Thank you all for making this game and rekindling my childhood!

[Jaqen]

Greetings!

I wanted to log in to personally thank everyone involved for making this game. I cannot (to the full extent of my abilities) express the happiness and wonder I feel when playing a game made in this classic format. Why is this, one may ask?

For me, it all started in 1998, when I went to the game store to spend all my pocket money on a new game. At that time, I did not have the money to afford the latest consoles with all the latest titles (like today), only an old Windows 98 PC with enough power to run basic applications like Microsoft Office and allow internet browsing with an amazing speed of 3.3-5.6Kbps! I saw a boxed PC game by the name of Baldur's Gate (those who know of this game are now probably smiling or grinning ). I did not know much about it, only that something about it drew me to buy it. The rest, as they say, is history.

Having played mostly console games (Nintendo, Playstation) during my early childhood with my friends, I never experienced a RPG or a world this deep and complex, not to mention intellectually stimulating and engaging. Now 13 at that time, I was entering a new age of growth and development and I have many of these games to thank for who I am today. Not only that, but I met wonderful friends, some of which have remained true to this day and whom I share deep memories with, thanks to the common interest of being fascinated and drawn to the exploration of these wondrous worlds and stories.

We all know that there are simply too many things to mention that make the Baldur's Gate series of games so memorable. The music, the D&D system mechanics, the vast world, the memorable characters and most importantly (for me), the immersion. When playing those games, I felt as if I was part of those worlds, torn out of reality and placed there to be there to feel and explore the emotions and conflicts that befell my character and companions.

For many years now, companies have released other titles like the Neverwinter Nights series, Dragon Age series and others. Gaming has changed, with newer technologies being used to make and change the meaning 3D gaming. What i noticed, however, is that many of today's games lack the 'substance' and 'immersion' that these older titles have. I have played countless of great modern games in the last 17 years or so, but none came close to being as memorable as this. I have forever waited for Baldur's gate 3 or a new game in the series or of a different world but same style or different engine. Games like Pillars of Eternity or the old predecessors were limited in technology, but never in imagination. People from all walks of role-playing backgrounds, such as D&D veterans, writers, readers and 'nerds' (in all sincerity) that simply oozed passion and imagination, poured their heart and soul into these games to bring to life games that touched us all.

For many years have I yearned for another title in this format to come out. Sure I wanted more of Faerun and those old characters, but I was open to new worlds and experiences. Pillars of Eternity delivers! I am only 10 hours into the game and loving it! The world details (scenery, foliage, broken items, abandoned ruins and dungeons, etc.), the ominous or mysteriously unsettling music when night falls and you are sneaking around, travelling to the next destination with no clue what lies beyond the next hill. The new lore and world and characters with their own unique personalities that make for memorable travel companions. All of this and more adds to the intrigue and immersion of the world one is in. One is drawn in and compelled to keep adventuring to find out what one's journey will bring next.

To sum up, I am happy to be playing another truly great game that combines the vision, imagination and hard work of its creators and its fans, without which this game would not have been possible.

Do not give up making these great games (even if it means one day creating a new engine and taking it to true 3D). I hope we will see expansions or sequels to Pillars of Eternity or games similar to its true roots of old.
 

 

PS: I know it's hard to describe, but those of you who played BG, Icewind dale, D&D and Pillars of Eternity know that it's a collection of many small details and factors that allows us to feel that special 'immersive' feeling of being part of a wondrous world that is somehow close to our hearts. Why this is so, we may never know.

[Lythe Vodaine]

I know how you feel, friend. It's really awesome that this game could be made.

[CybAnt1]

I think it's interesting that there hasn't been a D & D based game for a long time -- almost nothing based on 4E rules, other than the Neverwinter MMO. Now suddenly there's an announcement of Sword Coast Legends, which will use 5E ... (which AFAICT is a response to some of the problems in 4E). 

 

I personally think they absolutely did the right thing in moving to their own system. The main problem with D & D based games is the ruleset was originally designed for tabletop, and there are some reasons a computer-based game can move beyond a tabletop system. Tabletop is based on your ability to randomize based on the 5 Platonic solids (dice), but computers don't have to be shackled to that. More importantly, they can world-build their own fantasy world that isn't based on Faerun. And that may be more important. From a practical point of view, of course, it also saves licensing fees on having to constantly license outside IP. 

 

No WotC constantly telling them "you can't do that" or "you have to use Elminster!" 

