Baldur's Gate 2 > PoE 2 Deadfire

[anathanielh]

 

 

Two different games can both be good

No, people must fight. Only one opinion can rise to the top and transcend into the ultimate truth that we shall all abide by.

They both are good. And we're talking.

NAY! This is a verbal bloodmatch and the world is your spectator. Slaughter each other mercilessly in your quest to find the answers you seek.

 

 

 

 

 

 

sarcasm.

[zendingo]

Well I still play both BG2 and POE2 and both are good in different ways. Liking BG2 definitely can't be reduced to nostalgia, that's just a cheap way of taking a shot at something. Blizzard actually accused people of nostalgia when they said D2 was better than D3, but nope D3 was a steaming pile when it came out.

 

POE definitely beats BG2 in graphics and many many modern convenience features and refinements. But I never play with POE 1 or 2 NPCs after the first time. Tavern hires just have better personalities. I will say the blood pool quest was the best quest in POE 1 and the one reason I allowed an Obsidian NPC into my party.

 

With that said I really like POE 1 and 2 and hope they will work out most of the major issues. The bad writing doesn't bother me much because I can just click through it. Love the subclasses, multiclassing, and ai customization added to POE2. Please continue to balance and refine the game and add more content.

[Barleypaper]

Two different games can both be good

Tsh, "good". I eat "good" games for breakfast. I want a game that, well, > BG2. Spoilers, it's Planescape: Torment

 

I refuse to let Deadfire go off and be its own game, with its own fans. It had the gall to call itself a spiritual successor to BG and it needs to answer for every single last one of its heinous deviations from the sacred IE formula! Or perhaps I just enjoy belittling the hard work of Obsidian Entertainment. Probably that.

Edited July 5, 2018 by Barleypaper

[Answermancer]

And even if I did feel I could confidently say, "BG2 is better than PoE2," I'm not sure what the point of doing so would be. I've played a lot of games that weren't as good as other games I've played, and I've never felt like my time was wasted for that reason. I don't play BG1 on endless repeat because Durlag's Tower is absolutely amazing. I don't play Jade Empire over and over again because the scene at the end with the Water Dragon makes me cry. I didn't think, "well, Battletech seems fun, but will it have a scene like when Kreia sits on the edge of a dried-up fountain in KotOR 2 and for the first time seems old?" and then strike it off of my list. The story and setting of P5 failed to grab me in the way that P3 and P4 did, but I don't think my time would've been better spent playing those again. Riven still stands out in the adventure game genre for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't mean that the only adventure game worth playing is Riven. Analogue: A Hate Story is almost certainly better than Digital: A Love Story, but damned if Digital isn't worth exploring for its sheer inventiveness. Duel Savior is in no way the equal of something like Odin Sphere, but I still had a lot of fun with Duel Savior on its own merits. Momoyo's route in Majikoi resonated powerfully with me, but that didn't make the other routes unworthy of my attention.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that trying to compare pieces of entertainment and art as if they were mathematical sums is insane, even when it's possible ... and it's almost never possible. Comparison serves well as the source of analysis and critique, but it has no intrinsic merit. Art may exist in context, but context is not the entire source of value.

I wish that I could like these two paragraphs more than once. Spot on.

 

I'd rather play 20 games of varying quality with varying strengths and weaknesses than 1 "perfect" game for 20 years. For the people who seemingly think that BG2 is the best game ever made, and compare everything else to it, what's the point? At that point BG2 isn't a game to you, it's a religion, nothing else that comes along is going to beat it for you.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Besides the real answer is that the best game ever is Pool of Radiance because that's what *I* played when *I* was eight

 

it had a code wheel. Did Baldur's Gate 2 have a code wheel? It was turn based. Was BG2 turn-based? It was the best game. Was BG 2 the best game? You know the answer to those questions.

Edited July 5, 2018 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[zendingo]

Besides the real answer is that the best game ever is Pool of Radiance because that's what *I* played when *I* was eight

 

it had a code wheel. Did Baldur's Gate 2 have a code wheel? It was turn based. Was BG2 turn-based? It was the best game. Was BG 2 the best game? You know the answer to those questions.

In that case, Telengard is the best RPG ever. That was my first!

