Comparing PoE to BG is unfair

[Captain Shrek]

as BG was a horrible game in general. What was great about BG was its amazing art + spell FX. The rest was cringeworthy: Story, Chars and combat were awful. BG2 at least improved upon quest density. 

 

Also, BG was ~15 years ago. If a game made today is NOT better than BG then what's the point of making it?

 

What made this thread possible? The continuous claims that POE > BG and somehow that being a metric of good games. 

Discuss your opinions!

 

EDIT: Corrected some typos 

Edited April 29, 2015 by Captain Shrek

[Amentep]

To be fair, when you advertise your game as the spiritual successor to BG (and IWD and PST) then comparisons to BG would seem to be natural.

 

And even if comparisons directly between a modern game and an 15 year old game weren't "reasonable" (something I don't agree with) you could still make comparisons to how they are relative to their respective contexts of time.

[Captain Shrek]

What exactly is the 'relative context of time' here in which PoE is different substantially from BG? I think that the art is comparable, if not slightly better in POE but not  better than in IWD1/2. Combat is apparently pretty subjective if you read stuff around here. What else is left? Story? PoE story makes little overall sense to me personally.

[kaiki]

I agree with Amentep that the whole premise and marketing of PoE makes comparisons natural. In a way both games are perfectly comparable as to which is better in that if you have both games on your pc you will make the judgement "Which one do I want to play?". As such, for me, it seems fair/reasonable/natural to make comparisons & criticisms between the two. Alot of them seem to be personal preference which should be kept in mind.

[Captain Shrek]

What you are saying amounts to "Comparison is subjective". This makes the point of comparison moot. Which I disagree with. 15 years of difference + intermediate game-development/playing experience should mean a lot. 

[Amentep]

"Relative context of time" - you can discuss the relationship of a game to its relative context and then their relative contexts to their own.

 

ie BG's narrative vs other games narratives in 1998 contrasted with PoE's narratives vs other games narratives in 2015.  In other words, do the games compare within their relative contexts to one another (with respect to their "time" in video game production).

[Captain Shrek]

Uh oh. They had PST, Deus EX and MoTB somewhere in the middle. PST fairly closer to BG. What does that say for the context? 

[GrinningReaper659]

Comparing PoE to BG is unfair

 

No, it's not. PoE was designed as a game heavily inspired and influenced by BG, IWD, and PS:T. The comparison between PoE and any of these games is logical, and all other comparisons are absolutely more of a leap. The time between these releases matters not at all when the IE games are among the favorite games of many backers, and when many of us haven't found much of worth since the IE games. The entire premise of this game was its relation to the IE games, so claiming that the comparison is unfair is ridiculous. Your motives here are disingenuous, you just clearly dislike that this particular comparison paints PoE in a more positive light than you like.

 

Also, not everyone agrees that BG was as terrible as you think it is. Again, BG1 is one of three games explicitly stated as inspiring PoE, so there's a pretty good chance that a lot of backers wouldn't be as quick to dislike BG1 as you are.

[Captain Shrek]

Then you have misunderstood what I wrote. It is not fair in the sense that any claimed 'improvement' over Bg must be seen in the light of 15 years of time spent between them and not as a direct comparison. Whether or not you like BG is again secondary.  Also, what exactly did you like in BG other than art/music/spells?

 

What such a comparison implies in the general sense is as follows:

 

Compare the mobile handset in 1998 to a smartphone today. 

 

Think about it. 

Edited April 27, 2015 by Captain Shrek

[Amentep]

Uh oh. They had PST, Deus EX and MoTB somewhere in the middle. PST fairly closer to BG. What does that say for the context? 

 

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Who are "they"? What kind of context are you building your comparison with?  Game maker (Black Isle and Ion Storm are not Obsidian Entertainement)?  Age (2007 is 8 years from PoE and MotB and Deus Ex is 2 years later than BG)?  Gamestyle (Deus Ex and MotB are both 3D action RPG games, First Person and Third Person respectively)?

