Let's Play Baldur's Gate 2, and reflect on Pillars of Eternity

[PrimeJunta]

What are you talking about? You hunt down evil spellcasters in addition to standard palading things.

Infiltrating Thief guilds is not a job for a guy that cannot lie. Didn't you say you played PnP?

Maybe you should read what Inquisitors do. They are not police or detectives and certainly not undercover agents. That is what Harpers do.

 

I certainly permitted paladins in my campaigns to lie, if pursuing Lawful Good goals.

[Luckmann]

 

 

No it is not. You took a quest for Thief guild as a paladin. A quest that was not even about greater good. That should have been instant loss of paladinhood there in PnP. The game is nice and didn't do that. After that, it does not need to pander to Paladins with identity crisis.

If you don't want to do it, walk away. I done that plenty of times even in PnP while not playing as restricted classes as paladins, **** money and XP.

I'm an Inquisitor. Ever heard of undercover cops? What if my intention was to investigate both groups in order to find out enough about them to bring them both down?

 

What are you talking about? You hunt down evil spellcasters in addition to standard palading things.

Infiltrating Thief guilds is not a job for a guy that cannot lie. Didn't you say you played PnP?

Maybe you should read what Inquisitors do. They are not police or detectives and certainly not undercover agents. That is what Harpers do.

 

Yeah, I think the idea that the Inquisitor infiltrates is.. odd, too. A Paladin Inquisitor is very much the kind that would be more liable to throw in a molotov ****tail into the building and start cutting the sinners down as they try to run outside.

 

I certainly permitted paladins in my campaigns to lie, if pursuing Lawful Good goals.

Alignment isn't your intention, it's what you do. Lying is pretty much the opposite of Lawful behaviour as far as alignment works (at least pre-4e, I know jack squat about what they ended up doing with that insane abortion of a ruleset). Edited January 10, 2015 by Luckmann

[archangel979]

Baldur's Gate (the location) was nothing like Athkatla. There was a lot of stuff there, for sure, but it was not being stuffed down my throat. I had to go look for it. That is way more enjoyable.

I agree with this. I am just in BG as part of my Bg1ee play and I find it having more quests than Athkatla but spread out better.

[PrimeJunta]

:shrug: Fair enough. I was playing it wrong.

 

Be as it may, I was disappointed that the game did not acknowledge my choice of alignment and class in any way, and the only options offered were "accept quest/don't accept quest."

[illathid]

 

 

 

No it is not. You took a quest for Thief guild as a paladin. A quest that was not even about greater good. That should have been instant loss of paladinhood there in PnP. The game is nice and didn't do that. After that, it does not need to pander to Paladins with identity crisis.

If you don't want to do it, walk away. I done that plenty of times even in PnP while not playing as restricted classes as paladins, **** money and XP.

I'm an Inquisitor. Ever heard of undercover cops? What if my intention was to investigate both groups in order to find out enough about them to bring them both down?

 

What are you talking about? You hunt down evil spellcasters in addition to standard palading things.

Infiltrating Thief guilds is not a job for a guy that cannot lie. Didn't you say you played PnP?

Maybe you should read what Inquisitors do. They are not police or detectives and certainly not undercover agents. That is what Harpers do.

 

Yeah, I think the idea that the Inquisitor infiltrates is.. odd, too. A Paladin Inquisitor is very much the kind that would be more liable to throw in a molotov ****tail into the building and start cutting the sinners down as they try to run outside.

 

 

That a pretty narrow view of the different Class Kits in my opinion. An Inquisitor in BG2 is just a paladin who specializes in fighteing evil magic. I could see them infiltrating a thieves guild just as easily as any other paladin. Your mileage may vary.

[archangel979]

 

 

What are you talking about? You hunt down evil spellcasters in addition to standard palading things.Infiltrating Thief guilds is not a job for a guy that cannot lie. Didn't you say you played PnP?

Maybe you should read what Inquisitors do. They are not police or detectives and certainly not undercover agents. That is what Harpers do.

I certainly permitted paladins in my campaigns to lie, if pursuing Lawful Good goals.

There is big difference between telling the evil necromancer a wrong location of the innocents he wants to kill and going all in and pretending you are a rogue. Paladins don't do that. They go in and arrest anyone that does not fight back. They kill the rest.

