Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 2 is vastly overrated

[Immortal]

Not particularly, no, although I've played it once and its EE once (didn't complete the second one).

I'm actually enjoying BGEE more because of its relative simplicity and unpretentiousness.

Edit: I also found the IWD games to be superior to BG.

I started playing IWD2 and the story is fucking trash but the encounters / exploration overall is enjoyable. I like the item artwork for potions too.

 

[King Crispy]

Did all of you mouthbreathers know that one of the very first (if not *the* very first) Dungeons & Dragons modules, B1 In Search of the Unknown, was designed to have the DM fill in the encounters and treasures in each room himself? It had writing space to allow this and its purpose was to allow for replayability.

I swear, if the typical zoomer neckbeard of today were faced with something like that, he'd instantly call his therapist for an emergency crisis intervention. Mom must also be present.

 

[KateMicucci]

Did all of you mouthbreathers know that one of the very first (if not *the* very first) Dungeons & Dragons modules, B1 In Search of the Unknown, was designed to have the DM fill in the encounters and treasures in each room himself? It had writing space to allow this and its purpose was to allow for replayability.

I swear, if the typical zoomer neckbeard of today were faced with something like that, he'd instantly call his therapist for an emergency crisis intervention. Mom must also be present.

ok but why would somebody pay for "just make it up yourself, sucker"

 

[Butter]

ok but why would somebody pay for "just make it up yourself, sucker"

Why would somebody pay for D&D?

 

[King Crispy]

That's actually an excellent question.

What the fuck is wrong with my brian?

 

[Beans00]

If anyone wants to see volourn's writing style from back when he was trying to become a moderator on obsidian forums here's a sample.

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/44602-volourns-early-final-fantasy-12-impressions/
-Volourn, age 30

 

[Volourn]

Dude, don't be retartet.

 

[likash]

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

There used to be a time when the story of an RPG was that there was a dungeon, that actual monsters were present in that dungeon, and that your party was responsible for dealing with those monsters.

This is what liberalism has done to the genre and to the hobby, and, for that matter, to modern society in general: emasculated and neutered it.

I hope you're fucking happy.

Yamara comic strip, originally appearing in Dragon Magazine #160 (August 1990)

 

[ItsChon]

I made a post addressing JarlFrank's specific points about why BG2 is not superior to BG1. He proceeded to ignore the structured argument and respond to a single point that was related to the two game's settings, ignoring all the other very legitimate critiques I had. When pressured, he proceeds to shit out a bunch of games to flex his RPG "knoweldge and pedigree" instead of actually focusing on what we were supposed to be discussing, whether or not BG2 is supperior to BG1. Shame that even the most prestigous of Codexers are incapable of engaging in logical argumentation properly.

Spoiler

Baldur's Gate invented CRPGs the same way Lord of the Rings invented fantasy: it didn't.

Nice strawman. I said Baldur's Gate was one of the cRPGs that defined the cRPG genre, much like Tolkien defined the fantasy genre. I did not state Baldur's Gate invented cRPGs, nor did I state that Lord of the Rings invented fantasy.

Similarly, in the CRPG space, there was Wizardry, Might and Magic, the Gold Box games, Ultima, Elder Scrolls Arena & Daggerfall, Ultima Underworld, Quest for Glory, Dark Sun... to claim that Baldur's Gate is one of the "first prestigious cRPGs ever released" is disingenuous at best and blatantly ignorant at worst. It did not come first in any sense of the word. Even Fallout pre-dates Baldur's Gate. It is just as much "the first prestigious CRPG" as Lord of the Rings is "the first fantasy novel". Both statements display a gargantuan level of ignorance, and reflect only a surface level normie-tier understanding of the genre.

Are you okay? Did you even read what you quoted? I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume when I said GoldBox games you literally took that to mean only GoldBox games and not DOS games in general. I quite literally covered every single title you already named with that disclaimer, and that disclaimer is not an artifical one at all. There is a reason why many people oftne draw a distinction with games that were released on DOS and the games that came after, and I don't think it's wrong to draw a distinction between games that were released in either era. Baldur's Gate was one of the first cRPGs released after the DOS/GoldBox era, and though it wasn't the first, it was definitely one of the first, and this is especially true when we consider the type of cRPG that Bladur's Gate is, featuring an isometric view. Let's go ahead and look at each title you named though.

Wizardy and Might and Magic are both blobbers and Ultima Underworld, Elder Scrolls Arena and Daggerfall are blobber-esque, in regards to their first person view and similar movement, automatically taking them out of the discussion. I do not consider blobbers to be in the same genre as isometric cRPGs, and Baldur's Gate was one of the first and quintessential isometric cRPGs released, so my claim stands. Quest for Glory is also not really an isometric cRPG, and is instead a third person adventure game/RPG hybrid.

Dark Sun is a valid entry, and I'm surprised you didn't mention Ultima 7, as despite having a top-down view instead of an isometric view, I consider it to be close enough to also be in the conversation. As I stated before however, I was exempting DOS games which both of these are, but even if we were to include them, and Fallout which also predates Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate is still one of the first isometric cRPGs ever released, and it is undeniably a prestigious cRPG, so I see nothing wrong with my claim. I would also argue that it has had far more of an impact than either of those those two games, with Fallout being the only title that can rival it in terms of influence.

And just like I prefer the American pulp sword & sorcery tradition in the literary space, I prefer the Ultima Underworld tradition and the Fallout tradition in the CRPG space.

LOL. Fallout is an extremely overrated cRPG and I don't give a fuck what anyone says. None of the arguments the NMA rejects on this forum have provided excuse its failings, and Ultima Underworld is a decline first-person blobber game that really cannot hold a candle to Baldur's Gate. Prefer what you want, plenty of people prefer games like Skryim and Oblivion over more prestigous RPGs, that doesn't change the fact that both the games you cited have glaring flaws which automatically eliminate them from being in the contention for the title of cRPG great. This also only addresses one part of my entire post that was listing all the issues BG2 has.

Now, you can argue that LotR was the first epic fantasy or high fantasy work, that founded its own sub-genre distinct from the earlier sword & sorcery. That is a fair argument and I would concur with you.
But that same argument does not apply to Baldur's Gate, at least not in the same way. Baldur's Gate may have founded its own sub-genre (isometric RTwP RPG), but the quality of its content cannot be compared to Lord of the Rings in any way. LotR's worldbuilding is on par with or even better than Morrowind and Arcanum, the two best CRPGs when it comes to worldbuilding as you yourself admitted - Baldur's Gate, in contrast, is closer to those cheap D&D novels of the 80s. BG doesn't even remotely compare to the depth of lore, interesting characters, sweeping plot, and poetic prose of Tolkien's work. Just because Baldur's Gate founded a new sub-genre doesn't mean it's a good game, and by comparing it to LotR you reduce Tolkien's work to being a mere progenitor of what came later, which is reductive and insulting.

Come on dude, why are you making me waste my time spelling this out. I mentioned LotR to make an analogy, and now you've gone on some tangent comparing it to Baldur's Gate in terms of world building and all sorts of other things that really don't have anything to do with my argument. What is this completely irrelevant paragraph even talking about? I was not comparing it to LotR, I was making an analogy to highlight how uneducated normies shit on LotR for being boring or lame without realizing it helped define the genre. My point is that you claiming Baldur's Gate is boring and generic is ridiculous because it helped define the isometric cRPG genre, and calling it generic compared to Arcanum, Age of Decadence, Underrail, etc, is silly.

Baldur's Gate not only founded the isometric RTwP RPG, but it also helped popularize isometric RPGs in general which are the best kind of RPGs.

Whether or not Baldur's Gate founded or popularized just the RTwP sub genre or the isometric RPG genre as a whole, I agree with the assertion that just because something helped found a sub-genre/genre, doesn't mean it's a good game or has a good setting. Baldur's Gate has a good setting because it managed to craft a world that was simultaneously grounded and realistic while also keeping a quirky, fantastical feel. It did all of this while having a fascinating geopolitical conflict as the driving narrative of the story, which is not something we traditionally see in high fantasy settings. It has a great combat system despite being RTwP, with a ton of tactical depth, good difficulty, and lots of customization, fantastic sound design, beautiful art direction, and a great story. But when did this discussion turn into whether or not BG1 is a good cRPG? Weren't we supposed to be comparing it to BG2?

Which is exactly why comparing Baldur's Gate to Lord of the Rings is a bad faith argument.

Again, I wasn't comparing it. Why do people have so much difficulty understanding analogies?

"If you think Baldur's Gate is shit then you also think LotR is shit" is one of the dumbest arguments I ever saw on this site, and I've seen plenty of retard takes over the years.

LOL. If that's what you think my argument was, I can already tell this discussion is going to go nowhere.

