This is true, and I think also the reason why NWN could never quite achieve its full promise as a successor to Baldur's Gate.

The main reason being that, despite having an awesome toolset, the Dungeon master could not really create a campaign that looked or felt anything like Baldur's Gate. You know with the epic godmode vibe of the 6 player party and a gang of summons all under the command of one strategic mind. Instead it fell into the trap of being only single player ala Everquest grind feel, or multiplayer with a few people in a small groups, because anything more than Solo + a henchmen was nearly impossible to scale properly. So you'd have combat's that were either designed to work well for one player, or just become instantly insane with way too much stuff happening way too quickly in real time. Speaking mainly of NWN1 vanilla here. By the time good single player campaigns came out, or PWs figured out a way to manage the large gatherings, and break it up with heavy DM involvement, it was like "Now we're doing NWN2!" and it was cool, but had like no backwards compatibility. Splinter the design community in half. But what it didn't have was a way to build a Baldur's Gate game.

What it needed I think was an action RTS component or view more like the old original Warcraft editor, where killer levels could be designed to really take advantage of the RTS real time type angle. 6 player party is basically the bridge between a wargame large battle type atmosphere, and more PnP play. But Bioware went a different direction when they moved on, doing the Jade Empire Kotor route, cinematic FPS in a fantasy setting basically, and still using the henchmen idea to the Nth degree. Baldur's Gate had more in common with Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark portal 1995, than it does with NWN. I think if NWN could have built in the action RTS element to its campaign designer we'd have seen something like the ultimate. Because then it could marry the cool cinematic and exploration appeal of a more driving game experience, but have the combat intensity of the best in strategy game, while still using the TB elements of say what Troika was trying to cook up (which was basically the old SSI sort of vibe but brought up to speed.)

I think the pinnacle for a D&D computer game would be able to combine all 3 concepts, into a single grand campaign system. Basically the BG style for battle campaigns, the others more for the story and exploration driven stuff. I mean I think everyone had the same feeling at the time. That NWN would kick ass and take names if only it could have a Party of 6, and pull the camera out into an iso view, look more in game the way it presented in the level editor of the Solstice Toolset. Like the way back zoom, with the sort of control scheme that such a view requires. Let the player switch it on the fly, based on the intensity of the combat encounter. The player knows when shit's about to get real, and when it goes cinema, what's going to have the right appeal based on what's happening. I think that would be pretty cool. I can picture how it would look, but I've never seen it. I was hoping BG3 might be it, but we're just not there yet.

I want to see something that can eventually bridge into D&D VR, but I also love that older style of crawler from the eye in the sky that BG truly exemplified.

I think BG3 will be much closer when they raise the party cap to 6. This remains like the first litmus test for me. If before bringing us out of EA they up us to six, then I will know that deep down, they truly want to be a Baldur's Gate game. They need to find a way to make it happen heheh

Last edited by Black_Elk; 16/10/21 11:45 AM.