206 réponses à ce sujet

[CybAnt1]

Actually my point was that Baldurs Gate maps had way more stuff on them and were more numerous. DA:O maps are more 'sprawled out', but only have a few locations (most of which are shops). 

I'm not sure I understand this point. Denerim is the only real large-scale "city" in Ferelden (i.e. comparable in size to the original city of Baldur's Gate itself.) Well, human city ... there's also the underground city of Orzammar. The other towns & villages are just that ... small towns & villages. I wouldn't expect to find a lot of places to visit in a small town or village like Haven, Redcliffe, Lothering, Ostagar, etc. 

It seems to me that Denerim was full of plenty of places to visit, not just shops, although there were a wide variety of merchants. There were numerous homes to visit (for quest or other reasons), a Chantry (temple) to stop by, a few interesting taverns, a brothel to boot, some dark alleys, a whole racial ghetto (the Elven Alienage), a prison fortress, a few noble palaces, places where you could be given tasks to do by groups like the Crows, the mysterious "K" and "D," Mr. Coudry, the Blackstone Irregulars, and a number of others if you wanted to take time off from the mainquests. 

Since your point simply seems to be not about what the maps look like (and I continue to reiterate; who cares, a map is an abstraction representing the actual area you're in, a simplified 2D abstraction showing me where to go in an actual 3D area suits me just fine) -- since I continue to maintain that while the maps may not look nice, who cares, many of the exterior and interior areas themselves look amazing themselves even if their abstract representations look simple -- but about variety of places to visit: I counter that when you weigh Denerim vs. Baldur's Gate in terms of interesting and useful places to visit, as opposed to just fluff (like rifling through as many random homes as you can find in search of treasure/encounters), BG doesn't win quickly and easily. 

[devSin]

Red Frostraven wrote...
A poll. On the official Dragon Age forums... saying that Dragon Age is just barely prefered over Baldur's Gate.

Actually, it doesn't even say that. It's not only statistically insignificant as he claimed but is also statistically irrelevant.

A vote of X / Y / Z infers only the probability that X is a game that has been played and enjoyed; it says nothing at all about Y or Z. If you were to somehow limit responses to only those familiar with all of X, Y, and Z, then you begin to inch closer toward insignificance, away from the current position of total nonsense.

[CybAnt1]

Gameplay, no contest - BG2 has more party members at once,

Agreed. But this is part of the tradeoff from the move from 2(.5)D to 3D. On an isometric screen where your chars are tiny ragdolls on the screen, it's easy to keep track of all six of them at once and keep 'issuing orders'. In real 3D, it's far harder to keep track of six independent actors at once and keep ordering them all around independently. This is why although I hate the AI I get frustrated trying to micromanage 4 chars instead. I can just imagine how harder this gets when the # hits 6. Plus 5 summons!

I don't know. In many ways, it really seems like in an ideal world I would just micromanage the main/warden PC, and trust everybody else to do their thing without my intervention; the continually subpar AI of these games falls short of doing that. 

What you really need, BTW, is an action queue, so that I can tell Zevran I want him to do X, then Y, then Z (stealth, get behind the mage, apply magebane poison, stab the bastard in the back, then go and kill the archer next to him IF he's dead or sufficiently crippled), and then I can leave him alone for a while, and move on to tell Alistair that I want him to do X, then Y, then Z. But anyway. The bottom line is to solve this problem I think you need a game system with AI that works, combined with action queues that will interrupt the AI when you decide to "seize control" & establish them. DAO has moved closer to that than BG2. But yes there's still room for improvement. The default AI scripts in BG2 were completely worthless & useless. DAO's ones for warriors at least work reasonably well. 

more summons, more familiars,

Agreed. I'd like to see more summons. But guess what. Mod makers are working on that. Check out the Evocation Mod. It needs some work. But it's a great start. 

And familiars & pets? There should be more than just Dog (for you). Hopefully this is something we can see in future games. 

more abilites,

Disagree. A DA:O warrior has far more tactical abilities than a D & D 2E fighter did in BG2. Minsc could carry a shield but never did anything with it. It just added some number to his AC. He could use a sword, but he had no ability to weaken his opponent's defenses or stun them with it. Etc. 