And yes, it is a relevant point because if better games exist, and if you played these better games before BG1, then the natural reaction will be disappointment, especially since BG1 has an extremely overhyped reputation. I expected something excellent but found something mediocre. It's just like when some Italian guy told me that Final Fantasy VII is the best RPG ever made, and as an RPG fan - having played Arcanum, Morrowind, Ultima 7, Divine Divinity, Baldur's Gate 2, Ultima Underworld, Arx Fatalis, Wizardry 8, VTM: Bloodlines before - I was eager to check it out. It turned out to barely even qualify as an RPG. Utter shit.

No game, no piece of literature stands alone. If other works exist in a genre, any game will have to stand to comparison against those other works. And plenty of other RPGs tower above Baldur's Gate.

Someone is incapable of staying on topic. We were discussing which games have better settings, not which games are better, which is a completely different argument. But just to address some of the games you listed.

Morrowind, Arx Fatalis, Ultima Underworld, Wizardry 8, VTM: Bloodlines are all first person faggotry. Nice try comparing them to one of the greatest cRPGs of all time.

Baldur's Gate 2 is the sequel to Baldur's Gate and we're currently discussing which is better, so you can't claim this is a better game.
Arcanum was and still is a buggy mess with a broken combat system.I know you and plenty of others fanboy over it however, so I will give you a pass, and I've yet to play Divine Divinity and Ultima 7, so we can add that to the list.

What is your argument again? You've named three great cRPGs and because Baldur's Gate isn't as good as them in your eyes that somehow makes it shit?

Now it just comes down to a matter of taste. Baldur's Gate didn't feel any more lively than Morrowind to me when it comes to NPC behavior. Do BG's NPCs have schedules, like the excellent Ultima 7? No, they either stand around idly, or walk back and forth in the same place. Just like Morrowind's NPCs. Sometimes, an NPC approaches you to tell you something, but that also happens in Morrowind very occasionally. I don't see how BG is supposed to be any more lively than Morrowind in this regard.

It has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with the medium of the two games. As a general rule, it is far easier to make an isometric game immersive and lively than a first person game. This is because a game that is an isometric view requires the player to participate in a certain amount of abstraction. When you are playing a game with a first person view, you are looking directly at the character you are speaking to. You can see every little movement they do, or oftentimes don't do. It becomes painfully apparent how wooden, and stiff, and frozen they are. These are all things you cannot see from a zoomed out isometric view. In Baldur's Gate, the sprites move around and have tiny little animations, and while these animations are obviously much less complex than the type of animations we'd see in Skyrim or Morrowind, they end up creating characters that feel far more alive and normal than any first person RPG has managed to do.

Another big issue is the amount of NPCs in Morrowind, specifically the lack of NPCs. All Bethesda games have had this problem. Am I supposed to believe I'm in a town or city when the whole thing is populated by only ten to fifteen people? Shit like this completely kills immersion, which is one of the biggest pros of having a game in a first person view. Compare this to the city of Baldur, in Baldur's Gate? There are hundreds of little sprites moving around, patrolling, exploring, participating in activities. Because the game is not in first person, I can't tell if the same person is being used over and over because I cannot observe that level of detail. Baldur's Gate feels a billion times more alive and immersive than dead Morrowind will ever be for all these facts alone. Imagine walking around Vivec city and feeling like the gameworld is alive lmao. Contrast that with games like KC:D where you never visit a big city precisely so this doesn't happen, or Gothic where you're walking around an under populated penal colony, and you will see why Morrowind drops the ball hard.

You calling it a "shit first person game" reveals your bias against the first person perspective. It is true that it shouldn't be compared to Baldur's Gate - because BG doesn't stand a chance in comparison. Exploration, Morrowind's main draw, is so infinitely superior it's not even funny. The first person perspective adds a third dimension to explore, so rather than just combing fixed-sized maps until all the fog of war is gone, you actually have to look up and down and left and right and discover things with your own eyes, then find a way to get there. The levitation spell allows you to fly, and the game's level design makes great use of this ability, hiding many unique items in hidden niches far up near the ceiling of a dungeon. The Urshilaku Burial Caverns alone offer 1000 times more interesting exploration than the entirety of Baldur's Gate's wilderness areas combined.

If you can't enjoy first person games (or 3D games in general), I feel sorry for you, because Morrowind, Gothic, Ultima Underworld, Arx Fatalis, Deus Ex, and Thief (not an RPG but still an exploration-heavy RPG-adjacent game) have the best exploration gaming can offer, and it's not even close.

Yeah coolstory bro, I see where Smaug gets his talking points from. I never got the whole meme of first person view exploration. It does nothing for me, and I've never got any pleasure from finding a super secret part of a dungeon through multiple dimensions that could only have been executed with a first person view. I really couldn't give a fuck less, and I never had, because it has always seemed pedestrian and boring. I much prefer discovery and exploration as it relates to discovering more about a world and what it has to offer me, versus the literal act of exploration.

Also it's hilarious that exploration is the only thing you're going to cite. Alright, according to you Morrowind has superior exploration, I will give that to you though I think that is being overly charitable. Baldur's Gate has superior combat, art direction, sound design, and immersion just to name a few things it does better off the top of my head.

Another fallacy. Come on bro, you can do better. "Wow I just saw Drizzt! OH MY GOD!"

You can admit you're in love with Drizzt do'Urden, no need to be ashamed about it bro. It's ok if you came in your pants a little when you met him in BG1.

But yes, variety of encounters and locations, and the visual presentation of architecture are important elements of establishing an atmosphere. Go on, watch a Robin Hood movie, followed by an Arabian Nights movie, followed by a swashbuckling pirate movie, and tell me they all feel exactly the same. They don't. Setting matters. BG1 delivers a familiar vibe, BG2 delivers an exotic vibe. I happen to prefer exotic vibes to familiar vibes.

I also prefer Pillars of Eternity 2 to the first game simply due to the more exotic setting (also, it has more barefoot women ). Both are mediocre games at best, and they pale in comparison to the Baldur's Gates (yes, PoE1 is even more bland and boring than BG1, an amazing achievement), but the setting can make a difference in how you perceive the game world. Claiming that it doesn't is, again, disingenuous.

And again the comparison to LotR. No it is not, in fact, as if someone watched Two Towers first and then thought Fellowship was boring, because the change in atmosphere and tone between the two films isn't as great as the change between BG1 and BG2. In fact, there is no change, because Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings as a single book which was split into three parts by the publisher for ease of printing and distribution. Similarly, Peter Jackson's movie adaptations were filmed in one go and then released as three separate movies.

Baldur's Gate 1 was made as one game, then released. After that, the devs came up with a sequel. Completely different approach, with a completely different result. Not comparable.

Finding BG1 boring after playing BG2 is more akin to finding 1980s cookie cutter D&D novels boring after reading Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories.

Do you know what a fallacy is? What part of my statement was a fallacy? Also, I am not comparing Baldur's Gate to LotR for fucks sake, I am making an analogy. These are two different things. On the topic of Lord of the Rings, notice how you cite atmosphere and tone when I said anticlimatic and boring. Neither of these two things are related to atmosphere or tone, so congrats on either being too stupid to pick up on my point or being purposfully obtuse. The atmosphere and tone between the two movies is consistent, but the pacing and level of action between the two films is extremely great. Two Towers is undeniably far more action packed than Fellowship of the Ring, hence my point that someone who claimed Fellowship was boring because it wasn't as action packed as Two Towers is retarded. Similarly (notice how I italicized that word. That means an anology is about to take place. The difference between BG2 and BG1 is not the pacing/level of action, but the difference between the two games can be compared much like the difference between the two movies can be compared, even if the games and the movies have different differences), claiming Baldur's Gate 1 is bland and generic while Baldur's Gate 2 is super "exotic" and "interesting" is hilarious, and something that someone who played the second game first would say.

And if you really consider a simple swap of the actual setting to be "exotic", I feel bad for you. The difference between Robin Hood and Arabian Nights and a Swashbuckling pirate movie is far more than just a simple building swap, which is what we can see in Athkatla. There are wardrobe changes, changes in how people look, changes in accents, changes in score, entirely different subject matters, themes, etc, etc. None of these things translate as tangible differences between the two games.

I will reiterate, the issue isn't finding Baldur's Gate boring, the issue is that you're claiming it's boring while also simultaneously calling Baldur's Gate 2 fun and interesting when it's not that different. What the fuck does it do to deliver an exotic vibe? Is changing buildings to have domes instead of gable roofs all it takes for you to get an exotic vibe? I feel bad that you have such a lack of imagination tbh. One day hopefully an RPG will come out that actually manages to nail an exotic vibe so I can point it out to you.

You just emerged from a madman's laboratory, causing a part of the market promenade building to fucking collapse, and then that madman appears at the collapsed entrance and engages your sister in a wizard duel - in a city where public practice of magic is banned, so this should be a pretty rare sight. Then, cowled wizards appear and imprison both the madman and your sister. Meanwhile you're just standing there yelling "I'll free you, Imoen! Just you wait!"

