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Hey everyone, I just wanted to share some of the reservations I have about Larian taking over the project. A couple of my posts have been deleted so far... I hope Larian will recognize that criticism is important to advancing their art and that my words are worth keeping around, even if most people disagree with them (which seems to be the case). Anyway, here are the big concerns I have about Larian taking over the BG franchise:

Tonal Whiplash: Now granted, I only played the first Divinity: Original Sin, but I felt it really suffered from some storytelling blunders. The player is introduced via an ultimately pointless murder that immediately gets interrupted by a brief glimpse of some cosmic horror, interspersed with lul-random, wink-wink, genre-aware slapstick comedy. All these competing tones were woven together really inelegantly, and it really hindered my own engagement with the plot.
Baldur’s Gate as a series, by contrast, has an extremely consistent tone. It’s a story about loss, death, and destiny. Granted, the game is humorous, but its humor is largely incidental, where it works. There are moments of outright silliness, but they’re some of the weakest moments in the games. The real depth comes from the narrative, and the real comedy comes from the characterization: Edwin’s sarcastic, breathy asides, Minsc’s classically heroic overexuberance, Viconia’s complexities that contrast the values of her people with the starkly different culture of the surface.
Not a Spiritual Successor: I didn’t understand when critics described Larian’s games as “spiritual successors” to Baldur’s Gate. I only played the first Original Sin, but in my mind it didn’t match the gameplay, mood, storytelling, themes, or characterization at all. DOS places emphasis on puzzle-tactics that over-emphasize elemental interactions and incorporate a lot of conveniently-placed gunpowder barrels. Its mood is light-hearted and wacky. It features almost no deep characterization: companions are mere cyphers with no personality and NPCs are vague sketches that aren’t given much time or consideration. The Baldur’s Gate franchise, specifically SoA, featured historically deep characterization of a type that hadn’t yet been seen in video games… real, deep relationships with fleshed-out characters who would chime in to contradict and make demands of the player. Most were given their own quests, windows into rich backstories, lives that didn’t just revolve entirely around the Bhaalspawn… what exactly were those critics referring to when they described DOS as BG’s spiritual successor? They are both party-based CRPGs? That’s pretty shallow.
Full Voice-Over: The increase of voice-acting in games negatively impacted the depth of storytelling and narrative choice. Games like PS:T and BG2 were able to tell really rich stories and engage in deep, thorough dialogue and characterization precisely because they weren't expected to spend tons and tons of money on full voice-over. Quality of storytelling has declined since it became bog standard in RPGs. How is Larian planning to deal with this?
Real-Time-with-Pause vs. Turn-Based: The Baldur's Gate series is the definitive game franchise for real-time-with-pause combat. It's how the games were made to be- a real-time adaptation of turn-based D&D mechanics that a few clever people realized could be automated for a video game. I'm very concerned that Larian is at the helm because they are known for turn-based games. You can already observe a big rift forming in the game's prospective community around this issue... the old Infinity Engine system is hard for new players to grapple with, and games using it will never be as popular as a simple turn-based system, but for me, it's crucial to the identity of the series and the fast-paced excitement of the gameplay. For me, the fact that's it's even being debated is sacrilegious.
Too Much Freedom?: I am really concerned that Sven Winke keeps playing up the open-ended nature of Larian’s games in regard to BG3. He and Mike Mearls really seem on the same wavelength about the fun in D&D being derived from being able to say whatever you want to the DM and the DM adjusting to suit your decision. From the recent interviews, Sven really thinks meaningful choice in a video games means “if you see a chair you should be able to light it on fire and throw it at someone.” Sorry, but all the moveable cheese and baskets in the world can’t make Skyrim a successful story-driven RPG.
DOS offers a lot of choice, but it’s mostly superficial. It garnered a lot of praise for being open-ended, when really all the environmental interaction boiled down to obvious elemental combos and a tons of cartoonishly big gunpowder barrels placed all over the battlegrounds for no real reason.
BG2 gave you freedom in overcoming challenges in the sense that you had 300 spells at your disposal and a crazy number of magical items and consumables… you could die in a fight, reload, cast Clairvoyance to survey the surrounding rooms, find a better angle of approach, swap out some useless potions in your quick slots for the ones you need (plus that Wand of Summoning you’ve been saving for a situation like this) and then try again, READY AS FUCK. When you won after that, you felt great; you got that awesome satisfaction of knowing you found your own unique way of overcoming a challenge, playing with the full range of toys that the game gave you. Didn’t matter if you totally circumvented an encounter- the gratification came from knowing that you found a valid, easy way around it.
I never got the same feeling from a DOS encounter. It was always more like, oh, I’m dying, I should try again and use one more of those barrels, and put it in that big gaping hole where they want me to put it. I’m glad these barrels are all over the place!

