Best of infinitity.

[Musopticon?]

Unhh, I agree that BG's story was paper-thin. It's just the first Infinity game(or crpg) of most people and the nostalgia factor is rampant.

Edited January 28, 2006 by Musopticon?

[Sermon]

Certianly not the GB games, M&M, Wizardry, Bard's Tale, etc. Most of these are basiclaly exploration/dungeon crawling games. Very light on actual role-playing.

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Depends on how you define the term "role-playing". Back then role-playing was nothing more than taking a bunch of characters into dungeons, beating the crap out of monsters and by doing that gaining experience points for your aforementioned characters, so role-playing a plenty in these games. With the years the genre changed and with it the definition of role-playing, but that doesn't make these old classics less RPG's. At least not in my book.

[Sermon]

Unhh, I agree that BG's story was paper-thin. It's just the first Infinity game(or crpg) of most people and the nostalgia factor is rampant.

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Personally I never understood why everyone was raving on about how great BG1 was when it was released. Sure, it was a good, entertaining game, but not as great as everyone wanted you to believe. It had its very obvious flaws that were hardly mentioned in any of the reviews back in the day. That doesn't mean I don't like it - I enjoyed the game immensely, but even back then when it was released I thought it was a tad over-rated.

[kirottu]

The rat-girl's name was Annah.

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Tail hotness.

[Slowtrain]

1) Icewind Dale: Far and away the best. Dice Roll, full party of your own, lots of loot, leveling, undead crushing

 

2) BG2: A quality game though never will be among my favorites because it made me resuce Imoen. Colorful and interesting game world, lots of stuff to do and see, lots of cool irtems, high levels. Dialogue was not overwhelming or pretentious.

 

3) Icewind Dale 2: A big move up for this game. 3e rules, your own 6 person party, some really good levels.

 

4) BG: Hurt by a lack of leveling and limited char development which is alomst impossiblee to do under crpg D&D anyway. A lot of low lwevel boring monsters. The city of BG was TOO big.

 

5) Planescape: Torment: Far and away the worst. An awful game really, with little to redeem it. Made incalculably worse by the huge amount of excuciating text, I was forced to wade through. If I had known I was dealing with an adventure game and not a cropg I probably wouldn't have bought it. Ah well, at least I have a couple interesting coasters.

[Musopticon?]

I think it had something to do with crpgs being almost dead back then. Everyone considered them as a dead genre. Then came BG, many considered it a messiah.

Edited January 28, 2006 by Musopticon?

[Musopticon?]

The rat-girl's name was Annah.

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Tail hotness.

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Annah...

[Lancer]

BG1 was, at its core, equally as hack'n slash as IWD1

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This is just obviously not true. I don't recall in BG1 spending upwards of 3-4 or more hours per dungeon just hacking away at enemies only to be thrust into ANOTHER dungeon right after finishing that one... again.. and... again... and again. I could hardly take a step in IWD1 before getting ambushed by some random horde (sometimes army) of monsters here and there.. Only to repeat the trite cycle over and over...

 

Except for the very beginning and the very end, very little time was spent in IWD1 speaking to town NPCs gathering information that would have served well to break the monotony.

 

If nothing else, BG1 actually had wilderness areas to explore and TOWNS (some with interesting NPCs and quests!) which added much needed variety to the gameplay.. Something IWD really didn't have.

 

And the dungeons weren't nearly as long nor repetitive as they were in IWD.

 

Really, the only thing that IWD and BG1 had in common was that they both were based on Forgotten Realms, used AD&D 2ndEd rules and the Infinity Engine.

Edited January 28, 2006 by Lancer

[Lancer]

5) Planescape: Torment: Far and away the worst.  An awful game really, with little to redeem it.  Made incalculably worse by the huge amount of excuciating text, I was forced to wade through.  If I had known I was dealing with an adventure game and not a cropg I probably wouldn't have bought it.  Ah well, at least I have a couple interesting coasters.