[PizzaSHARK]

People are only making the comparison because Deadfire is just that BAD when compared to something they did nearly 20 years previous. Deadfire is a good game in a vacuum but it's very weak compared to previous efforts by the same developers.

 

I don't know if they were hoping to engender mass market appeal by over-simplifying game mechanics, but they certainly made it worse from a "tactical gameplay" standpoint.

 

Dismissing criticisms as "different games are different," is just absurd.

[Arddv]

Deadfire has its moments, but they are more rare than in PoE1 and much rarer than in BG2. I absolutely love what they did to martial classes but wholeheartedly despise what they did to casters. Also Josh's "no hard counters" design philosophy lead to the dismissal of many powerful effects that some considered unfair and frustraiting (instant death, stoneskin, weapon immunities, level/attribute drain etc). So that encounters are less of a "problem to be analyzed and solved" but rather a "stat check obstacle".

[Camonge]

Baldurs Gate 2 is the greatest game I ever played, but Baldurs Gate 2 fanboys are insufferable.

 

Pointless to say "Pelé > Messi", "Jordan >Lebron", "Ali > Mayweather". You can compare them, all right, but this "u cant beat the best!!!" is childish.

[anathanielh]

Baldurs Gate 2 is the greatest game I ever played, but Baldurs Gate 2 fanboys are insufferable.

 

Pointless to say "Pelé > Messi", "Jordan >Lebron", "Ali > Mayweather". You can compare them, all right, but this "u cant beat the best!!!" is childish.

At least nothing can be as bad as sonic fans. *shudder*

[tedmann12]

Just wanted to chime in that I agree with OP. Nothing can top bg2, and I have a hard time figuring out exactly why.

 

I would be a fool to say nostalia has nothing to do with it, but thats definitely not the only reason. I genuinely think overall bg2 is just a better game. And I really like PoE.

 

The magic system in bg2 is super deep and the world is incredible and huge. Story amazing, items amazing, companions are great. And to be honest there is something I kind of love about the lack of balance. Early on in the triology fighters are king, but around the halfway point and on wizards are just significantly stronger. The lack of perfect balance which so many games try to achieve is kind of refreshing. Bg2 just embraces the fact that high level magic reigns supreme and I love it!!!

 

Just started a new game with scs mod installed, going all the way from bg1 to throne of baal and I cant wait!

Edited July 6, 2018 by tedmann12

[misterjimmy]

https://bit.ly/2KBiXJG

When designing Pillars of Eternity’s narrative, Sawyer says one of their main objectives was to make the adventure “feel epic but not too epic.” 

 

No Josh,I think people just care about "good storyline." In fact, POE2 critical path is very disappointed.

[aksrasjel]

https://bit.ly/2KBiXJG

When designing Pillars of Eternity’s narrative, Sawyer says one of their main objectives was to make the adventure “feel epic but not too epic.” 

 

No Josh,I think people just care about "good storyline." In fact, POE2 critical path is very disappointed.

 

I kind of get where he's coming from, but to be honest, Obsidian's - and Josh Sawyer's in particular - antipathy towards embracing a more "fantasy" and outlandish elements of their fantasy franchise always rubbed me the wrong way. Not to mention the PoE narrative suffers for it - the universe feels really small and constricted now. They somehow made Gods mundane and boring. Deadfire was supposed to be this mysterious, hostile land filled with volcanoes, sea monsters and who knows what monstrosities and phenomenas - it turns out it's just a fantasy Carribean with fantasy Maori people. There is so much you can do with this franchise, but somehow Obsidian doesn't want to. Again - Baldur's Gate felt like playing a true Tolkienesque fantasy adventure. PoE feels like a reading a history book with various races being reskinned humans in both looks and behaviour - it actually took me a while to realize Oswald is an elf for instance.

Edited July 6, 2018 by aksrasjel

[PizzaSHARK]

Deadfire has its moments, but they are more rare than in PoE1 and much rarer than in BG2. I absolutely love what they did to martial classes but wholeheartedly despise what they did to casters. Also Josh's "no hard counters" design philosophy lead to the dismissal of many powerful effects that some considered unfair and frustraiting (instant death, stoneskin, weapon immunities, level/attribute drain etc). So that encounters are less of a "problem to be analyzed and solved" but rather a "stat check obstacle".