Yeah, sure makes you wonder why people would approach you. It's not like you just explosively appeared in the middle of the city's most frequented district. You're just a completely unknown dude nobody ever heard about.

Also, have you ever been to a big city you've never been to before and tried to find a district without a map? What did you do to find it? Ask the locals for directions, perhaps?
That's what the unlocks are.

The vast majority of people that approach you in the game did not see you enter into the city, what the fuck are you talking about?

Also you can't just ask any local for directions, it has to be the specific local that will give you a quest which will unlock an area. Do you really not see why that is immersion breaking and retarded? Come on, I know you're trying to "win" the argument here but let's not be silly.

Europe, America, Asia, and Africa literally feel like they're in the same setting? Just because the city architecture in other countries is different than what we'd normally see in a European city, isn't enough to make it interesting or unique. The people can all speak English just like us, a lot of them dress the exact same, they talk the exact same, they do the same things. What is so interesting about traveling the world if staying at home is so banal and shit? My point is that the difference between countries is so razor thin, that trying to claim that seeing different parts of the world is what makes traveling awesome and amazing is ridiculous.

Imagine comparing real life to a video game. There is more than just the architecture that is different about these places, and it's hilarious that this is the argument you're going with. Ah yes, if it wasn't for the Eifell Tower or the architecture, I would not be able to tell I was in France. Lolk.

 

[ItsChon]

1) What he's actually saying is: Hobbit is less cool than Lord of the Rings, despite both being set in the same universe.

The Hobbit can be less cool than the Lord of the Rings, but it is not less cool because it has a worse setting, it would be less cool for different reasons related to the plot and other such reasons. He is claiming that Baldur's Gate 1 is less cool than Baldur's Gate 2 because the setting in the first game is worse than the second game, but they both take place in the same world, and the surface level setting changes are extremely minor. Your argument does not make sense, and if you want to prove his point, you will need to establish that the setting of Baldur's Gate 2 differs from the first in a reasonably significant way, which it does not.

Morrowind is no Gothic when it comes to creating the illusion of alive world (which Gothic did brilliantly), but that doesn't change the fact that the world of Morrowind has a lot of character, despite being static. It's one of the reasons why people like it so much, even today.

The issue has nothing to do with it being static. I hate this meme about NPC schedules, as if that even fucking matters. The game has shit art direction and feels empty due to GameByro being incapable of rendering more than twenty NPCs in a single city. It works in Gothic because it's a sparsely populated penal colony. The same excuse does not work for Morrowind.

@JarlFrank did say this was big part of the reason why he was disappointed in BG1... I mean, I found Lord of the Rings to be waaaay better than Hobbit and I did read Hobbit before Lord of the Rings, so I am not sure what are you trying to say here.

Hobbit is a stand alone book, while Two Towers and Fellowship are sequential movies in a series. At least you understand what an analogy is and are capable of making them yourself, even if they are flawed, so I have to give you some props for that.

Yes? So is Hobbit and Lord of the Rings? That's not the issue. For example, in BG1 you don't get to fight a dragon. In BG2 you can fight a few. In Baldur's Gate 1 you don't leave a relatively small area. In BG2 you visit exotic places of the world and even other planes (albeit briefly). That's the difference.

What the fuck are you talking about? First you claim BG2 feels like it's a different setting to BG1, and then when I disagree with that that statement because I don't feel like the differences are substantial, you cite the Hobbit and LotR and change the point about the difference in scale/epicness between the two games? You are all over the place. Pointing to the lack of a dragon in BG1 but the presence of one in BG2 is a tangible example that we can work with, but it's also a dumb point which is why he didn't make it. What are the exotic places you visit in BG2 that really make it feel like a different setting to BG1? Please elaborate, and let's see if they are significant enough differences so we can give his claim any weight. Mind you, he ignored all my other points about the issues BG2 had.

Its architecture wasn't really the main reason for it to feel interesting or unique. The fact that it's an urban area alone is good enough to make it more interesting than a middle of nowhere. But what really makes Athkatla interesting (NOT unique!) is the sheer amount of content and places to go within the city. It feels like a bustling metropoly it pretends to be. At least it did that for me.

Holy fuck, Baldur is also an urban area with a shit ton of content. It also feels like a bustling metropolis. What are you talking about? This same thing applies to BG1, and it is even more impactful in BG1 because you arrive at the city after spending tens of hours mucking about in dungeons, mines, wilderness, towns, villages, etc, etc, while in BG2 you're immediately dropped off in an urban hub.

This. Right here. This is ridiculous. I already said that while BG1 is an adventure, BG2 is an epic adventure. It's a difference between Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. They are not the same merely because the share the setting. Just because both games have Orcs and Goblins doesn't mean they are on the same level.

You said it, but it's not what we were originally discussing. You constantly do this, forget about the specific points of what we're debating and move the goalposts or bring up new shit without every sussing out the original thing we were discussing. The Lord of the Rings is more epic/fantastical than the Hobbit because of the different story it tells, not because of anything related to its setting.

I'm not going to bother responding to any more of the post as it basically devolves to you throwing the opinion word around, as if all opinions are equal and arguments can't be made in favor of or against a certain opinion. Conversing with you is one sided, and you never want to actually put in any effort to make and develop arguments citing reasons and explanations, and instead want to chop up what I've written so you can respond to things piecemeal in the most surface level way possible, when you're not too busy misinterpreting/strawmanning what has been said.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I don't think BG is a horrible game, I'm also perfectly aware of the circumstance and context surrounding its release and understand why it became such an important title for so many people (although there are a lot of retarded try-hards as well, that's for sure). But those pro-BG tirades can p much always be assigned into one of two general categories:

1. Vague personal feelings: "NPCs having no character gives them more character!"; "I love clearing fow from forest/mountain maps, the 5 trash mob standing in a cluster encounter design is amazing and bring item to a person quests are very stimulating for my brian!!"; "Noticing your rts pathfinding is completely unable to deal with dungeons and then putting literal labyrinths in your game is top notch design, I want more of that!!!". You know what I'm talking about here.
2. Pardon me for calling horse a horse, but autistic screeching: shields reee, main menu reee, paper dolls reee and so on. And again, I'm not saying some of those points aren't valid (yeah, vanilla shield designs in BG2 are retarded), but come on...

This is because, for all the glaring BG2 flaws and problems, when it comes to stuff that matters (varied and interesting challenges, encounters, tools available to handle them, quest design etc.), this comparison is simply Brazil - Germany 2014.

BG1 NPCs do have more character though. They have good portraits and voicelines. They're not explored much, but that doesn't make them low-quality.
With BG2 you have ugly portraits (especially jarring for returning cast) and overdone mediocre dialogue, it's a worse experience. I would much prefer a BG1 companion with the superb portrait art (what game is better?) and lack of cringe.
Same thing with shields, and other things like the Entangle and Fireball spell visuals. BG1 is a beautiful traditional fantasy realm and BG2 is an ugly hodge podge abortion. YES, having retarded shield designs visible constantly is a serious issue.

I view it as pretty much the same as Fallout 1/2, the first game is more immersive, the second has better gameplay.

I'd probably feel the same way if I re-read Hobbit and LoTR, Hobbit is a monocled cute and immersive tale, LoTR is ruined by all the poorly-concealed shilling for Anglo capitalist imperialism against the USSR/Third Reich. And how great (((((Elves))))) are.

 

[octavius]

OK, I thought I'd add my two øre to this very important and novel discussion:

For me BG2 always "jumps the shark" when genociding Drow, Ilithids and Beholders left and right in the Underdark. Before that I think it's superior to unmodded BG1.
Unlike BG2, BG1 takes some time to really gain momentum, but it never gets stale.

BG1 has the advantage of gaining more from mods (especially SCS and to a lesser degree the NPC Project) than BG2 does.

BG1 feels more like a semi-open pen&paper module, while BG2 is more scripted and cinematic.

I feel more like replaying BG1 (modded) than BG2.

 

[Falksi]

BG2's just better for me, much better. Whilst I loved BG1 back in the day and was totally sucked in by it for a once-through playthrough, returning to it after really highlighted how thinly spread it is and how low-level D&D just isn't that much fun.

BG1 certainly isn't without it's plus points, but BG2 I can still play now and wholeheartedly enjoy, it's just so rich and full of goodness. BG1 is enjoyable in parts, but recent replays have all ended with me not being bothered to finish it.

All based on the vanilla games of course.