It'd be a more interesting question to look at fighters/warriors in 4E; but BG2 was not a 4E game, it wasn't even a 3E game like NWN2. 

D&D rules, better use of traps, poison, the list goes on and on.

Better use of traps? Please. There is much greater variety of traps in DA:O, and far more useful ways to use them (though most are not using them). That statement is just ridiculous. Likewise with poisons - and the ability to craft & make them. 2E had no type of poison other than "instant kill" poison if you didn't save against it. 

Characters and story?  No contest, the BG2 setting/story and characters are some of the best of all time.

Except there was no way to build influence/approval with your companions (and no point to doing so; the only thing you had to care about was not making them leave) nor any point to doing so, that their personal quests did nothing usually but give you an XP reward, and as others stated, they almost never commented on your actions, offered advice, interjected in situations - etc, etc, etc. 

[CybAnt1]

The BG2 maps were better, rationalizations won't change that.  The DAO maps are almost worthless and ugly.

The maps don't look as nice, but the areas themselves look better. More realistic. No interior areas in BG2 had a ceiling and in many cases didn't have (visible external) walls either. It was impossible to shove an enemy into a wall because there basically were no walls. I don't remember any outdoor area where you found people standing on a hill looking down upon you: because there were no real hills. Any verticality was purely artificial. I don't get why this shouldn't be MORE important.

The interior of a home in DA:O looks more like an interior of a real home than the weird isometric homes of BG2. A dungeon in DA:O looks more like a dungeon. And yes a cavern like a cavern. Etc.! 

[CybAnt1]

and in BG you can click on the map and your party will sometimes auto path there.

Ummm, this totally ignores how bad the pathfinding in the game sucked, and sucked hard. 

I can't remember how many times I tried to get my entire party to leave an area, clicked on the exit, and had to listen to the "you must gather your party before venturing forth" for about 5 minutes because while everybody else headed for the exit, Aerie decided to stop and visit the fountain, talk to the merchant, look at the statue, stop and look in a store window, and then eventually wind up at the area exit. (OK, that's not what literally happened, but given the bizarre paths she or other NPCs would take, it felt like it.) 

BTW, your NPCs wouldn't even do something as simple as follow everywhere your main char went; the only way to insure they all headed in the same direction was simply to group them all and tell them to walk to the same place. 

[Rictras Shard]

Haexpane wrote...



This isn't a "which is the more realistic dragon slaying game" it's simply "which was better"

And since the DA maps are actually maps, that makes them better.

This is just as valid an opinion as yours.

[AlanC9]

CybAnt1 wrote...
But this is part of the tradeoff from the move from 2(.5)D to 3D. On an isometric screen where your chars are tiny ragdolls on the screen, it's easy to keep track of all six of them at once and keep 'issuing orders'. In real 3D, it's far harder to keep track of six independent actors at once and keep ordering them all around independently. This is why although I hate the AI I get frustrated trying to micromanage 4 chars instead. I can just imagine how harder this gets when the # hits 6. Plus 5 summons!

I don't know about this. I've been able to run more characters than that in NWN2. In the last couple of battles of the OC don't you control about ten?

[attackfighter]

CybAnt1 wrote...

I'm not sure I understand this point. Denerim is the only real large-scale "city" in Ferelden (i.e. comparable in size to the original city of Baldur's Gate itself.) Well, human city ... there's also the underground city of Orzammar. The other towns & villages are just that ... small towns & villages. I wouldn't expect to find a lot of places to visit in a small town or village like Haven, Redcliffe, Lothering, Ostagar, etc. 

It seems to me that Denerim was full of plenty of places to visit, not just shops, although there were a wide variety of merchants. There were numerous homes to visit (for quest or other reasons), a Chantry (temple) to stop by, a few interesting taverns, a brothel to boot, some dark alleys, a whole racial ghetto (the Elven Alienage), a prison fortress, a few noble palaces, places where you could be given tasks to do by groups like the Crows, the mysterious "K" and "D," Mr. Coudry, the Blackstone Irregulars, and a number of others if you wanted to take time off from the mainquests.