Calling It Baldur's Gate "3": I'm already nervous about this game being a cynical, shameless cash grab banking on nostalgia, and the fact that they named this game Baldur's Gate 3 isn't reassuring. The story of Baldur's Gate is over… it ended formally with Throne of Bhaal. Granted, some of those souls were working on the Black Hound a few years later, but it never came to fruition, and who can say what it would have dealt with?
The pertinent question that no interviewers have asked is, in what sense is this going to be a third installment of the franchise? The off-chance that Boo or Viconia might show up is not enough to warrant giving the title that 3.
There have been other spinoff games set in the same universe – Dark Alliance, for example – that used subtitles to distinguish themselves from the actual series. This was because although they take place in the same geographic region, they don’t engage heavily with the narrative of BG1 and BG2. So why are they calling this game BG3 and not, oh, Baldur’s Gate: Attack of the Mind Flayers? (lol) Because they’re cashing in on the name.
Mind Flayers?: The illithid: a classic monster of D&D and a wonderfully frightening, strange, alien being. It is precisely that alien nature that makes them so frightening. In the abstract, you only ever need one mind flayer in D&D: a player character has only got one brain… and that brain being eaten is enough to kill that PC… and a session where one PC dies is still scary as hell!
An illithid’s ‘fear factor’ is derived from its alien nature… it is less and less scary the more commonplace it becomes… once you’re fighting a hundred illithid, they might as well be zombies or orcs… that should be obvious to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of horror. The fact that the story beat they’re leading with for this game is “the whole city becomes mind flayers” really raises red flags for me.
I know this teaser isn’t the opening cinematic, but just as a point of contrast, BG1’s opener, which this trailer consciously imitated, immediately introduced us to a really daunting, compelling villain: Sarevok. His spiked armor, glowing yellow eyes, and orgiastic chuckle at the prospect of killing that fellow Bhaalspawn really sold him as a villain and got us all wondering, how the hell are we going to take that guy down?? It didn’t matter that he was basically a human; he was brought to life in that cinematic, and a mundane villain with good characterization will always be more impactful than a villain who’s defining characteristic is that he’s weird looking.
Summary: Basically, I’m really concerned about this project. I’m a huge, huge Baldur’s Gate fan, and a fan of all Infinity Engine games. But I’m really, really, worried about whatever this is coming down the pipeline, because Larian has not proved itself to be aware or competent with the design or storytelling principles of the original series. I need some assurance that Larian is serious about this project, and the legacy they have inherited.

TLDR: It’s very possible that the next Baldur’s Gate could be a lul-random, turn-based puzzle-fest where you drop chandeliers on hundreds of mind flayers. Be afraid.

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Originally Posted by tundalus
Hey everyone, I just wanted to share some of the reservations I have about Larian taking over the project. A couple of my posts have been deleted so far...


I guess I will begin and finish with a reply to the above section. One you could not have had a couple of post deleted since this is your only post. You only joined the forums 4 minutes before you posted this. Either you have not posted before this, or for some reason you had to created another account to post this post. Were banned for your previous post?

