176 réponses à ce sujet

[old book]

I must have played through the Baldurs Gate trilogy repeatedly for over three years. Used mods to merge all three games (so that I could play BG with BG2's mechanics) and integrate bits of Icewind Dale as well. Worked as part of a few mod teams as a writer, proof reader or item maker. No game before or since ever came so close for me to the feeling of being part of an epic tabletop RPG campaign. Only Daggerfall or Morrowind (both very different games) were able to evoke a similar response.

I like Thedas and Dragon Age, and I've missed having companions and villains as interesting as only Bioware really offers. DA does have a mod community that continues to grow. But I just can't see myself playing and replaying DA the way I did the BG games. The world seems smaller, my character's options more limited.

DA is very much a spiritual successor to the BG games, but it's just not holding me as they did.

If you feel differently, good. I do really like DA, and I want the series to succeed.

How do you think the games compare? Outside of the obvious technical advances DA offers, what does one have that the other lacks?

[Brockololly]

Its hard for me to fully compare BG and DA quite yet, at least until I see where they're going with DA2. Part of the reason I loved the BG games was that you stayed as one PC throughout BG1, BG2 and ToB. But as that one PC, you got to build up relationships with the companions and actually see character development that lasted beyond one game. Thats what I'd love to see out of DA for at least a bit before moving on to a totally new hero and story, but we will see.

But one other thing I loved about BG and is something BG does better than DA are the environments. While the characters might not hold up visually for BG, the environments are still really lovely in all their 2D glory. Every area has its own unique feel and tone, something I think is really lacking in DA. Too often in Origins the locations just were underwhelming to me visually and seemed too generic.

Modifié par Brockololly, 22 juin 2010 - 04:31 .

[MindYerBeak]

The problem for me is that with DAO it doesn't have the same impact on the imagination that the BG series had. A good book is always better than the film because the book allows you to use your imagination more than a film can do. DAO is an interactive film, BG was more a book type of game. I could give more vent to my imagination with BG than I can with DAO, despite the georgeous graphics. I grew quite attached to Imoen, she seemed like a real person to me. Not so with DAO. The same with other characters whose names I can't recall. The only character I really like is Morrigan, but she isn't as memorable as Imoen. Leliana was a big dissappointment as a replacement for Imoen. She comes across as a tart and ruins my imaginative perception of her.

With BG & Co. you had innumerable stats to consider. It was more challenging in that respect, working out where best to put your stats. DAO is lightweight in comparison. I liked the fact that Mages had to learn their spells. Not so in DAO.

Having said that DAO wins hands down on the graphics plus speech front. The speech adds a new dimension to the game. Modded DAO games without speech, despite being good in their own right, simply don't have the same impact and seem retro despite the high quality graphics.

The only games I played more than once were the BG series and, of course, DAO. I'm looking forward to the BG Mod that's currently being made. The Irenicus Dungeon is coming along nicely. It'll be a completely new experience with DAO graphics and sound.

Modifié par MindYerBeak, 22 juin 2010 - 05:00 .

[AlanC9]

old book wrote...
DA is very much a spiritual successor to the BG games, but it's just not holding me as they did.

The question, of course, is why it isn't holding you. You're surely not asking us for your reasons.

I'm actually replaying BG right now -- just reached Gromnir (whatever happened to him, anyway?). One of the obvious differences between the two games is the rules systems. And I gotta say that I'm officially done with D&D now. Not only is buffing tedious, but it's bad for any situation where the party doesn't have the initiative.

[jones0901]

i love both games but if youve played games since then nothing will ever seem better than BG. Part of this is nostalgia of course, and like mindyerbreak said, DAO is better in graphics and even setting to me, the underground is just amazing, but its also all there. in BG you had to imagine things a bit more ( i felt the same way about Imoen, too by the way), Baldurs gate was huge and you felt that, you could never go everywhere it felt like, in DAO and all new crpgs you can literally pick up and touch every item in the game in a play through, it leaves little to the imaginiation

i wish they would build DAO2 like Red Dead Redemption...NOT a sandbox where you loose all rpg elements, but just build a world that feels that big, but keep everything else the same in terms of gameplay and character interaction with companions and npcs....any thoughts on why this would not work or why not?

Modifié par jones0901, 22 juin 2010 - 05:13 .

[MindYerBeak]

Another thing missing from DAO is a Drizzt character. Remember him? Riordan seemed at first to fit the bill, but unfortunately not.

[Swordfishtrombone]

I've seriously come to doubt that I'll ever see a game that quite measures up to BG2, but Dragon Age:Origins is an outstanding game still.



