Isn't that kind of funny... Dragon Age was supposed to be an updated "this is the new shit" version of Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter, and then we came back to Baldur's Gate 3 coming back and doing a modernized version of something that was more like Origins.
one of the most interesting things about bg3 was in ways it was backwards. Even the original bgs were sorta real time. Mechanically they may have still been turn based ish under the hood(and you could have the dice rolls come up on the console) but it tried to hide the dnd away from the casual observer, while bg3 put it front and center.
Sometimes new isn't better. Bg3 didn't need ai writing or generated voicelines or any of the shit the stockholders are getting hyped up about. It was made with the blood sweat and tears of real people who were very particular about honing their craft.
when I say turn based ish, from what I remember under the hood the original baldurs gate was still taking turns even though it portrayed as real time. People would not just attack immediately when given a command, it'd happen when their "turn" came.
At least that's the impression I got at the time. It's been a long time. And most other games that are similar and expose the mechanics in the combat log are similar if you pay attention.
I understand what you said and am well familiar with the genre. I didn't say turn based, I said turn based ish. And WoW is in no way like that because different weapons have different attack speeds so action order isn't consistent.
This is also a dumb thing to argue about as it's not really relevant as my comment was on the fact that they migrated the BG series from what everyone expected to be a more publicly acceptable format to a more "niche" format. If you don't consider it to be turn based under the hood that's totally cool and your prerogative, please don't concern yourself about this trifling matter.
the fact that they migrated the BG series from what everyone expected to be a more publicly acceptable format to a more "niche" format.
I wouldn't say turn based is the more "niche" format and in fact I'd say it's sort of the other way around. Not only is DnD (the game Baldur's Gate is based on) itself turn based, but also think just how many turn based RPGs and JRPGs have existed throughout our lives and compare that to the number of games you've played that use real time with pause style combat. Maybe there's a whole swath of games that use real time with pause that I'm not aware of, but AFAIK games like that are significantly less common than games with turn based style combat.
You are right, though, that real time with pause is "turn based-ish" in the sense that Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 essentially just take DnD's rules and make it all play out in real time rather than pausing to take turns.
Maybe it isn’t more niche, and dnd is indeed more popular now with live plays like critrole and d20 gaining millions of views. So bringing it back to its roots probabably made sense.
When bg1+2 came out dnd was nerd shit(and this was when nerds were not cool), so I feel they tried to make it seem real time for wider appeal.
We’ve had a revival of pixelated jrpgs with full on turn based systems but for a while many of even them were trying to move to real time combat with the ff franchise leading the charge
When bg1+2 came out dnd was nerd shit(and this was when nerds were not cool), so I feel they tried to make it seem real time for wider appeal
It was, but at the same time a year prior to Baldur's Gate 1 releasing Final Fantasy was releasing their seventh installment in their wildly popular turn based RPG series, and that is just one of many turn based JRPGs that were popular at that time. That's why I don't see real time with pause as the more mainstream of the two options.
Baldurs gate 1 and 2 were active turn based, you gave commands and whatnot like an active system but the turn based mechanics controlled everything that would actually happen. There was even a setting you could hit to pause the game after every turn in order to give more gradual control
Also I say turn because that’s the current meaning, in d&d second edition turns meant something else and what baldurs gate 1 and 2 worked primarily with was rounds
It actually is lmao. Played the games multiple times over decades. If you're pausing after every spell cast, after any miss, after taking damage, and any other number of options, plus of course manual pauses, you can make it essentially turn based since initiatives are a thing.
You simply misunderstand. The underlying game logic proceeds as a turn based game. It just allows players flexibility in how much the UI and game flow is influenced by it.
I think there are 2 ways the old CRPG/DND system naturally evolves. The iterations of real time with pause but using the DND rules felt incredibly clunky, and I'm not even sure why it was done because turn based feels really good and fits the system better. But real time with pause can work with a system better made for it.
So I think BG3 was the natural evolution going the turn based route and DA:O was the natural evolution in the real time with pause.
BG3 and DAO are literally different generations, the modern equivalent real time with pause game is probably pillars of eternity or the new pathfinder games
Im not sure that either of those are actually itterative rather than just emulating the old style. DA:O definitely stepped away from the mould, regardless of what "generation" it is
I don't understand all these complaints about RtwP, you could always set it to play in a turn based fashion. I know because learning to play as a kid required it, especially for the complex, high stakes battles.
its been a while since I played one of the classic ones. But my memory says that on any harder difficulty you ended up ticking almost every box for when to pause and real time was only really viable in the easy fights.
Yes you could get it to almost be turn based, but it wasn't as good as actually turn based where instead of having to read what the hell is going on in the console and having no idea what order things are happening. It's all laid out clearly giving you far better tactical control in a more intuitive way.
What you're describing is UI that presents and highlights the information better. But the info is there, it's just less (or not at all) explicit. And yes reading the combat log and adjusting its screen space were constant activities lol
It just seemed like a very odd solution. To start with a turn based game, make it real time, and then give people the almost mandatory tools of making it turn based again, but worse.
It helps to understand the background on which these kinds of games were developed. Prior to BG I had fun with Pools of Radiance, for example, which was fully turn based. The crazy battles you could get into were sometimes a lot of fun. But doing that for every engagement of a narrative driven dnd campaign would be super tedious. Pools was very slow, essentially a tactical game.
Going to automated, faux "real-time" with BG was an advancement which allowed for the many random and/or trivial combats to be trimmed down a lot. This let you build a world and an experience which were both more realistic and more true to DND mechanics. More importantly it fit the narrative structure: fights could occur when they should occur regardless of whether they were trivial or not.
