Baldur's Gate 1/2 gameplay is total shit.

[Kaanyrvhok]

]Quantity alone can't create quality if said lore doesn't come together in a believable manner. If the setting is treated like a bag where you thrown as much crap as you can, you don't end up with cohesive world, but a sack of mostly unrelated dung crammed into single worldspace.

The Forgotten Realms is already a cohesive world because of the amount of lore.

The common critisim of the Forgotten Realms is how it attempts to cram every anceint earth culture and more onto one mega continent. Think about it though. Rewind the clock 3,000 years, add 50 real gods to the cosmos, add magic, and a few hundred D&D races and beast. You are going to have an incredibly compartmented society where 150 miles could separate two vastly different cultures. The lore of the Forgotten Realms serves as an explanation for how those cultures evolved. It offers a tool that prevents the world from being something thats made up to fit a story... In theory. Its failed several times mainly when the story and the art sucks ie NWN's OC.

 

[Ruprekt]

mega continent.

This is what saves FR. Faerun is huge, it's larger than the real world eurasia+africa landmass.

On the other hand this makes it retarded when you're popping back and forth on fetch quests between Neverwinter, Luskan etc.

 

[DraQ]

I'm all for more interesting settings, assuming you can keep the classic RPG gameplay.* Certainly if you put aside financial constraints

Not really, given the huge success of Morrowind.

I'm just saying, reviewing the historical record (heh), so far CRPG developers have, with a very few exceptions, not shown a lot of ability to design quality RPG settings.

Sturgeon's Law.

So while FR is cliched and bland, relative to most original (non licensed) CRPG settings, it is likely to be better than the common alternative of... making a setting that is a poorly fleshed out clone of FR.

Well duh.
Being raped VS being raped, tortured and murdered brutally - which is better and why?
Discuss!!

* However verisimilitude can suffer when you try to force classic RPG gameplay into a setting where it not quite fit.

Not unlike forcing it where it supposedly does.
I'm all for altering classic RPG gameplay. There are so much more interesting formulas to explore, and usually just mowing down 100s of filler foes is so much more entertaining in about any other genre.

The difference is that videogame lore is more dissociated from mechanics, so that this mechanics can be reworked without messing around with the lore, rather than accumulating successive layers of nonsensical crap. This is one of the very few cases where typically bad gameplay/story segregation works to your advantage.

Why is videogame lore more divorced from the mechanics? Videogame lore is made for use in a game, just like PNP RPG lore.

Reread post you're referring to. It's all explained there.
Also, an educational help (notice the dates).

If anything, with game developers working under such tight deadlines they have little excuse to develop lore that doesn't directly relate to something they need for the main focus of the game.

Not necessarily. See pre-oblivious TES lore.

The difference in resources spent on lore is huge. That doesn't necessarily translate into better lore for the licensed product

Precisely. A large group of rentawriters writing for specifications will typically produce a vastly inferior work to a single good writer able to pursue his creative vision freely, or a close knit group sharing common vision.

Nope, I still remember significant amounts of stuff from the Gold Box games and the Dark Sun games with vivid detail, despite playing them a few years after they came out and never re-playing them.

Dark Sun is still on my to do list, TBH, although I think I have already downloaded it.

This is a traditional RPG:

This is a PnP or tabletop RPG. Anything else is just ambiguous - notice how this site isn't called cRPG Codex, in spite of what it actually focuses on (in before "GD Codex lololol").

Traditional CRPGs attempted to translate the gameplay of pen and paper RPGs onto a computer, although of course some compromises were necessary due to the move from a social experience to a single player one.

Removing tactical combat in favor of action based combat and removing the party in favor of a single character are two huge steps away from that traditional RPG formula.

Removing tactical aspect is a step back regardless of introduction of actiony one, but whatever you do with the party (apart from going coop) is a lose-lose situation. In PnP games you controlled a single character in a party, and party aspect was largely social. Whether you remove the party or give player control over the entire party, the social aspect will be gone and the end result will differ significantly from PnP.
PnP style party aspect is simply not supported by SP cRPGs, so is GM, and cRPGs need to adapt to their new medium, denial just opens the way for the genre to be hijacked by action wannabes who can't into proper action games because of being too impaired. Then we all lose.