 

Yup, and I hate it.  I realize that others like that kind of thing, so it may just be that Pillars isn't going to be a series of games that are "for me" - and that's incredibly disappointing, if that turns out to be the case.

 

See, in Deadfire, when I fail an encounter it's almost NEVER because I don't know what to do - I *DO* know what to do (because what to do is invariably "apply buffs to my dudes, apply debuffs to their dudes, and then hit them harder than they hit me"), but whether I win or lose is either heavily reliant on RNG (if stats are roughly equivalent) because nearly everything in combat is just "your stats vs theirs" rather than game knowledge, or a foregone conclusion based off of stats - if my Deflection is 30 points different from their Accuracy (above or below), I'm not going to win that fight without finding some way to abuse the game's weak AI (the Almighty Doorway in Pillars, for example.)  I'm not dying to a mage, looking at the combat log and my own mage's spellbook to try and figure out what killed me.  I'm not discovering new things that kill me and I have to factor in for my next attempt (literally the only time traps are interesting or cool, please stop clogging random, empty hallways with traps.)  I'm just going "okay I almost had it, maybe I'll get some more crits this time and come out ahead on the dice rolls."  I don't feel like I defeated a tough encounter because I got better at the game, I defeated it because I was either luckier than last time or I left and came back in-game weeks or months later and beat it because now I have +5 to Accuracy and +15% to damage!

 

Did BG2 have this?  Of course it did, such things are part and parcel of d20 and especially so in earlier editions.  But the nuanced and occasionally overly complex magic system and its interactions, and the relative frequency with which you encountered Mages, Clerics, or creatures with spell-like abilities meant that many encounters DID have more to them than "buff up and hit them harder than they hit you."  You simply were not beating encounters with equivalent-level Mages without knowing how things like Breach, Dispel Magic, Stoneskin, Mantle, Globe of Invulnerability, etc interacted.  Even encounters with divine casters could turn out this way, because they had the most potent buffs in the game and had a selection of save or suck or mass-damage spells, too.  In Deadfire, though?  Wizards and Priests are just like any other class for the most part - tank the damage and hit them harder than they hit you.  Debuffs don't really matter much because of the pants-on-head retarded choice to have inspirations override afflictions (rather than have them run concurrently), and having Resistance (which is ridiculously easy to get) means you're generally immune to the form of Affliction that imposes a hard CC effect like stun, paralyze, dominate, etc.  Later versions of D&D have counterspelling mechanics (typically like-for-like, with Dispel Magic and related abilities filling an all-purpose function that's a little less effective than a specific counter-spell), which are also almost entirely absent from Deadfire - you either have the one Wizard spell, random weapon crits, or a few attacks specifically Interrupt in addition to their other effects.  I don't think this is bad, but it needs a lot more work since it's one of the very few things that the game engine clearly has available to add badly needed tactical depth to the combat system.

 

More than anything, though, I think Deadfire desperately needs some way of affecting the terrain.  Why don't Druids and Wizards have Stone to Mud/Mud to Stone?  Turn the solid floor into mud, imposing Slog Zone penalties... or maybe you're fighting a tough construct made of stone or other, similar materials and you can use Stone to Mud to damage it or lower its armor.  I can place a wall made of fire, but I can't use a spell to create a pit or a wall to break line of sight/line of effect?  My Barbarian can leap around and do all kinds of overtly supernatural things, but he can't smash the ground to create a Slog Zone or a pit or something?  In a decent d20 tabletop campaign, the terrain you're fighting on is often AT LEAST as important, tactically, as WHAT you're fighting.  6 kobolds with bows at 5th level is a complete joke if they're just 20 yards away in a room, but if they're 20 yards away up a hillside covered in rocky scree or on the other side of a pit or in the trees while you're slogging through a swamp?  Tucker's Kobolds is the ur-example of how a bunch of statistically pathetic monsters can go from walking sacks of XP to being intensely challenging encounters without any kind of arbitrary stat differences... and you'd think that JSwayer alone, given his breadth of tabletop experience (much greater than mine, I'd wager - I've never even heard of some of the games he's talked about playing and preferring to d20 systems), would realize how important it is to have SOMETHING like this in a game that claims to offer a challenging tactical experience.