[eimatshya]

Yeah, for me, Obsidian really nailed the feel of the Infinity Engine games: that old feeling of wonder, like you're just stepping into a small part of a larger world. It's a feeling that the Dragon Age and NWN games never really had for me, and I've missed it.

 

So yeah, thanks Obsidian!

[CybAnt1]

You know, for a long time, certain folk and certain developers have made a big deal of a voiced protagonist, and how this is key to immersion. 

 

But I've found READING deep dialogue and description sure seems to beat the limitations of letting current computer-generated graphical worlds "describe" themselves and boy oh boy is it once again cool to see dialogue choices modulated by stats, reputation, and other choices, and to be able to pick dialogue choices on the basis of thinking about proper words, not emoticons and staccato phrases (which often lead to unrelated voiced statements). 

 

That, plus tactical combat you really get the chance to think about, not just react with twitching and button mashing. That resolves itself based on how you design, develop, and equip your character. Not on how fast you twitch your joystick. 

 

I don't think either of those things are "dated" as people claim; they are as appropriate for a (RPG) game in 2015 as they were in 2001. 

[Yellow Rabbit]

There are really a lot of negativity towards the game on these boards, and some of it is fully earned. But the sheer fact of threads like this one cropping up from time to time ever since release date roughly a month ago tells a great deal about actual worthiness of Pillars of Eternity despite all flaws it has. I hope devs notice such threads.

[Excalibur_2102]

Yay, happy thread

[rjshae]

Thanks for not starting yet another whiney thread complaining over this or that minor detail. Yes I too enjoyed my play through and will be most pleased when we get the expansion, and hopefully a sequel.

[Dadalama]

More my late teens than childhood but yeah, I agree this is a nostalgia trip and quite good on it's own merits.

[Jitsuka]

Ditto

[Sven_]

Baldur's Gate wasn't exactly my first role-playing game, having grown up on a diet of 8bit systems. But I can relate completely, in particular as in terms of D&D games, there hadn't been anything of its complexity before. The more open-ended exploration, the decent narrative pulls, the party members who would on occasion outright get into fights amongst themselves, the dialogue trees as complex as in a Lucas Arts adventure game -- D&D had been done on computers before, but not on such a grand scale. I know that the wraith of the Goldbox fans will crush upon me any minute now. But at that point, the contract between TSR and SSI had been bust for half a decade already, and advances in technology and complexity in design were not mutually exclusive entities.

 

Alongside the big releases, I'm playing other games that aren't powered by the latest in tech, but PoE is another one of those reminders that the desperate arm's race for technology hasn't made games any real better. In particular the big productions from the last 15 or so years were all about upgrading visual stimuli, which can be important depending on the overall experience targeted (no point in going for the most realistic combat simulation on the market aka Armed Assault and then going for the pixel looks of early Doom id tech) -- and equally if not more about making games more accessible. However, very few have thought about a player's input, and how (deeply) he is engaged or not. That is why Pillars, even after these fifteen years in between, "retro" aesthetics aside, totally plays like a cutting edge role-playing game from start to finish. It may flirt with the past and aims to do so, but some path finding and camera issues aside, at its core lays as engaging an experience as ever.

That is also why games such as the original Fallout still look massively bold to this day -- heck, depending on your character's build and decisions, you'll have a completely different experience and ending. Most games made by Looking Glass equally look as futuristic and advanced as they did back then in a lot of ways -- if you can look past the pixles, that is. In some ways gaming has come full circle ever since the hype surrounding Interactive Movies in the 1990s. But whereas it used to be actors and grainy video sequences being put onto CDs, it is now huge amounts of money put into polygons pretending to be actors. Talking Baldur's Gate, you can't blame Bioware for what they've become in a sense, they've outgrown their specialized niche to keep up with the big guys on the block -- however you might be interested in this interview I found today all the same. Even the developers basically acknowledge such on occasion.

 

http://www.pcgamesn.com/sword-coast-legends/inside-sword-coast-legends-back-to-baldurs-gate-with-the-director-of-dragon-age-origins

 

 

 

During the development of Dragon Age, the team at BioWare often referred to the game as a “next-gen Baldur’s Gate”. But the end product, brilliant though it was, wasn’t so much more advanced as more expensive: a blockbuster Baldur’s Gate.