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First off.. An adventure game doesn't rely much on stats to describe how well the character performs non-combat tasks nor do stats have a high level of customization as the character levels up like honest-to-goodness RPGs do. This is one of the key *real* differences between an adventure game and a true RPG.

 

Planescape Torment was actually very similar to the Fallouts in how your stats dictated both what your character was capable of doing in non-combat situations and what your dialogue options were. No adventure game does that. Although you couldn't make a character from scratch, you had a GREAT degree of control over how your character was developed. Aside from deciding what spells, weapons/armor (etc..) you want your character to have in adventure games, you have minimal control over the development of your character.

 

Not to mention that Planescape Torment , like the Fallouts, offered many different solutions to many, many problems.. Effectively, give you the choice as to HOW you want to ROLEPLAY your TNO. Now THAT is roleplaying. Something no adventure game I am aware of does.

 

 

If you want to define an adventure game as a game that doesn't allow you to make your own character from scratch, you must keep in mind that many PnP RPGs and (It is ironic that even the Fallouts do this) CRPGS give you custom-made characters in case you don't want to build your own from the get-go. From that perspective, the ability to make your own character from scratch is not a defining criteria for a game to be considered an RPG.

 

And come to think of it.. Planescape Torment was more of an RPG than even games such as BG1 were in many respects.

Edited January 28, 2006 by Lancer

[Lancer]

Oh really? I'm surprised you used plural form here. Ultima can be argued to be better in this aspect. No doubt about it. But, what other earlier RPGs were in either BG or Ultima's class when it came to character interaction? I cna't think of any unless its some obscure one. Certianly not the GB games, M&M, Wizardry, Bard's Tale, etc. Most of these are basiclaly exploration/dungeon crawling games. Very light on actual role-playing.

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Recall that not only did Ultima VII (both parts) but both of the Fallouts had a better/more advanced dialogue system than Baldur's Gate I. Fallout I came out the year before BG and Fallout II came out the same year as BG.

 

The GB games were interesting though, your skills/proficiences and how well you were able to perform non-combat tasks were based on your stats though. They were still RPGs (at least the GB games I played). But in terms of character interaction, yes, they were lacking.

 

About getting as close to the pnp experience as possible in a single player D&D game. You should be comapring the IE games to, say, the GB games not Ultima.

 

I don't get this. Just because it is a D&D game you can't have good character interaction? I don't see any reason why BG1 couldn't have a dialogue system like Ultima VII's (or even better, an improved version..).

A game can have interesting and well-developed NPCs with a dialogue system which is both well-written and variable via your stats regardless of the ruleset you use.

Edited January 28, 2006 by Lancer

[CoM_Solaufein]

It's just the first Infinity game(or crpg) of most people and the nostalgia factor is rampant.

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Indeed it is just like Fallout. Those two games have fond memories with me.

[Meshugger]

The rat-girl's name was Annah.

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Tail hotness.

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Annah...

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What's this obsession with Annah? It's almost like the Bastila-hordes.

[Pidesco]

Bastila was an annoying bore. <_>

 

Annah was a hot female half-fiend with a tail and a body that gets literally hotter when aroused.

[Meshugger]

Bastila was an annoying bore. <_<

 

Annah was a hot female half-fiend with a tail and a body that gets literally hotter when aroused. 

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Well yeah, but....but that accent of her <_<

[Pidesco]

Bastila was an annoying bore. <_>

 

Annah was a hot female half-fiend with a tail and a body that gets literally hotter when aroused. 

 

Well yeah, but....but that accent of her <_>

 

 

Don't knock Sheena Easton! 80s sex symbols rule.

[kirottu]

Bastila was an annoying bore. <_<

 

Annah was a hot female half-fiend with a tail and a body that gets literally hotter when aroused. 

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Well yeah, but....but that accent of her <_<

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It was awesome and then some.

[Volourn]

"Depends on how you define the term "role-playing". Back then role-playing was nothing more than taking a bunch of characters into dungeons, beating the crap out of monsters and by doing that gaining experience points for your aforementioned characters, so role-playing a plenty in these games."