 

[NecroLord]

I don't think BG is a horrible game, I'm also perfectly aware of the circumstance and context surrounding its release and understand why it became such an important title for so many people (although there are a lot of retarded try-hards as well, that's for sure). But those pro-BG tirades can p much always be assigned into one of two general categories:

1. Vague personal feelings: "NPCs having no character gives them more character!"; "I love clearing fow from forest/mountain maps, the 5 trash mob standing in a cluster encounter design is amazing and bring item to a person quests are very stimulating for my brian!!"; "Noticing your rts pathfinding is completely unable to deal with dungeons and then putting literal labyrinths in your game is top notch design, I want more of that!!!". You know what I'm talking about here.
2. Pardon me for calling horse a horse, but autistic screeching: shields reee, main menu reee, paper dolls reee and so on. And again, I'm not saying some of those points aren't valid (yeah, vanilla shield designs in BG2 are retarded), but come on...

This is because, for all the glaring BG2 flaws and problems, when it comes to stuff that matters (varied and interesting challenges, encounters, tools available to handle them, quest design etc.), this comparison is simply Brazil - Germany 2014.

BG1 NPCs do have more character though. They have good portraits and voicelines. They're not explored much, but that doesn't make them low-quality.
With BG2 you have ugly portraits (especially jarring for returning cast) and overdone mediocre dialogue, it's a worse experience. I would much prefer a BG1 companion with the superb portrait art (what game is better?) and lack of cringe.
Same thing with shields, and other things like the Entangle and Fireball spell visuals. BG1 is a beautiful traditional fantasy realm and BG2 is an ugly hodge podge abortion. YES, having retarded shield designs visible constantly is a serious issue.

I view it as pretty much the same as Fallout 1/2, the first game is more immersive, the second has better gameplay.

I'd probably feel the same way if I re-read Hobbit and LoTR, Hobbit is a monocled cute and immersive tale, LoTR is ruined by all the poorly-concealed shilling for Anglo capitalist imperialism against the USSR/Third Reich. And how great (((((Elves))))) are.

Yeah, the shields and armor in general look like shit. Some of the weapons too. I liked the item design of the first Baldur's Gate better.

 

[JarlFrank]

Ultima Underworld is a decline first-person blobber game that really cannot hold a candle to Baldur's Gate

Morrowind, Arx Fatalis, Ultima Underworld, Wizardry 8, VTM: Bloodlines are all first person faggotry. Nice try comparing them to one of the greatest cRPGs of all time.

Ok you're literally retarded and have no taste, should have stated that at the very beginning.

And you keep referring to Baldur's Gate as "one of the greatest cRPGs of all time" so of course I'm going to criticize that statement, and not keep it contained to BG1 vs BG2. If you make factually wrong statements (BG1 isn't even close to being one of the greatest) I feel compelled to counter them.

All of this "first person faggotry" is objectively superior to BG1.

It has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with the medium of the two games. As a general rule, it is far easier to make an isometric game immersive and lively than a first person game. This is because a game that is an isometric view requires the player to participate in a certain amount of abstraction. When you are playing a game with a first person view, you are looking directly at the character you are speaking to. You can see every little movement they do, or oftentimes don't do. It becomes painfully apparent how wooden, and stiff, and frozen they are. These are all things you cannot see from a zoomed out isometric view. In Baldur's Gate, the sprites move around and have tiny little animations, and while these animations are obviously much less complex than the type of animations we'd see in Skyrim or Morrowind, they end up creating characters that feel far more alive and normal than any first person RPG has managed to do.

Ok so you lack the ability to use your imagination when the perspective is too close to the action. That's your issue, not the game's.

I never got the whole meme of first person view exploration. It does nothing for me, and I've never got any pleasure from finding a super secret part of a dungeon through multiple dimensions that could only have been executed with a first person view. I really couldn't give a fuck less, and I never had, because it has always seemed pedestrian and boring. I much prefer discovery and exploration as it relates to discovering more about a world and what it has to offer me, versus the literal act of exploration.

So you openly admit that you lack the ability to enjoy genuine exploration, yet keep claiming that BG1's empty wilderness fog of war uncovering is good exploration.
When you don't understand something, you don't get to make qualitative statements about it.

You don't even know what good exploration looks like, so your opinion about it is as valid as someone who only likes McDonalds claiming a 5 star restaurant isn't good.

Also it's hilarious that exploration is the only thing you're going to cite. Alright, according to you Morrowind has superior exploration, I will give that to you though I think that is being overly charitable. Baldur's Gate has superior combat, art direction, sound design, and immersion just to name a few things it does better off the top of my head.

I can grant you better combat, but art direction and immersion?

Let's ignore our differing opinions on isometric vs first person perspective and just focus on the quality of the art direction and the immersion factor itself.

Morrowind's art direction is clearly superior. BG has, as I already stated before, extremely generic-looking places that don't evoke a sense of wonder at all. It feels like "my first RPG campaign" in every aspect, especially the visuals. Generic medieval village vibes that take more inspiration from renaissance faires than actual medieval villages. You know, I do enjoy medieval architecture - but Baldur's Gate's generic visuals don't evoke that at all. It looks like a cheap copy of what popular culture thinks medieval places looked like.

Morrowind art direction:

Spoiler

Baldur's Gate art direction:

Spoiler

Morrowind has much better art direction than Baldur's Gate. Far, far superior. Exotic architecture, interesting armor design, mountainous landscapes...

You might claim that most of it is "too brown" or something, but so is BG in many places. Just look at the crappy textures of the gnoll fortress, looks ugly as fuck.
Morrowind has different architecture for each faction, different armor for each faction, etc, and it's consistent. The different great house guards wear different styles of bonemold armor, you can see even from afar at a glance what house they belong to. A lot of care has been put into making architecture and clothing consistent between different factions, and to make it all reflect cultural differences and attitudes. You have the crazy mushroom towers of the Telvanni wizards, the traditional architecture of Redoran, the more European-looking houses of the Imperials, the yurts of Ashlander tribes, etc etc.

Baldur's Gate's visuals don't have such a strong identity. It's just generic-looking pseudo-medieval houses everywhere.

And immersion? Morrowind is a game that weaves a complex tapestry of different cultures and factions working with and against each other, gives the place a rich history, and turns you into a pawn of greater powers - the daedric goddess Azura, the Almsivi Tribunal, the Empire. There's intrigue everywhere, and your role as the incarnation of an old hero figure isn't even clear. Are you truly the Nerevarine, or are you just some guy/girl whom several factions invested their hope in?

The world is treated seriously, and there are only few joke characters in the game. Apart from Crassius Curio, an overly lusty Imperial dude who wants to see your character naked (lol), they're all easter eggs (Creeper, Mudcrab Merchant, M'aiq the Liar).
The average dialog in Morrowind treats itself seriously and tries to deliver information about the world in a straightforward way.

Most of the NPCs that approach you in Baldur's Gate have one or two funny throwaway lines and that's it. "Haha, we're a quirky tongue in cheek fantasy setting, hehe!" That's the impression Bladur's Gate gives me. Not exactly conducive towards immersion.

To bring the discussion back towards BG1 vs BG2, BG2 is clearly superior to BG1 in both aspects.
BG2 may not have BG1's grounded backstory of the iron crisis, and it has more "out-there" elements in general, but at least it doesn't take itself as a joke as much as BG1 does. There are much fewer NPCs that just come up to you, drop a funny tongue in cheek line, and go away, never to be seen again. Even though it is less grounded, BG2 takes itself more seriously in how it presents the world and its people.

And art direction wise, BG2 is 100000000 times better than BG1, its superiority is so crystal clear it's not even funny. Athkatla looks a lot better than Baldur's Gate, the dungeons look better, the few wilderness areas have more going on than BG1's empty forests, and the overall modeling and texturing is superior. You don't get stuff like the gnoll castle whose walls look like literal shit smears.

BG2 art direction:

Spoiler

The only element where BG1's art design is superior is character portraits, but that's about it. The actual game world you travel through looks infinitely better in BG2 compared to BG1.

I will reiterate, the issue isn't finding Baldur's Gate boring, the issue is that you're claiming it's boring while also simultaneously calling Baldur's Gate 2 fun and interesting when it's not that different. What the fuck does it do to deliver an exotic vibe? Is changing buildings to have domes instead of gable roofs all it takes for you to get an exotic vibe? I feel bad that you have such a lack of imagination tbh. One day hopefully an RPG will come out that actually manages to nail an exotic vibe so I can point it out to you.

You don't have to, that day already came.

Morrowind exists, after all.
Pillars of Eternity 2, mediocre as it was, had pretty good art direction and plenty of exotic locales.
Ardenfall, a currently in-development first person RPG has very Morrowindian vibes.
Conan Exiles looks pretty great, too, landscape-wise.
And Planescape Torment is a thing, too.

I don't even mind classical medieval architecture, as long as it's done right.
Baldur's Gate doesn't do it right. Baldur's Gate looks boring, feels boring, plays boring. Mowing down copypasted low level trash mobs in empty forests, then doing some generic fetch quests and meeting one-note joke NPCs in quaint villages isn't my idea of an adventure.