Denerim had a lot of places, but many of them only contained random encounters and maybe something for a fed-ex quest. The only significant places were Howes Estate, the Palace, the Drunken Noble (or w/e it was), the Pearl, the Alienage (which I won't count as it's own subsection, as it only contained 2 small quests), the Blood Mage hideout and Fort Drak. That's 7 places for the entire city, everything else was a generic back ally, a shop or a house used to facilitate an enemy or two. In comparison, any of the 6 or so districts in Athkatla housed more content then the entire city of Denerim.

PS: your mention of Denerim's chantry is one of my pet peeves, as it's so obviously something the devs intended to let you explore but ultimately cut out.

PPS: I actually thought Ostagar was more fleshed out than Denerim.

The maps don't look as nice, but the areas themselves look better.
More realistic. No interior areas in BG2 had a ceiling and in many
cases didn't have (visible external) walls either. It was impossible to
shove an enemy into a wall because there basically were no walls. I don't remember any outdoor area where you found people standing on a hill looking down upon you: because there were no real hills. Any verticality was purely artificial. I don't get why this shouldn't be MORE important.

The
interior of a home in DA:O looks more like an interior of a real home
than the weird isometric homes of BG2. A dungeon in DA:O looks more
like a dungeon. And yes a cavern like a cavern. Etc.!

Baldurs Gate is more stylized while DA:O is more realistic.

Ummm, this totally ignores how bad the pathfinding in the game sucked, and sucked hard. 

I
can't remember how many times I tried to get my entire party to leave
an area, clicked on the exit, and had to listen to the "you must gather
your party before venturing forth" for about 5 minutes because while
everybody else headed for the exit, Aerie decided to stop and visit the
fountain, talk to the merchant, look at the statue, stop and look in a
store window, and then eventually wind up at the area exit. (OK, that's
not what literally happened, but given the bizarre paths she or other
NPCs would take, it felt like it.) 

BTW, your NPCs wouldn't even
do something as simple as follow everywhere your main char went; the
only way to insure they all headed in the same direction was simply to
group them all and tell them to walk to the same place.

Yeah the pathfinding sucked, but the instances where it stood out were rather short and far between. For example, you'd have 4 hours of quest time followed by a few minutes spent travelling back to the quest giver for a reward - and the quest giver wasn't always so far away that the AI would get lost.

[Realmzmaster]

Which game is better is always a matter of personal opinion. I could state that Wizardry one of the granddaddy's of all time is the best CRPG. It was in black and white. I could say that the Bards Tale series could eat the Baldur's Gates series for lunch. What about Might and Magic? The Ultima Series which had more innovations than the Baldur's Gate series.

I could go on, but it is my opinion. Yes, I have played them all.

Also last time I checked DA:O was developed on a PC and then ported to the consoles which required different interfaces.

Also Baldur's Gate was scheduled to come out on the Playstation one. The game was finished but never released by Sony. A mobile vertsion of Baldur's Gate came out in 2004 by Sorrent. So why the remark about DA:O being on a console?

I thought the idea is to broaden the market. Many people like playing on their consoles so why not bring Crpgs to them.

[Maria Caliban]

attackfighter wrote...

...no company randomly implements things suggested by its fans...

This is correct.

However, the opinion of forum goers did have an influence on the development of Dragon Age: Origins, just as the opinion of forum goers had an impact on the development of Mass Effect 2.

[Lotion Soronarr]

CHARACTERS:
DAO and BG both have amazing characters and development.  I've played BG1 and 2 again recelntly, so It's not nostaligan talking or anything. They are both awesome in this regard.

GAMEPLAY:
Difficult to judge. For one DA:O mechanics regarding loot and attributes don't stick well with me. In BG, the way armor was done didn't set well with me.
Gameplay is fun in both games, but I?m gonna give a slight edghe to BG in this one. Simply because there's more for me to "fix", mechanics-wise, in DA:O.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Red Frostraven wrote...

... I think you're a tad hard on the companions in Dragon Age.
The problem beeing, your characters talked to YOU in baldur's gate, when THEY felt like it (after X hours of gameplay after quest Y). The average run-through was about 100 hours, so the dialogue was spread out pretty heavily. But it was spread out.