Edited July 6, 2018 by PizzaSHARK

[Madscientist]

@PizzaSHARK:

If you want the terrain to matter, play D:OS2. Spill oil to slow them down, set the oil on fire, let it rain on the fire to create a cloud and then electrify the cloud.

Personally I think that D:OS2 goes a bit too far with that.

 

A computer game will never reproduce a 100% PnP feeling, because you have to program everything before playing and time and money to make a game are limited. You cannot have 100 possible options all the time and it will often happen that players will have an idea on how deal with a situation but the game does not allow this.

In the best possible case the devs will offer more options later when many players complain about it, like in Tyranny where they gave you the option to stay loyal to Kyros.

 

Its OK if some people like game A ( e.g. BG2 ) more than game B (e.g. deadfire). Just accept that PoE is not a DnD game.

[Loren Tyr]

I kind of get where he's coming from, but to be honest, Obsidian's - and Josh Sawyer's in particular - antipathy towards embracing a more "fantasy" and outlandish elements of their fantasy franchise always rubbed me the wrong way. Not to mention the PoE narrative suffers for it - the universe feels really small and constricted now. They somehow made Gods mundane and boring. Deadfire was supposed to be this mysterious, hostile land filled with volcanoes, sea monsters and who knows what monstrosities and phenomenas - it turns out it's just a fantasy Carribean with fantasy Maori people. There is so much you can do with this franchise, but somehow Obsidian doesn't want to. Again - Baldur's Gate felt like playing a true Tolkienesque fantasy adventure. PoE feels like a reading a history book with various races being reskinned humans in both looks and behaviour - it actually took me a while to realize Oswald is an elf for instance.

 

 

But the thing is, what you see as "doing more with the franchise", of embracing more "fantasy" and outlandlish elements; others (including apparantly Obsidian; or at least, that's not the way they want to go with it) would not see that as an improvement at all. Which is completely fine of course, different people like different things. But I think it does bear pointing out that certainly not everyone want it to be all that epic and over the top.

 

Speaking for myself at least, I much prefer Gods being something more mundane, something more grounded. To me, Gods in fiction being some inexplicable force are just boring. Inexplicable in general bores me. The world being more normal and believable, the people and other entitities in it being more normal and believable, that is much more interesting to me. It gets you closer to a kind of 'what if' scenario, of some variation of our actual reality but with different rules, with magic infused into it.

 

And same with the characters you play and encounter. I very much prefer them not to turn into virtual unstoppable demigods themselves at the end of the game (especially not over the time span a typical game takes), but to still feel like actual mortals, albeit very skilled ones perhaps. Given the way these games work mechanically that's always going to be a bit difficult of course, but PoE does approximate that much better than BG does. I definitely do enjoy more outlandish settings as well, but primarily to the extent that it provides unique and really quite different settings. Planescape Torment being a very good example, or for example the books by China Mieville. And in a way also Star Wars actually, that kind of blend of fantasy and sci-fi setting always felt like it has great promise (a pity they always manage to mess it up with horrible plot and most characters being pervasively incompetent). I certainly enjoyed the BG series mind you (though certainly not Lord of the Rings), but that's more despite the more outlandish elements of the setting than because of it. 

 

Anyway, I just thought I'd provide an opposing perspective 

[aksrasjel]

 

I kind of get where he's coming from, but to be honest, Obsidian's - and Josh Sawyer's in particular - antipathy towards embracing a more "fantasy" and outlandish elements of their fantasy franchise always rubbed me the wrong way. Not to mention the PoE narrative suffers for it - the universe feels really small and constricted now. They somehow made Gods mundane and boring. Deadfire was supposed to be this mysterious, hostile land filled with volcanoes, sea monsters and who knows what monstrosities and phenomenas - it turns out it's just a fantasy Carribean with fantasy Maori people. There is so much you can do with this franchise, but somehow Obsidian doesn't want to. Again - Baldur's Gate felt like playing a true Tolkienesque fantasy adventure. PoE feels like a reading a history book with various races being reskinned humans in both looks and behaviour - it actually took me a while to realize Oswald is an elf for instance.

