hollowcrown

I'm recently replaying Baldur's Gate 2 (possibly the best RPG ever made) and coming up to the end of the base game and approaching the epic level expansion, Throne of Bhaal. I like Baldur's Gate, a LOT, but I think Throne of Bhaal was a bit of a let down. It brings the game to new heights of difficulty and has you facing down multiple dragons, Drow armies, legions of giants, Demonic princes and elemental kings. However it loses a bit of the personality that the base game has in favour of mainly combat focused dungeon crawls. There's a few side quests, but most of the game is a straight up slog through enemy dungeons and strongholds until the final confrontation. There's less exploration of areas, less sidequesting in big cities and less optional areas, which is a shame. The best part of the game is Chapter 8, set in a besieged City, which goes back to the tried-and-tested RPG formula of side questing around the city and the wilderness surrounding it, a few dungeons crawls and finding how to lift the spell of invulnerability of your enemy. The next chapter has a big hub area with not much to do beyond buy some potions before going on 2 extremely long dungeon crawls. The third and final chapter is one epic long battle, with extremely tough combat although it's more of an endurance test than anything. One major point in favour of the game however, was the Watcher's Keep side-dungeon which is one of the best multi-level dungeons ever produced in a game. It's full of personality and challenge and was really good. Overall I think that the conclusion to Baldur's Gate, with the epic Bhaalspawn war, should have had a larger and more expansive game more in line with BG2 than a combat and dungeon crawling focused expansion. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the game!

All I'm coming into say is that randomised equipment is bad. Baldur's Gate 2 was bad initially for Paladins, for example, but the expansion back rectified that with some of the new Paladin swords. Either way, the unique weapons and armor with lots of personality make the game worthwhile and fun to play. Better than getting boring randomised equipment. Getting legendary weapons makes you feel legendary and makes the game feel much more handcrafted.

Don't get me wrong I definitely enjoyed the game, but it's deeply flawed in many ways. The open world is completely separate from the story, it should be more integrated, sidequests are a side thought, the world has been Assassins' Creedified, and the main story is overall too short. It's a shame because they're really close to making a great game but just miss the mark on several levels sadly. The good thing about the game is some of the characters, and the lore. I love the lore of Dragon Age and is probably the main reason I play it, the cultures they have created are really good. Origins is Bioware's most magical modern game in my opinion. It has a great atmosphere and brilliant music that has sadly gone missing in the later games of DA.

In my opinion Bioware was good from BG until DA:O, which is a pretty long time. BG, BG2, NWN, KOTOR, ME1 and DA:O were all quality games. The games prroduced after the EA merger were poor quality: ME2, DA2 and ME3. Inquisition is a good game, although heavily flawed and I got a lot of game time out of it, but it's basically Dragon Effect: Inquisition and doesn't have the magic of the golden age of Bioware from 1998-2009.

I'm glad it's been pushed, won't clash with Pillars now

Should be the tutorial section of the game, give us background to who Ciri is, who Geralt and The Witchers are, and the game mechanics. Would be a perfect tutorial.

Maybe if you're twelve, but I respect the game treating me like an adult.

Currently doing my final "canon" playthrough of The Witcher 2 in preparation for The Wild Hunt. This RPG is amazing. The world feels fleshed out and lived in and most of all REAL. It doesn't treat the player as an idiot, is full of interesting characters, lore, political machinations and is funny to boot. I'm still blown away by this 3 year old game despite having recently finished Dragon Age Inquisition. The Witcher reigns supreme!

I'm glad the game is delayed, for two reasons. 1. It will no longer clash with Pillars of Eternity (hopefully) 2. It gives me more time to buy a gaming PC that will run it.

