IndiraLightfoot

I really hope that Larian will nail the replayability of the game. PoE1, had quite a bit of it, but PoE2 had not, and Pathfinder1, I only replayed ch 1 since I hated the entire Kingdom setup, so now I'm craving something that's fun to play over and over again in the CRPG department.

Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County 21 juni 2017 · Vintage Strip of Week. 1983

Excerpt from the Community Update #2 just now: What you will eventually play has been in the planning at Larian and closely with Wizards of the Coast for over 4 years now, with their key creative people colliding with our key creative people in ways that we will eventually talk about in greater length. Our task is to create the ultimate Dungeons & Dragons game; a loving and modern sequel to Baldur’s Gate 2. Oozing with 5e D&D greatness, set in the world that you know and love. You will explore Baldur’s Gate 100 years after Baldur’s Gate 2. The Bhaalspawn saga has ended, and a new threat is converging on the city of Baldur's Gate. But the gods do not forget, and the shadows and scars of the past will not stay silent. You will meet and get to know many new characters, and encounter some of the legendary characters you know and love. Most importantly, you’ll learn how their stories have evolved. And as you play, you will heavily influence their fate. And later: We’ve built an engine that allows all 250 people at Larian collaborate to become the ultimate DM. Allowing for near-limitless reactivity, responsiveness, and a memory that never forgets who you are, or what you’ve done. No matter who you roll, dice-rolls, modifiers, and physical simulation have all been designed to simulate a D&D experience that feels as though it’s straight from the imagination, where no matter the dice roll the story will continue. It’s also a game that is intended to span the entire range of human emotion. It is in equal parts a dark and a light game. “We always want to make failure as interesting as it possibly can,” said Senior Writer Adam Smith. “We don’t put everything that’s cool and interesting behind success.” “Light and dark are really good sources of advantage,” noted Swen in a recent GameSpot interview. The philosophies that define the rules in D&D 5e also define the narrative, where you’ll often make difficult decisions through initiative or through the roll of the dice. The Baldur’s Gate games were dark - sometimes darker than many people remember. Baldur’s Gate 3 is no exception, though in 2020 we’re able to take the gamut of emotion and experience and stretch it further due to systems, simulation, and of course also our cinematics team. Unfortunately we did not make it to the end of our PAX East 2020 live demo due to a feature (see: bug), but those in the hall witnessed a scene where Astarion’s hunger got the better of him, and through a series of dice rolls (and often audience choice), Astarion sank his teeth into Shadowheart to varying degrees of mortality. Astarion was happy (systemically), but Shadowheart often ended up dead (also without irony, systemically). Baldur’s Gate 3 is on course to be a ‘Mature’ game, which is publishing language for “if you go any further the ratings board is going to be extremely annoying”. We want to push the limits of every theme within the game, which should allow you to play exactly how you’d like to play. Astarion may be a Vampire Spawn, but that doesn’t mean he has to be evil - if hungry. Though you saw one path at PAX East, there were many possibilities for good, and evil -- note also, everything in between. It has always been Larian’s plan to create games that allow you to play however you wish. This larger team, and this new engine, allow us to push this further than ever before. Much further than Divinity: Original Sin 2. As you delve into an epic adventure that subverts the binary morality found in many RPGs, and explore Baldur’s Gate with new and existing characters, 100 years after the story of the first two games, dice roll by dice roll, we hope that together we can reignite that great sense of discovery you felt as you dived for the first time into Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, bringing the experience of an open-ended D&D game to photo-realistic realisation, albeit with 5e rules in place of 2nd edition rules. Things have come a long way in 20 years, but what’s important to us is that you’re along for the ride. You have many questions, and we have answers. We’ll be hosting a Reddit AMA where you can ask Swen (Creative Director), David (Producer), Adam (Senior Writer), Nick (Lead Systems Designer), and Jiji (Writing Director) your questions. 11:00 PT on March 12, over on Reddit!

This is good news in my book. Having started my journey in Fell Seal Arbiter's Mark, I fell that I miss that turn-based RPG simultaneity, which we also used when we played D&D way back when.

Some basic info from recent articles and videos: -combat is turn-based and terrain, such as height differences and gaps, and the kind of terrain, will be something that affects your tactical choices -Over 100 hours of gameplay -Lots of player freedom and quest-environment-puzzle-solving-system flexibility (more like PnP) -You can split the party and play at different locations at the same time in MP -True to the lore of Dungeons & Dragons’ Forgotten Realms world, (should be a given, though?) -15 races and subraces -8 classes (a bit skimpy? I'm not into 5th ed, so I wouldn't know.).

This is my take on this as well. I will be critical about a lot of stuff, even nitpicking, but I am VERY happy that Larian is making this game in the first place. And since I never really played DOS1 (except for the original like 2h), it will feel really fresh to me, at least.