[PrimeJunta]

There is big difference between telling the evil necromancer a wrong location of the innocents he wants to kill and going all in and pretending you are a rogue. Paladins don't do that. They go in and arrest anyone that does not fight back. They kill the rest.

 

Why? Says who?

[Lord Wafflebum]

 

There is big difference between telling the evil necromancer a wrong location of the innocents he wants to kill and going all in and pretending you are a rogue. Paladins don't do that. They go in and arrest anyone that does not fight back. They kill the rest.

 

Why? Says who?

 

GOD

[archangel979]

 

 

There is big difference between telling the evil necromancer a wrong location of the innocents he wants to kill and going all in and pretending you are a rogue. Paladins don't do that. They go in and arrest anyone that does not fight back. They kill the rest.

Why? Says who?

Paladin descriptions from multiple rulebooks.

[PrimeJunta]

Paladin descriptions from multiple rulebooks.

 

Quote one.

 

I only have access to my 3.5 rulebooks, and the description there certainly said nothing of the kind.

[Stun]

Bottom line: despite the promising start (slaver quest, de'Arnise keep)  I'm finding BG 2 more frustrating than fun, so I'm ending this Let's Play (and my attempt at it) here. The things that killed it for me are:

• Athkatla's content density: the way every bystander is pushing a quest on me, sometimes even in my face, including those scripted, timed events, from party members and elsewhere. I don't know what's important and what's not, and feel like I'm being yanked on a leash in different directions. I love it that there's a lot of content, but let me find it, don't push it on me like a bunch of panhandlers.
• Certain features of IE mechanics, compounded by the limited control I have over party composition. For example, it got really tedious to cast one Cure Light Wounds after another, so after a while I was sliding back to clicking Q-Rest(-L if monsters showed up) just because it was easier. I.e., between tedious and degenerate, I slid to degenerate. Other similarly irritating mechanics were the inventory system, the stealth system, the chance to fail to transcribe a spell, and pathfinding combined with constrained maps. Also: rock-paper-scissors magic. It felt like I had the wrong spells memorized -- or learned -- most of the time. It's as if the game wants me to change my spell loadout for each part of each quest, but at the same time it punishes me for resting (wandering monsters).
• The quests and writing just aren't all that interesting. All the quests I did were completely linear; the only choice involved was to take it or leave it. Choices in alignment and class were not supported or even acknowledged. In IWD I didn't care because the combat was so much fun and the maps were so well designed, but with much rougher encounters, areas that don't make sense, and cheesy writing... not worth it.
• A quite a lot of the content was save-die-and-reload. The golem fight in de'Arnise Keep, the beholders/gauth, and that Kangaxx guardian lich. Maybe I was underleveled for some of it. If so, how would I know? And how do I find the content that's suitable for my level? The game doesn't tell me, and I do not find it enjoyable to go partway through a quest, discover it's not fun, and go do something else. When I start on something I want to finish it. And I want the game to communicate to me when I'm going off the beaten path and about to try something stupidly dangerous. BG2 does not do it in any way. I am totes cool with someone else liking that, but I do not.

So that's that for BG2 and me. I'll go back to Heart of Winter at some point; it looked promising and if it's set up the same way as IWD I will probably like it a lot more. At this time, BG1 and BG2 are clearly my least favorite IE games. I enjoyed even IWD2 more than this, IWD a LOT more than this, and PS:T is, of course, PS:T.

 

Thanks for following, everyone. I have high hopes that I'll like P:E more than this -- not a very high bar to clear in my case.

 

Surprise, surprise.

 

This is basically what you've always said about Baldur's Gate 2 - and specifically its features (save or die; hard counters, writing) every time me and you butt heads on the topic. So, why didn't you just post all this in your Op from the start?

Edited January 10, 2015 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

Surprise, surprise.

This is basically what you've always said about Baldur's Gate 2 - every time me and you butt heads on the topic. So, why didn't you just post all this in your Op from the start?

 

Because Sensuki had taught me IE combat with IWD, and I realized I had been doing it wrong. So I figured maybe I was mistaken about BG2 too, and wanted to give it a fresh try. 

 

Edit: The writing I was pretty sure about and didn't expect my opinion to change on that. However I thought that my views on the hard counters and save-or-die was due just to me playing it badly. Now I know that that's not the case. 