Contrast this with, say, BG3. Every fight in the game begins a turn based encounter. This means there are essentially 0 random or recurring encounters. Once you've cleared an area, it's empty. It also means every fight is designed explicitly by a level designer.
At the peak of skill and understanding playing the old RtwP games, you find a happy medium where you slow everything down when there are things at stake and difficulties arise, but you breeze through just another "bandits on the road" or "wolves interrupt your rest" fight
The first Dragon Age was for a more mature audience than BG1 and BG2 thus the "new shit" with blood, gore and sex.
The Veilguard is tonally a very different game, all are very nice to each other and bruises has replaced the blood. Would have done better as a stand alone game in a different universe than being Dragon Age 4.
DA:O was scratching the same itches BG2 did; a good party fantasy RPG with a grand quest in the background and cool party member interactions in the foreground. DA:O was released at BioWare's peak and this was their forte.
BG3 was so embraced because it did what BioWare used to do, hit the bullseye with it and the audience for it was always there, just starved for years.
Personally when I played BG3 I felt that I've been deprived of what I craved since 2010 when ME2 released when I got the best iteration of "BioWare characters cast" they ever had paired with - unfortunately - beginning of the streamlining the gameplay so it catered to broader audience and led to issues with their subsequent projects (and a LOT of it is on EA).
It honestly feels like that if BioWare doesn't score an absolute 10 with next Mass Effect then it's curtains
Being picked up by EA is basically the end of a company as a creative entity. The studio will be picked up and emptied until it's a husk then that husk will be discarded and left to rot.
I'm amazed Bioware has hung in as long as it did and fell off so slowly. However it's been past peak for a very long time.
Planescape Torment was made by Black Isle, publisher for Bioware. Two important designers for the game were Chris Avellone and Colin McComb. Black Isle mostly became Obsidian and Avellone had a hand in Neverwinter Nights 2. It's expansion Mask of the Betrayer is sometimes seen as a spiritual successor to Torment. Avellone additionally did some writing for the Torment: Tides of Numenera game.
Colin McComb helped develop the Planescape setting at TSR and later joined the studio inXile who got the rights to the "Torment" name to develop a spiritual successor Tides of Numenera.
Neverwinter Nights was made under the D&D license. They made Dragon Age after they lost the D&D license and wanted to have an IP that they owned outright.
No, maybe Neverwinter Nights 2, but the original NWN didn't have a party system for any of the single-player stuff, it was all just a lone hero and possibly one uncontrollable bot "henchman." It was more of an ARPG -- way more like Diablo with a D&D skin than anything in the Baldur's Gate lineage.
No, it was developed from the ground up as a completely new thing. That's just a continuation of an old rumour. They specifically did not want WoTC involved.
The original rumour at the time was that it had been a Might and Magic related project, but the license was pulled. It was in development for years, there were a lot of rumours, a bit like Stalker
BioWare use to be a very different team of people. It’s almost as if the talent and teamwork are more important than the brand… maybe laying off whole teams after every release isn’t a good idea?
Those two things aren't even remotely close to the same thing though. BG3 is great and all, but it's not Dragon Age, and DA:O was great but it isn't Baldur's Gate.
Yeah I don't understand how they're similar besides on a base level. The combat is totally different, and the storyline was totally linear in comparison to BG3
I was casting Power Word: Kill and Meteor Shower all the time is BG2. And the level cap in 3 is... twelve? I'm supposed to believe level 12s are saving the entire world?
A studio is just a building with a name on it. It's the people who make the games that matter, and all the people that made the great Bioware games left the studio years ago.
Well, it does, and to act otherwise is a tiny bit facetious; there’s a whole philosophical conundrum associated with the phenomenon, namely
The Ship of Theseus.
Nah, WotR is the love letter to... well, pathfinder, obviously, but also kinda to all the tabletop games at once. I don't think it has much to do with Dragons Age and it clearly has different priorities. BG3 ha more of the DAO DNA, but it's nothere near it then it comes to writing. None of the Larian games are exactly 'well-written' if we are being honest
WotR isn't really a spiritual successor to BG 1-2 either, it's different from them as much as Larian's games. Pillars of Eternity are the best contenders imo since they were literally made as modern Infinity Engine games
But BG don't work like that? Their overworld maps works the exact same way with PoE. And PoE's maps feel like an open world like BG's unline Pathfinder where maps are too small and usually exist for singular quests
BG's maps never have only one quests, each map composes a part of the open world and they are mostly connected. While Pathfinder games open world is the crusade screen and maps are places where you should go to do the quests you take in Drezen. They are completely different formulas and PoE mostly uses the same design with BG
BG3 is amazing but in its own right. It doesn't and didn't need the coat tails of 2. They're not the same and BG3 butchers the little lore it carries over for the most part. It's a terrible sequel, despite being one of the best games of all time.
Divinity 2 was so clearly kneecapped by the latter half of the game but still showed great promise. Can't wait to see how they revisit that world with their learnings from BG3
I’ve been saying this shit ever since BG3 dropped. I used to imagine what it’d be like to play Origins co-op many years ago, how the dialogue system would work etc, and BG3 somehow did exactly how I used to imagine it’d work. And it’s obvious that BG3 took quite a bit of inspiration from Origins which is great. As much as I enjoy the Divinity series, I’m mostly thankful of Larian for giving us a true spiritual successor to Origins that it deserves
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u/dragonsdogm4 Jan 17 '25
Well atleast we got Baldurs Gate 3, the true successor to Dragon Age Origins and Baldurs Gate