Preview Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear Opening Cutscene and Gameplay Snippets at GameSpot

[DeepOcean]

inb4 everything that is supposed to be better than PoE turns out worse than PoE.

Yeah, I remember when people said Sword Coast Legends looked awesome and was going to be better than PoE. Great track record guys.

Wot? I remember the opposite, unless it is some retard shill, most people were rightly convinced it would be a piece of crap.

 

[almondblight]

Spoiler

This game looks great!! RTwP goodness and the fantastic Forgotten Realms setting!



And it looks better than Josh Sawyer's Pillars of Excrement in every way too.

Not even half as bad as I anticipated. I'll play this over Josh Sawyer's No Fun Grognards snorefest.

At the worst it's bound to be just as streamlined and boring.. err sorry... consistent and balanced as Sawyer's "totally like IE and totally the game I wanted to do until after you give me money and then it's neither" scam.

It's about as promising looking as a Bioware game can get but there'll be no way to really tell for sure until it's released and people can really get all up in the editor.

Well, after fucking around with NWN and NWN2 (+mods), consider me hyped as fuck.

Doesn't sound too inspiring, but if they will keep romances out of the main storyline, make the game challenging and will let players create epic builds this game has the potential to be much better than POE.

Looks really nice. Ideally it would be another BG successor, what I expect is a proper DA:O successor on a lower budget with a bit less Biowarianism. Which... is worth buying, really.

looks better than the PoE nice

I'm more excited for this than most other games coming out. I really hope it owns up to the concept.

 

[Infinitron]

Spoiler

This game looks great!! RTwP goodness and the fantastic Forgotten Realms setting!



And it looks better than Josh Sawyer's Pillars of Excrement in every way too.

Not even half as bad as I anticipated. I'll play this over Josh Sawyer's No Fun Grognards snorefest.

At the worst it's bound to be just as streamlined and boring.. err sorry... consistent and balanced as Sawyer's "totally like IE and totally the game I wanted to do until after you give me money and then it's neither" scam.

It's about as promising looking as a Bioware game can get but there'll be no way to really tell for sure until it's released and people can really get all up in the editor.

Well, after fucking around with NWN and NWN2 (+mods), consider me hyped as fuck.

Doesn't sound too inspiring, but if they will keep romances out of the main storyline, make the game challenging and will let players create epic builds this game has the potential to be much better than POE.

Looks really nice. Ideally it would be another BG successor, what I expect is a proper DA:O successor on a lower budget with a bit less Biowarianism. Which... is worth buying, really.

looks better than the PoE nice

I'm more excited for this than most other games coming out. I really hope it owns up to the concept.

Yeah, there was some stuff like that at first, but it disappeared pretty quickly.

SitS might be a better example. People really wanted that to have better combat than PoE, but in the end it really didn't.

As for this game? I don't know, it could end up being pretty good. 25 hours means it's more focused, like an MotB. Add to that lots of nostalgia wankery (characterization for all those BG1 NPCs that everybody remembers fondly even though they were paper-thin caricatures!) and you could have something people will really enjoy. There might be some interesting encounters too, though it remains to be seen just how many - streams haven't shown anything too special.

 

[FeelTheRads]

People also really wanted PoE to be better than the IE games, what with it being developed by such an elite designer who identified and set to fix everything that was wrong with them, but in the end it really was a piece of shit.

 

[J_C]

Battle looked quite shitty, and didn't have a BG feel at all.

 

[m_s0]

didn't have a BG feel at all.

I'm guessing that was the goal. More=better, that sort of thing.

 

[Volrath]

Spoiler

This game looks great!! RTwP goodness and the fantastic Forgotten Realms setting!



And it looks better than Josh Sawyer's Pillars of Excrement in every way too.

Not even half as bad as I anticipated. I'll play this over Josh Sawyer's No Fun Grognards snorefest.

At the worst it's bound to be just as streamlined and boring.. err sorry... consistent and balanced as Sawyer's "totally like IE and totally the game I wanted to do until after you give me money and then it's neither" scam.

It's about as promising looking as a Bioware game can get but there'll be no way to really tell for sure until it's released and people can really get all up in the editor.

Well, after fucking around with NWN and NWN2 (+mods), consider me hyped as fuck.

Doesn't sound too inspiring, but if they will keep romances out of the main storyline, make the game challenging and will let players create epic builds this game has the potential to be much better than POE.

Looks really nice. Ideally it would be another BG successor, what I expect is a proper DA:O successor on a lower budget with a bit less Biowarianism. Which... is worth buying, really.

looks better than the PoE nice

I'm more excited for this than most other games coming out. I really hope it owns up to the concept.

