hey remember that part of baldurs gate 2 where you got totally owned for treating INT as a dump stat? ive got an idea…what if we made an entire game out of that, AND it was made by the divinity original sin guys, AND we called it baldurs gate 3, but its (im writing fanfiction here based off the nautiloid) secretly a stealth spelljammer game
heres a gross trailer where a tadpole eats a guys brain and turns him into a mind flayer!!
meanwhile all the enhanced editions of the infinity engine games (bg1, bg2, icewind dale and planescape torment) plus neverwinter nights are going to be out on consoles by the beginning of december
its a good time to give a shit about D&D videogames baby!!!
i’ve only played dark alliance on the ps2 but that trailer was super cool and gross
my only complaint is that when the tentacles fly from his mouth, the teeth pop out way too easy. like if they had some tension before flying out it would have evoked a bigger wince from me
dark alliance 1 and 2 are legit great games and probably the only actually decent thing interplay couldve done with the license at that point in time, though i still do think the black hound was a cool concept
I STILL haven’t beaten BG2 entirely. I started it at the beginning of the year (literally new years day) and I’m about half way through throne of bhaal. maybe a bit more. I give up games very easily. BG2 is pretty obtuse if you’re playing it for the first time in 2019, it’s extremely long, fairly hard, and full of a lot of little annoyances. it takes a lot of inventory management, which is my least favorite thing in all of video games. I’ve put it down for extended periods multiple times, which is usually a death knell for me. but I keep coming back, because this game is amazing and totally worth it.
yeah my biggest beef with BG2 at this point is that high level AD&D gameplay kind of just isnt super fun (every AD&D game ive ever played in has petered out by like level 10) because caster supremacy means so much of it revolves around knowing exactly what kind of bullshit protections enemy casters have and the exact combination of spells you need to breach/dispel them. now that can be a fun puzzle to figure out if you know the mechanics but i feel like most people playing BG2 for the first time in 2019 are going to think its a bunch of arcane bullshit. its still not as bad as some of the gold box games like dark queen of krynn where the opening fight is your party vs like fucking 4 dragons or the stupid draconians who flesh to stone when they die so your weapons get stuck inside them
on other other hand theres few other games ive played that have such a good development arc as starting off as some 3 hp level 1 loser in BG1 and getting chunked by wolves and ending up with such godly power that you can do shit like make demiliches explode with turn undead or beat a dragon to death with your bare hands solo.
but yeah, BG2 is really remarkable - i still fucking love how packed full of content athkatla is, theres so much shit in every little corner of the city. imo i think the main plot is a little weak esp. regarding player motivation but david warner sells some bad '90s videogame ass writing like it was fucking gold and i could listen to that man read the phonebook
the game understands this too, which is nice. by throne of bhaal your character is under threat because of their power, and other characters recognize your unusual ability to be much better at killing than most anything else. your companions will talk about how, hey, they’re actually really fucking powerful now. imoen has casually referred to herself as an archmage a couple times. aerie explicitly states that she’s one of the most powerful spell casters in faerun. it’s mostly just a simple power fantasy, still, but because of how gradual it is it works much better
i never really had a problem with real time with pause in the infinity engine games because of how often id get into a trash fight that wouldve taken 5x as long in turn based but on the other hand, pillars 2 plays way better turn based so i think having good encounter design + turn based is more fun. BG3 looks like it might still be real time which is weird because the divinity guys just made 2 turn based games people loved
not sure how much of the old threads you’ve read since joining but Deadfire has some of the only good RTwP combat I’ve ever played and it’s due substantially to having user programmable gambits
I saw they added the turn based mode after launch and I honestly couldn’t see a need to play it that way, which is kind of unprecedented
it does have the problem common to all RTwP systems where the answer to automating any kind of AoE attack is “don’t” since they apparently think it’d be cheapening to actually let characters dodge intelligently but they got so much specifically right for a RTwP system between the disengagement attacks and the empowerment abilities that playing it turn based actually feels like it’d be slowing it down too far to appreciate what they’ve done while still not being as satisfying as a full on tactics game
deadfire is still pretty good with RTwP for sure! it has the best combat out of any of these games because it isnt saddled with AD&D bullshit (as much as I love AD&D) and actually feels like an evolution of infinity engine style games. BG et al. you basically have to play with party AI off, and i agree that having a robust tactics system for party AI makes the combat infinitely more fun in these games! i think the turn based mode is mostly useful for people who get overwhelmed at the RTwP stuff - if i went back to it now id probably like RTwP way more because i wouldnt be suffering fatigue as bad from playing pillars 1 (which is kind of a fucking slog) and deadfire back to back
its a shame we probably will never see a third game because of the microsoft acquistion and the fact that deadfire apparently didnt sell so well (probably because it didnt have all the kickstarter hype of the ~infinity engine revival~ plus the first game being kind of eh.) i need to know how my buddies eder and pallegina are doing!!
I haven’t played all these new ones that Felix always gets so enthused about but imo the only time it’s ever been good is Transistor, which is not an RPG in at all the same way. But IS very very good.
The only way to play these games is to setup the auto-pause triggers such that you’re basically playing turn-based. Baldur’s Gate, at least, had enough triggers to make that happen.
I don’t care for this “I say something really clever or inspiring” dialogue system shit at all. If I wanted to put in this kind of work why wouldn’t I just play a tabletop game with actual people. how does a crpg benefit from this