again. Obsidian's Pentiment more recently actually reminded me of this...
You're seeing the same settlement not merely during different times of the day. But seasons pass too.. eventually, the game's plot spawns over a quarter of a century. By the time the game ends, you kinda feel as if you had "lived" there with those people... newborn, dead or still alive, some of which depending on your own actions!
