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Originally Posted by Abits
The Witcher games didn't invent anything. Everything about the Witcher 3 is based upon years of Bioware games. By the way, the first major CD project work was actually a translation of BG into polish, and the first Witcher game uses the NeveeWinter Night's engine.


True, but they are still the best in open world action RPGs there is out there, even if they didn't reinvent the wheel or anything.

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Originally Posted by WarBaby2
Originally Posted by Abits
The Witcher games didn't invent anything. Everything about the Witcher 3 is based upon years of Bioware games. By the way, the first major CD project work was actually a translation of BG into polish, and the first Witcher game uses the NeveeWinter Night's engine.


True, but they are still the best in open world action RPGs there is out there, even if they didn't reinvent the wheel or anything.

The Witcher 3 is one of the best RPGs of all time. 1 and 2 have great stories ( which the thing I personally care about the most) but have too many other problems to be qualified as great. The Witcher 3 is so awesome mostly because of CD project, but also because CD project knew how to take the best elements of the games that came before it


Larian's Biggest Oversight, what to do about it, and My personal review of BG3 EA
"74.85% of you stood with the Tieflings, and 25.15% of you sided with Minthara. Good outweighs evil, it seems."
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I have to agree with the comments, I'm not getting a Witcher 3 vibe

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Originally Posted by WarBaby2
Originally Posted by Kendaric
Originally Posted by sinogy
Originally Posted by Popsculpture
I don't see the Witcher 3 parallel other than it being a fantasy game



Then you are pretty ignorant about games. The cursed swamp with hag area, the bard NPC, trying to push romance too much into story. The wannabe Witcher 3 is so obvious.


A "cursed" swamp with a hag has been part of D&D (and various european myths/fairy tales) forever. By the bard NPC you mean Volo, I assume? Volo has been around in the FR setting since 1st edition AD&D.


This... I really don't see the W3 influence either... also, where is the Witcher "pushing romance"? Geralt's love life and sexuality are simply parts of his character and story, and aside from the juvenile card collecting shenanigans in the first game, not really "pushed" at all.

...but yea, not the topic.


"pushing romance" exists in BG3 because it wants to get the same attention W3 got. While romance was an organic and very successful part of W3's story it is not like that in this game.

Do you really think developers took those tropes from some has been games or from the most successful RPG in recent years? Damn man, even the clothing of bard NPC is copied from that of W3. How do you explain that silly clothing of him in BG3? It is so out of touch that not other character's fashion matches it. It is too obvious to ignore they just wanted to make him Dandelion 2.0 but they failed miserably.

Last edited by sinogy; 22/10/20 10:04 AM.
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Originally Posted by sinogy


Damn man, even the clothing of bard NPC is copied from that of W3. How do you explain that silly clothing of him in BG3? It is so out of touch that not other character's fashion matches it. It is too obvious to ignore they just wanted to make him Dandelion 2.0 but they failed miserably.


Volo's clothing has always looked outrageous compared to everyone else's. It has nothing to do with Dandelion. Volo is often seen as "go-to" guy for adventurers, even if much of the information he provides is wildly exaggerated and contains a lot of half-truth at best.

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Originally Posted by sinogy
It is so out of touch that not other character's fashion matches it. It is too obvious to ignore they just wanted to make him Dandelion 2.0 but they failed miserably.


That's literally what Volo always looked like in lore, though, for decades - gaudy Bard - if anything, CDPR might have copied the Realms there. wink

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Originally Posted by WarBaby2
Originally Posted by sinogy
It is so out of touch that not other character's fashion matches it. It is too obvious to ignore they just wanted to make him Dandelion 2.0 but they failed miserably.


That's literally what Volo always looked like in lore, though, for decades - gaudy Bard - if anything, CDPR might have copied the Realms there. wink



Wrong. Devil is in the details. Volo has always been chubby, long haired dude with it's distinct fashion. BG3 Volo is far different from original Volo. Now, all of a sudden he has bright purple colors, stripes and an east european style fashion. I wonder who he wants to be!

Denying they wanted to make Volo to be Dandelion 2.0 is just willful blindness.