In dragon age, I quest for three hours, then pick the new dialogue options in the camp before I go to bed.
The game is kind of forced to do this, because the story is just too short to have companions fetch your attention every fifteen minutes to build up your relationship with them -- like they talked to your charcter every hour like in BG2 -- so the developers chose to let you talk to them instead, when you feel like it.
Problem is, when everything happens when YOU tell things to happen, characters become less interesting.
...
I expect dialogue when I enter the camp.
Not when traveling.
The fact that your companions TOOK your attention in BG2 caused them to seem more alive.
There were five companions with you at all times in BG2, and many of them interacted with eachother and forced you to listen by normal dialogues.

I love that characters interact with eachother in Dragon Age, but I wish they interacted with ME half as much as with eachother. Or one quarter. I'd settle for one tenth!
But at the very least talk to me, or I will feel alone. Talking to, and talking with are two entirely different breeds of conversation.
When characters "talk TO you", they start the conversation. That is a forceful action which bonds the player with that character.
When you talk with them you start the conversation every single time, which makes them just another NPC with dialogues which may lead to loot.

The same is true ingame: I skip a lot of dialogues I initiate because I know there will be a quest added to my list.
I listen to the NPCs that come and talk TO me.

I very much agree with this. I wish the party memebers were more active...and more emotey in the inter-party-banter.

[Franpa]

BGII has more items, more item effects, more weapons, more weapon types, more spells, character reactions to stealing, more diverse quests and sub-quests, many more types of enemies and weaknesses, better dialog fitting the environments/current situation.



BGII wins

[Sarevok Anchev]

CybAnt1 wrote...

Actually my point was that Baldurs Gate maps had way more stuff on them and were more numerous. DA:O maps are more 'sprawled out', but only have a few locations (most of which are shops). 

I'm not sure I understand this point. Denerim is the only real large-scale "city" in Ferelden (i.e. comparable in size to the original city of Baldur's Gate itself.) Well, human city ... there's also the underground city of Orzammar. The other towns & villages are just that ... small towns & villages. I wouldn't expect to find a lot of places to visit in a small town or village like Haven, Redcliffe, Lothering, Ostagar, etc. 

It seems to me that Denerim was full of plenty of places to visit, not just shops, although there were a wide variety of merchants. There were numerous homes to visit (for quest or other reasons), a Chantry (temple) to stop by, a few interesting taverns, a brothel to boot, some dark alleys, a whole racial ghetto (the Elven Alienage), a prison fortress, a few noble palaces, places where you could be given tasks to do by groups like the Crows, the mysterious "K" and "D," Mr. Coudry, the Blackstone Irregulars, and a number of others if you wanted to take time off from the mainquests. 

Since your point simply seems to be not about what the maps look like (and I continue to reiterate; who cares, a map is an abstraction representing the actual area you're in, a simplified 2D abstraction showing me where to go in an actual 3D area suits me just fine) -- since I continue to maintain that while the maps may not look nice, who cares, many of the exterior and interior areas themselves look amazing themselves even if their abstract representations look simple -- but about variety of places to visit: I counter that when you weigh Denerim vs. Baldur's Gate in terms of interesting and useful places to visit, as opposed to just fluff (like rifling through as many random homes as you can find in search of treasure/encounters), BG doesn't win quickly and easily. 

I understand the critics of you guys, but the point about the quality and quantity comparison between BG2 and DA:O should be clear.
Like you said Denerim is the "only real large-scale "city" in Ferelden" (besides Orzammar), while the rest is only Villages etc. Ok, so wher is the problem in comparing it to Amn from BG2?
Athkatla is the only large scale (and Major) City in Amn, while Tradekeep and Umar Hills are a small Tradingtown and a Village respectively. There is also the Elven and Drow- City, while the first is more like RtO and the latter like Orzammar.
So when i compare Denerim with Athkatla you can count the major locations (8 Athkatla / 2 Denerim), which i only count, when: They are big enough for a walk and contain at least a handful of entrances + several Quests.
Thus: The Black Pearl isnt counting, because it is only a Inn, that isnt more important than f.e. the Inn in Waukeens Promenade.
The other Locations in Denerim are either for single battles (like the killing of the thugs) and are more comparable with the random encounters in Athkatla.
Also there are the main-quest related locations, which i compare with Irenicus Dungeon, the Mind-Flayer Lair, the Canalisation under the Slums AND Temple-District (+ the 3 other areas under that , the area in the Sphere + the Plane, the Caves under the Cemetery, Shaodw-Thieves locations and the Prison-Plane.
In Denerim you have about 6 areas, that are related to the major questline, thus are only used in one situation.

