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How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

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Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#151

Post by enraged_camel »

_asummers wrote: post #137
sreque wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admittedly, I've only played Skyrim and a bit of ESO, but I've gotten the impression from Bethesda that their RPGs are always buggy, but, at least with Skryim, the game was so good I was more than willing to forgive them for it. Skyrim remains my favorite single player RPG to date. To respond to the OP, I consider the baldur's gate series to be more of a trend-setter than the other games he listed.

Give Witcher 3 a shot if you haven't. I much prefer it to Skyrim, and felt much more attachment to the world and characters.

Witcher 3 is fantastic. Incredible story, enormous amount of high-quality content, and wonderful, hand-crafted world.

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#152

Post by enraged_camel »

minikites wrote: post #47
goodbyehorses wrote: post #45

Baldurs Gate was really good, but I think people give it too much credit. Fallout 1$2 and Planescape Torment showed what really is a narrative-driven RPG game, they deserve more attention.

The Fallout series isn't exactly obscure and Fallout 1 in particular is terrible. I got a game over 5 minutes into the game because I walked too far and the arbitrary timer ran out.

"This game is terrible because I got game over after ignoring the primary quest" is not a good reason to hate a game...

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#153

Post by bmurphy1976 »

peferron wrote: post #130
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still possible. I have 3 kids a full time job and a 1 hour driving commute each way. Despite this in the past 6 years I've still managed to play through Ultima VI, Baldur's Gate 1&2 Planescape Torment, 1/2 of Icewind Dale (finally burnt out on infinity engine), Tides of Numenera, Pillars of Eternity, Torment, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Zelda a Link to the Past, Zelda Wind Waker, Hyper L…

What did you think about Tides of Numenara? I know there are many reviews out there, but your taste in games seems amazingly close to mine, including finding Skyrim boring, so I'd love to hear your opinion. I've had the game sitting on my computer for a while but haven't started it yet.

I was disappointed in that one. The concept was great and the world was interesting, but I found the characters to be bland and poorly developed.

The Bloom was a monotonous slog. I wish you spent less time in the Bloom and more time in other parts of the game (or new areas).

The combat was mediocre at best (nothing like Wasteland 2 or Divinity which are great).

Finally, the bugs were terrible. I only finished the game a couple months ago, so it's had plenty of time for them to get fixed. I still ran into one game breaking bug where I had troll the forums to find out how to hand edit a game script to cause an event to trigger so that I could continue the main quest. That sucked, especially since I didn't do anything unusual. The flag just didn't get set and I was too far along in the game to go back to a previous save.

It's the only game I've kickstarted. I did that because I knew there was no other way a game like this was going to be made at the time. I wanted it to exist. I'm still glad I did and glad I played through it, but it could have been much better. I'd put it at the lower end of my list: worth playing if you really like these kinds of games, otherwise pass.

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#154

Post by alasdair_ »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #82
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still possible. I have 3 kids a full time job and a 1 hour driving commute each way. Despite this in the past 6 years I've still managed to play through Ultima VI, Baldur's Gate 1&2 Planescape Torment, 1/2 of Icewind Dale (finally burnt out on infinity engine), Tides of Numenera, Pillars of Eternity, Torment, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Zelda a Link to the Past, Zelda Wind Waker, Hyper L…

I highly recommend you give the Exile series from Spiderweb Software a chance if you haven't. It's a bit dated graphically, but it's engine has been kept up and there's some new Avadon series as well. It's hands down some of the best storytelling and I've easily played hundreds of hours. I've definitely played from night to morning without realizing it more than a few times.

I really liked the older games as well (a long, long time ago). I still remember the "shareware canyon" that was impassible without buying the game in full. Fond memories!

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#155

Post by ddebernardy »

tdehart wrote: post #107
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #98

OK, so in 1995 there were few computer RPGs. True. In fact I distinctly remember myself at that time, as a huge CRPG fan, thinking that they were bad times for PC RPGs, and hoping for better times. But 1996 was the year of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, one of the best RPGs of all time (IMO, way better than Baldur's) that would later continue into a saga that is still top notch today. In 1997, Fallout came out. I'…

There was also Diablo 1 released at the end of 1996. It was a great time for RPGs.