As to answer your question about should it be called BG3? Wizards of the Coast thinks so or they wouldn't let Larian call it that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIdSoaR7SH4

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Originally Posted by tundalus
Real-Time-with-Pause vs. Turn-Based: The Baldur's Gate series is the definitive game franchise for real-time-with-pause combat. It's how the games were made to be- a real-time adaptation of turn-based D&D mechanics that a few clever people realized could be automated for a video game. I'm very concerned that Larian is at the helm because they are known for turn-based games. You can already observe a big rift forming in the game's prospective community around this issue... the old Infinity Engine system is hard for new players to grapple with, and games using it will never be as popular as a simple turn-based system, but for me, it's crucial to the identity of the series and the fast-paced excitement of the gameplay. For me, the fact that's it's even being debated is sacrilegious.

It's funny that you say this because Baldur's Gate was only made real time with pause because BioWare was doing an RTS that got cancelled, and they didn't have enough time to convert their engine into a turn-based system. So no, Baldur's Gate was never made to be RTwP. It was a complete accident born out of necessity.

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Tonal whiplash: GO FOR THE EYES BOO! GO FOR THE EYES!
FOR GREAT GOODNESS!
My grand grandfathers second grade uncles niece....

Why do you people always think nobody here has played Baldurs Gate or is too lazy to google search for 5 minutes to be able to point out that the whole "Baldurs gate is such a deep and serious story" yadda yadda isnt true.
Baldurs gate, like every RPG, has its silly moments and it has its serious moments. Just like the Divinity games.
You played one of em, OS1, a game that is based on northern central european fairytales.
A game that was basically a toolset of systems rather than a big story.

You couldve played Divine Divinity, or Divinity 2 or OS2 and youd be saying very different things. Im not even the Larian studios defense force here, Humor is their thing and theyve made games like Dragon commander that basically throw story out of the window in favor of political satire, but it snot like thats the only kind of story they can do, not to mention they work together with WOTC ont his.
You realy think a company like WOTC that is notorious about enforcing the boundries of their property would let Larian just run wild?


Full voice over: thats your opinion. Baldurs gate didnt have full voice over because doing full voice over is expensive. OS2 originally wasnt going to have it either. I dont realy see the point here, how does having the text read out to you negativeley impact the story? Just turn it off.

Combat System: Larian has done Diablo like ARPG combat, something like RTWP (beyond divinity, not realy but eh), Oblivion style combat, Dragons with jetpacks, RTS and full Turn based.
i wouldnt say Larian is "known" for turnbased combat when the majority of their games arent.
Thats like saying Obsidian is known for their fish romance plots.
From what Sven said, well be getting a compleltey new system. And realy, RTWP is a bad system, ive said this before and ill say it again, RTWP is a limitation of its time. If the developers of that time wouldve had todays technology, they would have made a very different kind of combat system.


Too much freedom: Dios mio. I dont even know what to tell you. One of the reasons BG was loved was because of the gorillion of different dialogue options.Its a DnD game, freedom is the highest goal here. And realy, you dont like Cheese? You ever played a Wizard in any infinity engine game? Or in DnD for that matter. The class could only be cheesier if it was yellow and had holes in it.
And then in the next paragraph, thats the funniest bit, you essentialy talk about cheesing encounters.
Yes, you get exactly that feeling in OS if you actually think about what you do. Chances are, you just didnt explore around, you didnt fully abuse the capeabilities of the system.
If you havent built a very strong charcter just so you can one shot bosses by throwing death fog at them, you havent lived.

Muh Cashgrab.
Yeah right, Larian the cashgrab studio. Larian "Lets break up with Publisher so we can make the kind of games we want to play" the cashgrab studio.


Yeah and then you go on a tangent about fighting hundreds of illithids.... because of a CGI trailer.

You know what, this is a waste of time, you were obviously banned becaue you came here to get angry.

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Except in extreme and very rare cases, accounts should only be banned for spamming.