 

That's not role-playing. That's dungeon crawling. Role-playing is more than just leveling up, and killing monsters even those two activities cna be fun as they (mostly) wer ein the GB games. Still not role-playing though.

 

 

"Recall that not only did Ultima VII (both parts) but both of the Fallouts had a better/more advanced dialogue system than Baldur's Gate I. Fallout I came out the year before BG and Fallout II came out the same year as BG."

 

Sorry; but I figured when you stated 'earlier RPGs' that you menat games that had been out for years ala a 'different generation'. FO, of course, has more role-playing than BG; but since both games are like a year a part, I would term FO has really an older game even if it did technically come out earlier. I'm talking about games in the 80s and very early 90s.

 

 

"Annah was a hot female half-fiend with a tail and a body that gets literally hotter when aroused."

 

Annah is a crap character. She was so extremely shallow she makes the FO joinable npcs look as deep as the ocean. She was a **** who had sex with her adopted father,a nd who would jump in the sack at the first ugly dude that looked her way. She is one of the most overrated characters ever.

 

Fall-From-Grace was much better in every way.

 

 

"BG1 was, at its core, equally as hack'n slash as IWD1"

 

As Lancer pointed out quite accurately, the two games aren't even close to being equal. IWD was about exploring dungeons, and hacking monsters. Story came came second.

 

BG1 was about solving the mystery of the mine difficulties, and finding out about your charcter's origins. Sure, there was a lot of combat; but the purpose of the game was *not* the combat.

 

In IWD and all hack n slashes; the combat is the purpose of the game while in non hack n slashes any (well most of it) like BG or PST or FO the combat is a means to an end - learning the story, role-playing your characters, and discovering the world.

Edited January 28, 2006 by Volourn

[kirottu]

Annah is a crap character. She was so extremely shallow she makes the FO joinable npcs look as deep as the ocean. She was a **** who had sex with her adopted father,a nd who would jump in the sack at the first ugly dude that looked her way. She is one of the most overrated characters ever.

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She turned you down, didn

[Nick_i_am]

Scottish accents > u

[Volourn]

"She turned you down, didn

[alanschu]

To be fair to Baldur's Gate, no one really expected those things in that time, which is why we all have fond memories of it.

 

To criticize Baldur's Gate in comparison to today's games is silly in my opinion.  It SHOULD be worse.  However, I don't think it's as bad (today) as it really should be.

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But remember that Ultima VII (both parts) had in-depth NPCs with interesting backstories and solid character interaction nearly half a decade earlier. Good character interaction wasn't some new concept when time BG1 came around.

 

But there was a 5 year gap between both games. By the time BG came out, many had considered the CRPG market to be kaput. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if Baldur's Gate was a bigger seller than Ultima, if for no other reason than Personal Computers were more popular (and much easier to game on than the Ultima VII days).

 

 

BG's treatment of NPC character interaction in comparison (including BG2!) was a step backwards indeed. Not until Torment did we see a game that continued that high character interaction standard originally set by Ultima VII.

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Like I said...I think that that standard had faded by the time BG came out. It's like all the high society stuff that the Greeks and Romans had, before the Dark Ages when everything was pretty much worse.

 

 

 

The fact that it was a company's second game ever is pretty impressive too. I big part of my buying Ultima VII is because I had tried Ultima VI (my first Ultima experience) and enjoyed it. I didn't have anything to give additional motivation for Baldur's Gate.

Edited January 28, 2006 by alanschu

[alanschu]

Of course it's a console. Don't even think of mentioning pc and that thing in the same sentence.

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All it is is a stripped down pc.

 

It even uses a version of windows as it's OS.

 

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So did the Dreamcast.

[Darque]

And it died too

[Gabrielle]

And it died too

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May all consoles die.

 

Love those BG games, they're something aren't they?

[Gabrielle]

Bastila was an annoying bore. <_<

 

Annah was a hot female half-fiend with a tail and a body that gets literally hotter when aroused. 

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Bastila was all that.