Last edited by sinogy; 22/10/20 10:49 AM.
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Originally Posted by sinogy
Originally Posted by WarBaby2
Originally Posted by sinogy
It is so out of touch that not other character's fashion matches it. It is too obvious to ignore they just wanted to make him Dandelion 2.0 but they failed miserably.


That's literally what Volo always looked like in lore, though, for decades - gaudy Bard - if anything, CDPR might have copied the Realms there. wink



Wrong. Devil is in the details. Volo has always been chubby, long haired dude with it's distinct fashion. BG3 Volo is far different from original Volo. Now, all of a sudden he has bright purple colors, stripes and an east european style fashion. I wonder who he wants to be!

Denying they wanted to make Volo to be Dandelion 2.0 is just willful blindness.


Well, aside from the colors and the obvious fact that there are no "chubby" character models in the game right now... no, I don't see it.

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Originally Posted by WarBaby2
It almost seams as if Larian is trying to imitate the wrong era of BioWare games. wink


This is exactly my impression.

Originally Posted by sinogy
"pushing romance" exists in BG3 because it wants to get the same attention W3 got. While romance was an organic and very successful part of W3's story it is not like that in this game.


They aren't copying The Witcher games with pushing romance so much, they're copying modern BioWare and making it worse.

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Originally Posted by sinogy
Originally Posted by Popsculpture
I don't see the Witcher 3 parallel other than it being a fantasy game



Then you are pretty ignorant about games. The cursed swamp with hag area, the bard NPC, trying to push romance too much into story. The wannabe Witcher 3 is so obvious.


Bards were in DnD and BG way before W3. In BG2 there was a bard theater stronghold side quest that puts W3 to shame.

BG2 brought romance to games. The only difference is nudity and sex which God of War had before W3.

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Originally Posted by WarBaby2
Originally Posted by sinogy
Originally Posted by WarBaby2
Originally Posted by sinogy
It is so out of touch that not other character's fashion matches it. It is too obvious to ignore they just wanted to make him Dandelion 2.0 but they failed miserably.


That's literally what Volo always looked like in lore, though, for decades - gaudy Bard - if anything, CDPR might have copied the Realms there. wink



Wrong. Devil is in the details. Volo has always been chubby, long haired dude with it's distinct fashion. BG3 Volo is far different from original Volo. Now, all of a sudden he has bright purple colors, stripes and an east european style fashion. I wonder who he wants to be!

Denying they wanted to make Volo to be Dandelion 2.0 is just willful blindness.


Well, aside from the colors and the obvious fact that there are no "chubby" character models in the game right now... no, I don't see it.

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Colors, hidden scarf et. just scream wannabe Dandelion. I am not saying thye are the exact same but dandelion 2.0 is undeniable. No chubby pc character doesn't mean no chubby NPC. There a lot of different body types NPC exist in the game. For example, Halsin...

Saving Volo in the first act also screams Dandelion 2.0. It is so obvious.

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Originally Posted by Rhobar121
I just copy my post from another thread.

Number of game owners according to Steam spy:
-> POE 1 is between 1-2 mln
-> POE 2 is between 500-1mln
-> Pathfinder is between 500-1mln
-> DoS2 is between 2-5mln !!!
The situation is worse if you look at other statistics.
Unfortunately, old school games are not popular.
Only PoE 1 sold over 1 million copies because it was one of the first classic RPGs in this decade. POE 2 sold much worse.

I think the issue here is more that Pillars of Eternity has an absolutely dreadful start and is a pretty bad game all the way through in my opinion. It took me multiple tries to just get through the awful, boring start. And I basically forced myself to play the entire game because people kept saying its good but it wasn't. PoE 2 was actually interesting but I basically completely ignored it because of how bad PoE1 was. So I'm not surprised it sold worse despite being a massive improvement.

Pathfinder has a ton of flaws itself. Its buggy, quests are frustratingly badly explained and sometimes not at all. The way it handles alignment is hilariously awful and nonsensical. The map movement is insanely slow and just annoying. It is an incredibly flawed game. I'm still looking forward to pathfinder war of the righteous to see how they will improve with the lessons they learned.