Rekt

 

[Mustawd]

I think the take away is that PoE really fucked with the Codex.

 

[Delterius]

A bad intro doesn´t make a bad game . I give them the benefit of the doubt, because they have:
+ David Warner
+ Jim Cummings
+ Black outlines optional
+ Interesting difficulty scaling

On the other hand... Their handling of the baldurs gate 1 & 2 enhanced editions tip the scale so far into the negative that it tempers all expectations s into pure pessimism.

Well, their extra content for BG1:EE at best merely clashed with the original content (three fully voiced characters with quests of their own versus a sea of minimalistic paper thin caricatures) but for the most part was rather horrifying looking. Handsome half orc and ditzy elf mage is one thing but those maps, holy crap.

So on the third hand they improved so much since then I can actually have hope.

 

[DeepOcean]

Spoiler

This game looks great!! RTwP goodness and the fantastic Forgotten Realms setting!



And it looks better than Josh Sawyer's Pillars of Excrement in every way too.

Not even half as bad as I anticipated. I'll play this over Josh Sawyer's No Fun Grognards snorefest.

At the worst it's bound to be just as streamlined and boring.. err sorry... consistent and balanced as Sawyer's "totally like IE and totally the game I wanted to do until after you give me money and then it's neither" scam.

It's about as promising looking as a Bioware game can get but there'll be no way to really tell for sure until it's released and people can really get all up in the editor.

Well, after fucking around with NWN and NWN2 (+mods), consider me hyped as fuck.

Doesn't sound too inspiring, but if they will keep romances out of the main storyline, make the game challenging and will let players create epic builds this game has the potential to be much better than POE.

Looks really nice. Ideally it would be another BG successor, what I expect is a proper DA:O successor on a lower budget with a bit less Biowarianism. Which... is worth buying, really.

looks better than the PoE nice

I'm more excited for this than most other games coming out. I really hope it owns up to the concept.

Nah, those are hype/cautious optimistic posts and there wwere plenty of posts like this on the PoE thread, Divinity thread and Wasteland 2 thread too at the beginning. Since 2012, reckless wishful thinking and optimism infect new RPG threads until the everything is shit state returns by the end and concrete information about the game comes out. The only thing that changed after PoE is that Wasteland 2 failed to be a good enough game to be classified as a codexian classic, Divinity was well liked but people didn't like it enough for it to receive cult status.

After two big hyped kickstarter games that weren't new codexian classics, it was the time for Obsidian and people placed all the bets on them, Sawyer in particular fed a hype with all his arrogant talk, the end result was massive disappointment and butthurt that lives to this day as PoE was a very by the numbers cookie cutter bland BG 1 clone. The seek for the modern codexian classic will continue, if Torment is shit or mediocre, expect alot of butthurt and negative comparisons with other games too.

 

[Kem0sabe]

So on the third hand they improved so much since then I can actually have hope.

Improved the amount of bugs and fixes no one asked for, and continued their mediocre extra content characters into bg2.

 

[sser]

Spoiler

This game looks great!! RTwP goodness and the fantastic Forgotten Realms setting!



And it looks better than Josh Sawyer's Pillars of Excrement in every way too.

Not even half as bad as I anticipated. I'll play this over Josh Sawyer's No Fun Grognards snorefest.

At the worst it's bound to be just as streamlined and boring.. err sorry... consistent and balanced as Sawyer's "totally like IE and totally the game I wanted to do until after you give me money and then it's neither" scam.

It's about as promising looking as a Bioware game can get but there'll be no way to really tell for sure until it's released and people can really get all up in the editor.

Well, after fucking around with NWN and NWN2 (+mods), consider me hyped as fuck.

Doesn't sound too inspiring, but if they will keep romances out of the main storyline, make the game challenging and will let players create epic builds this game has the potential to be much better than POE.

Looks really nice. Ideally it would be another BG successor, what I expect is a proper DA:O successor on a lower budget with a bit less Biowarianism. Which... is worth buying, really.

looks better than the PoE nice

I'm more excited for this than most other games coming out. I really hope it owns up to the concept.

Mothafucka, what do I have to do with this thread? Christ lol

I don't know shit about this game.

It looks like a piece of shit. I'm more excited for this than most other games coming out. I really hope it owns up to the concept.

 

[Delterius]

So on the third hand they improved so much since then I can actually have hope.

Improved the amount of bugs and fixes no one asked for, and continued their mediocre extra content characters into bg2.

I mean comparing the new maps from SoD and the extra ones from BG:EE. Did you see those ones?