Diablo was monotonous, linear hack'n slash. If that's your thing it's cool, but it's not an RPG.

As a CRPG fan at the time, it still boggles my mind that such a title had any kind of success after the likes of Wasteland, Bard's Tale 1-3, the numerous SSI/D&D titles, or the Ultima series. Those days were glorious, and nearly all of those titles are still fantastic today.

Diablo did long-term damage to CRPGs IMO. It established that there was a larger market for completely linear titles than there was for titles where the player could actually decide what to do - or at the very least the order in which you do what there is to do. And as a result, it more or less vaporized any type of funding for non-linear CRPG experiences.

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#156

Post by [deleted] »

doitLP wrote: post #109
fuball63 wrote: post #84

Baldur's Gate was really difficult as a kid. Without fully understanding how the stat system worked or the pause/play combat, my siblings and I really struggled with it. What we would do to overcome the difficulty was ramp our characters level when starting the game. In Candlekeep Inn, we would buy as many darts as we could afford, and throw them at the sorcerer in the lobby. Before he could retaliate, we would run u…

You mean your foster father Gorian? For shame!

[deleted]

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#157

Post by glangdale »

sano1 wrote: post #124
ajmurmann wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, surround with a swarm of skeletons so he can't move and kill him with crossbows.

No, you have to have enough members in your party to surround him before speaking to him and then remove them from your party. So neutral NPCs are surrounding him. He will just kill skeletons. But you deserve whatever is coming to you if you kill Drizzt just for some swords.

I always felt obligated to kill Drizzt as a matter of literary criticism.

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#158

Post by cialowicz »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #98

OK, so in 1995 there were few computer RPGs. True. In fact I distinctly remember myself at that time, as a huge CRPG fan, thinking that they were bad times for PC RPGs, and hoping for better times. But 1996 was the year of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, one of the best RPGs of all time (IMO, way better than Baldur's) that would later continue into a saga that is still top notch today. In 1997, Fallout came out. I'…

The Wikipedia page for Elder Scrolls II [0] indicates that the game world was absolutely massive:

> the actual size of the map is 161,600 km² (62,394 mi²). The game world features over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player's character to explore.

Was that scale part of the magic and fun back then? How varied were the various quests? Did it get repetitive, or was it fun to explore?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfa...

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#159

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

cialowicz wrote: post #158
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #98

OK, so in 1995 there were few computer RPGs. True. In fact I distinctly remember myself at that time, as a huge CRPG fan, thinking that they were bad times for PC RPGs, and hoping for better times. But 1996 was the year of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, one of the best RPGs of all time (IMO, way better than Baldur's) that would later continue into a saga that is still top notch today. In 1997, Fallout came out. I'…

The Wikipedia page for Elder Scrolls II [0] indicates that the game world was absolutely massive: > the actual size of the map is 161,600 km² (62,394 mi²). The game world features over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player's character to explore. Was that scale part of the magic and fun back then? How varied were the various quests? Did it get repetitive, or was it fun to explore? [0] https://en…

Your questions are answered in my answer to a sibling comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18735512

Except maybe the question regarding quests. They were very varied, because there were plenty of factions giving quests, and plenty of text scripts (that were parameterized with locations, items and NPCs), from a quick search apparently 227 in total. So sometimes you would do similar quests (especially if you liked to always work for a single faction) but the variety was great actually.

Re: How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG

#160

Post by nu5500 »

s_trumpet wrote: post #78
eclyps19 wrote: post #4

If you want to play a modern game that takes you back to Balder’s Gate, definitely check out Divinity Original Sin 2. I never played the first, and I was skeptical about it living up to BG 1 and 2, but after the first couple hours I was hooked. It is very much worthy of the comparison.

Modern CRPG's are pretty great, I enjoyed all of the following: - Divinity OS 1/2 - Underrail - Age of Decadence - Bastard Bonds - Serpent in the Staglands - Tyranny - Torment: Tides of Numenera However, I did not care for Pillars of Eternity at all.

I feel like Tyranny is greatly under rated. There are rough edges for sure, but the story line and atmosphere sucked me in in a way that I haven't experienced in a long time. Really fun combat system too.
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