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tirinal posted:To be fair, it's a pretty low bar. I played BG for the first time recently after more than a decade of loving BGII, and it's remarkable how bad all of the writing (and some of the game, to be honest) is. It's overblown, kitchy, and switches between Ye Olde English and lolrandom according to whim or fancy. The problem with BG1's script is that it can't make up its mind if it's a serious D&D adventure or just taking the piss out of one. Which makes sense when you realize it's mostly characters the developers played in their homemade D&D campaigns railroaded into a narrow, well-established setting (see : how hard it is to kill Drizzt).
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Dec 17, 2013 03:52
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Neera's problem is her awful voice acting. If it were just text it really wouldn't be so bad. Also, they really need to do IWD and IWD2 EE already.
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Dec 17, 2013 04:32
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Ok, Durlag's tower, chessboard level. After I beat it, am I forced to go onto level 4 or can I go back to town somehow?
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Dec 17, 2013 05:14
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bunnielab posted:Ok, Durlag's tower, chessboard level. After I beat it, am I forced to go onto level 4 or can I go back to town somehow? I want to say on the bottom level theres someone you can talk to that teleports you to the entrance. It should be just north of where Durlag's ghost is I think.
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Dec 17, 2013 05:18
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Yeah, the other ghost right outside of the Demon Knight's room lets you leave.
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Dec 17, 2013 05:27
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Dorn is such a badass. Of all the new NPCs I think he is the most seamlessly integrated into the game and his VA work is just as top-notch as the original.
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Dec 17, 2013 05:49
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oswald ownenstein posted:Dorn is such a badass. Of all the new NPCs I think he is the most seamlessly integrated into the game and his VA work is just as top-notch as the original. I badly wish that they had gotten Michael Dorn to do his voice, for oh so many reasons.
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Dec 17, 2013 06:04
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I really want to get into Icewind Dale but the lack of kits and reduced proficiencies and general vanilla BG1-ness of it is really offputting, especially since I didn't grow up playing these games.
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Dec 17, 2013 06:11
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JustJeff88 posted:I badly wish that they had gotten Michael Dorn to do his voice, for oh so many reasons. Doesn't Michael Dorn already show up in a couple dream sequences as Bhaal? Aaaaand just before I hit post I realized what the joke was... Duh... 
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Dec 17, 2013 06:13
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steakmancer posted:I really want to get into Icewind Dale but the lack of kits and reduced proficiencies and general vanilla BG1-ness of it is really offputting, especially since I didn't grow up playing these games. I wouldn't blame you if you were put off, but IWD has aged a lot better I think. It's absolutely beautiful, the best looking IE game imo. At character creation you options are more limited, but many of the spells work differently/are entirely new so any spell casting type will be a new experience. Plus the combat is much much better despite the same rule set. It's amazing what people who understand how an encounter should be set up can do with a limited engine.
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Dec 17, 2013 06:29
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steakmancer posted:I really want to get into Icewind Dale but the lack of kits and reduced proficiencies and general vanilla BG1-ness of it is really offputting, especially since I didn't grow up playing these games. IWD is way, way better than BG1 if you ask me. BG1 is filled with a ton of bland and mundane sidequests. It was a great game for its time and a true low level PnP experience but the early game especially sucks. It's full of bland 'spawn' encounters (5 wolves, crap like that) instead of actual encounters. IWD on the other hand is much more balanced because it's not an exploration game. Your levels come much more steadily and the game is more enjoyable. It's a straight up dungeon crawl and much more linear (which just makes it flow better)
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Dec 17, 2013 06:34
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So I'm firing up Baldur's Gate for the first time, my only other IE experience being Torment, and I just roll up a random character to try out the mechanics. After some fiddling I make Bela Skull-Cleave, halfling fighter, 17 STR, 18 DEX, 18 CON (with lovely WIS and INT and middling CHA, 10 or something) and a proficiency for long swords and bows. I just spend some time walking around Candlekeep. I've heard horror stories about these games, and I suspect I'm in for a rough time once combat starts. I run into my first fight, some assassin in a random building, he comes at me with a dagger, I poke at him with my sword once, and he loving explodes into a shower of blood and meat 
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Dec 17, 2013 08:06
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You know what would make Find Traps in BG way better? Increase the radius from 10 meters to 30, or whatever distance you typically cover in five or six seconds. It seems like a relatively minor tweak but I can't find any mods that do this so I'm guessing it's hard-coded.