Though if there's a progression of quality from DA:O to DA:O 2 of similar degree as from BG1 to BG2, then... well, it's time to break out the shampagne, because we'll have the winner. I'll believe it when I see it though... it's hard to improve upon an already excellent game that much.

[jones0901]

with regards to characters like Drizzt, remember he is the product of years of preexisting lore and creativity, as the series grows, i imagine you will get some comparable characters

[Rhys Cordelle]

MindYerBeak wrote...

The problem for me is that with DAO it doesn't have the same impact on the imagination that the BG series had. A good book is always better than the film because the book allows you to use your imagination more than a film can do. DAO is an interactive film, BG was more a book type of game. I could give more vent to my imagination with BG than I can with DAO, despite the georgeous graphics. I grew quite attached to Imoen, she seemed like a real person to me. Not so with DAO. The same with other characters whose names I can't recall. The only character I really like is Morrigan, but she isn't as memorable as Imoen. Leliana was a big dissappointment as a replacement for Imoen. She comes across as a tart and ruins my imaginative perception of her.

With BG & Co. you had innumerable stats to consider. It was more challenging in that respect, working out where best to put your stats. DAO is lightweight in comparison. I liked the fact that Mages had to learn their spells. Not so in DAO.

I think you're looking through rose colored glasses. Your attachment to Imoen likely has a lot to do with nostalgia. If you were to write down everything you know about Imoen, based on what is provided in the BG series, I don't think you would have enough to call her a fully fleshed out character. Morrigan and Leliana have been developed with a lot more depth.

I'm not trying to belittle Baldurs Gate. I don't think BG2 will ever be surpassed, partly because the prerendered backgrounds and non voiced dialogue allowed it to be much broader in scope than any game that limits itself by modern methods of game development. But let's be honest. As much as I love the characters of BG2, I can't claim to know as much about any of them as I do about the characters of Dragon Age.

As for your opinion of Leliana, all I can say is to each their own. You can't expect a carbon copy of Imoen. Calling Leliana a tart suggests to me that you haven't gotten to know her character very well. She was raised to be that way, but has chosen to join the Chantry because she doesn't want that life for herself. Imoen grew up in a sleepy library, there hasn't been much for her to overcome pre BG1.

I don't know what you're referring to with that last point. BG had the standard stats that are used in D&D, which is not significantly different to DA. Also, mages DO learn their spells in DA, they just don't do so by reading a scroll. What a minor, pointless gripe.

[AlanC9]

jones0901 wrote...

Baldurs gate was huge and you felt that, you could never go everywhere it felt like, in DAO and all new crpgs you can literally pick up and touch every item in the game in a play through, it leaves little to the imaginiation

Of course, you could certainly manage to do everything in a single BG run. Except the different party interactions, of course, but that's true for both games. The difference is that you don't have any real reason to hit some of the major quest areas in a single BG2 run, whereas you will see just about  every map in a single DA run. 

One of the interesting things about moving through the different environments is that not only are the DA maps somewhat smaller than their BG series equivalents, but your movement rate through them is a good deal slower. I'm pretty sure it takes longer in real time to walk across the Denerim Market District than it does to cross the BG2 Slums, even though the Slums would be larger if you modelled them in DA. You can move sprites around faster without things looking silly. I'm not sure I'd even want something as big as BG2 in a modern engine without some sort of rapid transit.

[Rzepik2]

In short - no, it can't compare. I think that it's closer to the Neverwinter Nights than Baldur's Gate.

1. As someone mentioned It does not have a big impact on imagination. In 3D it's much more harder to create a living world (well... witcher did it). DA completely fails at that, cities are just mock-ups, so there's almost no immersion.
2. DA setting is really poor. I prefer oldschool fantasy over dark-wannabe with almost no original motives. It's also annoying that DA world lacks of mysteries, the only unknown thing is existence of the maker (and everything connected ,origin of darkspawns etc.). There's so little to discover.
3. Terrible level scaling. Right after defeating a dragon I was killed by a pack of wolves. Wtf!?!? BG2 had some kind of experimental level scaling, weird but quite good. Replacing ghasts with bone golem makes more sense than wolf - lvl. 99.
4. IMHO the biggest flaw of DA - dungeon crawling. SoA has really nice ballance of talking quests, short subquests and the main plot. In the DA... uhhh... Deep Roads, Fade, even friggin storage room in the magi tower(!) turns out to be a cave (CAVE! IN A TOWER!). It's just a forced extending of gampeplay, worst thing that can happen to a game.
5. There's no space hamster in Dragon Age: Origins.

Modifié par Rzepik2, 22 juin 2010 - 07:09 .

[AlanC9]

Athkatla wasn't much of a living city either. I'm starting to think that the real difference is only that we're more sophisticated.

