DISCLAIMER: Incoherent rant warning. Lots of unproven opinioning. No tl;dr summary. Insane state of mind while writing.
While my
first post in this thread was about a game that I really wanted to complete at the time, but literally couldn't, I just thought about games (mostly CRPGs) that I played and enjoyed as a youngster. Sad truth is, that when I revisited most of those games in more recent times, I couldn't enjoy them as much or even anymore. Either I got bitten by nostalgia-makes-better-memories or thinking "My, how braindead had I to be enjoying this kind of stuff back then? // What's wrong with me now, why can't I stand this anymore? This used to be fun?!?".
It may sound weird, but the fear of nostalgia not living up to the experience I might have with it now is what kept me from really starting Pools of Darkness anew. And the fact that it's quite a huge beast, so burning out might occur. But one day, I promise.
I mostly play old(er) games due to limiting myself on stuff that I can play on Linux/Wine/Dosbox. And because I couldn't give a shit about most new, overhyped, braindead, soulless AAA graphic jerk off festivals. (Thinking new equals shit is a really great way to resist temptation, isn't it?) Just so that you might get an idea, the most recent (from a time of publishing point of view) games I've played were Torchlight II and Deus Ex:HR.
My choice of bitching around for now will be Baldur's Gate Trilogy (BGT; BG1+TotSC+BG2+ToB).
While I never thought of any of the BGs as the holy grail of CRPGs (I think there is none), I remember myself having a great time especially with BG2+ToB. The prospect of going through the whole saga seamlessly with BGT got me quite excited; enough of going through the time consuming PITA process of setting it up manually. Which is not a failure of BGT itself, but in the sheer vastness of available mods. Technically, WEIDU makes it quite easy and comfortable to set up all the stuff, but compiling it again and again while figuring out which mods and options I like and which are way over the top for my taste, is very time consuming. In fact, one could get burned out even before really starting to play. Which I guess is an issue with many games that have an active modding community. Sometimes, having choices hurts.
So, after a
really long time of setting-up-fine-tuning my BGT installation (think of more than a week, seriously), I finally got through to playing the game. And almost immediately got hit with all the small stuff that might occur as nitpicking to others, but really annoys the crap out of me. Like having choices that make absolutely no sense for my PC (this is a role playing game, yes?). Like having shitty side quests that I only do from a metagaming perspective, to not suck later on due to lack of XP. Like having to wonder how to manage the crapload of pointless NPCs the game throws at me. (Not going more into detail here. My brain hurts.)
All things considered, the whole BG1 part felt like a metagamey setup to have a better PC in BG2. I couldn't get into it. Lack of immersion, one might say. The BG2 part was better. Still, lack of immersion, but the metagaming was more fun. As long as I not thought "Hell, why am I doing all this crap? Isn't my goal to go to Spellhold? Isn't there some urgency to it? Apparently not, since I keep on traveling the countryside and enjoying the [view|loot|slaughter].". You see, sometimes lack of railroading may cause issues if it doesn't fit your story setup.
I more and more wished this to be either more of an ARPG or a strategy game. The "light on storytelling" aspect already being fulfilled.
Coming back to the topic of this thread, shortly after starting the ToB part, I bailed out. Metagaming through BG1 for BG2 and then somewhat doing the same in BG2 as preparation for ToB, left no real goal to endure ToB. Why should my PC talk with all those whiny, needy people? Or doing FedEx quests for them? Hell, that's where I came from! Why won't the game let me slaughter you all, blast open all locked doors, instead of inventing all those shonky excuses to make me interact with my environment in a way I'm NOT imagining it? Again, I was hurt by freedom of choice. It seems the game let me choose a combination of Race/Class/Alignment that wasn't any fun within the boundaries of the story/setting. Which I consider quite bad for a RPG.
Thank whatever-you-believe-in-or-not, there was a time when games were restricted in what they could try to accomplish. I'm looking at you, Gold Box games. Easy to setup, light to stomach, being more abstract due to technical limitations, leaving more room for my imagination. All this making me far more forthcoming in forgiving their flaws. (You remember what I've written about lack of holy grail before, do you?)
Rant over. For now.