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Originally Posted by Raze

Except in extreme and very rare cases

Ugh, don't remind me. D:


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Originally Posted by Iuris Tantum
Originally Posted by tundalus
Real-Time-with-Pause vs. Turn-Based: The Baldur's Gate series is the definitive game franchise for real-time-with-pause combat. It's how the games were made to be- a real-time adaptation of turn-based D&D mechanics that a few clever people realized could be automated for a video game. I'm very concerned that Larian is at the helm because they are known for turn-based games. You can already observe a big rift forming in the game's prospective community around this issue... the old Infinity Engine system is hard for new players to grapple with, and games using it will never be as popular as a simple turn-based system, but for me, it's crucial to the identity of the series and the fast-paced excitement of the gameplay. For me, the fact that's it's even being debated is sacrilegious.

It's funny that you say this because Baldur's Gate was only made real time with pause because BioWare was doing an RTS that got cancelled, and they didn't have enough time to convert their engine into a turn-based system. So no, Baldur's Gate was never made to be RTwP. It was a complete accident born out of necessity.

Source?

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Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Iuris Tantum
Originally Posted by tundalus
Real-Time-with-Pause vs. Turn-Based: The Baldur's Gate series is the definitive game franchise for real-time-with-pause combat. It's how the games were made to be- a real-time adaptation of turn-based D&D mechanics that a few clever people realized could be automated for a video game. I'm very concerned that Larian is at the helm because they are known for turn-based games. You can already observe a big rift forming in the game's prospective community around this issue... the old Infinity Engine system is hard for new players to grapple with, and games using it will never be as popular as a simple turn-based system, but for me, it's crucial to the identity of the series and the fast-paced excitement of the gameplay. For me, the fact that's it's even being debated is sacrilegious.

It's funny that you say this because Baldur's Gate was only made real time with pause because BioWare was doing an RTS that got cancelled, and they didn't have enough time to convert their engine into a turn-based system. So no, Baldur's Gate was never made to be RTwP. It was a complete accident born out of necessity.

Source?


i never heard of that before. yes really interested in the source or proof.

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Hate to say it, but after playing most of D:OS and thinking it was very good but not great, I share alot of the OP's concerns. Really, what raised my antenna was in one of the recent interviews I saw, Sven mentioned there were some of their team members who hadn't even heard of the BG franchise. However I am confident that Larian will be successful because I do think there is genuine passion in the Divinity games and from what I could see in the interviews, a true reverence of and respect for the legacy of the BG series.

I am truly excited to see what they come up with.

Originally Posted by Iuris Tantum
It's funny that you say this because Baldur's Gate was only made real time with pause because BioWare was doing an RTS that got cancelled, and they didn't have enough time to convert their engine into a turn-based system. So no, Baldur's Gate was never made to be RTwP. It was a complete accident born out of necessity.


Ha! What a load of absolute nonsense!

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Not sure which part you thought was nonsense, but there was a game called "Battlefield Infinity" that the engine was developed for. But whether or not they had enough time to convert it or not to turn base I don't know.

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Infinity_Engine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWare#1990s:_Shattered_Steel_and_Baldur's_Gate (Just copy and past the link, i can't figure out how to make it clickable)

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/16/not-forgotten-bioware-on-baldurs-gate/

Last edited by Nobody_Special; 23/06/19 08:54 PM. Reason: fixed rock paper shotgun link
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OP posted the exact same drivel on Reddit a couple of days ago where people (rightfully) called him out for not understanding what he was talking about and addressed his concerns, causing him to subsequently delete his posts. ( [1] [2] )
Considering he seemingly just copied and pasted the entire body of text to Larian's forums I simply have to assume he's trying to provoke some sort of reaction for the sake of inciting negativity sleep

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called it.
Theres a lot of negativity about BG3, on reddit, here, on 4chan.
I assume its just 3 realy salty people trying to poison the well

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I don't understand why you people want to change the fundamental mechanics of the greatest rpg of all time into a boring TB game?

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Because maybe just maybe it wasnt the greatest RPG of all time, and the greatest RPG of all time deosnt exist yet, instead it needs to be created by taking good things from games that exist and putting them together, aswell as coming up with new things that improve the games that came before.

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Originally Posted by Sordak
the greatest RPG of all time deosnt exist yet

Oh, it does, it's just that we still haven't yet determined whether it's Oblivion or The Sims 3 that should take the crown.