But really. The issue here isn't that old school games are not popular, its that the ones that are around had awful execution in some way to hold them back. PoE2 was actually interesting, but PoE1 blew out the series metaphorical kneecaps with how bad it is. Sure some people loved it but Im pretty sure it is universally agreed upon that the opening is absolutely dreadful. And most people dont have the patience for it. So people who bought it but didnt get through that, or did and still hated it, wouldnt even give a first look to PoE2. While Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a rollercoaster of frustration with some good ideas but by the gods does the bad outweigh the good.

I love classic RPGs and the only reason I even played these games was because there has been such a dry period with cRPGs. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't bother. Did I enjoy them? Kingmaker sure. It had a lot of good ideas despite the insanely flawed execution. PoE1? No. PoE2? Hell yes.

Last edited by blazerules; 22/10/20 12:43 PM.
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Originally Posted by blazerules
Originally Posted by Rhobar121
I just copy my post from another thread.

Number of game owners according to Steam spy:
-> POE 1 is between 1-2 mln
-> POE 2 is between 500-1mln
-> Pathfinder is between 500-1mln
-> DoS2 is between 2-5mln !!!
The situation is worse if you look at other statistics.
Unfortunately, old school games are not popular.
Only PoE 1 sold over 1 million copies because it was one of the first classic RPGs in this decade. POE 2 sold much worse.

I think the issue here is more that Pillars of Eternity has an absolutely dreadful start and is a pretty bad game all the way through in my opinion. It took me multiple tries to just get through the awful, boring start. And I basically forced myself to play the entire game because people kept saying its good but it wasn't. PoE 2 was actually interesting but I basically completely ignored it because of how bad PoE1 was. So I'm not surprised it sold worse despite being a massive improvement.

Pathfinder has a ton of flaws itself. Its buggy, quests are frustratingly badly explained and sometimes not at all. The way it handles alignment is hilariously awful and nonsensical. The map movement is insanely slow and just annoying. It is an incredibly flawed game. I'm still looking forward to pathfinder war of the righteous to see how they will improve with the lessons they learned.

But really. The issue here isn't that old school games are not popular, its that the ones that are around had awful execution in some way to hold them back. PoE2 was actually interesting, but PoE1 blew out the series metaphorical kneecaps with how bad it is. Sure some people loved it but Im pretty sure it is universally agreed upon that the opening is absolutely dreadful. And most people dont have the patience for it. So people who bought it but didnt get through that, or did and still hated it, wouldnt even give a first look to PoE2. While Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a rollercoaster of frustration with some good ideas but by the gods does the bad outweigh the good.

I love classic RPGs and the only reason I even played these games was because there has been such a dry period with cRPGs. If it wasn't for that I wouldn't bother. Did I enjoy them? Kingmaker sure. It had a lot of good ideas despite the insanely flawed execution. PoE1? No. PoE2? Hell yes.


For me, the worst thing about POE was the fight.
I don't know how Obsidian did it, but it was more unpleasant than bg2.
PoE2 was much better but it was too late.



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Indeed. Many friends I have who do enjoy cRPGs a ton didn't play PoE2 yet because of PoE1. They replayed fallout 1 and 2... and BG1 and 2... but didn't bother with PoE2. I only played it cause one friend bought it for me as a gift in 2020.
So yeah I only played PoE2 years after launch and enjoyed it. But I really wouldn't have even looked at it due to how awful PoE1 was.

There is a pretty big issue with cRPGs and how badly executed they are. Many people gush over them because they are cRPGs rather than any of the games actual achievements. Even if they can be worse than many cRPGs made in ages past - sometimes even more clunky in ways they shouldn't be. Be it with mechanics, execution, story or all of the above.

DoS1 didn't faceplant the second it stepped onto the cRPG stage. And that probably contributed massively to the success of DoS2. Is it flawed? Yes. But its flaws dont overshadow everything else or get in the way too much. Gods I detest the party management of DoS1, 2 and BG3 for example.

TL;DR
It's not that cRPGs aren't popular. It's that the modern ones mentioned faceplanted right out of the gate. They are really games for hardcore cRPG fans who are willing to put up with it, or people who really, really enjoy jank. I'd say Pathfinder: Kingmaker qualifies for Eurojank. Even if you like cRPGs it can take a lot out of you with how frustrating or bad these games can be and need a lot of time investment just to get the most out of them. Time investment to circumvent the jank in the case of Pathfinder.