[Fredward]

BG was awful. BG2 was better.

[Captain Shrek]

 

Uh oh. They had PST, Deus EX and MoTB somewhere in the middle. PST fairly closer to BG. What does that say for the context? 

 

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Who are "they"? What kind of context are you building your comparison with?  Game maker (Black Isle and Ion Storm are not Obsidian Entertainement)?  Age (2007 is 8 years from PoE and MotB and Deus Ex is 2 years later than BG)?  Gamestyle (Deus Ex and MotB are both 3D action RPG games, First Person and Third Person respectively)?

 

 

 

I think you have not thought enough about this. If you are asking "What are the game made EXACTLY In 1998 which we take for context?" then it is an arbitrary judgment. AN year is not a metric of a formal comparison for contexts. The point in that PST, a game considered by many to be one of the best story tellings in RPGs was made in close vicinity of BG. That fact alone is sufficient to say that people in the relatively similar contexts of storytelling of BG could think about superior stories. Which is all that needs to be said.  Same for DX. DX was being made before BG was released. So people in that time could and did come up with better stories. Is that not what context means? 

 

All this shows is that BG, which in my opinion had a bad plot and story telling can not be considered as a standard of comparison for storytelling in general. 

 

 

 

 

BG was awful. BG2 was better.

 

Which is part of the point. Why aim for something that is clearly inferior and then celebrate when you beat that mark? 

Edited April 27, 2015 by Captain Shrek

[GrinningReaper659]

Then you have misunderstood what I wrote. It is not fair in the sense that any claimed 'improvement' over Bg must be seen in the light of 15 years of time spent between them and not as a direct comparison. Whether or not you like BG is again secondary.  Also, what exactly did you like in BG other than art/music/spells?

 

What such a comparison implies in the general sense is as follows:

 

Compare the mobile handset in 1998 to a smartphone today. 

 

Think about it. 

 

I haven't misunderstood you, nor was I defending the quality of BG. The fact remains that declaring BG to be a crap game is pointless in the context of the majority of backers who presumably liked the games that PoE set out to imitate. You or me thinking that BG1 is crap would be irrelevant because it can't possibly be crap to the majority of people who backed a game inspired by it.

 

More to the point, your statement about comparing 1998 mobile handset to smartphone today doesn't make any sense. If a new phone smartphone was being designed today by Sony and they said that they were basing the design on some mobile handset from 1998, then comparing the finished product to that handset would be pretty much expected and obvious. Think about it.

 

Also, you're talking about gradual technological advancements making the comparison meaningless. There's a huge difference between comparing pieces of technology vs. art and design decisions which don't necessarily progress over time like technology. Again, a lot of people think that the IE games did a lot of things right that haven't been done since due to regressions since then, so it's not at all analogous with technological progression. If you want to say that praising technology improvements specifically (such as game engine, etc.) is meaningless, I guess you have a point, but it's dwarfed by the fact that most comparisons are to encounter design, story, setting, etc. These aspects are clearly fair game for comparison, because there's no argument that all of these things have fundamentally progressed too much in the last 15 years to be comparable.

[kaiki]

If your argument boils down to "I feel BG was not a good game" then there is no argument that can really disprove your claim. I disagree that BG was a bad game, but that is based off my own personal opinion that cannot be used to prove or disprove my claim or yours.

 

It's a completely subjective argument. The same goes for "PoE is better then BG". We all have our opinions and preferences regarding those games. Unless you have some objective standard or testing methodology all it ever will be is subjective.

[Althernai]

I made a thread about this last week so I'm going to repeat myself a bit here: if you compare BG to the dozen or more descendants from Bioware, Black Isle and Obsidian that it spawned, it is far from the best of them. I personally played BG2 before BG and the latter came off as primitive and unremarkable. However, this sort of complaining completely misses the point: when it was first released, Baldur's Gate was original and innovative. I tried to find a similar game and there really aren't any -- you can find its various elements spread out across Japanese RPGs, older D&D games and many others, but the specific combination was quite different from anything that came before.

