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Baldur's Gate 3ma podcast deep dives Infinity Engine, Pillars, what is rpg

Jason Liang

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So as we were discussing the "what is an rpg" issue last month, ironically it was also on the minds of the popular tactical game podcasts Three Moves Ahead:

https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/to-infinity-engine-and-beyond-1
June 7, 2018 Games like Baldur's Gate cast a long shadow but, like a racist grandparent, come along with too many caveats of being a product of their time. There have been many attempts to capture the magic of early CRPGS while adding modern accoutrements, and the financial success of games like Pillars of Eternity and Dragon Age: Origins are clear indicators that the public is looking for such a product. But have any of these attempts actually nailed the CRPG formula? Is a modern CRPG truly worth pursuing, and were the originals as good as we remember? Join our host T.J. Hafer, Rowan Kaiser, and Cameron Kunzelman as they travel from the Gold Box to the most recent iteration of Pillars of Eternity in search of the perfect CRPG.

Starts with an interesting retrospective theory on the history of computer rpgs.
 
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Cross

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I listened to it for a few minutes. It starts of by shitting on the Gold Box games and implying the Infinity Engine was the evolution needed to fix their 'flaws'.

Avoid at all costs.
 

Jason Liang

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ut have any of these attempts actually nailed the CRPG formula? Is a modern CRPG truly worth pursuing?
I'm not going to listen to some dude babble for an hour to find out that YES, HE LOVES PILLARS.

The real answer is no.
SPOILER they love Icewind Dale and Dragon Age

Their thesis is basically that Baldur's Gate 2 killed western rpgs (by making them too expensive to produce) until X-Box made rpgs economically feasible to produce again.

But no, they wouldn't shit too hard on Pillars since they are Paradox shills
 
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eric__s

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ut have any of these attempts actually nailed the CRPG formula? Is a modern CRPG truly worth pursuing?
I'm not going to listen to some dude babble for an hour to find out that YES, HE LOVES PILLARS.

The real answer is no.
SPOILER they love Icewind Dale and Dragon Age

Their thesis is basically that Baldur's Gate 2 killed western rpgs (by making them too expensive to produce) until X-Box made rpgs economically feasible to produce again.

But no, they wouldn't shit too hard on Pillars since they are Paradox shills
Very strange, especially because there were so few RPGs on the original X-Box and one of the Playstation 2's flagship games was Summoner, a Western RPG.
 

Jason Liang

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They basically divided western rpgs between squad-based tactics rpgs (gold box/ rtwp) and single-pc "cinematic" rpgs (here they likely mean TES, Fallout 3 and Witcher although they don't refer to them directly).
The main claim is that a 2D isometric game like BG2 is incredibly expensive to produce for PC platform only since many of the art assets cannot be recycled/ shared (ie. cut and paste) unlike a 3D game. The production values of the infinity engine games were unsustainable and unprofitable. This they feel is the main reason that Baldur's Gate 3 was cancelled.

Pre-Xbox (i.e. before devs started developing games for both X-box and PC; PC exclusive):
TES: Daggerfall (1996)
Baldur's Gate (1998)
PST (1999) (which they basically ignore)
Icewind Dale (2000)
Baldur's Gate 2 (2000)
Wiz 8 (2001) (death of Sir-Tech)
Arcanum (2001)
Icewind Dale 2 (2002)
NWN (2002)
Temple of Elemental Evil (2003) (which they also never mention, although they do discuss Troika a little)
Bloodlines (2004) (death of Troika)
NWN 2 (2006)
The Witcher (2007)

X-Box/ PC:
TES: Morrowind (2002) (X-box) (cinematic)
TES: Oblivion (2006) (X-box 360) (cinematic)
Fallout 3 (2008) (x-box 360) (cinematic)
Dragon Age: Origins (2009) (X-box 360) (rtwp)
Fallout New Vegas (2010) (X-box 360) (cinematic)
TES: Skyrim (2011) (X-box 360) (cinematic)
Dragon Age 2 (2011) (X-box 360) (rtwp)
The Witcher 2 (2011/2012) (X-box 360) (cinematic)
Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) (X-box 360) (rtwp)
The Witcher 3 (2015) (X-box ONE) (cinematic)