BG meanwhile looks to me like an honest and significantly successful attempt to directly translate RPG gameplay into a computer game, in the tradition of the classic CRPGs that came before it (and arguably even going further in some respects (the companions))

If PnP gameplay consists mostly of frantically dissuading your retarded buddies from trying to reach a kobold before them by taking detour through several caverns infested with high level monsters and a corridor tiled with instagibbing traps, all between sections of railroading, then you can't even imagine how glad I am that I have never really got into it.

I must give BG1 a credit though, as I'm arduously trudging through the game right now in hopes of fulfilling my completionist urges and having a character to port to BG2 for my first actual playthrough, that it seems to incline somewhat after you assault the Iron Throne HQ and leave for Candlekeep (please tell me it's actually so, BG city almost killed me with retarded way it was cut into the areas and lack of ability to get necessary information from useless napotkana osobas - yes, Daggerfall and Morrowind spoiled me in this regard - asking for directions is good).

]Quantity alone can't create quality if said lore doesn't come together in a believable manner. If the setting is treated like a bag where you thrown as much crap as you can, you don't end up with cohesive world, but a sack of mostly unrelated dung crammed into single worldspace.

The Forgotten Realms is already a cohesive world because of the amount of lore.

Quantity alone can't create quality if said lore doesn't come together in a believable manner.

Heaving to repeat oneself in a discussion - almost as entertaining as bouncing a ball off a retarded kid, but not quite.

The common critisim of the Forgotten Realms is how it attempts to cram every anceint earth culture and more onto one mega continent.

Indeed, essentially a huge theme park. Kwanzanians and such may not understand this criticism fully.

Think about it though. Rewind the clock 3,000 years, add 50 real gods to the cosmos, add magic, and a few hundred D&D races and beast. You are going to have an incredibly compartmented society where 150 miles could separate two vastly different cultures.

Essentially a detailed, step-by-step explanation of how it failed, yes.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Unfortunately, adding special dialogue for dumb characters is a huge amount of work, usually too much for most teams. Or just too expensive.

How about simply not allowing dumb characters (or intelligent characters while we are at it), then? Retarded dialogue lines are also a penalty for low Int stat, no different from penalty for low dex or low str.

No intelligent characters in a DnD game? You must hate your target audience
Seriously, nobody except some educated individuals will get the reason for that.
They would simply go "Who cares about fucking dialogue, I want my 18 Int!".
And they would be right, since combat is simply much more important in the BG series (and DnD in general) than well-designed stat-sensitive dialogue.

I didn't find it to be that disturbing that my very intelligent mage was sometimes not able to give the intelligent answers one would expect.

I think I also was a bit more forgiving of it simply because I had until that point strongly associated crpg with early Wizardry games and Ultimas. Hence I was used to int and wisdom just being some random measurement of 'good-at-magey-stuff' or 'good-at-clericy-stuff'.

I couldn't forgive that. Not after playing Fallout and not with the amount of dialogue that the game had. Fuck, even the Icewind Dale - a dungeon crawler had more role-playing in dialogues than Baldur's Gate.
And in BG2 not after fucking Planescape: Torment. Also, the half-assed implementation of AD&D and lack of dynamism didn't make the combat satisfying for me, so I didn't see enough redeeming features for that .

With the same playing order I'd probably agree. But there was a long line of crpgs where wis/int/cha were just there for determining mana and spell strength from the early 80s and their implementation as interactive, realised, stats in the manner of Fallout was VERY recent when Baldurs Gate came out. From memory, there was only a year's difference between the games, maybe less, and I can't think of any games prior to Fallout that had that kind of usage of int/cha (maybe Wasteland? not sure - but the genre giants of the time: Wizardry, Ultima, M, Gold Box ALL just had those stats as mana/spell points - actually I'm not so sure about Dark Sun, so I won't swear on it, but it was very much the norm nonetheless). Folks were well used to the mechanic and the FO changes were new and exciting, but not exactly the industry standard even during the golden years.