“For so many years in game development, it’s really been about chasing the blockbuster,” said n-Space president Dan Tudge. “We fell victim to it at BioWare post-Neverwinter Nights.”

Edited April 21, 2015 by Sven_

[Ferrante]

+1 to say thank you and to appreciate the master piece they made. 

[Psychevore]

You know, for a long time, certain folk and certain developers have made a big deal of a voiced protagonist, and how this is key to immersion. 

 

But I've found READING deep dialogue and description sure seems to beat the limitations of letting current computer-generated graphical worlds "describe" themselves and boy oh boy is it once again cool to see dialogue choices modulated by stats, reputation, and other choices, and to be able to pick dialogue choices on the basis of thinking about proper words, not emoticons and staccato phrases (which often lead to unrelated voiced statements). 

 

That, plus tactical combat you really get the chance to think about, not just react with twitching and button mashing. That resolves itself based on how you design, develop, and equip your character. Not on how fast you twitch your joystick. 

 

I don't think either of those things are "dated" as people claim; they are as appropriate for a (RPG) game in 2015 as they were in 2001.

Well, I must be hella weird then, because I don't feel any difference in immersion between reading and fully voiced games.

 

Though fully voiced has my preference, but not for a game like this. In this game, the voice acting is actually annoying and immersion breaking, especially if there's tonnes of flavour text to read and the voice is already already saying it's thing.

[constantine]

There are really a lot of negativity towards the game on these boards, and some of it is fully earned. But the sheer fact of threads like this one cropping up from time to time ever since release date roughly a month ago tells a great deal about actual worthiness of Pillars of Eternity despite all flaws it has. I hope devs notice such threads.

 

Unfortunately, there is a lot of that, like you said. Many of those who helped this game be possible act like spoiled children, whining about the smallest detail or refuse right-out the way game mechanics handle things.

 

Fortunately, they are the minority, as the game is a huge success ! I too will have to wholeheartily agree with the OP- I open the game and it's like travelling to Eora! The love that has been poured into this game

 

Hopes up for more of this wonderful franchise !

[CybAnt1]

 

Well, I must be hella weird then, because I don't feel any difference in immersion between reading and fully voiced games.

Though fully voiced has my preference, but not for a game like this. In this game, the voice acting is actually annoying and immersion breaking, especially if there's tonnes of flavour text to read and the voice is already already saying it's thing.

 

 

Well, I agree with your point, that in general, RPGs don't need fully voiced PCs, although maybe that's not what you're saying. 

 

Even the IE games had voiced NPCs, the only issue is the voiced PC. The choice to voice the PC is what led to the dialogue wheel, and no, I don't like it. 

 

I want to be able to select what I'm saying based on, well, reading what I'm about to say. All of it. Not choose it based on a colored emoticon & a "paraphrase". 

 

BTW, I'm not the least bothered by reading text while hearing someone else speak it aloud, but at the end of the day, this is an argument over taste; we could argue about vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream; all I can say is that doesn't bother me in Deus Ex, or in this game. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 21, 2015 by CybAnt1

[VahnXIII]

Love this post. I think it resonates with a lot of us fans of PoE. I hope the series continues a la Baldur's Gate in that we get a solid first title and each expansion and sequel only enhances and improves the overall series.

 

Kudos to Obsidian!

[Psychevore]

 

Well, I must be hella weird then, because I don't feel any difference in immersion between reading and fully voiced games.

 

Though fully voiced has my preference, but not for a game like this. In this game, the voice acting is actually annoying and immersion breaking, especially if there's tonnes of flavour text to read and the voice is already already saying it's thing.

 

Well, I agree with your point, that in general, RPGs don't need fully voiced PCs, although maybe that's not what you're saying. 

 

Even the IE games had voiced NPCs, the only issue is the voiced PC. The choice to voice the PC is what led to the dialogue wheel, and no, I don't like it. 

 

I want to be able to select what I'm saying based on, well, reading what I'm about to say. All of it. Not choose it based on a colored emoticon & a "paraphrase". 

 

BTW, I'm not the least bothered by reading text while hearing someone else speak it aloud, but at the end of the day, this is an argument over taste; we could argue about vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream; all I can say is that doesn't bother me in Deus Ex, or in this game.

 

I prefer fully voiced, but I don't mind having to read it all. After all, that's what I used to do in the past, it's not something that bothers me.

 

But if you're not going to do full voiced, don't do any at all.

 

All or nothing kinda guy