The superhuman jumping and shoving is quite bit annoying, and with childish sound effects on top, with a cymbal tin drum? thump upon landing. Especially funny when the char started sneaking, and then a huge jump ending with a huge din. (And these jumps do start with a huge Aaaargh!, echoing a mile away!) Even worse, every other attack and every other action ends or starts with a short snare drum or whack sound effect. Yuck! No need for this, I reckon. And that male character has some ridiculous lines, as well as crazy pale skin. A lot of the writing and the chars themselves are a bit cheesy and cringe-y, but I can put up with a fair bit of that. The characters chest heaving while breathing is too prominent, and the character faces look like they had real-peeps photos from Pinterest plastered on their heads (creepy). What I do like is that d20 when you landed a critical strike along with a Skyrim reward cut scene, or the use of the d20 graphically during the skill Persuasion check. The crypts looked really neat. And well, Volo, again, at the very end. I never...!

I really don't care if it's called Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate or Haatar Baen (a place in Vaasa in Forgotten Realms, a Swedish founding royal family, and Haatar Baen in Swedish, slightly misspelled though, would translate as "Hating Bones"!), as long as it's a good D&D CRPG unlike most which have been released after my beloved NWN2 (I like the BG series crazy much too). It certainly looks great, and I prefer NWN2's UI over most of the others - yup, I'm odd that way. *Skeletal fingers crossed.*

From that article at the link above: Holy Moley! And this? Is this Dungeons & Dragons? Whelp!

What now? Those parents have nothing on this bastard witchcraft child of theirs! The Dishonored creations - their music, art, and soundscapes - they simply run circles around them. We're speaking fancy French cuisine here. I no longer live in this world. I've phased into my digital existence as a a seafront apartment owner in Karnaca, reading the morning paper while being frantically scared of over-sized mosquitos.

-CRPGs are too long. -Most CRPGs are bad. -Most of the CRPGs claiming they have great replayability hardly differ from one playthrough to the next. -No 4X game so far has solved the sluggish late game that feels like pounding a big dough over and over. -The Dishonored series is probably the best PC game series ever produced (IMHO) -And, well, yeah. NWN2 rocks! Nuff said!

I'm actually using Zwift + treadmill now, and it's much nicer than chimney + treadmill or TV + treadmill. However, watching Tour de France on the telly + treadmill is still my favourite setup.

It sounds like you guys should have played Descent in the 90s'...

@Oner I certainly did! I meant @Katphood

Thank you all for your review-ish listings of games played! These words above I wholeheartedly agree with. Assassin's I mostly played last year, but also this year, and Prey last year, but Zoraptor and I seem to see eye to eye on these two titles, and my most played game this year is probably Minecraft. I'll have to get back to you on the rather few games I played, and most of them I put away far too soon, and several were older games in my backlog. @Katphood And, yup, what remains of Edith Finch is a neat gem, a game like no other. I wasn't that scared, but it was a mind trip of quite some magnitude, that's for sure, like being in several dreams woven into one shifting entity.

I loved Chapter 1, and the game overall has so much potential. But I hated the Kingdom management just as much, so hearing that they will keep serving up that pain in the donkey means that I will give this game a hard pass. I had no previous investment in the world(s) of Pathfinder, except Obsidian's card game, so I have no craving for it per se.

This is a post full of useful insights. Kudos to Gromnir for writing this up, and the expression "wayback machine" gave me a good chuckle as well. I agree with these points in general, and then I am still one of those weirdos that did like the exploration in BG1 (and I still do when I've replayed BG EE), despite them big and rather empty maps with quite a few repetitive and bland encounters sprinkled with a few brief ones and then various dungeons and castles and manors and farms and fields and towers... NWN2 Storm of Zehir and Deadfire pushed these game too far into Skyrim territory, and I've been replaying Skyrim again now (Special Edition), and I still like the game for what it is - a huge map where I get to run around and explore and do repetitive stuff my way and I couldn't care less about the quests. A game like Deadfire, however, shouldn't copy that recipe. If BG1 was anything like that I wouldn't find it very appealing at all. So, one way to describe Deadfire would be to say that it has Neketaka as a content-rich hub, which is surrounded by the sea (most of the gaming map is these waters, actually) - people easily forget this in these discussions - where you can find some floating debris, or a plague ship, but for the most part you get bugged by other vessels (encounters which you can deny be veering away or fast-click through battle and then board them, or do the little mini game over and over again). And you have to deal a lot with ship maintenance and enhancing it as well (not very fun stuff). Also at sea, you get this intermittent pantheon on a stick interludes when you decided to take a nap in your bunk. But your character isn't developed along this story, and the game progression doesn't work in tandem with these deity discussions. The only obvious thing is your party following the tracks of Eothas and obviously literally Eothas. And from the get-go, we are told that we don't really matter. Eothas will do his thing regardless of what we do, and quite logically, we only get to agree with his cause or not at the end - we can't even take him on. Eothas is like a player that is playing the game before us and who is in-game, and we are in the wake of his wreckless tunnel-vision playthrough. The islands pale in comparison to the impact of the Deadfire game at sea I just described. Even worse, most of our exploring them was in the overland map mode (like in NWN2 Storm of Zehir), which isn't PoE1 gaming either - but rather some Civlization map-pushing mode with a few goodie huts (the places were we could scavenge resources or find a few items). This is sad, since a few of the dungeons out on the islands are very nicely designed and they have a great atmosphere. They are just too far and few between and they suffer from being spread out in this Deadfire at sea syrup. All in all, what I took away from the game is some weird sea-sick CRPG scurvy, and, mind you, I was one of those people that cheered when I learned about the sea map and the Pirates-like gaming being added to PoE2. O'hoy, was I wrong!