 

[Kem0sabe]

I mean comparing the new maps from SoD and the extra ones from BG:EE. Did you see those ones?

Yeah, the art is a huge leap from their previous work, but that's not my biggest issue with them, it's that they have the wrong idea about going about improving the originals and their new content tries to ape modern Bioware sensibilities instead of maintaining the line of the source content.

Especially in the case of Bg1 and this new expansion, Bg2 was very much the proto modern Bioware rpg, focusing on intercharacter drama instead of the more barebone D&D exploration of the first game, the fact that beamdog went with this aproach in their expansion to bg1 instead of going for what people enjoyed about the first game, demonstrates that they have their priorities wrong.

 

[Delterius]

and their new content tries to ape modern Bioware sensibilities instead of maintaining the line of the source content.

This is key, yes. But Baldur's Gate 2 being what it is and Siege of Dragonspear being its own thing, hopefully, they won't go too overboard with modern BioWarian design.

Basic competence is there already, the art design is much better and bringing in those VAs shows they are trying. The ruleset is still the same and EPIC BATTLES aside, it shouldn't take much to make for interesting encounter design. All it would remain is for MCA's endorsement to hold grounds and SoD becomes a very solid experience that, unfortunately, requires you to play BG:EE with all the bad content that comes with it.

I can see why this wouldn't persuade you but I guess I'm just too much of an optmist.

 

[Infinitron]

In the most recent stream we saw, SoD seemed to have more companion interjections than even BG2 did. The dungeon areas in the earlier streams had less of that, though.

 

[ArchAngel]

and their new content tries to ape modern Bioware sensibilities instead of maintaining the line of the source content.

This is key, yes. But Baldur's Gate 2 being what it is and Siege of Dragonspear being its own thing, hopefully, they won't go too overboard with modern BioWarian design.

Basic competence is there already, the art design is much better and bringing in those VAs shows they are trying. The ruleset is still the same and EPIC BATTLES aside, it shouldn't take much to make for interesting encounter design. All it would remain is for MCA's endorsement to hold grounds and SoD becomes a very solid experience that, unfortunately, requires you to play BG:EE with all the bad content that comes with it.

I can see why this wouldn't persuade you but I guess I'm just too much of an optmist.

I don't think you need to play BGEE. You can just create a character for SoD.

 

[Johannes]

I'm mostly just interested whether it has good encounter design.

What's the general consensus here, if I want to play through BG's (or just either of them) should I use the (modded) original or EE? Checked that SCS is compatible with EE's, which is the main mod I care about (plus widescreen etc.).

 

[Tigranes]

Original, unless you want tablet, or think that new UI looks good, or you would find two badly written new companions indispensable, or have a burning urge to be able to zoom slightly and look at blurry textures.

 

[ArchAngel]

I'm mostly just interested whether it has good encounter design.

What's the general consensus here, if I want to play through BG's (or just either of them) should I use the (modded) original or EE? Checked that SCS is compatible with EE's, which is the main mod I care about (plus widescreen etc.).

If you have bgee there is no reason to use bg+mods. The only valid reason in favor of bg+mods is if you already own them and don't want to buy EE as well.

 

[Doktor Best]

I mean comparing the new maps from SoD and the extra ones from BG:EE. Did you see those ones?

Yeah, the art is a huge leap from their previous work, but that's not my biggest issue with them, it's that they have the wrong idea about going about improving the originals and their new content tries to ape modern Bioware sensibilities instead of maintaining the line of the source content.

Especially in the case of Bg1 and this new expansion, Bg2 was very much the proto modern Bioware rpg, focusing on intercharacter drama instead of the more barebone D&D exploration of the first game, the fact that beamdog went with this aproach in their expansion to bg1 instead of going for what people enjoyed about the first game, demonstrates that they have their priorities wrong.

Uhm Baldurs Gate 2 is regarded as the superior game in the series by a large majority. Why should they go for BG1 style then?

 

[Lilura]

Especially in the case of Bg1 and this new expansion, Bg2 was very much the proto modern Bioware rpg, focusing on intercharacter drama instead of the more barebone D&D exploration of the first game, the fact that beamdog went with this aproach in their expansion to bg1 instead of going for what people enjoyed about the first game, demonstrates that they have their priorities wrong.

Maybe from our point of view, but not from a financial perspective: banter-drivel sells like hotcakes; you said it yourself, BG2 started that shit and it hasn't stopped through DA and ME (big sellers).

 

[Infinitron]

Actually, that shit started in a certain Black Isle Studios game that came out the year before.

 

[Lilura]

The hell? No, Infinitron. Just no.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, minus the "drivel" part!