And point 2 is just just incoherent. Oldschool is good, but something unoriginal is bad? I'm sure you actually meant something that made sense there, but that wasn't it.

What gets me about the whole "modern improved graphics leave nothing to the imagination" argument is that this argument could have been raised against the BG games themselves. Did the BG games really hit some sort of magical point that generates optimal immersion?

Modifié par AlanC9, 22 juin 2010 - 07:40 .

[MindYerBeak]

I think Sten was meant as a replacement for the Boo character (can't remember his name). "Go for the eyes, Boo!" titillated my funny buds every time I heard it. Sten, the replacement Boo, on the other hand, is a character I hate due to his attitude problem. I just can't stand people like that. The only amusing thing I found in DA was the Mad Mage, but none of the characters come across as being amusing, unless Zevran can make the bill. Also Shale looks promising.  I have yet to take them out. I was a third of the way through BG before I realised a Bard could use magic. I thought he was an archer.

Modifié par MindYerBeak, 22 juin 2010 - 07:47 .

[Rzepik2]

AlanC9 wrote...

Athkatla wasn't much of a living city either. I'm starting to think that the real difference is only that we're more sophisticated.

And point 2 is just just incoherent. Oldschool is good, but something unoriginal is bad? I'm sure you actually meant something that made sense there, but that wasn't it.

In Athkatla "encountered people" at least walks around

Faerun in 2 ed. is oldchool and it's good at it.
Dragon age desperately tries to be "something different" and it fails at it.

[Rzepik2]

Double post. My bad.

Modifié par Rzepik2, 22 juin 2010 - 07:47 .

[Swoo]

I think it compares rather favorably at this stage, we will have to see what happens though. Right now we basically have an Origins/Awakening vs Baldurs Gate 1/Tales of the Sword Coast. It's going to take a lot to even get close to Baldurs Gate 2, and even if DA2 falls way short it can still be a classic game. BG2 was just that good.

The big problem with looking back at a trilogy or saga is it's hard to compartmentalize it back down into what it was in it's original sections, instead of how you now see it for it's whole.

The story of Baldur's Gate wasn't terribly original, it was just done to perfection. Straight from the 'Hero pushed out of an idyllic setting to watch his mentor die' to the 'final duel with the half-sibling with the dark secret'. You didn't even find out about the Bhaalspawn until the very end of the game, and the 'teaser' ending with the statues crumbling. It wasn't until BG2 that the plot point became totally epic.

The PCs were amazing for the time but were far from fleshed out at that stage. You basically knew almost all of them by 'This is the good druid, this is the sadistic druid. That's the whiny mage, that's the red wizard mage'. There was definitely some personality and backstory introduced, and the party banter and confrontations were both amazing and revolutionary at the time, but the characters were far from deep by that point. Take your least favorite Dragon's Age character and you will know more about them by the end of DA:O than you knew about your favorite BG NPC.

What made BG the classic it is is the growth the entire storyline went through from BG1 to BG2 from the PC and his companions to their histories and various desires and pathos, to the evolution of the metaplot taken to ways many could not have seen. The first time I popped into the Slayer after Bodhi's taunts I had to pause so I could let loose a two minute string of 'Holy S-, awesome!' profanities that would have made the Goonies proud.

There are enough building blocks that if done right (and who knows what that is? Right could end up being the exact opposite of what you or I want right now) that Dragon Age could experience that sort of growth. It's been hinted that the Warden's Tainting is mutable and the Warden's could develop into something so much more than they are right now. Various factions have been slightly defined and set up for future movements. There very well could be an Old God going into a human form for the first time with all the power, none of the memory or experience. On and on.

Remember, Imoen was a Rogue who didn't have a line of dialogue after Candlekeep that wasn't a normal party bark and just popped traps for you if you didn't want to take a psycho-thief like Montarion or Triax, or the so-so 'I will never stop whining' Skie. By the end of the second game she was a blood relative that had been tortured and mentally broken down until she was questioning her very sanity and humanity, while still retaining some of her previous charm and exhuberance for life.

There is room for everything to grow if you have a good team and great vision backing it, which Bioware proved it still has at it's disposal with Origins. Hell, remember that even dying itself wasn't a barrier from stopping a characters personal arc.

[Rzepik2]

Swoo wrote...
Remember, Imoen was a Rogue who didn't have a line of dialogue after Candlekeep that wasn't a normal party bark and just popped traps for you if you didn't want to take a psycho-thief like Montarion or Triax, or the so-so 'I will never stop whining' Skie. By the end of the second game she was a blood relative that had been tortured and mentally broken down until she was questioning her very sanity and humanity, while still retaining some of her previous charm and exhuberance for life.