Last edited by blazerules; 22/10/20 01:11 PM.
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Originally Posted by blazerules
TL;DR
It's not that cRPGs aren't popular. It's that the modern ones mentioned faceplanted right out of the gate. They are really games for hardcore cRPG fans who are willing to put up with it, or people who really, really enjoy jank. I'd say Pathfinder: Kingmaker qualifies for Eurojank. Even if you like cRPGs it can take a lot out of you with how frustrating or bad these games can be and need a lot of time investment just to get the most out of them. Time investment to circumvent the jank in the case of Pathfinder.


True, for the most part, however: I doubt cRPG's have ever been not "janky", but for some reason, players back then where more willing to deal with that... well, either that or the stories/characters where more engrossing then they are today. I know, it's a bit of a veiled "gamers/writers are just not what they used be" argument, but when you compare late 90'ies, early 2000's gaming charts with today's... yea, things have changed. wink

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Expectations have more to do with standards. Gaming has advanced quite a lot in some ways over 20+ years. So people do expect modern cRPGs to be less janky than the ones of old. Not as much or more janky. That and practically every type of story has been told in some capacity so RPGs will probably do better with really interesting companion stories. Which... Larian sort of does in a limited capacity. A good step in the right direction.

The standards of what is good have shifted quite a lot over the years but not to anything outlandishly demanding, for the bare minimum at least.

From a writers aspect yeah... if you want some example of early jank in Pathfinder kingmaker just actually think about the alignment options. Or even ending part where you are questioned.

You can be blamed for robbing the armoury and make up excuses about it.

Even if you didn't take anything from the armoury but the key. Yet you have no option to go "I... literally took nothing but the key? Why are you saying I took other stuff?" and instead only have options to rationalize it in a good or bad way. Which is either jank or bad writing.


It's a tiny thing, but that sort of stuff litters P:K in ways both big and small, sometimes to the point of breaking quests if you do them in the wrong order. Despite the game not being clear about the right order. And in fact making no sense with the supposed solution since it has no relation to the problem whatsoever. That sort of stuff drags P:K at least.

PoE1 is just bad writing and game design considering how godawful the opening is though.

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This is a really weak take that isn't worth a lot of effort to respond to, so I'll just summarize my thoughts with this quote from famed American novelist and humorist, Mark Twain:

"There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”


I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought.

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This kind of happened to Dragon Age games.

Origins was a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. A great game, but it was already influenced by the MMO style casual grind mentality. Stuff like the equipment material tiers created for constant gear upgrades. Trash mobs in the end drop Dragonbone weapons just because you are high level even though it makes zero sense in the context of the lore. The design where every fight begins with full resources and there is no resource management to consider at all, basically. Individual spells are on gamey cooldowns. Love the lore and the writing, hate the systems.

Dragon Age 2 took that to the next level. Everything looks overpowered but everything feels underpowered. Flashy "fun" romp where you don't have to think too much, just spam them buttons MMO style and watch your Mage spin around casting flashy spells that take 1% of enemy health at a time.

They wanted the D&D crowd, but also the action crowd for obvious corporate reasons. But the game itself becomes worse for both groups.

To a perhaps smaller extent, Larian now want the D&D crowd, but also the DOS crowd. I must say I hated the combat in DOS games and could never finish them. The gamey systems kill immersion in an RPG. There's too much of this in BG3 currently and I hope they can find a more realistic take on the gameplay that makes the game world more believable. For comparison, this has never bothered me in BG, IWD, NWN, POE or PFK. It's quite unique to BG3 and because of the DOS influence. Some of it is really good but they need to filter it much more.



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Yeah sorry OP I can't agree on this.

There will always be similarities because each game, book, etc... takes inspiration from the same sources. Witches in huts in dark forests is not a W3 thing. Yes, the HAGS (plural) from Witcher 3 were very memorable and like most things in the W3, just brilliantly written, but the are not unique. Same with Bards following you around and being annoying. Plus you don't have to save Volo you know!

Regardless, I am sure any "closeness" is flattery and the game is certainly in no way failing as a result. There are many things wrong with BG3, but having similarities to Witcher 3 or NWN is not one of them.

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I took the Witcher comparison simply as the OTS camera view. Obviously this is not an action RPG.

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