X-box/ PS exclusive/ X-box --> PC port:

Jade Empire (2005/2007) (X-box/ PC port) (cinematic)
Nier (2010) (X-box 360/ PS3) (cinematic)
Dark Souls (2011/2012) (X-box 360/ PS3/ PC port) (cinematic)
Dark Souls 2 (2014) (X-box 360/ PS3/ PC) (cinematic)
Dark Souls 3 (2016) (X-box ONE/ PS4/ PC) (cinematic)
Nier Automata (2017/2018) (X-box ONE/ PS4/ PC) (cinematic)

"Throwback" PC/ Kickstarter era:
Shadowrun Returns (2013) (tb) (iOS/ Android)
Dragonfall (2014) (tb) (iOS/ Android)
Wasteland 2 (2014) (tb) (X-box ONE/ PS4)
Divinity: Original Sin (rtwp) (X-box ONE/ PS4)
Shadowrun Hong Kong (2015) (tb)
Pillars of Eternity (2015) (rtwp)
Divinity: Original Sin 2 (rtwp) (X-box ONE/ PS4)
Pillars of Eternity 2 (2018) (rtwp) (X-box ONE, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4)
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Jason Liang The maps in the Infinity Engine games aren't "painted" as they claim, but prerendered in 3D and then touched up. If you play Baldur's Gate 1 it's painfully obvious that it has plenty of asset reuse. There are expense issues with creating IE-style 2D backgrounds, but it's not as stark a difference as they're claiming and certainly not the reason for the death of that style of RPG.

The podcast is an interesting listen overall despite getting some details wrong, but the participants are definitely coming from a middlebrow/casual perspective. Their opinions are probably approximately representative of the median Kickstarter backer, so it is useful in that regard.
 
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AwesomeButton

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I listened to it for a few minutes. It starts of by shitting on the Gold Box games and implying the Infinity Engine was the evolution needed to fix their 'flaws'.

Avoid at all costs.
If they are praising the IE games and shitting on older games, sounds like these asshats themselves are as much "a product of their time" as their "racist" grandparents are.
 

Jason Liang

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What I found most interesting is that, as their primary interest is strategy/ tactical gaming, they actually prioritize rtwp and express zero interest in single-pc games like Witcher. So it's interesting that from where they're coming from, the best examples of rtwp are Icewind Dale and Dragon Age: Origins.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
What I found most interesting is that, as their primary interest is strategy/ tactical gaming, they actually prioritize rtwp and express zero interest in single-pc games like Witcher. So it's interesting that from where they're coming from, the best examples of rtwp are Icewind Dale and Dragon Age: Origins.

Well, that was the topic of the discussion. I thought it was more interesting how they brought up Wasteland 2 but not Divinity: Original Sin when talking about turn-based RPGs. Anti-Euro bias strikes again.
 

bussinrounds

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Jason Liang the participants are definitely coming from a middlebrow/casual perspective. Their opinions are probably approximately representative of the median Kickstarter backer, so it is useful in that regard.
Yup, I listened to this picturing other codexers cringing along with me.
 

Jason Liang

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Newest 3MA episode continues discussing strategy games with rpg elements and vice versa. This time with a the regular panelists.

https://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/procedural-content-and-strategy-layers-in-games
It used to be enough for mainstream games to claim they had "RPG elements". Now we see games with base-building and "strategic layers" - what does that mean? Can one truly take two disparate genres and combine them in a meaningful way? And does procedural generation of content ever live up to its promises? State of Decay 2 ends up being the whipping boy as Rob, Steven Strom, Rowan, and Fraser discuss all of the above.

State of Decay 2, Ni No Kuni 2, Little King's Story, Suikoden, Stronghold, Shadow of War, Pillars of Eternity 2, Yakuza 6, Fire Emblem Warriors, Bladestorm?
 

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