You know what's medieval architecture done right?
This:

Spoiler

It's busy, twisty, with odd angles, tall structures, lots of detail to explore - but hey, that's from a first person game. That perspective is inherently better at creating an atmosphere and allowing for good exploration, but you wouldn't understand.

Also you can't just ask any local for directions, it has to be the specific local that will give you a quest which will unlock an area. Do you really not see why that is immersion breaking and retarded? Come on, I know you're trying to "win" the argument here but let's not be silly.

I'll grant you that point. Still, the way you'd gradually unlock new places to go to as you talked to NPCs and filled your questlog felt pretty organic to me.
I can understand why you don't like it, though.

Imagine comparing real life to a video game. There is more than just the architecture that is different about these places, and it's hilarious that this is the argument you're going with. Ah yes, if it wasn't for the Eifell Tower or the architecture, I would not be able to tell I was in France. Lolk.

I'm too autistic to care about people so yes, architecture is the main reason why I travel

I made a post addressing JarlFrank's specific points about why BG2 is not superior to BG1. He proceeded to ignore the structured argument and respond to a single point that was related to the two game's settings, ignoring all the other very legitimate critiques I had. When pressured, he proceeds to shit out a bunch of games to flex his RPG "knoweldge and pedigree" instead of actually focusing on what we were supposed to be discussing, whether or not BG2 is supperior to BG1. Shame that even the most prestigous of Codexers are incapable of engaging in logical argumentation properly.

I didn't ignore your argument, I replied to the points I found relevant.

Everything else, I had already properly stated in my previous post. I don't think there's much else to say about the gameplay that hasn't been said already.

If you prefer BG1's mostly-empty but big forest areas filled with tons of copypasted low level trash mobs to BG2's more structured but also more interesting encounter design and dungeon crawling, then that's just what you prefer.
It's an objectively inferior preference, but it is what it is.

The game has shit art direction and feels empty due to GameByro being incapable of rendering more than twenty NPCs in a single city.

Morrowind does not have shit art direction (in fact it's superior to Blandur's Gate's, see above), and there's way more than 20 NPCs per city. Why do you lie?

Balmora, a small to mid-sized city, has 94 NPCs, for example. Source: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:City_People

Hobbit is a stand alone book, while Two Towers and Fellowship are sequential movies in a series.

Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return of the King are a single movie split into three parts for ease of distribution

The Hobbit can be less cool than the Lord of the Rings, but it is not less cool because it has a worse setting, it would be less cool for different reasons related to the plot and other such reasons. He is claiming that Baldur's Gate 1 is less cool than Baldur's Gate 2 because the setting in the first game is worse than the second game, but they both take place in the same world, and the surface level setting changes are extremely minor. Your argument does not make sense, and if you want to prove his point, you will need to establish that the setting of Baldur's Gate 2 differs from the first in a reasonably significant way, which it does not.

Do you agree that Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia are all located on the same continent, therefore are technically in the same setting?
Do you also agree that all of these places have a different feel to them? Different local culture, different architecture, different things to do and see?

That's the difference between BG1 and BG2, setting-wise. Same world, different region. It shouldn't be that hard to understand. A game set in medieval France and a game set in the Byzantine Empire are technically in the same setting, yet they would feel pretty different from each other. In fact, I think most people wouldn't even say that they're in the same setting!

Mind you, he ignored all my other points about the issues BG2 had.

Which ones would that be?
I can admit to the issue that BG2 falls apart towards the end, but BG1 has the reverse issue that it only gets good towards the end, when it's too late and you're already bored from the slog you had to wade through.
The good parts of BG2 are superior to the good parts of BG1, so BG2 wins by default.

BG2 has better encounter design, better level design, better quest design, better art direction - pretty much better everything, and I haven't read anything from you that would disprove this.

 

[Volourn]

Stop defending ES games. They are shit. There's NOTHING good about them. FFS It makes you look retartet.

 

[Harthwain]

Morrowind, Arx Fatalis, Ultima Underworld, Wizardry 8, VTM: Bloodlines are all first person faggotry. Nice try comparing them to one of the greatest cRPGs of all time.

What kind of argument is that? You were asking, and I quote; "what cRPGs have superior world building to Baldur's Gate?". Regardless of your opinion on first-person, all of these games are examples of cRPGs and considered as great in terms of world building. Perhaps you shouldn't be asking for examples if that's how you're going to respond when someone actually goes through the effort to list some and provide a detailed reasoning why.

He is claiming that Baldur's Gate 1 is less cool than Baldur's Gate 2 because the setting in the first game is worse than the second game, but they both take place in the same world, and the surface level setting changes are extremely minor.

He says that BG (both 1 and 2) are generic high fantasy. Which they are. The difference between the two is what they focus on:

BG1 feels extremely mundane and generic. BG2 is wild and exotic. This one comes down to individual preference, but I like my fantasy to be fantastic, not mundane. If I want central European medieval villages, I go for a drive around my area, there's plenty of those here. BG1 has a lot of medieval rural villages, mines and caves, forests, grasslands... it's as generic as fantasy can get. BG2 starts in a Mediterranean-inspired city and leads you to weird places like pocket planes, the Underdark, dungeons carved by mad sorcerers... it's a lot more exotic, so the sense of discovery is stronger.

Your argument does not make sense, and if you want to prove his point, you will need to establish that the setting of Baldur's Gate 2 differs from the first in a reasonably significant way, which it does not.

Here is a thought: maybe it's not my argument that doesn't make sense. Maybe it's your inablity to comprehend what's written. And not only in my case, but others as well (because you clearly don't understand what JarlFrank is saying too).

The issue has nothing to do with it being static. I hate this meme about NPC schedules, as if that even fucking matters. The game has shit art direction and feels empty due to GameByro being incapable of rendering more than twenty NPCs in a single city. It works in Gothic because it's a sparsely populated penal colony. The same excuse does not work for Morrowind.

NPC schedules help in making an illusion of a living world, even if the number of NPCs isn't amazing. Skyrim is a good example (despite being a decline when compared to Morrowind). Besides, none of this really changes the fact that Morrowind rides on its world building, especially today, when its visuals are no longer its strongest point. Which directly answers your question about "What use is world building when the medium at which you experience the world is a so terrible?".

Hobbit is a stand alone book, while Two Towers and Fellowship are sequential movies in a series.

Um, no? The Hobbit is a separate book, yes. The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers are two separate volumes out of the three (the last one being The Return of the King), and the entire Lord of the Rings is divided into six books. The reason I use Hobbit is because it better captures the difference in the scale of the adventure when compared to BG1 and BG2. BG1 would be closer to The Hobbit. BG2 is Lord of the Rings, because it's waaaay bigger in terms of area it covers (and pretty much everything else).

At least you understand what an analogy is and are capable of making them yourself, even if they are flawed, so I have to give you some props for that.

Sadly I can't say something nice in return, considering you talked about a book and then about "sequential movies in a series". I mean, these movies were based on the books, so why mention the movies at all...?

What the fuck are you talking about? First you claim BG2 feels like it's a different setting to BG1, and then when I disagree with that that statement because I don't feel like the differences are substantial, you cite the Hobbit and LotR and change the point about the difference in scale/epicness between the two games? You are all over the place.

No, my friend. It's you starting to realize what's going on. Hopefully. Because I never claimed that "BG2 feels like it's a different setting to BG1". I did make the point about the difference in epicness between the two games though. Because that's the whole point.

Pointing to the lack of a dragon in BG1 but the presence of one in BG2 is a tangible example that we can work with, but it's also a dumb point which is why he didn't make it.

"The presence of one"? I literally said "a few". And it's not "a dumb point" - it's a very good example of the shift between the "mundane" and the "epic".

What are the exotic places you visit in BG2 that really make it feel like a different setting to BG1? Please elaborate, and let's see if they are significant enough differences so we can give his claim any weight. Mind you, he ignored all my other points about the issues BG2 had.

Um, no. I am not going to elaborate. Firstly - it was stated already in responses from me and JarlFrank . Secondly - I know you're going to downplay everything to fit your opinion, so I can't be bothered to waste energy on elaborating when I already know it's a bad faith argument, especially after how you replyed to JarlFrank and his essay on cRPGs with superior world building.

Holy fuck, Baldur is also an urban area with a shit ton of content. It also feels like a bustling metropolis. What are you talking about?

I was talking about Athkatla. I was talking about what made it feel interesting. This was in response to you saying that "Just because the city architecture in Athkatla is different than what we'd normally see in a European city, isn't enough to make it feel interesting or unique". I never compared it to Baldur's Gate (the city). Why are you so confused? I have no problem following the conversation.

This same thing applies to BG1, and it is even more impactful in BG1 because you arrive at the city after spending tens of hours mucking about in dungeons, mines, wilderness, towns, villages, etc, etc, while in BG2 you're immediately dropped off in an urban hub.