Then for me PS:T changed everything. No, I could not go back to BG after that - every game has disappointed me since then in terms of its implementation of int/wis/cha. Not denying that FO is its equal, but some folks get grabbed by one, others by the other - I loved FO, but it wasn't until after PS:T that I actively EXPECTED int/wis/cha implementation. Perhaps it was because PS:T used the same engine as BG, so I held them to the same light, whereas FO was a different setting and a different playstyle, and unashamedly 'before its time'.

Then BG2 was forgiveable for me because I didn't expect much to change in a sequel, and FO/PS:T weren't exactly producing clones.

Arcanum came many years later, then Bloodlines, but the golden age was one with mindless wis/int = mana. THe introduction of properly realised int/wis/cha came as a highlight during the start of the decline - it was the peak upon the hill - never something that was realised enough that you could really slam a game for not having it.

 

[visions]

How many and how successfully? BG, for example, was terribad setting-wise.

So what was so terri-bad about BG's setting? *playing the devil's advocate*

 

[DraQ]

How many and how successfully? BG, for example, was terribad setting-wise.

So what was so terri-bad about BG's setting? *playing the devil's advocate*

It's fucking Sword Coast.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Heaving to repeat oneself in a discussion - almost as entertaining as bouncing a ball off a retarded kid, but not quite.

Ok I didn't clarify. I don't believe the quality of the lore is as important as the amount. I'll give you an example of why. Motb is about the eternal curse of a dead god. You may have read the Avatar stories of Myrkul's death and loved the literature or you may have hated it. That doesn't matter as much as the fact that its there and had to at least stand on its own accord in a novel. Otherwise you have Final Fantasy shit where everything feels like some geek just made it up on the fly to fit the story. You end up with a world thats not just generic but ridiculous.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

With the same playing order I'd probably agree. But there was a long line of crpgs where wis/int/cha were just there for determining mana and spell strength from the early 80s and their implementation as interactive, realised, stats in the manner of Fallout was VERY recent when Baldurs Gate came out. From memory, there was only a year's difference between the games, maybe less, and I can't think of any games prior to Fallout that had that kind of usage of int/cha (maybe Wasteland? not sure - but the genre giants of the time: Wizardry, Ultima, M, Gold Box ALL just had those stats as mana/spell points - actually I'm not so sure about Dark Sun, so I won't swear on it, but it was very much the norm nonetheless). Folks were well used to the mechanic and the FO changes were new and exciting, but not exactly the industry standard even during the golden years.

All of these games were released long before Fallout and long before Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate has basically shown that you can stop inclining the genre and get away with . Note, that even if they didn't have time to implement proper stat-based dialogues (actually, their whole dialogue system is stat-based - it's technically possible to make a dumb/intelligent dialogue mod for BG1), Baldur's Gate was no longer cutting edge when it was released, so it didn't deserve all these 9/10 that it got.
Also, Fallout 2 was released before Baldur's Gate, so there was another huge non-linear game with stat-based dialogue that was made between Fallout and Baldur's Gate. After Fallout 2, it was unimaginable for me that Baldur's Gate (or actually any major cRPG) will be a huge step backwards.

Then for me PS:T changed everything. No, I could not go back to BG after that - every game has disappointed me since then in terms of its implementation of int/wis/cha. Not denying that FO is its equal, but some folks get grabbed by one, others by the other - I loved FO, but it wasn't until after PS:T that I actively EXPECTED int/wis/cha implementation. Perhaps it was because PS:T used the same engine as BG, so I held them to the same light, whereas FO was a different setting and a different playstyle, and unashamedly 'before its time'.

Fallout wasn't "before its time". It was Fallout's time and Baldur's Gate was unashamedly "after it's time" - it belonged somewhere before Ultima VII.

 

[DraQ]

Heaving to repeat oneself in a discussion - almost as entertaining as bouncing a ball off a retarded kid, but not quite.