 

 

But the thing is, what you see as "doing more with the franchise", of embracing more "fantasy" and outlandlish elements; others (including apparantly Obsidian; or at least, that's not the way they want to go with it) would not see that as an improvement at all. Which is completely fine of course, different people like different things. But I think it does bear pointing out that certainly not everyone want it to be all that epic and over the top.

 

Speaking for myself at least, I much prefer Gods being something more mundane, something more grounded. To me, Gods in fiction being some inexplicable force are just boring. Inexplicable in general bores me. The world being more normal and believable, the people and other entitities in it being more normal and believable, that is much more interesting to me. It gets you closer to a kind of 'what if' scenario, of some variation of our actual reality but with different rules, with magic infused into it.

 

And same with the characters you play and encounter. I very much prefer them not to turn into virtual unstoppable demigods themselves at the end of the game (especially not over the time span a typical game takes), but to still feel like actual mortals, albeit very skilled ones perhaps. Given the way these games work mechanically that's always going to be a bit difficult of course, but PoE does approximate that much better than BG does. I definitely do enjoy more outlandish settings as well, but primarily to the extent that it provides unique and really quite different settings. Planescape Torment being a very good example, or for example the books by China Mieville. And in a way also Star Wars actually, that kind of blend of fantasy and sci-fi setting always felt like it has great promise (a pity they always manage to mess it up with horrible plot and most characters being pervasively incompetent). I certainly enjoyed the BG series mind you (though certainly not Lord of the Rings), but that's more despite the more outlandish elements of the setting than because of it. 

 

Anyway, I just thought I'd provide an opposing perspective 

 

I hear you. I agree that's very a much a case of "apples and oranges" when it comes to narrative.  Down-to-earth and mundane is fine, but if you overdo it, the story can become a slog - and vice versa. You go too much into "out-there" territory and you cannot connect with the setting. That's why I got absolutely burned out on "Song of Ice and Fire" series - it was just too cynical and mundane for me.

It's just for me, Deadfire (and to a somewhat lesser extent the franchise as a whole - although it really shows with PoE 2) is almost afraid to go into more outlandish and weird territories - and kind of overdoes the "mundane" aspect a bit too much. And by "outlandish and weird" I don't mean "wacky and silly Looney Tunes cartoon" just something more creative and out-of-the-box.  Examples: we have a giant Godzilla-sized god stomping around Deadfire causing biawacs and mayhem, yet everyone seems very blase about that - faction leaders (and the game itself, incidentally) seem more interested in Deadfire politics than dealing with reincarnation of Eothas itself.

Your character is a special person that can see souls of dead people - the game really doesn't seem to care about it. It's just something you do on Friday mornings, rather than a lynchpin of your enitre character development. Comperatively, being a Bhaalspawn - and how the player deals with that - was the main focus and a really "big deal" of an entire Baldur's Gate series.

One of my companions is a nerdy soul-sucking vampire scientist from a mysterious place we know nothing about - the game ignores her and her story entirely. On the other hand, Pallegina keeps delivering  bucketloads of dry exposition about the politics of her beloved fantasy not-Reinassance Italy that don't seem that exciting actually. Remember those fun times, when Star Wars decided to sit down and discuss trade disputes? This is what actually irks me in Deadfire narrative. I guess that's a deliberate focus - to keep things down-to-earth, "realistic" and mundane, I just don't know if I can get fun out of that, having a rather different approach towards fantasy narratives.

Than again - apples and oranges, my opinion and all that - unironically, if realism and mundanity is what some people look for in a fantasy story - all the more power to them.

Edited July 6, 2018 by aksrasjel

[AFA]

Baldurs Gate 2 is the greatest game I ever played, but Baldurs Gate 2 fanboys are insufferable.

 

Pointless to say "Pelé > Messi", "Jordan >Lebron", "Ali > Mayweather". You can compare them, all right, but this "u cant beat the best!!!" is childish.

 

That is Bioware fans in general it seems, and I am a Bioware fan myself. I always loved the flawed gem that is Dragon Age 2, because it deconstructed all the narrative and character cliches of BW since BG1. Of course, the raging butthurt over it led to the Mary Sue filled retcon extravaganza known as Dragon Age Inquisition.