In BG1 the problem is that you spend "tens of hours mucking about" in "boring" and "empty" areas. In BG2 you instantly start in a big city (a lot of diverse areas, a lot of NPCs with quests, etc.) and locations you visit from there are beating "mines" and "wilderness" in terms of how exotic they are (again, JarlFrank already listed them, so I am not going to bother repeat it. It wouldn't make a difference anyway).

You said it, but it's not what we were originally discussing. You constantly do this, forget about the specific points of what we're debating and move the goalposts or bring up new shit without every sussing out the original thing we were discussing.

Bullshit. It's you who constantly keeps forgeting the point here, not me.

The Lord of the Rings is more epic/fantastical than the Hobbit because of the different story it tells, not because of anything related to its setting.

...

I keep telling you the difference is in the scale ("BG1 is an adventure, BG2 is an epic adventure), not in the setting ("They are not the same merely because the share the setting"), so I have no idea why you keep talking about the setting. But at least you agree that Lord of the Rings is more epic than The Hobbit, I will note that as progress.

I'm not going to bother responding to any more of the post as it basically devolves to you throwing the opinion word around

Ah, it seems you have realized you don't really have arguments but opinions and prepared a way to back out from an unfavourable position.

as if all opinions are equal and arguments can't be made in favor of or against a certain opinion.

They can. But you need to have arguments to back said opinion first.

Conversing with you is one sided, and you never want to actually put in any effort to make and develop arguments citing reasons and explanations

The pot calling the kettle black.

and instead want to chop up what I've written so you can respond to things piecemeal in the most surface level way possible, when you're not too busy misinterpreting/strawmanning what has been said.

That's funny, coming from the guy who forgets what he was talking about a post before.

 

[smaug]

BG1 feels more like a semi-open pen&paper module, while BG2 is more scripted and cinematic.

“Feels” is a key word. BG1 isn’t a semi-open pen&paper module in any meaningful sense, in fact BG1 is pseudo open world due to the major areas in the game being locked behind story chapters instead of something cool like gameplay (I.E Fallout). BG1 in the most literal sense “feels” more “open-world” due to the fact that there’s at least decent chunks of space in between areas and quests. Whereas this is nearly non-existent in BG2 where everything is literally right next to each other.

BG1 didn’t do anything at all, it’s just that BG2 went so extreme in the other direction that anything is better than nothing (basically content that actual has space between encounters). This doesn’t mean BG1 had good design ffs

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

BG1 feels more like a semi-open pen&paper module, while BG2 is more scripted and cinematic.

“Feels” is a key word. BG1 isn’t a semi-open pen&paper module in any meaningful sense, in fact BG1 is pseudo open world due to the major areas in the game being locked behind story chapters instead of something cool like gameplay (I.E Fallout). BG1 in the most literal sense “feels” more “open-world” due to the fact that there’s at least decent chunks of space in between areas and quests. Whereas this is nearly non-existent in BG2 where everything is literally right next to each other.

BG1 didn’t do anything at all, it’s just that BG2 went so extreme in the other direction that anything is better than nothing (basically content that actual has space between encounters). This doesn’t mean BG1 had good design ffs

I had preferred BG1 style maps too, but I remember a good point someone made many years ago. In BG2 you're not some pleb anymore. Hoofing it through farmland to get speed-bumped by wolves, hobgoblin bandits, and other trash would be a poor choice. The encounters would have to get pretty dumb to remain relevant. We don't need elder fire elementals waylaying us on our way to Trademeet like it's an Owlcat game.

 

[ItsChon]

Ok you're literally retarded and have no taste, should have stated that at the very beginning.

Nah, I'm just not blinded by bias due to having grown up with the aforementioned games. Wizardry 8 can actually be removed from the list, because even though Blobbers are inferior to Isometric RPGs, it is a game that actually has decent combat due to being a turn-based party game.

Ultima Underworld has a flat out shit combat system man, I'm not sure what else needs to be said. It has the Legend of Grimrock dancing around style of combat which is so fucking gay and uninteresting, and because you have the ability to kite almost every monster, all combat ceases to be interesting and just becomes a trudge to get through. And don't get me started on the art style; I fucking hate this everything is rectangular shit that we see in old school blobbers and other first person style games. If you can ignore it because you grew up with it, that's fine, but don't expect me to actually enjoy that shit. Not a single environment looks aesthetically pleasing, and it's so difficult to create a world that is visually impressive with this type of art. Morrowind, Arx Fatalis, and VtM:B all have shit combat due to their real time action combat systems, which simply don't work when making an RPG. Imagine comparing Deus Ex's gunplay to CS:GO or even Call of Duty? Imagine comparing Morrowinds combat to something like Chivalry? Simply put, it is extremely difficult to create a first person RPG that has an action combat system which simultaneously depends on a player's stats in a meaningful way, while also remaining fun to play. Blobbers circumvent this issue by simply making their combat systems akin to a turn based RPG, but now we're back to the very reason why isometric RPGs are simply better than first person RPGs, because an isometric view is superior for that kind of a combat system versus the first person view.

Space Hulk Tactics is an example of a game that features both a first person view while also having the ability to pan out to an isometric view for combat which is actually very cool, and Archaelund is another example of a game that is attempting to fix this issue, and there are others. None of the games you mention do this however, so while they all have their own strengths, it simply doesn't matter because they are flawed products.

All of this "first person faggotry" is objectively superior to BG1.

Yeah whatever you say. Imagine being entertained by a game where the core gameplay, the combat, is mind numbingly boring and bad. A game that has bad combat is almost certainly a shit game.

Ok so you lack the ability to use your imagination when the perspective is too close to the action. That's your issue, not the game's.

Retarded statement. Do you actually believe this? I'm genuinely curious. Or is this a snide comment so you don't have to acknoweldge the very legitimate point I am making. Am I supposed to imagine an NPC that doesn't exist? Am I supposed to imagine that I'm in a bustling city when the streets are empty all around me are empty and all the sounds that are emblematic of an urban environment are missing? Get the fuck out of here lmfao. The game feels fucking dead, and no amount of "use your imagination" cope will excuse it.

So you openly admit that you lack the ability to enjoy genuine exploration, yet keep claiming that BG1's empty wilderness fog of war uncovering is good exploration.

Genuine according to you. I'd be more than happy to get into a pedantic argument about what constitutes "genuine" exploration, but I think you'll have a hard time explaining why exploration done in first person is more valid than exploration done from an isometric view due to the addition of multiple directions for things to be hidden/discovered. You might argue that it's better, but they are still both exploration.

The issue is not whether or not BG1's exploration is genuine (it is obviously), but whether or not it is good. BG1 does have good exploration because it manages to create an interesting world that immerses and invests the player, so they are actively interested in it. Although you're just clearing fog of war, every time you find something new or interesting in Baldur's Gate, it feels awesome. The world is becoming more real and interesting with every step, and you are constantly excited about all the things you might discover, whether they be new quests, powerful items to help you on your journey, or just a beautiful building because of how gorgeous the hand drawn backgrounds are. It is fun to exist and find new things in a world that you are invested in, much like it is fun to walk around a city and look at the architecture. I cannot the say the same for Morrowind as an example, because even though the world itself is very interesting, the game feels dead, and I cannot immerse/invest myself in the game, so no matter how cool the things I see are, I am constantly disappointing by how dead everything around said cool things is.

You don't even know what good exploration looks like, so your opinion about it is as valid as someone who only likes McDonalds claiming a 5 star restaurant isn't good.

No, you are just far more easily entertained than I. Good exploration for you requires far less things to work than what is required for exploration to be good for me. I do not care so much for the actual physical act of exploring, so much as I care about why I am exploring, where I am exploring, and what I find when I do explore.

I can grant you better combat, but art direction and immersion?

Let's ignore our differing opinions on isometric vs first person perspective and just focus on the quality of the art direction and the immersion factor itself.

Morrowind's art direction is clearly superior. BG has, as I already stated before, extremely generic-looking places that don't evoke a sense of wonder at all. It feels like "my first RPG campaign" in every aspect, especially the visuals. Generic medieval village vibes that take more inspiration from renaissance faires than actual medieval villages. You know, I do enjoy medieval architecture - but Baldur's Gate's generic visuals don't evoke that at all. It looks like a cheap copy of what popular culture thinks medieval places looked like.

Morrowind art direction:

Baldur's Gate art direction:

Morrowind has much better art direction than Baldur's Gate. Far, far superior. Exotic architecture, interesting armor design, mountainous landscapes...