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Originally Posted by Nobody_Special
Not sure which part you thought was nonsense, but there was a game called "Battlefield Infinity" that the engine was developed for. But whether or not they had enough time to convert it or not to turn base I don't know.

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Infinity_Engine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWare#1990s:_Shattered_Steel_and_Baldur's_Gate (Just copy and past the link, i can't figure out how to make it clickable)

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/16/not-forgotten-bioware-on-baldurs-


Yes, it was their exploratory demo called "Battleground: Infinity." But absolutely nowhere in each of those 3 links is there any mention of problems that resulted in them having to convert any system, combat mode, or any one feature at all when they were making BG.

In fact, it says "Upon seeing the demo, [Interplay] suggested it might be a good fit for the Dungeons & Dragons license, which it had just snatched away from SSI. Infinity was recast in the world of Forgotten Realms."

And then,
Quote
Virtually every RPG owes a debt to D&D, and Baldur's Gate was in some ways an effort to take the genre back to its roots, but in a very modern package.


So yes, saying that BG was initially TB but was later converted to RTwP is complete and utter nonsense. It was always RTwP.

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Originally Posted by vometia
Oh, it does, it's just that we still haven't yet determined whether it's Oblivion or The Sims 3 that should take the crown.

If Shivering Isles is installed, it's a pretty easy choice between the two. I mean... Nobody has as many friends as the man with many cheeses.

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Originally Posted by Artagel
Originally Posted by Nobody_Special
Not sure which part you thought was nonsense, but there was a game called "Battlefield Infinity" that the engine was developed for. But whether or not they had enough time to convert it or not to turn base I don't know.

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Infinity_Engine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWare#1990s:_Shattered_Steel_and_Baldur's_Gate (Just copy and past the link, i can't figure out how to make it clickable)

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/16/not-forgotten-bioware-on-baldurs-gate/


Yes, it was their exploratory demo called "Battleground: Infinity." But absolutely nowhere in each of those 3 links is there any mention of problems that resulted in them having to convert any system, combat mode, or any one feature at all when they were making BG.

In fact, it says "Upon seeing the demo, [Interplay] suggested it might be a good fit for the Dungeons & Dragons license, which it had just snatched away from SSI. Infinity was recast in the world of Forgotten Realms."

And then,
Quote
Virtually every RPG owes a debt to D&D, and Baldur's Gate was in some ways an effort to take the genre back to its roots, but in a very modern package.


So yes, saying that BG was initially TB but was later converted to RTwP is complete and utter nonsense. It was always RTwP.


You really need to read things. I never said they converted it to be RTwP. I said it didn't say they didn't have time to convert it to TB.

In each of the links it uses the words "re-engineered", "converted" and "reworked" inline with the D&D ruleset. Since D&D is a Turn-Base game it boils down to that there engine was already RTwS because there were developing it be an MMO.

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Originally Posted by Nobody_Special
You really need to read things. I never said they converted it to be RTwP. I said it didn't say they didn't have time to convert it to TB.

In each of the links it uses the words "re-engineered", "converted" and "reworked" inline with the D&D ruleset. Since D&D is a Turn-Base game it boils down to that there engine was already RTwS because there were developing it be an MMO.


Hmm. I never said you did. You asked what part of "Iuris Tantum"s quote I thought was nonsense. That quote only really had one primary idea in it.

Then you posted links that mentioned Battleground Infinity, none of which contained anything that confirmed the idea of the quote in question or terms associated with it. All of the "re-engineering", "converting", and "reworking" you are referencing is clearly inferring the process of going from PnP to cRPG. In other words, the entire process and not a specific feature like TB or RTwP.... as the quote in question states.

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Look I could not think of better hands to make this game. We all have high expectations, and we have nothing to draw any logical conclusions at this point. Skepticism is healthy but very concerned would be a little strong at this point.

They are fans, and have high expectations themselves. Self publishing with no overlords meddling with the vision, or rushing the production schedule will give it a great chance of succeeding.

It's the game industry.keep expectations low and hope for the best.

Game on brother

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