You counted most of the areas yourself, but you didnt mention the lack of inter-action in there.
I wont even count the 3 questlines for Mercs, Chantry and Mages, because they arent even settled in Denerim most times. You cant even enter the Chantry and there are only 2 Inns and the Brothel. Beside the Marketplace i dont remember any major area in the city.

Other locations: I think that Umar Hills and Trademeet are swallowing everything else in this game, that can count as a major location, besides Orzammar.
Orzammar is the only, positive, exception for all this, with 3 areas in the city and several underground locations.
But the slums are ridiculously small. Has anybody realized, that at the end of this "snakepit" is a stonewall, that hinders you - without explanation- to go further in there?


I know you guys are mostly referring to some overgrown objections of the OP and i like DA:O myself, the Characters are better, the possiblities in combat are more 3rd ed. D&D etc etc.
But  DA:O fatigued me already after 2 playthroughs, because your way is always the same.
Ok, you can decide which of the 4 major quests you start with and all, or if you make Denerim and other sidequests.
But you mainly have this 4 major blocks and thwat what follows it.
BG2 i played dozens of times (sic!) and you could make just the major questline(with even different ways like Shadow Thieves/ Vampires, Sahuagin/Underdark). 
I wont count the wonderful Watchers Keep, because its expansion material; so i will wait till Awakening

Its true that modern game-development and the increase in 3d graphics chip away the time and detail for locations and questlines etc., but it doesnt change that (at least for me) it takes much detailed possiblities away, that make a major individual gaming experience every time you beat the game.

[Derengard]

I'm very enthusiastic about the brevity and wit stuff. Just imagine how much longer the game could be if they went for more condensed dialogue. They could cut half of the combat filler. But I suppose it's part of the style Bioware is going for at the moment. Look at Mass Effect 1. There were some very poignant passages but often it was just long-drawn exposition.

Modifié par Derengard, 18 février 2010 - 01:08 .

[TheRealIncarnal]

It's not a valid comparison if you simply use your own opinion.

[Red Frostraven]

TheRealIncarnal wrote...

It's not a valid comparison if you simply use your own opinion.

Unfortunately:
Fun, aestethics, dialogue quality, companion quality, gameplay (feel) cannot be determined objectively without perfecting psychology and understanding how and what makes people prefer one thing over another while other people prefer the other, and even if you find out a way to determine what one person considers the most fun -- all you'd have is knowledge about what that single individual will find the most fun.

Nothing can be better or worse unless it serves a specific function in real life, like moving objects or people, serves as nutrition and for taste, serves as a teacher, does information processing, isolates rooms against cold or heat, measuring data, determining structure stability, calculating, or objects that serve to perform a task at the lowest cost at maximum efficiency -- et cetera.

The level of fun and immersion are indeterminable and individual values that no two people share, and cannot be measured for use for humanity as a whole: Values derived from people's subjective opinions only maximize the experience for that one person.

That is why there exist genres: Fields of experience that cater to different expectations, so that people can buy a product and know if they're prone to liking it, beforehand, due to there beeing written and unwritten rules for each genre that mixes the known stereotypes in that genre with innovation to satisfy the customers who want the familiar setting from that genre, with a pinch of something new they've never seen before.
Make a completely new genre, like Mulholland Drive did, and you only confuse people because they don't know what it is.
We humans like to think we're clever, but when we experience something new, we're only left confused.
We prefer to be entertained with something we're already familiar with, with some twists.

For instance, the best joke in the world is:

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?”

The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard.

The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?“

...

Witty, to be sure... but I'd literally have no problems finding 4 000 000 000 people who thinks another joke is better; It's just the compromise between all cultures.
So is Dragon Age: It's a compromise between the roleplaying genre and the action game genre.
It's an action-fantasy game, not catering fully to either action fans nor fantasy fans.

That is dangerous position to be in: Roleplayers will not be impressed because of the lack of a wide array of interaction possibilites and slight lack of immersion, actiongamers will think there's too much information and nitpicking in the game, powergamers will be annoyed that some of the best items in the game are mutually exclusive and that some items can be missed.