You might claim that most of it is "too brown" or something, but so is BG in many places. Just look at the crappy textures of the gnoll fortress, looks ugly as fuck.
Morrowind has different architecture for each faction, different armor for each faction, etc, and it's consistent. The different great house guards wear different styles of bonemold armor, you can see even from afar at a glance what house they belong to. A lot of care has been put into making architecture and clothing consistent between different factions, and to make it all reflect cultural differences and attitudes. You have the crazy mushroom towers of the Telvanni wizards, the traditional architecture of Redoran, the more European-looking houses of the Imperials, the yurts of Ashlander tribes, etc etc.

Baldur's Gate's visuals don't have such a strong identity. It's just generic-looking pseudo-medieval houses everywhere.

Alright you are definitely right about this, Morrowind does have much better art direction than Baldur's Gate. That being said, I do want to clarify why I made that statement. I said art direction and I did mean it when I said it, so I was definitely wrong, but part of what I was thinking of when I said that is the quality of the art itself in Baldur's Gate 1, and this is magnified when you look at modded/enhanced versions of Baldur's Gate which really highlight how beautiful the hand drawn backgrounds of Baldur's Gate are. Morrowind has far better art direction, but Baldur's Gate looks absolutely gorgeous at higher resolutions, and I do think it is the prettier game even despite Morrowind's excellent art directioin. My issue with Morrowind comes down to it's terrible combat, which is a major problem for any game where combat is a big focus, and how dead the game feels. It's a shame because it has a ton of potential otherwise.

And immersion? Morrowind is a game that weaves a complex tapestry of different cultures and factions working with and against each other, gives the place a rich history, and turns you into a pawn of greater powers - the daedric goddess Azura, the Almsivi Tribunal, the Empire. There's intrigue everywhere, and your role as the incarnation of an old hero figure isn't even clear. Are you truly the Nerevarine, or are you just some guy/girl whom several factions invested their hope in?

Yes, and how do you explore all of these things? By walking around a world that feels completely empty. Cities that are devoid of people with the few NPCs in the game barely moving are moving like cardboard cutouts. Just kills all of these things for me, and whether or not you disagree with me getting hung up on this, I'm sure you can understand why someone that does get hung up on this would find themselves incapable of immersing themselves in the world.

The world is treated seriously, and there are only few joke characters in the game. Apart from Crassius Curio, an overly lusty Imperial dude who wants to see your character naked (lol), they're all easter eggs (Creeper, Mudcrab Merchant, M'aiq the Liar).
The average dialog in Morrowind treats itself seriously and tries to deliver information about the world in a straightforward way.

Most of the NPCs that approach you in Baldur's Gate have one or two funny throwaway lines and that's it. "Haha, we're a quirky tongue in cheek fantasy setting, hehe!" That's the impression Bladur's Gate gives me. Not exactly conducive towards immersion.

It is immersive, it's just immersing you into a setting that is not overly serious. And I will clarify, the biggest thing that is responsible for getting me immersed into a game is how alive and logically cohesive it feels. In Baldur's Gate, everything makes sense. I don't need to wonder how the city of Baldur gets their food, because you pass through a bunch of farms on the way over to it. How does a smaller village like Nashkel get their food, when their entire economy is based around the mine their town was built around? They have small farmsteads on the same tile as the map versus taking up their own tile to highlight this. How is such a big city policed? By the Flaming Fist military organization which act as the police force. How are the city and the various towns of this region interconnected ? Well the entire game is built upon an iron shortage which is having major rammifications on trade in the region and has the potential to spiral into a war between two rival states, which aside from being awesome and interesting, actually feels realistic and mature. The at times quirky writing is not needed to create a world that feels alive and immersive, and this is why I often seperate good writing and world building. A game could have fantastic world building while also having mediocre writing, while another game might have amazing writing but shit world building. How good a game is at world building is a major component of immersion, but so is the actual feel of moving around in the game, the sound design, character movement, NPCs, etc, etc. Morrowind excels at a few of those things, but catastrophically fails in others, which lead to a game that is simply not immersiv because it doesn't meet the minimum requirements in all the necessary categories to qualify as such, regardless of how much it excels in the categories that it does meet the requirements of.

To bring the discussion back towards BG1 vs BG2, BG2 is clearly superior to BG1 in both aspects.
BG2 may not have BG1's grounded backstory of the iron crisis, and it has more "out-there" elements in general, but at least it doesn't take itself as a joke as much as BG1 does.

You're definitely exagerating the amount that BG1 takes itself as a joke. I did not get nearly the same impression that you did in regards to it constantly meming on its setting.

There are much fewer NPCs that just come up to you, drop a funny tongue in cheek line, and go away, never to be seen again. Even though it is less grounded, BG2 takes itself more seriously in how it presents the world and its people.

This barely happens in Baldur's Gate, what are you talking about? In BG2 on the other hand, NPCs are constantly coming up to you, and while they do aren't dropping tounge in cheek lines, they are giving you some quest you really don't give a fuck about, leaving you wondering what the hell just happened.

Even though it is less grounded, BG2 takes itself more seriously in how it presents the world and its people.

Obviously it would be ridiculous for me to ask you to present some sort of statistical analysis where you higlight how many "silly" or "quirky" dialogues there are in BG1 versus BG2 so we can determine which game takes itself more seriously. I guess we're at an impasse here, but I genuienly don't know how you got the impression that BG1 takes itself unseriously. The game is massive, around a hundred hours. There are what, ten, twenty lines that are super jarring and detract from how seriously the game takes itself? This is just such a weird distinction you're drawing, and it seems so minor compared to the actual flaws that I was attributing to BG2.

And art direction wise, BG2 is 100000000 times better than BG1, its superiority is so crystal clear it's not even funny. Athkatla looks a lot better than Baldur's Gate, the dungeons look better, the few wilderness areas have more going on than BG1's empty forests, and the overall modeling and texturing is superior. You don't get stuff like the gnoll castle whose walls look like literal shit smears.

Look at some of the upscaled areas in BG1.

Spoiler

Yes these are from the Enhanced Edition but that's only because I can't easily find modded high resolution screenshots from Baldur's Gate on google. Baldur's Gate 2 and Baldur's Gate 1 have comparable art direction in my eyes because Baldur's Gate 1 is more consistent in what it does, while Baldur's Gate 2 is all over the place, but I can see why someone would prefer the second game. You saying that there is such a big difference between the two that it is a point in favor of Baldur's Gate 2 being the superior game reeks of hyperbole.

You don't have to, that day already came.

Morrowind exists, after all.

That was a dumb statement to make because you're right, there are plenty of exotic RPGs out actually. Let's go ahead and compare them. Baldur's Gate 2 versus Morrowind? Lol. I like the Baldur's Gate series and setting, but it is not exotic, and attributing such a delineation to such a milk toast standard setting is offensive, well, it would offend me if I liked Morrowind, but my point stands. Planescape: Torment versus Baldur's Gate 2? Again, imagine calling Baldur's Gate 2 exotic when faced with Planescape: Torment. You're making my point for me. These are actual exotic settings, Baldur's Gate 2 is not exotic at all compared to them.

I don't even mind classical medieval architecture, as long as it's done right.
Baldur's Gate doesn't do it right. Baldur's Gate looks boring, feels boring, plays boring. Mowing down copypasted low level trash mobs in empty forests, then doing some generic fetch quests and meeting one-note joke NPCs in quaint villages isn't my idea of an adventure.

You know what's medieval architecture done right?
This:

It's busy, twisty, with odd angles, tall structures, lots of detail to explore - but hey, that's from a first person game. That perspective is inherently better at creating an atmosphere and allowing for good exploration, but you wouldn't understand.

Baldur's Gate looks gorgeous with graphical adjustments, and it plays and feels the same as Baldur's Gate 2. If anything, Baldur's Gate 1 feels far more tense when first starting due to how low level we are and how everything around us can kill us. Every wolf every bandit has the opportunity to end out adventure, and we feel that dynamic. Baldur's Gate does an excellent job of making us feel like Gorion's Ward, thrust into danger in an unsafe, hostile world, with mercenaries who want us dead hiding in every shadow. Since you start Baldur's Gate 2 with a fair bit of levels under your breath, it feels much less tense and exciting than Baldur's Gate 1, especially if you are adept at D&D combat, as you have the tools to deal with pretty much any encounter the game throws at you.

There are also plenty of great quests in Baldur's Gate and fun encounters in the wildernesses. I already stated that the forests weren't empty, but you continue to parrot that point without a shred of evidence to support it. Notice how you have to constantly minimize Baldur's Gate to an extreme degree with hyperbolic statements, while I don't need to resort to any of that to criticisze Baldur's Gate 2?

Finally, first person games are certainly better at creating immersive atmospheres and tones, but this is a different thing from having good exploration, though the two are often linked. That doesn't change the fact that first person games have a ton of issues outside of this one thing they excel at. Also, while Baldur's Gate is guilty of having less than ideal medieval architecture, are you actually claiming Athkatla does a great job of representing Mediterranean architecture? Both of them are mid as fuck, and that is my whole point.

