Gameplaywise, RTWP was never all that great – but there’s some fan-made combat mod for Icewind Dale 2 that I installed way back, and the intensity and perfect level of difficulty it added to every encounter was a stroke of genius.
I installed combat mods for BG2 ‘way back’ that likewise made it interesting, but nowhere near as perfectly balanced as that combat mod for ID2.
I’ve no interest in multiplayer – don’t have time for it, never will, so it could be a proper pile of shite and it wouldn’t bother me in the least.
Storywise, Larian is all over the gaff with BG3. The latest trailer exposed how insecure they are in their vision – it’s everything but the kitchen sink in terms of ‘tone’. A hobbling, yabbering narratively-inbred thing that doesn’t know if it should be campy/goofy – Larian’s trademark style – or all ‘serious’, with it’s sombre ‘My life was dismantled piece by piece’ opening.
‘Show don’t tell’ is a cliché in fiction, when a lot of the best literary writers paid this no heed, to astounding effect.
But here Larian should heed that advice as we’re being bashed over the head with the drama they’re trying to set up.
Of course it’ll be a playable game. Their artists are talented, if only they could go back to the solid ‘chiaroscuro’ style from earlier patches over the horrid ‘make everything bright’ style. The blacker, starker graphics work great in particular for video games, which still cannot match the visual punch of reality. Yet they erased this darker style in later patches – there are many threads on the topic. It’s amazing how bad that decision is, art-wise.
As someone who used to dabble in painting/sketching and even won a few awards for it ‘back in the day’, I happen to have strong opinions on the visual art side.
This is the only place I can truly complement Larian. They have genuinely talented artists – there are many places in the game where the graphical work is exceptional. More so in the later parts of the act, such as the unfortunately named ‘Grymforge’ (did you get that it’s a grim forge???).
But despite their artistic talent, BG2 had, as others mentioned, a more evocatively lowkey aesthetic, that knew when to dial things up and when to tone things down. It matters not a damn that it’s an old game, because the art was hand-drawn. That will never age. 10 years from now, though, BG3’s 3D graphics will look potato-esque.
The drow city in BG2 had a sinister, spidery menace. Likewise, the cerebral geometric shapes within the illithid city were far more imaginative and alien than Larian’s Hollywood blockbuster take on the ship of these creatures, with the silly flashy floor lights etc.
Character-wise, as others have mentioned here, BG2 knocked it out of the park. Someone here once chastised me for saying BG2’s devs weren’t ‘having a laugh’. Yeah, they clearly were in all aspects of the characterisation. Where BG3 tries too hard to please with its overly special posse of dry-shites, BG2’s characters were rough-hewn, made for the craic rather than the memes.
There is no story on earth that is a masterpiece that will appeal to everyone, flawlessly, and not have some aspects people view as naff, dated, derivate, or what-have-you.
But you have to look at the overall thing and what it achieves. Does it have the ‘magic’, in its rough, imperfect way? BG2 did. BG3 does not.
It will be a competent, big-budget game, with good gameplay, possibly great artwork and a truly forgettable story.
Last edited by konmehn; 03/03/23 09:31 PM.