Yeah, poor Imoean. Added at the last moment in BG1, intended to be killed in BG2 so there's almost no conversation with her
And she's not blood relative i guess. I mean, she can't be a gnome/dwarf/elf so Bhaalspawns don't share DNA, only their taint.

But she's cute damsel in distress to rescue. Yeah, Dragon Age lacks of proper damsels in distress!!! There's only princess stabbity. 

Srsly now. After beating DA I thought BioWare just lost their mojo for good... Luckily ME2 restored my faith in them. Funny, because I was always more into fantasy than sci-fi.

Modifié par Rzepik2, 22 juin 2010 - 08:18 .

[Aratark]

@Mindyerbeek



You're thinking of Minsc (sp?) who was amazing. I would like to see a proper Minsc character in DA2, but having another miniature giant space hamster (I seem to recall that was Boo's designation) would be a little much, great as he was.



I played through the BG arc numerous times, enjoying it immensely each time, however, it was created on the back of a huge amount of lore, much of which the writers for BG didn't create. We're seeing the creation of the lore for DA as we play. In that respect, DA:O, DA:A, DA2 and the next couple of games may not have the same immersion factor as BG, but if the world is used continually, that level of immersion could well come about.



On a quick side note, DA:O does smash BG hands down on one small point, Claudia Black voicing Morrigan;)

[Aran Linvail]

Nothing Compares to BG Series

Dragon Age Origins is a great game , i really love , i just hope DAO 2 continue the warden history and the companions too , thats make BG great , you feel like you know the companions , like thats you history , DAO can be better than Baldur's Gate Series , and thats coming for a BG die hard fan. We need just wait and see if Bioware can deliver , i just hope.

[Weiser_Cain]

BG had more interesting romance options and classes despite the crap dnd multiclassing rules

[Giantevilhead]

Baldur's Gate had the advantage of being able to draw upon a huge pool of D&D lore. Baldur's Gate was set in areas that already had a deep history. It had a ton of recognizable characters like Elminster, Driz'zt, the various gods of Faerun. There are plots involving organizations and races that fans of D&D know a lot about like the Red Wizards, the Illithid, the Beholders, and the Harpers.

Dragon Age on the other hand, is a brand new world that hasn't really been fully explored. The lore is certainly extensive but it pales in comparison to what D&D offers. If Dragon Age had been another D&D game or if it was based on Warhammer Fantasy, which it clearly draws a lot of ideas from, it would probably surpass Baldur's Gate.

Modifié par Giantevilhead, 22 juin 2010 - 09:34 .

[Dirlewanger]

Dragon age needs to creat a myth, a fully fleshed myth. There are dozens of D&D books. Designers can just drink from that and the world is pre-built. Not always right, of course.



DA has the disadvantage of a symplistic stats, skills and combat system.

[CybAnt1]

What gets me about the whole "modern improved graphics leave nothing to the imagination" argument is that this argument could have been raised against the BG games themselves. Did the BG games really hit some sort of magical point that generates optimal immersion?

As I've said before, you could take that argument to its irrational extreme, and argue that nothing will surpass text adventures like Zork, since they left everything to the imagination. 

Dunno. There's obviously a lot of room to improve 3D graphics, and it could be many more years before 3D artists get around to making facial expressions and body movements that look more ... realistic. Still, I can't speak for others, but the characters do seem more real to me even though they are pixels, because they are not tiny ragdolls on a screen, but with something approaching real human appearance, and an actual voice (that you hear every time they speak). 

Fine, we can all be nostalgiac for the beauty of those hand-drawn 2D sprites and maps, but I have to say I really like having a moveable camera that lets me get closer or further from people or objects. Tradeoffs, it's all tradeoffs. 

A 3D world doesn't have to look generic and bric-a-brac. I hated Dungeon Siege's game mechanics, but the environments for that game could be breathtaking. Also, there are quite a few areas in WoW that are similar, again whether or not you hate the mechanics. Unfortunately, there is some tradeoff that occurs when you use a Toolset to build the world. Putting the power to build the world in the hands of the players means every wagon has to look a certain way because that wagon is a placeable. That's just the way it is. It's the inevitable tradeoff. 

[AlanC9]

Rzepik2 wrote...


In Athkatla "encountered people" at least walks around

Faerun in 2 ed. is oldchool and it's good at it.
Dragon age desperately tries to be "something different" and it fails at it.

Fails how? Maybe I was wrong about your ideas making sense. I'm guessing it's just that you can't articulate them, though.

Modifié par AlanC9, 22 juin 2010 - 04:02 .

[Ulicus]

The BG Trilogy? If only. There were but two games and Throne of Bhaal -- an expansion -- was by no means a fitting conclusion. IMO, anyway.

Modifié par Ulicus, 22 juin 2010 - 04:14 .