I'm too autistic to care about people so yes, architecture is the main reason why I travel

While I appreciate the self deprecating humor and I know you're not entirely serious, I want to reiterate the point I was making. Even if you don't care about the people in these places, visiting Europe from Kwan for example feels different in so many ways that are completely unrelated to architecture, and this is undeniable. Every place has an intrinsic energy and feel to it, and this is something you can pick up on. San Francisco feels different from LA which feels different from Vegas. London is going to feel different from Paris which is going to feel different from Berlin. There are so many factors that go into this with architecture being just one. The same applies to game cities and settings, though obviously to a more focused and lesser degree.

As an example, the Foundry feels totally different from Core City or Camp Hathor in Underrail, and it would feel different even if they had similar looking buildings. The characters dress different, they talk different, they do different things, etc, etc.

I didn't ignore your argument, I replied to the points I found relevant.

Everything else, I had already properly stated in my previous post. I don't think there's much else to say about the gameplay that hasn't been said already.

If you prefer BG1's mostly-empty but big forest areas filled with tons of copypasted low level trash mobs to BG2's more structured but also more interesting encounter design and dungeon crawling, then that's just what you prefer.
It's an objectively inferior preference, but it is what it is.

You never addressed the biggest problem with BG2, which is how the entire thing feels like a themepark ride where content is shoved into your face, versus an actual organic adventure like an RPG is supposed to be. You keep saying it has empty forests when I addressed this in my first post, shame you didn't find it relevant enough to actually quote and respond to. You say the game has low level trash mobs, but because you start the game at such a low level, all of these encounters actually pose a threat to you and require a good level of strategy to deal with. It's a shame the game allows rest spamming because if it didn't, more people would feel how fun it is to go through all these encounters managing your resources and trying to eliminate them as efficiently as possible.

Morrowind does not have shit art direction (in fact it's superior to Blandur's Gate's, see above), and there's way more than 20 NPCs per city. Why do you lie?

Balmora, a small to mid-sized city, has 94 NPCs, for example. Source: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:City_People

The actual number I stated was hyperbolic, but the point remains. Even with 94 NPCs, the city feels dead. Just go ahead and walk through and you will see the lack of people. If Balmora has 94 NPCs, Baldur in Baldur's Gate has hundreds. If only every city had that many NPCs, would make the game feel way better. I was off base saying the game has art direction, mind melt from writing so much.

Do you agree that Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia are all located on the same continent, therefore are technically in the same setting?
Do you also agree that all of these places have a different feel to them? Different local culture, different architecture, different things to do and see?

That's the difference between BG1 and BG2, setting-wise. Same world, different region. It shouldn't be that hard to understand. A game set in medieval France and a game set in the Byzantine Empire are technically in the same setting, yet they would feel pretty different from each other. In fact, I think most people wouldn't even say that they're in the same setting!

I understand the point you're making but look at all the places you listed and compare the differences, now compare BG1 and BG2, and tell me that these games have differences that are even close to as meaningful as the differences between the places you listed. This is my point, BG2 and BG1 aren't different enough to be considered different settings even though they literally take place in different settings.

Which ones would that be?
I can admit to the issue that BG2 falls apart towards the end, but BG1 has the reverse issue that it only gets good towards the end, when it's too late and you're already bored from the slog you had to wade through.
The good parts of BG2 are superior to the good parts of BG1, so BG2 wins by default.

BG2 has better encounter design, better level design, better quest design, better art direction - pretty much better everything, and I haven't read anything from you that would disprove this.

Baldur's Gate 2 has a terrible beginning as well which you glossed over. The Athkatla experience is absolutely terrible, and it is bad because of the theme park nature of the city. NPCs shit out quests without giving you a chance to orient yourself or give a fuck about them, the city itself feels disjointed, confusing, and scattered, especially when compared to Baldur, and the game does not do a good job of making you care about anything. Contrast this with Baldur's Gate, where it eases you into everything, gives you short term immediate goals that you have a vested interest in seeing through. Baldur's Gate is a consistent experience throughout, and while Baldur's Gate 2 might have higher highs (I wouldn't even say that because Durlag's Tower in BG1 is better than anything in BG2), BG1 is the far more consistent experience.

BG2 and BG1 both have comparable encounter design in my eyes. BG2 does have more varied encounters but it constantly spams shit like Ilithids and Litches and many of its encounters are easily cheesable due to the nature of high level DnD. All of the other things you listed are honestly comparable in my eyes as well, I have no clue why you're claiming Baldur's Gate is filled with fetch quests when that isn't true, both games have great art once they are modded for higher resolutions and some textures in BG1 are improved, and BG1 has its moments of great level design.

It seems to me that you don't disagree with any of my critiques regarding Baldur's Gate 2, but have some weird hate boner against Baldur's Gate 1 which I just don't see.

 

[Butter]

A zoomer who has played 5 games is telling people they're just nostalgic. What is this, Reddit?

 

[King Crispy]

Personally I think ItsChon has recently discovered the wonders of cocaine.

 

[PapaPetro]

Baldur's Gate 2 is vastly overrated. It's a complete mess. It's only good points are the diversity and versatility of the locations and the monsters.
Otherwise, there is literally no atmosphere or single plotline in the game. Anything to hold interest? No.
Irenicus is a shadow, who intermittently pesters you with thoughts and kidnappings. his motivations are revealed until late. He seems to be a shadow than a real, scary villain.
Athkatla is one shithole of a city. Its art design is very bland. It doesn't give a fantasy vibe at all. More of a cosmopolitan, Southern European decaying husk of a city.
Side quests are too numerous, one dimensional, and completely unrelated to the plot. The Game is supposed to be related to Bhaalspawn or Irenicus's machinations, yet De'arnise keep, firkraag, Tradesmeet, planar sphere seem like random happenings.
Can anyone tell me how the Druid problem, the mad mage in planar sphere problem, eyeless cultist problem, and the weredragon aristocrat's puzzle dungeon all erupted at the same time? was their backstory explained? were they in any way related to Bhaalspawn, Irenicus?
Shadows of Amn was simply a platform to showcase the DnD knowledge of Bioware. To lure first-time gamers with "OOOOOOOOOOO BEHOLDER! :OOOOOOO Dragon" OOOOOOOOO KIDS we have a planar sphere "
Story writing, Minsc's humorous parables, and quality of dialogue is very mediocre.
Combat in BG2 is okay up to certain levels, but at higher levels, mage fights become cheesy, tiring, and boring. Breach, dispel magic, spell trigger, contingency, pierce, breach etc. No variety.

Compare Icewind Dale, Dragon Age for better gaming experiences, and smaller but more compact stories. On top of that, you get a sense of adventure only when you progress into a storyline.
BG2 storyline is like watered-down beer while Icewind Dale is concentrated whiskey. Even in Dragon Age, despite the wide variety of locations, we still have the feeling that there is an overarching plot.

for Combat, Icewind Dale 2 and Divinity Original Sin had much harder and more tactically enjoyable combat than BG2.

People hate Diablo 1 and 2 for their "lack of roleplaying" but they are pretty solid games for a very limited world. Their locations are mostly for monster killing, but yet they give a better sense of dread than pathetic dungeons in BG2. 4 Acts of Diablo 2 transport you into 4 completely different atmospheres, gothic for 1, arabian for 2, demonic for 3 and hellish for 4. We are able to feel the atmosphere, the immersion is flawless.
Diablo 1's locations were very claustrophobic and coupled with slow character speed, made encounters really scary.
BG2's atmopshere is really nowhere near these games.

It's no surprise though that it got as popular as it did, as "generalist" games made for mass audience are usually subpar in everything except diversity and variety. Something to please everyone concept.
Niche Games are truly classical as they are made with a specific objective in mind and the creators go wild with their imagination.

hell BG1 had a tighter storyline and a better unfolding of lore. BG2 lore is haphazard, unstructured with no sequential unfolding. You meet djinnis first, goblins next and suddenly you meet elementals.
To immerse, you got to provide anticipation, hype and a context for any area of any monster.

Dragons in Dragon Age Origins were few and were very much looked forward to. Dragons in BG2 are a dime a dozen. Almost every area has its guardian as a Dragon.

Highly imaginative players prefer niche games while generalists prefer Baldur's Gate 2.

Also, Baldur's Gate is not very appropriate a name for the series.
It should be renamed as :-
Bhaalspawn Saga : Part 1: Mysteries of the Gate (BGEE)
Bhaalspawn Saga : Part 2: Siege of Dragonspear (name implies)
Bhaalspawn Saga : Part 3: Shadows of Amn (Before Underdark)
Bhaalspawn Saga : Part 4: Irenicus's folly (After underdark)
Bhaalspawn Saga : Part 5: Throne of Bhaal (name implies)

Contrarianism for attention is overrated.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I just remembered the factoid that BG1 lead artist died between games. Isn't that true?