[Loren Tyr]

I hear you. I agree that's very a much a case of "apples and oranges" when it comes to narrative.  Down-to-earth and mundane is fine, but if you overdo it, the story can become a slog - and vice versa. You go too much into "out-there" territory and you cannot connect with the setting. That's why I got absolutely burned out on "Song of Ice and Fire" series - it was just too cynical and mundane for me.

It's just for me, Deadfire (and to a somewhat lesser extent the franchise as a whole - although it really shows with PoE 2) is almost afraid to go into more outlandish and weird territories - and kind of overdoes the "mundane" aspect a bit too much. And by "outlandish and weird" I don't mean "wacky and silly Looney Tunes cartoon" just something more creative and out-of-the-box.  Examples: we have a giant Godzilla-sized god stomping around Deadfire causing biawacs and mayhem, yet everyone seems very blase about that - faction leaders (and the game itself, incidentally) seem more interested in Deadfire politics than dealing with reincarnation of Eothas itself.

Your character is a special person that can see souls of dead people - the game really doesn't seem to care about it. It's just something you do on Friday mornings, rather than a lynchpin of your enitre character development. Comperatively, being a Bhaalspawn - and how the player deals with that - was the main focus and a really "big deal" of an entire Baldur's Gate series.

One of my companions is a nerdy soul-sucking vampire scientist from a mysterious place we know nothing about - the game ignores her and her story entirely. On the other hand, Pallegina keeps delivering a bucketloads of dry exposition about the politics of her beloved fantasy not-Reinassance Italy that doesn't seem that exciting actually. Remember those fun times, when Star Wars decided to sit down and discuss trade disputes? This is what actually irks me in Deadfire narrative. I guess that's a deliberate focus - to keep things down-to-earth, "realistic" and mundane, I just don't know if I can get fun out of that, having a rather different approach towards fantasy narratives.

Than again - apples and oranges, my opinion and all that - unironically, if realism and mundanity is what some people look for in a fantasy story - all the more power to them.

 

 

For me it doesn't easily get too mundane I must say; I'd certainly be (potentially) interested in similar styles of game in historical (or alternate historical) settings as well. But that is certainly quite subject to personal taste, I agree. I just enjoy getting a sense of a world, a place, which to me in many respects is more in the mundane and everyday things than in some spectacular upheaval. And it's perhaps also that it often feels that when things go epic (in most genres, superhero movies suffer from this to an even greater degree), everything just scales up with the threat.

 

Some godlike villain threatening to destroy the world? You'll generally end up with similarly godlike protagonists to defeat him, because obviously they need to be more or less balanced in power for it to work. But if it's balanced in that sense, then in terms of plot and character development there isn't necessarily that much point in it balancing at that enormous level of power. Toning it down a couple of notches, maybe also throw in an army or two rather than concentrating all the power in a single individual, makes it feel much more plausible in many ways to me. It's like with Superman: he's stupidly powerful and nigh indestructible, so you'll pretty much just end up either having him fight something equally as powerful, or something less powerful plus a plot contrivance that depowers Superman as well (as far as I'm aware, it's hardly my genre, but it seems to follow roughly that kind of pattern). So to me it often feels like at heart the narrative wouldn't really change that much if you scaled it down to a lower level of power, aside from a couple less buildings getting punched to rubble.

 

Whether reactions and such in PoE are believable is of course an additional point that can be argued. It feels plausible to me, insofar as denial and just plain disbelief that it's actually true (and also not exaggerated) would probably be fairly common reactions in a setting such as this. It will hardly have been the first grandiose rumour to have done the rounds, most of which will have been nonsense. And given that it would also a reasonable guise for one faction to weaken another, politics certainly seems relevant. And similar with the Watcher himself. It's a world filled with magic after all, with all sorts of (to us) unusual things. An ability to commune with souls just wouldn't be that unusual in comparison, I should think. Again, definitely a matter of individual perspective of course, though.

 

And having said that, Pallegina definitely is quite boring, and Ydwin would have made a much better choice for a fully fleshed-out companion. Certainly, although I like a bit of good politics and intrigue in stories (wouldn't be believable without it), I'd much rather hear more about animancy and the science in this world from my companions. So in that regard I'm definitely not going to claim PoE is perfect in that sense, I certainly wouldn't have minded them turning up the focus on the less mundane a bit. But at least to me, things like that work best against a backdrop of the more mundane and down-to-earth, to provide the contrast.