 

PoE's problem is not the comparison to BG (where PoE comes off well, as it should), but in the one to BG2. The latter was also made more than a decade ago, the people who made it were still relatively amateurish and yet it somehow manages to come out better by most metrics I can think of. Yes, it's a sequel and thus benefited from an existing engine, but a lot of the stuff that makes it great has little to do with that.

[Mathuzzz]

I am a bit fed up by the rising hatred towards BG on these forums. PoE is a decent game, which unfotunately have many shortcomings, which probably prevents the game from becoming na instant classic as BG or PST. And only because some people points out on these flaws and says how BG made it better, there are others who starts to bash BG, so it won` t outshine the game they are hyped about right now. I can expect this kind of behaviour on Bioware boards, I expected this community to be more restrained, or dare I say, mature. Whether you like the game or not is more of a subjective matter, but let us set the facts here. PoE is inspired MAINLY by BG and it most probably wouldn`t exist were not for BG as 90% of us are here becasue of BG. Even if you liked IWD and PST more, all these games can be grateful to BG, which made the genre commercialy successful and made all this possible. 

 

No offence meant.

[Amentep]

 

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Who are "they"? What kind of context are you building your comparison with?  Game maker (Black Isle and Ion Storm are not Obsidian Entertainement)?  Age (2007 is 8 years from PoE and MotB and Deus Ex is 2 years later than BG)?  Gamestyle (Deus Ex and MotB are both 3D action RPG games, First Person and Third Person respectively)?

 

 

I think you have not thought enough about this. If you are asking "What are the game made EXACTLY In 1998 which we take for context?" then it is an arbitrary judgment. AN year is not a metric of a formal comparison for contexts. The point in that PST, a game considered by many to be one of the best story tellings in RPGs was made in close vicinity of BG. That fact alone is sufficient to say that people in the relatively similar contexts of storytelling of BG could think about superior stories. Which is all that needs to be said.  Same for DX. DX was being made before BG was released. So people in that time could and did come up with better stories. Is that not what context means? 

 

All this shows is that BG, which in my opinion had a bad plot and story telling can not be considered as a standard of comparison for storytelling in general.

 

Okay, I understand what you're saying. However, you could argue that the first game in a new series (BG) is a more apt comparison to a first game in a new series (PoE) than the second game (BG2) to the first (PoE). 

 

Just because there are other comparisons that can be made doesn't make any one more/less valid than the other.

[Captain Shrek]

I am a bit fed up by the rising hatred towards BG on these forums. PoE is a decent game, which unfotunately have many shortcomings, which probably prevents the game from becoming na instant classic as BG or PST. And only because some people points out on these flaws and says how BG made it better, there are others who starts to bash BG, so it won` t outshine the game they are hyped about right now. I can expect this kind of behaviour on Bioware boards, I expected this community to be more restrained, or dare I say, mature. Whether you like the game or not is more of a subjective matter, but let us set the facts here. PoE is inspired MAINLY by BG and it most probably wouldn`t exist were not for BG as 90% of us are here becasue of BG. Even if you liked IWD and PST more, all these games can be grateful to BG, which made the genre commercialy successful and made all this possible. 

 

No offence meant.

No offence taken. As I pointed out earlier, what I/you/anyone feels of BG is secondary to the central point: The comparison between BG and POE is unfair. 

[Amentep]

I am a bit fed up by the rising hatred towards BG on these forums. PoE is a decent game, which unfotunately have many shortcomings, which probably prevents the game from becoming na instant classic as BG or PST. And only because some people points out on these flaws and says how BG made it better, there are others who starts to bash BG, so it won` t outshine the game they are hyped about right now. I can expect this kind of behaviour on Bioware boards, I expected this community to be more restrained, or dare I say, mature. Whether you like the game or not is more of a subjective matter, but let us set the facts here. PoE is inspired MAINLY by BG and it most probably wouldn`t exist were not for BG as 90% of us are here becasue of BG. Even if you liked IWD and PST more, all these games can be grateful to BG, which made the genre commercialy successful and made all this possible. 