 

Obviously I'm not as good as you guys who have played it through a dozen times or more, but I'm no long floundering, and I am finding solutions to the fights rather than cheesing them. And it still requires metagame knowledge and trial-and-error. Unlike almost all of IWD, I may add.

 

It is, of course, gratifying -- at a certain level -- to find that I was right all along. However, I would have preferred to be wrong, and not have spent a quite a lot of time on something I ultimately did not enjoy.

Edited January 10, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Stun]

But you weren't right all along. From an Objective standpoint, one cannot make the specific conclusions you're making (not accurately at least), from playing just 5% of the game.

Edited January 10, 2015 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

I was right about my reasons for disliking the game. The 5% was quite enough to demonstrate that.

 

Edit: incidentally, the P:E BB is about 5% of the game as well. Which makes this a pretty fair comparison actually...

Edited January 10, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Lord Wafflebum]

@PrimeJunta

 

Mayhaps a good portion of your dislike of the game was playing an Inquisitor? I love BG2 more than my mother, but when I tried a Pally play through I did not have fun. I actually had the most fun as a Sorcerer, but I also very much enjoyed the thief and monk.

 

Mayhaps a different class would be more enjoyable?

[Stun]

Edit: incidentally, the P:E BB is about 5% of the game as well. Which makes this a pretty fair comparison actually...

OK! Fair enough!

 

My conclusion of POE:

 

1) Spell system: Completely soulless, 2 dimensional garbage. Even Skyrim has a bigger variety of spells

2) Combat: Typical Obsidian fare. ie. Terrible. Induces sleep and boredom,

2) NPCs/Companion depth: Non existant. The CD case for my copy of BG2 has more personality than BB_Fighter, BB-Rogue, BB_Priest, and BB_Wizard. Shame on Obsidian.

3) Quest density/flow: terrible. 4 quests, barely fleshed out.

4) Maps/dungeon design. 5/10. Small and mostly lifeless. Found myself skipping the Stonewall Gorge dungeon on my last playthrough because.... pointless and dull.

5) Loot itemization: What loot itemization? Raise your hand if that sword of +10 accuracy excited you.

 

So that's it for PoE for me. They've failed already. </PrimeJunta Logic>

Edited January 10, 2015 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

@Stun Big surprise there, you've said that about P:E every time we butt heads on it. 

 

@Lord Wafflebaum Very likely. If I was starting over -- which I might, just not today -- I'd go with a something-thief multiclass. Make a decent scout at least, and have sufficient moral flexibility not to bellyache about the quests. (Hate hate hate the dual-classing mechanic so won't do that except under extreme duress.)

[Lord Wafflebum]

I don't think I ever dual classed in my LIFE. We were taught in school that dual-classing leads to drug use which is bad. 

 

I get needing to take a break from a game. After I played Skyrim for a couple days I stopped and didn't play it again for like three months. Sometimes you just need to be in the right mindset, but I think you'll get much more enjoyment out of a rogue class.

[Shallow]

Only IE games I'd ever played were BG1 and PS:T, played PS:T before BG1. I played PS:T first, absolutely loved it, writing and the world were both fantastic, and combat was quite good (this is from someone who'd never played another IE game, so I didn't judge it according to other IE games, just found the general style of gameplay fun). I then went on to play BG1, honestly I loathed it, combat was way inferior to PS:T, and while the greater plot is pretty cool, every individual portion of it (besides when you return to Baldurs Gate after Candle Keep) just felt really boring, all corridors were excessively narrow making the horrible pathfinding really stand out, and the writing was trash, several of the sidequests were indeed good (my favorite being the one with the crazy cleric surrounded by undead), and some wilderness areas were fun, they were far from enough to carry the game with all its other flaws. I recently started playing IWD2 (just got through the caverns to the horde keep), I'm really enjoying it, area and encounter design blows both BG1 and PS:T out of the water, so does everything else about combat, while there haven't been any interesting sidequests, and the only one that required the tinniest bit of going out of your way to complete it was the one with the ghost in the hotel, and the game is insanely linear, the general writing in itself isn't making me want to puke. One of my favorite things about IWD2 however is the extra character customization, which I'm pretty sure neither IWD1 or BG2 come close to, and while I miss the input of unique companions from PS:T, I love being able to fully design my own party (which I know I can't do in BG2). Once I've finished IWD2, is it worth it for me to give BG2 or IWD1 a try, and if so, which one would you recommend playing first, and for which reasons?