Ok I didn't clarify. I don't believe the quality of the lore is as important as the amount. I'll give you an example of why. Motb is about the eternal curse of a dead god. You may have read the Avatar stories of Myrkul's death and loved the literature or you may have hated it. That doesn't matter as much as the fact that its there and had to at least stand on its own accord in a novel. Otherwise you have Final Fantasy shit where everything feels like some geek just made it up on the fly to fit the story. You end up with a world thats not just generic but ridiculous.

I'll have to use an analogy here.


You say that a sufficiently large pile of bricks is a house, I disagree, you counter that a small pile of fancy bricks glued to a person to better fit them doesn't make a house either - WTF does it have to do with the fact that house is qualitatively something different than a pile of bricks, big or small, fancy or non-fancy, and that mere pile of bricks, no matter how large is simply unsatisfactory as a house?

 

[visions]

How many and how successfully? BG, for example, was terribad setting-wise.

So what was so terri-bad about BG's setting? *playing the devil's advocate*

It's fucking Sword Coast.

So what's so terri-bad about it?

It's a standard fare low level AD&D campaign in a generic part of the FR setting.

If something's terri-bad, shouldn't it stand out because of it's inferiority to the mediocre and generic?

Bg's setting is generic but is there anything particularly terrible about it? Something that makes it stand out as particularly bad?

 

[DraQ]

Bg's setting is generic but is there anything particularly terrible about it?

Yes. How generic it is.

 

[deus101]

Christ!

Look, having settings like game of thrones is nice, but in the end its all up to the implementation of the setting not the setting itself.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

I'll have to use an analogy here.


You say that a sufficiently large pile of bricks is a house, I disagree, you counter that a small pile of fancy bricks glued to a person to better fit them doesn't make a house either - WTF does it have to do with the fact that house is qualitatively something different than a pile of bricks, big or small, fancy or non-fancy, and that mere pile of bricks, no matter how large is simply unsatisfactory as a house?

I’m not trying to suggest that quantity trumps or equates to quality as a rule just an instance when needing more of something is more beneficial than having a decrement with more snazz. Take the common Korean MMO for example. They create the game then build the lore around the game and what you end up with Is a huge wiki site that trys to explain why all those furries are there for you to grind.

This is a traditional RPG:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Traditional CRPGs attempted to translate the gameplay of pen and paper RPGs onto a computer, although of course some compromises were necessary due to the move from a social experience to a single player one.

Removing tactical combat in favor of action based combat and removing the party in favor of a single character are two huge steps away from that traditional RPG formula.

This is a single player AD&D game from 1984

The solo line goes back a ways. They weren’t really tactical either.

 

[PorkaMorka]

This is a single player AD&D game from 1984

The solo line goes back a ways. They weren’t really tactical either.

Sure, but how similar is it really to a traditional roleplaying game?

It's more like a glorified D&D choose your own adventure book.

I'll pass. It's losing a huge chunk of the appeal of PNP.

 

[PorkaMorka]

I'm all for altering classic RPG gameplay. There are so much more interesting formulas to explore, and usually just mowing down 100s of filler foes is so much more entertaining in about any other genre.

We disagree here, I'd just like to see it refined and improved, to start to come closer to the excellence of a great Pen and Paper campaign.

I don't need it to be fundamentally altered away from the (melee) fighting man and magic user dynamic.

whatever you do with the party (apart from going coop) is a lose-lose situation. In PnP games you controlled a single character in a party, and party aspect was largely social. Whether you remove the party or give player control over the entire party, the social aspect will be gone and the end result will differ significantly from PnP.

Some compromise is certainly necessary to translate a social game into a solo computer game.

Specifically, the other *players* have to be removed.

But the other *characters* don't have to be removed, you can still keep a party of characters. So the gameplay stays mostly intact.

Removing the party of characters is a big step away from PnP as it completely changes combat, which is obviously a huge part of gameplay.

Actually, BG is closer to PnP than most traditional CRPGs in that it tries to simulate the other players a little bit, by giving the party some personality.

denial just opens the way for the genre to be hijacked by action wannabes who can't into proper action games because of being too impaired. Then we all lose.