I'd only agree with that if there's an expansion that builds upon those hints. If it's going to be addressed in a future game 3 or 4 years down the road, I'm not a fan of these unresolved plot points. Largely because as we've seen from previous Bio games where there are "cliff hangers" or unexplained events to come, they always end up falling short. Either the plot gets forgotten or marginalized (Morrigan with the Old God Baby). The only time these cliff hangers get acceptably fleshed out is through an immediate expansion/DLC. I'd actually prefer if they just wrap up all loose ends by the end of a given game. That way they're not tying their hands when the next game comes around, and don't have to include stuff that may not fit the new story, just so that the old story no longer has any unresolved storylines. I'm hoping there's a DLC investigating what is going on in the Anderfels, then a "Wolf Hunt" DLC similar to Witch Hunt but looking for Fen'Harel. I think the overarching story of the games is the wrath of the Elven gods, and if the next game is going to Tevinter (conveniently right next to Arlathan) then that would be a perfect plot point to pick up. I just think Mythal and Fen'Haral are such interesting entities they deserve more than a DLC to cover them. They deserve entire games. Anderfels needs to be an entire game. You could give the Grey Wardens the Inquisition treatment, most have disappeared and now you're the new First Warden managing Weisshaupt. Have to recruit new Wardens and re-establish the order. Bonus points for being the region with the only other Dwarven kingdom. That does sound great, especially since the Anderfels is a region dominated by the Grey Wardens. As a huge fan of the elves in Dragon Age, I definitely appreciated the huge **** ton of elven lore revelations, but sadly the Dwarves seemed completely neglected in this game.

I'd only agree with that if there's an expansion that builds upon those hints. If it's going to be addressed in a future game 3 or 4 years down the road, I'm not a fan of these unresolved plot points. Largely because as we've seen from previous Bio games where there are "cliff hangers" or unexplained events to come, they always end up falling short. Either the plot gets forgotten or marginalized (Morrigan with the Old God Baby). The only time these cliff hangers get acceptably fleshed out is through an immediate expansion/DLC. I'd actually prefer if they just wrap up all loose ends by the end of a given game. That way they're not tying their hands when the next game comes around, and don't have to include stuff that may not fit the new story, just so that the old story no longer has any unresolved storylines. I'm hoping there's a DLC investigating what is going on in the Anderfels, then a "Wolf Hunt" DLC similar to Witch Hunt but looking for Fen'Harel. I think the overarching story of the games is the wrath of the Elven gods, and if the next game is going to Tevinter (conveniently right next to Arlathan) then that would be a perfect plot point to pick up. I just think Mythal and Fen'Haral are such interesting entities they deserve more than a DLC to cover them. They deserve entire games.

That's kind of how I imagine this will happen. For example, when you finally find Ciri as Geralt they will have a conversation and Ciri will recount her tale of what she went through the past few days and you'll essentially get to play that retelling. I guess we'll find out in February. Yeah this seems like the most likely option for sure. We play as Iorveth, Roche, Henselt and Saskia for short sections of TW2 at a time so it's definitely not something brand new that TW3 is doing.

They're good at different things. Bethesda does the open world adventure thing better. They present their lore in game better in the form of books you can pick up. The make the world fun and interesting to explore, they allow you to ignore the main quest altogether. They allow you to play how you want. Bioware doesn't have a whole load of those aspects down yet. I think Bioware's open world was generally a failure, they don't know how to populate a huge world and make it as interesting as Bethesda does.

Finished the game. Got sort of bored by the open world by the end. Bioware is no Bethesda for sure. Overall the games probably a solid 8/10 for me. It's a step in the right direction but the whole formula isn't perfected yet, it needs a lot of improvement. The sequel hook is awesome, can't wait for more story. The pantheon and lore Bioware have created is truly special, I can only hope PoE has a lore this good and utterly mysterious.

Trailer hype intensifies. Actually looks like the graphics have been downgraded. They're probably just showing the console game so they don't get in trouble for misinformation like Watch_dogs did. I'm confident that the PC version will look beautiful.

Three words: Old God Baby. Literally can't believe they actually put some payoff for that decision in the game. It's not much but it's something and makes thing interesting for future games.

KOTOR2's story depends on how much you enjoy Star Wars. If you're not a Star Wars fan I don't think you'd like it that much and it would just seem like a pretentious story mimicking as deep. But really, it's one of two pieces of Star Wars fiction ever (the second is Traitor, a novel) which actually try to deconstruct and look at the Star Wars lore in the different way. The story isn't a fantasy of good triumphing over evil, but it's saying, for the good of the many, should The Force end? Since all we've seen the force do is manifest itself in power struggles of the Sith vs Jedi over thousands of years and millions of pages of Star Wars fiction. KOTOR2 examines that, as well as some other things, and does it very well. Much better than the typical "Sith vs Jedi" story we get.