[archangel979]

 

Paladin descriptions from multiple rulebooks.

 

Quote one.

 

I only have access to my 3.5 rulebooks, and the description there certainly said nothing of the kind.

 

I didn't want to go into specifics because I didn't know which version you used but in 3.5e it is directly said paladin code forbids lying and falsehood. That includes infiltrating Thief Guilds unless you can go through it by saying I refuse to answer or get into a fringe case on occasion. But going fully undercover is does not work in combination with Paladin Code. I earlier editions everything was even more strict.

You allowing paladins in your group leeway does not mean much, a D&D computer game is not your sessions and will not create quests for paladins pretending they are Thiefs.

[archangel979]

 

Surprise, surprise.

 

This is basically what you've always said about Baldur's Gate 2 - every time me and you butt heads on the topic. So, why didn't you just post all this in your Op from the start?

 

Because Sensuki had taught me IE combat with IWD, and I realized I had been doing it wrong. So I figured maybe I was mistaken about BG2 too, and wanted to give it a fresh try. 

 

Edit: The writing I was pretty sure about and didn't expect my opinion to change on that. However I thought that my views on the hard counters and save-or-die was due just to me playing it badly. Now I know that that's not the case. 

 

Obviously I'm not as good as you guys who have played it through a dozen times or more, but I'm no long floundering, and I am finding solutions to the fights rather than cheesing them. And it still requires metagame knowledge and trial-and-error. Unlike almost all of IWD, I may add.

 

It is, of course, gratifying -- at a certain level -- to find that I was right all along. However, I would have preferred to be wrong, and not have spent a quite a lot of time on something I ultimately did not enjoy.

 

Only thing wrong here is people like you steering development of PoE which is not supposed to be a successor to games you like but IE games which it seems are not your favorite.

If I had control over the forums, I would present a questioner to anyone posting here with 40 questions about things from IE games and you needed to be correct in at least 90% of them.

Edited January 11, 2015 by archangel979

[PrimeJunta]

@Shallow IWD1 is IMO much better than IWD2. It has less... make that, almost no filler combat, the maps are far more polished, and it maintains tension better.

 

You can design your own party in BG2, via the multiplayer feature. I remember doing that.

 

@archangel I've DM'ed every D&D version from the original to 3.5e. Never in Forgotten Realms though; I always made up my own worlds, although one of them "imported" most of the Al-Qadim setting content.

 

I just re-read the paladin description from 3.5e PHB, and it does not say anything about lying. At all. Or am I missing something? I'm looking at pages 43-45. All it says about the paladin's code of conduct is

 

"Alignment: Paladins must be lawful good, and they lose their divine powers if they deviate from that alignment. Additionally, paladins swear to follow a code of conduct that is in line with lawfulness and goodness."

[PrimeJunta]

Only thing wrong here is people like you steering development of PoE which is not supposed to be a successor to games you like but IE games which it seems are not your favorite.

If I had control over the forums, I would present a questioner to anyone posting here with 40 questions about things from IE games and you needed to be correct in at least 90% of them.

 

What, IWD and PS:T aren't IE games now?

[Namutree]

Anyone doubt BG2 will still be better than PoE in every way?

I do. Already I feel poe has a better race selection.

 

Don't get me wrong; I don't think poe will be better than BG2. I'm pretty confident poe will have at least a few things over BG2 though.

[archangel979]

@Shallow IWD1 is IMO much better than IWD2. It has less... make that, almost no filler combat, the maps are far more polished, and it maintains tension better.

 

You can design your own party in BG2, via the multiplayer feature. I remember doing that.

 

@archangel I've DM'ed every D&D version from the original to 3.5e. Never in Forgotten Realms though; I always made up my own worlds, although one of them "imported" most of the Al-Qadim setting content.

 

I just re-read the paladin description from 3.5e PHB, and it does not say anything about lying. At all. Or am I missing something? I'm looking at pages 43-45. All it says about the paladin's code of conduct is

 

"Alignment: Paladins must be lawful good, and they lose their divine powers if they deviate from that alignment. Additionally, paladins swear to follow a code of conduct that is in line with lawfulness and goodness."

From SRD for 3.5:

"Code of Conduct

A paladin must be of lawful good alignment and loses all class abilities if she ever willingly commits an evil act.

 

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents."

Edited January 11, 2015 by archangel979