Tolerating RPGs with no party leads to action based gameplay, because turn based gameplay is boring as hell and very untactical without a party. (except in DC:SS and a very few other games)

I must give BG1 a credit though, as I'm arduously trudging through the game right now in hopes of fulfilling my completionist urges and having a character to port to BG2 for my first actual playthrough, that it seems to incline somewhat after you assault the Iron Throne HQ and leave for Candlekeep (please tell me it's actually so, BG city almost killed me with retarded way it was cut into the areas and lack of ability to get necessary information from useless napotkana osobas - yes, Daggerfall and Morrowind spoiled me in this regard - asking for directions is good).

I think it does incline.

For me the worst part of BG was wandering around the huge, largely empty areas obsessively removing black space on the map.

That was very tedious. In BG2 this issue is far less prevalent, better design.

The plot based areas, especially once you're done with Kobolds were a lot more interesting to me, compared to the big empty wilderness maps.

 

[Azrael the cat]

With the same playing order I'd probably agree. But there was a long line of crpgs where wis/int/cha were just there for determining mana and spell strength from the early 80s and their implementation as interactive, realised, stats in the manner of Fallout was VERY recent when Baldurs Gate came out. From memory, there was only a year's difference between the games, maybe less, and I can't think of any games prior to Fallout that had that kind of usage of int/cha (maybe Wasteland? not sure - but the genre giants of the time: Wizardry, Ultima, M, Gold Box ALL just had those stats as mana/spell points - actually I'm not so sure about Dark Sun, so I won't swear on it, but it was very much the norm nonetheless). Folks were well used to the mechanic and the FO changes were new and exciting, but not exactly the industry standard even during the golden years.

All of these games were released long before Fallout and long before Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate has basically shown that you can stop inclining the genre and get away with . Note, that even if they didn't have time to implement proper stat-based dialogues (actually, their whole dialogue system is stat-based - it's technically possible to make a dumb/intelligent dialogue mod for BG1), Baldur's Gate was no longer cutting edge when it was released, so it didn't deserve all these 9/10 that it got.
Also, Fallout 2 was released before Baldur's Gate, so there was another huge non-linear game with stat-based dialogue that was made between Fallout and Baldur's Gate. After Fallout 2, it was unimaginable for me that Baldur's Gate (or actually any major cRPG) will be a huge step backwards.

Then for me PS:T changed everything. No, I could not go back to BG after that - every game has disappointed me since then in terms of its implementation of int/wis/cha. Not denying that FO is its equal, but some folks get grabbed by one, others by the other - I loved FO, but it wasn't until after PS:T that I actively EXPECTED int/wis/cha implementation. Perhaps it was because PS:T used the same engine as BG, so I held them to the same light, whereas FO was a different setting and a different playstyle, and unashamedly 'before its time'.

Fallout wasn't "before its time". It was Fallout's time and Baldur's Gate was unashamedly "after it's time" - it belonged somewhere before Ultima VII.

Quick: name a game between the Fallout games and BG1 that had reasonable implementation of int/wis/cha.

You say that the games I've mentioned were 'long before' BG. Wrong: they were a chain of games, STARTING long before BG, going all the way through the golden age of crpgs, and actually ending AFTER BG (Wiz8). Yes, there is 2-3 years gap between U7 and BG. Guess what? Most developers agree that the gaming industry was hardly producing any crpgs during that time. You had the Fallouts, maybe Wasteland (not sure if that was earlier), and not much else. You certainly did not have some mysteriously invisible run of glorious crpg games that had Fallout-style implementation of wis/cha/int. Nope, just stats for abstraction of spell-points. FO was not typical of its time.

Your belief that FO was somehow typical of the gaming industry at some previous time, and that we had some great era of wonderful implementation of int/cha/wis, makes me suspect that you weren't actually gaming during that era. The follow-ups to the Fallout-style implementation of int/wis/cha didn't come until a slow trickle a few years later - you had PS:T, Arcanum, Bloodlines, NWN2/MotB...and that's it. A game every now and then. Stretched out over the 2000s. With only one series by one company being before BG. And guess what? It was that same ONE company whose descendants made every single one of those games just mentioned. You take out Interplay/Black Isle and its descendants and you've got something very close to not having ONE SINGLE GAME that has realised implementation of int/cha/wis. Not exactly the industry standard. And certainly not when BG came out.