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Dec 17, 2013 14:45
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Wolfsheim posted:I run into my first fight, some assassin in a random building, he comes at me with a dagger, I poke at him with my sword once, and he loving explodes into a shower of blood and meat edit: I agree with the IWD love. I'm replaying it right now. The game still looks great, especially on a modern widescreen monitor. The pacing is tight, the combat is tough but usually fair, the encounters are well put together. The plot is pretty decent, it moves along at a good pace, the writing is good (and the tone is consistent, unlike BG1) and they captured the atmosphere and setting of Icewind Dale / the Spine of the World really, really well. Zephro fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Dec 17, 2013 |
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Dec 17, 2013 14:50
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Neera shadow of amn questions I got all the quests in the camp, thought the "convince elf to join" sounded quickest/easiest (plus pick up the hairband) and completed it. I killed the red wizard enclave, where did all the quest givers go? I just want to give that little girl her hairband.
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Dec 17, 2013 16:46
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Dillbag posted:Doesn't Michael Dorn already show up in a couple dream sequences as Bhaal? I actually wasn't taking the mickey, and I actually didn't know that Michael Dorn does other voices in the game. He just has a deep badass voice (which was an affectation for Worf, I know) and the name matches the character, so I thought that that would be a fit. I'm sure that he doesn't work cheaply, though.
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Dec 17, 2013 16:51
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Excelzior posted:The problem with BG1's script is that it can't make up its mind if it's a serious D&D adventure or just taking the piss out of one. Which makes sense when you realize it's mostly characters the developers played in their homemade D&D campaigns railroaded into a narrow, well-established setting (see : how hard it is to kill Drizzt). Eh? Were the original NPCs you recruit in the game based on Bioware peoples' personal D&D characters are something? If so, that's interesting and I wonder who the gently caress would play Tiax in an actual game. They definitely didn't create Drizzt or Elminster, though.
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Dec 17, 2013 16:54
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Excelzior posted:The problem with BG1's script is that it can't make up its mind if it's a serious D&D adventure or just taking the piss out of one. Which makes sense when you realize it's mostly characters the developers played in their homemade D&D campaigns railroaded into a narrow, well-established setting (see : how hard it is to kill Drizzt). I played it again for the first time in a long, long time and I think its definitely taking the piss out of one. Everyone already knows its full of weird, goofy poo poo. But what I found pretty interesting was that the game likes to repeat little set pieces with slight differences. For example: on your way to the city, you come across a poor farmer who lost his son. You go retrieve his son's body and the farmer laments that he's hosed because he's too old to work the farm. End of quest  Once you get to the city, you get the same setup but with a twist: there's a (rich) guy who's lost his son and you retrieve his body. He raises his son from the dead and sends him to bed without dinner or some poo poo. A more important example are the mines. Its pretty weird, from a game design perspective, to put the player through two mines, almost back to back. You save the legitimate mine while you destroy the illegal one, even though the miners in both look like fuckin' holocaust survivors. BG 2 is a better game, but I think there's more going on, theme-wise, for BG 1.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:13
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IWD2 has the best mechanics of any of the infinity engine games and I'm actually sad that they couldn't just port both BG games directly into the IWD2 engine for the enhanced editions. IWD1's mechanics are not as well aged but the game is good. Still, if IWDEE comes out and isn't using IWD2's character mechanics it'll be a huge waste of time.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:23
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Molybdenum posted:I killed the red wizard enclave, where did all the quest givers go? I just want to give that little girl her hairband. Nebalebadingdong posted:A more important example are the mines. Its pretty weird, from a game design perspective, to put the player through two mines, almost back to back. You save the legitimate mine while you destroy the illegal one, even though the miners in both look like fuckin' holocaust survivors. As for the miners, I guess you could argue that the ones in the first mine aren't enslaved and presumably look so bad mainly due to the fact they can't extract good iron so the mine isn't generating any revenue.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:33
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Factor_VIII posted:As for the miners, I guess you could argue that the ones in the first mine aren't enslaved and presumably look so bad mainly due to the fact they can't extract good iron so the mine isn't generating any revenue. If I remember right, they work the mines because they can't make enough money to support their families as farmers anymore. The slaves in cloakwood will be killed if they don't work the mines. The workers in Nashkel will starve to death if they don't work the mines. The miners in both use the same emaciated sprites. Both complain (and its played for jokes!) at how awful and meaningless their lives are. If you were actually a hero, you'd free the Nashkel miners too! That brings up another point. Unlike BG 2, there are no peasants in this game. They're all workers with mortgages and rent.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:41
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Nebalebadingdong posted:If I remember right, they work the mines because they can't make enough money to support their families as farmers anymore. The slaves in cloakwood will be killed if they don't work the mines. The workers in Nashkel will starve to death if they don't work the mines. The miners in both use the same emaciated sprites. Both complain (and its played for jokes!) at how awful and meaningless their lives are. If you were actually a hero, you'd free the Nashkel miners too! 