 

Also definitely not going to defend Star Wars eps 1-3, because that's just indefensible. Not that I'm such a Star Wars fan anyway mind you, it's an interesting setting spoiled by a never-ending chain of plot contrivance. 

[Verde]

Duh

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

I miss the "fantasy" in PoE II. As mentioned before, it feels mostly like some historic setting at the time of the Conquistadors and the Renaissance. We have the whole topic of gods, souls and animancy but this is rarely touched in a way to goes beyond typical cliches. It mostly regurgitates the conflict of science and religion but doesn't develop something "fantastic". It lacked imagination and surprises in my opinion. The only part that i found interesting and extraordinary was the Weeping Mother story in PoE 1, but the exposition was really dry with the endless soliloquies by the narration .

On the other hand Baldurs Gate II is quite the stereotypical fantasy but it does explore its setting nicely and you discover all kinds of aspects of the setting in an interactive way due to the huge amount of quests. You tangle with demons, undead, drow, planars, dragons, etc ... which simply keeps it interesting due to the large variation of content. 

[Psychevore]

 

Baldurs Gate 2 is the greatest game I ever played, but Baldurs Gate 2 fanboys are insufferable.

 

Pointless to say "Pelé > Messi", "Jordan >Lebron", "Ali > Mayweather". You can compare them, all right, but this "u cant beat the best!!!" is childish.

 

That is Bioware fans in general it seems, and I am a Bioware fan myself. I always loved the flawed gem that is Dragon Age 2, because it deconstructed all the narrative and character cliches of BW since BG1. Of course, the raging butthurt over it led to the Mary Sue filled retcon extravaganza known as Dragon Age Inquisition.

 

 

And I'm a Bioware fan who thinks DA:I is the best in the series.

 

Where do we go from here?

 

I also loved ME3 btw, including the ending which I found poetically beautiful, so I might just be weird

[knownastherat]

Bioware today is not the Bioware that created BG2. Since the time it was sold to EA and consequent departure Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, as well as other key personalities, Bioware games become streamlined and lacked the ingredients that distinguish greatness from mediocre. In this context, how can anyone be Bioware fan? It's as if Jesus became Mr. Trump. 

 

Deadfire also displays elements of streamlining yet pretends to be special. As "spiritual successor" it fails because where is the spirit? 

Edited July 6, 2018 by knownastherat

[AFA]

 

 

Baldurs Gate 2 is the greatest game I ever played, but Baldurs Gate 2 fanboys are insufferable.

 

Pointless to say "Pelé > Messi", "Jordan >Lebron", "Ali > Mayweather". You can compare them, all right, but this "u cant beat the best!!!" is childish.

 

That is Bioware fans in general it seems, and I am a Bioware fan myself. I always loved the flawed gem that is Dragon Age 2, because it deconstructed all the narrative and character cliches of BW since BG1. Of course, the raging butthurt over it led to the Mary Sue filled retcon extravaganza known as Dragon Age Inquisition.

 

 

And I'm a Bioware fan who thinks DA:I is the best in the series.

 

Where do we go from here?

 

I also loved ME3 btw, including the ending which I found poetically beautiful, so I might just be weird

 

 

I loved ME3 too.

 

I'm in the same boat as you, as not many fans like DA2, while I think it had the best story in the series. DAI wasn't a bad game, it was just way too much fan service, while kind of pissing on the lore of the Qunari and Tevinter. It was fun to RP a rebel mage, and have people like Cassandra hate me for it.

[AFA]

Bioware today is not the Bioware that created BG2. Since the time it was sold to EA and consequent departure Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, as well as other key personalities, Bioware games become streamlined and lacked the ingredients that distinguish greatness from mediocre. In this context, how can anyone be Bioware fan? It's as if Jesus became Mr. Trump. 

 

Deadfire also displays elements of streamlining yet pretends to be special. As "spiritual successor" it fails because where is the spirit? 

 

People are fans because they still managed to make the two best Western RPG series of the past decade, despite being owned by Big Bad Evil EA. Without the success of DAO, the current crop of BG Spiritual Successors would never have existed.