I'm only 30 hours in 1. Baldur's Gate 2 2. Dragon Age Origins 3. Dragon Age Inquisition 4. Knights of The Old Republic 5. Mass Effect 6. Baldur's Gate 7. Mass Effect 2 8. Neverwinter Nights 9. Mass Effect 3 10. Dragon Age 2 putting it above KOTOR, ME and BG is quite a big thing IMO, what elements are respectiely better in this game compared to the others? Could you share a more thorough explanation? I can believe that it's above places 7-10 though. It has a semblance of tactical combat in the game which I enjoy. You can set up choke points and having higher ground and evaluating enemies defenses and weaknesses is actually important. In Mass Effect and KOTOR it's not quite as tactical, mainly just stand still and shoot/hit the enemies so DAI has that one down. In the cinematic and storytelling experience it's simply just better than KOTOR and Mass Effect. Probably because the setting is more established and Bioware's gotten better at that kind of thing, but it's really been taken to another level with DAI. Same with the characters and the banter. It equals KOTOR and ME for me in this case but I think the humour is very good in DAI and some characters like Dorian and Solas are among the best Bioware has ever written. Why is it about Baldur's Gate? Plot reasons probably. I never connected much to the plot in the original BG and I didn't like the low-mid level focus of the game. Still a cracking game but I'd rather play DAI right now.

It's fairly standard save the world stuff without straying too far from fantasy conventions. Nothing particularly game changing, but aside from Sera and romances nothing particularly cringe worthy. Although it does seem to shift lore around, similarly to how ME changed from guns having unlimited ammo to guns using heatsinks as ammo. It just seems weird that blood magic(the supah controversial stuff from the first 2 games) is skimmed over most of the time, garnering a mention at best. Also the Qunari now use toxic warpaint instead of helmets, something never mentioned in previous games. Just feels a bit strange. To be fair they did all have warpaint on in the second game, we just didn't know it was toxic or not. I like the changes they've added to the Qunari over time though. Blood magic is quite important in the initiation of the Mage-Templar war and you can have some interesting conversations about it with Dorian and Solas, but there's so many other themes in the game that I don't think they needed to spend any more time on blood magic. Shame is isn't a specialisation now though.

I'm only 30 hours in 1. Baldur's Gate 2 2. Dragon Age Origins 3. Dragon Age Inquisition 4. Knights of The Old Republic 5. Mass Effect 6. Baldur's Gate 7. Mass Effect 2 8. Neverwinter Nights 9. Mass Effect 3 10. Dragon Age 2

The game is actually really good when you get used to the wonky controls. It's fairly tactical and doesn't require twitch skill at all. Seems like an actual return to form for Bioware but there is a lot of busywork, however the actual story quests and companions make up for the side quests.

They make things interesting. Instead of playing with a bunch of static, stoic adventurers, having a party of companions with their own hopes, dreams and fears is far more interesting, Party building in BG is a game in itself. Modern Bioware, as much as they have fallen, still have the funniest and best written companions in a game so far. It adds an extra layer of intrigue and interaction to the game and is generally a great thing. It's why I prefer BG over IWD. BG was "garbage" in this regard because it was an old game and one of the first ever to even attempt it. That answer is extremely general and doesnt actually answer my question at all. In IWD, you can imagine whom your comapnions are. If you are out adventuring in danger, I dont much care for the character of my companions as long as we get along and they have talents that I can use. If ETERNITY is going to have good companions I would really like to see it because I cant imagine this companion thing looking like anything but an embarrassing joke. Well it's clearly something you just don't care about that other people do. I mean...you can imagine an entire storyline, TV show, book or game, but it's not the same as playing something unpredictable with twists and turns.

They make things interesting. Instead of playing with a bunch of static, stoic adventurers, having a party of companions with their own hopes, dreams and fears is far more interesting, Party building in BG is a game in itself. Modern Bioware, as much as they have fallen, still have the funniest and best written companions in a game so far. It adds an extra layer of intrigue and interaction to the game and is generally a great thing. It's why I prefer BG over IWD. BG was "garbage" in this regard because it was an old game and one of the first ever to even attempt it.

Can't say I didn't expect another delay, but disappointed anyway, even if its for the best.

The danger in this is people like to do blind runthroughs with 1 character, and then maybe metagame with further characters. My "canon" play throughs are always my first runs through the game. However when you have to go back and replay the game with a new character to experience the new content, rather than continuing the new content with your first character, it just doesn't feel as genuine. Your first character has his story shut without experiencing for example...Durlag's Tower so it's simply just not as magical.