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Dec 17, 2013 17:47
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People keep on bringing up the Icewind Dale as having great combat and I don't agree entirely. The encounters are crafted really well, but that's largely because the game is linear and can be balanced around XP progression. You lose a lot of flexibility in terms of party composition and character builds compared to BG1 and 2. I've never actually finished Icewind Dale because I always end up bored of the standard party and experimenting with goofy tactics is punishing.Nebalebadingdong posted:I played it again for the first time in a long, long time and I think its definitely taking the piss out of one. Those are some interesting observations. Not sure if it was done on purpose, but it's fun to pick up on new details in a game after all this time.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:48
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Yeah, I *really* don't like how IWD1 keeps throwing enemies at you that are basically immune to specific things. You can't go anywhere in the second dungeon without enchanted poo poo to deal with all the Ghasts. Having a melee party will gently caress you trying to fight the Ice Salamanders and their passive chill crap. It tends to railroad you into one specific course of action.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:55
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SheepNameKiller posted:IWD2 has the best mechanics of any of the infinity engine games and I'm actually sad that they couldn't just port both BG games directly into the IWD2 engine for the enhanced editions. IWD1's mechanics are not as well aged but the game is good. Still, if IWDEE comes out and isn't using IWD2's character mechanics it'll be a huge waste of time.
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Dec 17, 2013 17:56
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SheepNameKiller posted:IWD2 has the best mechanics of any of the infinity engine games and I'm actually sad that they couldn't just port both BG games directly into the IWD2 engine for the enhanced editions. IWD1's mechanics are not as well aged but the game is good. Still, if IWDEE comes out and isn't using IWD2's character mechanics it'll be a huge waste of time. DeathChicken posted:Yeah, I *really* don't like how IWD1 keeps throwing enemies at you that are basically immune to specific things. You can't go anywhere in the second dungeon without enchanted poo poo to deal with all the Ghasts. Having a melee party will gently caress you trying to fight the Ice Salamanders and their passive chill crap. It tends to railroad you into one specific course of action. If you spread your weapons out right if you have a melee heavy party nothing lives long enough for a salamander aura to be a problem by the time you reach Dorn's. Fruits of the sea posted:People keep on bringing up the Icewind Dale as having great combat and I don't agree entirely. The encounters are crafted really well, but that's largely because the game is linear and can be balanced around XP progression. You lose a lot of flexibility in terms of party composition and character builds compared to BG1 and 2. I've never actually finished Icewind Dale because I always end up bored of the standard party and experimenting with goofy tactics is punishing.
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Dec 17, 2013 18:06
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Zombies' Downfall posted:Eh? Were the original NPCs you recruit in the game based on Bioware peoples' personal D&D characters are something? If so, that's interesting and I wonder who the gently caress would play Tiax in an actual game. They definitely didn't create Drizzt or Elminster, though. Most of the characters in Baldur's Gate had their origins in pen and paper games. A majority of these characters came from two Dungeons and Dragons campaigns that I dungeon mastered before and during the development of Baldur's Gate. When these characters were put into Baldur's Gate, they often went under a significant metamorphosis, simply so that they would fit the role that we needed at the time. The one thing we always kept the same was the characters name. The two campaigns that these characters were drawn from were a Forgotten Realms campaign, and a Dark Sun/ Planescape campaign. The Darksun campaign was sort of a sequel to the Forgotten Realms campaign, as I had monkeyed around with the history of Darksun so that the Forgotten Realms represented the pre-cataclysm history. I mixed Planescape in once the characters were higher level, just because it was such an immersive setting. The most popular character in Baldur's Gate was the hamster totting Minsc. The pen and paper version of this character was played by Cameron Tofer (associate producer and lead programmer of MDK2). As in the game, Minsc was an unstable ranger played for comic relief who carried around a hamster named Boo. Luke Kristjanson (lead writer on BG) took this basic concept and wrote some really funny dialogue, thus turning Minsc into one of the most enjoyable characters that you could meet in BG. In the pen and paper game, Minsc wasn't a Rasheman berserker, but rather a Darksun ranger. The villain Sarevok was originally a hero. He was a Darksun gladiator played by a friend (Jeff Veitenheimer) who had managed to capture a githyanki silver sword. I hated the silver sword (being vorpal, and therefore a danger to my favorite villains), and so Sarevok was always the target of enemy charm persons, holds, confusions and domination spells. In fact, Sarevok would, more often than not, be attacking his friends instead of his enemies. Ben Smedstad's (Producer, BG2) character Xan would often be called upon to parry the dangerous blows that Sarevok