FO was a rare exception that hadn't been seen before - 1 series by 1 developer. Way ahead of anything at that time.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Your belief that FO was somehow typical of the gaming industry at some previous time, and that we had some great era of wonderful implementation of int/cha/wis, makes me suspect that you weren't actually gaming during that era.

Except that I have never said such thing.

Also other outdated cRPGs or cRPGs from completely different subgenres that came out after Fallout have nothing to do with evaluating Baldur's Gate.

FO was not typical of its time.

Listen, I don't give a fuck if Fallout was typical or not. It happened and nothing will change it. There were two Fallouts released before Baldur's Gate and I won't pretend that it wasn't outdated just because some other developers have chosen to make outdated games and decline the genre into oblivion.
I have played two Fallouts before Baldur's Gate was released and expected Baldur's Gate to be better than Fallout. Bioware has failed to deliver. Case closed.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Your belief that FO was somehow typical of the gaming industry at some previous time, and that we had some great era of wonderful implementation of int/cha/wis, makes me suspect that you weren't actually gaming during that era.

Except that I have never said such thing.

Also other outdated cRPGs or cRPGs from completely different subgenres that came out after Fallout have nothing to do with evaluating Baldur's Gate.

FO was not typical of its time.

Listen, I don't give a fuck if Fallout was typical or not. It happened and nothing will change it. There were two Fallouts released before Baldur's Gate and I won't pretend that it wasn't outdated just because some other developers have chosen to make outdated games and decline the genre into oblivion.
I have played two Fallouts before Baldur's Gate was released and expected Baldur's Gate to be better than Fallout. Bioware has failed to deliver. Case closed.

Nope. Because I never denied that FO>BG. I said that BG was typical of the industry at that time - there was only one developer producing games with good implementation of int/wis/cha, and many many developers producing games using them for abstracting spell points, both before and after. The fact that you're too young to have played the golden age of crpgs, and hadn't really got into gaming before FO, doesn't change that fact. Stick to arguing about eras that you participated in.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Nope. Because I never denied that FO>BG. I said that BG was typical of the industry at that time - there was only one developer producing games with good implementation of int/wis/cha, and many many developers producing games using them for abstracting spell points, both before and after.

What it has to do with the discussion? Oh wait. I guess you refer to me expecting that stuff in BG. It's simple:
BG was being made by the same company as Fallout (I haven't even heard about Bioware before seeing the BG2 intro.) and hyped as the best cRPG ever. I think it was the first time I saw such hype machine employed despite being a PC gamer for some time and regularly following gaming magazines.

The fact that you're too young to have played the golden age of crpgs, and hadn't really got into gaming before FO, doesn't change that fact. Stick to arguing about eras that you participated in.

What? I started gaming on C64 in early 90s and on PC in 95. My first contact with cRPGs was UltimaI on C64 (sadly, it was a crappy partial rip on cassette). I have played the shareware version of Exile II, full versions of Ultima VII, Ultima VIII and demos of several contemporary cRPGs including Daggerfal and Diablo and some other stuff before playing Fallout.

I put Baldur's Gate behind Ultima VII time-wise because it didn't have a living world and and spells didn't need ingredients (despite that spells have ingredients in AD&D, sometimes very expensive ingredients) and didn't implement anything innovative, not because I thought that there were tons of games with dialogue skill checks in between these games.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Sure, but how similar is it really to a traditional roleplaying game?

It's more like a glorified D&D choose your own adventure book.

I'll pass. It's losing a huge chunk of the appeal of PNP.

From what I remember and granted I dont remember much it played a lot like the typical mod so much so that I played it as such with my cousin. To play it alone you used a decoder for the imaginary DM's dialog and for a map.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media ... F8&index=1

It felt more like a robotic or structured game of D&D than a choose your own adventure and what is a robotic game of D&D but a CRPG. Honestly this game helped bridge my own personal disconnect with single player CRPGs. The mod did pull off something that a lot of these single player CRPGs cant, wont, or dont. It justified going solo with three small adventures that required stealth, and enemies didn't line up to fight you one by one when teaming up would have made more sense.