Hey! I was that nasenale! Jokes aside, I really liked Neketaka, and I did almost every quest there before moving elsewhere, and pretty early on too, and that made most of the game seemed provisional and uninspired in comparison. Neketaka was Deadfire for me in most respects, and it spoiled me rotten. But having that standard, I guess it would have taken the devs 7 years more to "finish" the masterpiece Deadfire Enhanced Uncut Director's version.

thelee is absolutely right on this. When I did a lot of the harder bounties and fights, I had to resort to that unintuitive non-healing crutch more often than not. The system was annoying in that way, and perhaps in its entirety. I like a reasonable amount of resource management like everybody else, but not drab versions or convoluted versions. I reckon this version was both of these things. And I do recall that the system was one of the most disliked things in PoE1 - it was almost "hated" on par with the spiritmeter mechanic in MotB.

Yeah, PoE1's rather dark tone and much of the content up until Twin Elms were excellent - except the factions. I couldn't agree more. I avoided them in my first playthrough, going on how I'd like to play, and then I needed that conveniently planted story-driver Madame just in order to leave that town and get further into the game. I'd like to add that for the most part the areas and the dungeons were much more focused and well-packaged as well compared to PoE2 The systems in PoE1 was perhaps more fun to tinker with, but I actually replayed this start I'm rambling on about perhaps 7 times in all - which is a lot, after all. I have a much harder time replaying PoE2, challenges or not.

These two last posts are very sobering too. And, perhaps, we were all so starved for a new party-based isometric CRPG at the time that we has rose-tinted glasses on when playing PoE1 that we really couldn't tell if that was a semi-dud. Funny thing is: When I replay many of the classics I knew I really liked, I'm actually surprised that despite a decade or two, I'm still having so much fun. That, I thought, would be the fault of my old nostalgic pair of rose-tinted glasses, but then again, I'm not sure. It may very well be that since these loved CRPGs often take place in settings that many of us already knew a lot about (thanks to years or decades of corresponding PnP RPGs) that we automatically pad them all with depth and quality fluff - some perfect filler that's nowhere but in our own minds.

A very insightful point. Thx! I think this mattered more than expected.

Well, there you go - I have to play one round of Snake each time a ship's approach and then try to bum-rush my vessel. Still, annoying and repetitive, in my book, at least.

Clearly, Michael_Galt and I are still waiting for the same kind of deep wide-berth replayability-juicy game! Thx for the review.

Having several months of distance from my last challenge playthrough (which I stopped early on, and I didn't really try turn-based), and thinking back, I can personally list a few things that bothered me with PoE2 (Obviously there are lots and lots of stuff I loved about the game, perhaps the isometric art of it all, being the best aspect): -Ship combat. Yeah, that one again. While all the islands and the colonial pirate theme were cool things, with lots of really neat lore, ship combat became almost like a bug in the game, no matter how brain-dead my repetitive actions resolving it was. Imagine if some of my best games were interrupted like this over and over and over whenever I moved about: Playing NWN2, and then for the gazillionth time, I'm forced to play some bizarre side-game, say, Yahtzee. Quaint once, fun twice, annoying for the fourth time, and straight up hell, the ninth. -While appreciating the side quests, those that were meaty and good enough, were few and far between, and most of them were almost unnecessary. -And far too many small islands, with the overland map feature getting real stale fast. It was like Storm of Zehir, the only expansion in NWN 2, I haven't played dozens of times. They took a huge risk using this Civilization approach to the map, and in retrospect, I think this aspect of the game felt more like a bare-bone version of Sorcerer King or Fallen Enchantress. -Finally, the main quest was just as engaging as the main quest in Skyrim - i.e., not at all. It was annoying and lackluster. I'd much rather have been to that other dimension and made that into a more fleshed out and varied experience, the one where the gods roam and rule. -(Plus a pet-peeve of mine: I didn't like the factions. The way I see it; A game like F:NV is worse because of them, not better. I feel railroaded.)