dealt out with his vorpal sword (more on Xan in a moment). One character who was changed in a big way was Ben's character Xan. Originally he was a katana dual-wielding kensai. He was a githzerai, and had magic resistance; in other words he was a power gamer's dream character. He was originally slated to be an elven warrior in BG, but late in the game we found that there were not enough mages. Voice had already been recorded, and only Xan seemed to have dialogue neutral enough to have him switch classes. Ben, to this day, has not let me forget how I transformed his character from a super powerful warrior into a weakling enchanter mage (many consider the enchanter to be the weakest of the specialist mages). In Baldur's Gate 2 many of the old characters return (in one form or another). Again, some of the new characters are based on pen and paper characters. This time around, we've changed them drastically, so they'd fit within the story. One of the main villains is based off a character that was played by Dean Anderson (terrain artist for BG1 and BG2), and another was originally played by Ross Gardner (designer on BG). I've promised Ben that I'd put one of his other characters in BG2 to make up for Xan, so when you see a diseased cripple named Jopar, begging for gold, you'll know where he came from (just kidding Ben).
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Dec 17, 2013 18:18
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Imoen was named after a PnP character, who was in turn named after a girl called Neomi who the guy had a crush on.
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Dec 17, 2013 19:23
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sebzilla posted:Imoen was named after a PnP character, who was in turn named after a girl called Neomi who the guy had a crush on. That explains a lot. Ug.
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Dec 17, 2013 19:25
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gender illusionist posted:That explains a lot. Ug. I'm not sure that it does, since she basically has no personality in BG1  And since they planned to kill her in BG2 If anything it begs more questions!
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Dec 17, 2013 19:33
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Captain Oblivious posted:I'm not sure that it does, since she basically has no personality in BG1 NERDS!!!!!!!!!!!! 
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Dec 17, 2013 19:43
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sebzilla posted:Imoen was named after a PnP character, who was in turn named after a girl called Neomi who the guy had a crush on. Source?
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Dec 17, 2013 19:47
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Sleep of Bronze posted:Source? Something I remember reading on the old (old) Bioware forums back in the day. e: Not the original source, but a couple of others bringing the story up http://www.shsforums.net/topic/26304-familiar-name-in-the-company-directory/page-2 sebzilla fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Dec 17, 2013 |
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Dec 17, 2013 19:49
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I've done had enough of this.
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Dec 17, 2013 19:52
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You're all buffle-headed.
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Dec 17, 2013 19:54
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Heya, it's-a me, Mario! ...eh, close enough
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Dec 17, 2013 19:55
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DeathChicken posted:Yeah, I *really* don't like how IWD1 keeps throwing enemies at you that are basically immune to specific things. You can't go anywhere in the second dungeon without enchanted poo poo to deal with all the Ghasts. Having a melee party will gently caress you trying to fight the Ice Salamanders and their passive chill crap. It tends to railroad you into one specific course of action. One thing that gave me a little problem is that sometimes you went for very long periods without being able to rest, so things could become grueling. I ended up abusing the bard regeneration song a lot personally. Honestly I found IWD1 to be a little too easy for my liking, but I so love how good bards and druids are in that game. I've never touched HoF mode though personally, since I think you need mage levels on pretty much anyone who hopes to ever survive the amount of AoEs and stuff that get thrown at you (because mirror image avoids them).
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Dec 17, 2013 20:01
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zedprime posted:The mechanics are different enough they'd probably need to redisgn every encounter if it was going to feel right. That's approaching new game scope at that point. I get this but IWD feels really dated compared to IWD2 and I haven't replayed it in a long time for that reason. Personally, I'd be really unlikely to buy an EE for it. IWD2:EE I'd be all over.
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Dec 17, 2013 20:06
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Huh, I guess the Githyanki sword was eventually carried over too with the Macguffin blade they attack you over in BG2.
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Dec 17, 2013 20:32
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Dillbag posted:If by better you mean that's the end of her quest until BG2:EE, then yes. This does not bode well for my 'all the new characters' playthrough.
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Dec 17, 2013 21:11
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