 

[analt]

I put Baldur's Gate behind Ultima VII time-wise because it didn't have a living world and and spells didn't need ingredients (despite that spells have ingredients in AD&D, sometimes very expensive ingredients) and didn't implement anything innovative, not because I thought that there were tons of games with dialogue skill checks in between these games.

No living world was the big thing that stood out for me. People call Ultima VII an adventure game, but it had a very simulationist world. It was very disappointing to go from that to Baldur's Gate, with no continuous world (like an adventure game) and hotspot interaction (really like an adventure game).

For the rest of it, the things they played up in the media were real-time combat and graphics graphics graphics (in pre-3D days it was a big deal to choose skin and hair color for characters), so can't see where the surprises lurked there. Mental stats affecting anything other than spells have always been an anomaly.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

I put Baldur's Gate behind Ultima VII time-wise because it didn't have a living world and and spells didn't need ingredients (despite that spells have ingredients in AD&D, sometimes very expensive ingredients) and didn't implement anything innovative, not because I thought that there were tons of games with dialogue skill checks in between these games.

No living world was the big thing that stood out for me. People call Ultima VII an adventure game, but it had a very simulationist world. It was very disappointing to go from that to Baldur's Gate, with no continuous world (like an adventure game) and hotspot interaction (really like an adventure game).

Yeah, I was disappointed with it too.

For the rest of it, the things they played up in the media were real-time combat and graphics graphics graphics (in pre-3D days it was a big deal to choose skin and hair color for characters), so can't see where the surprises lurked there.

Here in Poland, Baldur's Gate was reviewed as the best RPG ever because it was incredible and incredibly awesome, basically the best RPG ever. And it had many quest solutions and tons of dialogue, so it was the best RPG ever. And the most important thing was that it had moral choices and morality was very important and there was incredible character creation so it was basically the best RPG ever. And there is incredible freedom with these moral choices so it's the best RPG ever. And it has a great non-linear plot with these choices that affect the world, really incredible best RPG ever. BTW graphics are great and it has a great world, so it's the best RPG ever. That's how it was hyped here.

Journowhores forgot to pick it apart, expose its mechanics, compare it with older games, etc. - it was basically impossible to tell what kind of game it is by reading reviews, so I just expected it to pick the genre up where the last Interplay cRPG left it.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Journowhores forgot to pick it apart, expose its mechanics, compare it with older games, etc. - it was basically impossible to tell what kind of game it is by reading reviews, so I just expected it to pick the genre up where the last Interplay cRPG left it.

The graphics were better the, interface was better, and the mechanics were easier to use. D&D was also a more popular license. Thats what you are going to get from game journalism. They arent going to break it down much more than that.

You really see this in the sports genre. Check this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH1BUg75YY0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL6a2P4KwJw

When you break it down College Hoops 2k8 paced both NBA 2k8 and 2k9 in gameplay but graphics, scoring in the paint, and the name rec of the NBA 2k series carried it.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Everything sucks.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Journowhores forgot to pick it apart, expose its mechanics, compare it with older games, etc. - it was basically impossible to tell what kind of game it is by reading reviews, so I just expected it to pick the genre up where the last Interplay cRPG left it.

The graphics were better the, interface was better, and the mechanics were easier to use. D&D was also a more popular license. Thats what you are going to get from game journalism. They arent going to break it down much more than that.

That's why I have stopped buying gaming magazines some time after BG2. Basically, these people are just enthusiasts that aren't able to give precise information. Especially with stuff like a few journalists criticizing BG1 for not having int-based dialogues and allowing stuff like creating 18/00 18 18 3 3 16 monster characters in gaming advices section two months after they gave the game 9/10.
I have an impression that most of these people simply buy the hype and aren't able to properly criticize a game during first few weeks of playing. I guess that's why they become gaming journalists instead of getting a productive job.