 

No offence meant.

 

To be fair, PST wasn't an instant classic.  It took a few years for its reputation to be built; I remember being at BIS (and moderating the PST forums) and there were a lot of people who just plain didn't like it at the time.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Amentep

[Captain Shrek]

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean here.  Who are "they"? What kind of context are you building your comparison with?  Game maker (Black Isle and Ion Storm are not Obsidian Entertainement)?  Age (2007 is 8 years from PoE and MotB and Deus Ex is 2 years later than BG)?  Gamestyle (Deus Ex and MotB are both 3D action RPG games, First Person and Third Person respectively)?

 

 

I think you have not thought enough about this. If you are asking "What are the game made EXACTLY In 1998 which we take for context?" then it is an arbitrary judgment. AN year is not a metric of a formal comparison for contexts. The point in that PST, a game considered by many to be one of the best story tellings in RPGs was made in close vicinity of BG. That fact alone is sufficient to say that people in the relatively similar contexts of storytelling of BG could think about superior stories. Which is all that needs to be said.  Same for DX. DX was being made before BG was released. So people in that time could and did come up with better stories. Is that not what context means? 

 

All this shows is that BG, which in my opinion had a bad plot and story telling can not be considered as a standard of comparison for storytelling in general.

 

Okay, I understand what you're saying. However, you could argue that the first game in a new series (BG) is a more apt comparison to a first game in a new series (PoE) than the second game (BG2) to the first (PoE). 

 

Just because there are other comparisons that can be made doesn't make any one more/less valid than the other.

 

 

I like this spirit of discussion. But I must disagree. It has nothing to do with being the first game of a series. Being so does not put constraints on quality. In that regard (being first of a series) claims about scope and breadth are admissible but not the quality of content. 

[Ohioastro]

I am a bit fed up by the rising hatred towards BG on these forums. PoE is a decent game, which unfotunately have many shortcomings, which probably prevents the game from becoming na instant classic as BG or PST. And only because some people points out on these flaws and says how BG made it better, there are others who starts to bash BG, so it won` t outshine the game they are hyped about right now. I can expect this kind of behaviour on Bioware boards, I expected this community to be more restrained, or dare I say, mature. Whether you like the game or not is more of a subjective matter, but let us set the facts here. PoE is inspired MAINLY by BG and it most probably wouldn`t exist were not for BG as 90% of us are here becasue of BG. Even if you liked IWD and PST more, all these games can be grateful to BG, which made the genre commercialy successful and made all this possible. 

 

No offence meant.

 

 

It's driven by a group of posters claiming that PoE, a game that most of us really like, is terrible.  The backlash against BG is inspired by the fact that a lot of the people trashing PoE  happen to worship BG.  So it's just retaliation in kind.

 

I like both of them and enjoyed both a lot on release.  Crazy, I know, yet possible.

[Yellow Rabbit]

Logic behind comparisons steted in OP:

 

Q: Why do you keep comparing PoE to BG1?

A: Well, I need to compare it to something, and BG1 qualifies better than anything else.

 

Clear enough?

[Captain Shrek]

Logic behind comparisons steted in OP:

 

Q: Why do you keep comparing PoE to BG1?

A: Well, I need to compare it to something, and BG1 qualifies better than anything else.

 

Clear enough?

No. Especially if comparison with recent games such as DAO, NWN2, Blackguards, DOS etc makes much more sense. 

[Yellow Rabbit]

No. Especially if comparison with recent games such as DAO, NWN2, Blackguards, DOS etc makes much more sense.

Why? "Because they're recent" isn't an answer because reasons stated by Amentep in the first answer to your thread.

[Captain Shrek]

Not just that. Some of them have explicitly claimed to harken back to IE games.