...
It's like a crime novel with crime investigators -- AND secret agents and gunfights in it. It will NEVER get the top ratings, despite the fact that it would have without the crime part OR without the agents part.
Unless it's written by that lucky bastard Dan Brown.

Point beeing..: It's made to appeal to a broader audience, to sell more copies. But the broader audience will be less impressed than a smaller audience would have been if the game catered to them.

If the game caters to one person in the world, that person would kill for the game.
If the game caters to ten people in the world, it will leave an everlasting impression.
If the game caters to thousands of roleplayers, the game will be the best game they'll ever play.
If the game caters to hundreds of thousands of roleplayers, the game will be among the best or the best game they'll ever have played.
If the game caters to millions of roleplayers and actiongamers, the game will be among the best games some of them have played, but not for most of them.
If the game caters to tens of millions of...

you get the point. The broader the audience, the smaller the impact.

Modifié par Red Frostraven, 18 février 2010 - 02:07 .

[CybAnt1]

I don't know about this. I've been able to run more characters than that in NWN2. In the last couple of battles of the OC don't you control about ten?

Oh yeah. I remember that final battle well and how much of pain in the arse it was managing all ten of my chars at once. Let's just say I thank Construct mightily because it was the last surviving character, and mopped the floor with what opposition remained. 

The two times all of your companions are fighting at once in DAO (the attack on your party camp, the initial battle to get into the city of Denerim in the endgame) they're in blue circles making them autonomous and not under your control per se. But I'm betting it would be tricky. (Incidentally, what's weird is when their circles are blue, they can be damaged with your AOEs, even IF you've set the game difficulty to easy. Just like other allied but not-under-your-conrol NPCs.) 

Personally, I think the only way to effectively manage ten NPCs at once is in turn-based systems, and OMG do I not want to revisit that debate. Modern day gamers just don't have the patience for turn-based and I can tell you everytime I play Heroes of Might & Magic I feel a sense of grating "waiting" for the computer to take its turn. 

If you're not going to do turn-based, and you're going to have wide areas where the group can easily become separated, then IMHO the only way to do full micromanagement is an action queue. So that you don't have to pay attention to everybody, all the time, issuing constant action orders.

 

[CybAnt1]

Yeah the pathfinding sucked, but the instances where it stood out were rather short and far between. 

Disagree. Your characters were constantly bumping into each other, and BTW nothing frustrated me more than in dungeons where I told them to go some place, and they started heading there by going in different directions, sometimes setting off traps or attracting monster attention along the way. 

Fine. I understand your point. There aren't five temples to visit in Denerim, because unlike D & D FR, humans aren't polytheistic. There's no independent thieves' guild because anybody with jobs for you seems to want to meet in taverns. There are no sewers to explore (complete with strange cults to bump into down in those sewers.) Etc. Etc. BG2 had superiority of places to visit and explore, and things to do/see in them. 

However, I'm not sure of your exact point, because I see no intrinsic reason why someday there might not be a game in the Dragon Age milieux of its depth. Origins wasn't that game. 

[booke63]

It's perfectly reasonable to compare BG series and DAO. Contrary to the OP's agenda, however, I'm not in the "pissing match" the OP is nor can I accept that BG is "unarguably" better than DAO. For me it's not a contest, and I'm really glad to have played both games.



For me there are 3 areas worth comparing in the 2 games: story arc, NPC character development, and gameplay.



The story arc was very engaging in the BG series. You had an arch enemy and getting him was your main motivation, and that this pursuit (its success or failure) might have world level implications and consequences developed through the story arc. Very cool. Some side quests developed the main story arc as well. Cool. (Some side quests were just really engaging in themselves even if self contained.) There were some good surprises in BG too. DAO mostly seems to be merely introducing us to the DA world and planting the roots from which a great story arc could come--and by the way also saving the world from the Blight and the Arch Demon. Fortunately, while BG is DONE, DAO has more to come, so any comparisons here are premature. This fact is often forgotten in these comparison threads.



I enjoyed NPCs from both games. One general observation would be that I felt a little less sure of myself in my interactions with BG NPCs, felt like I was walking on eggs a bit. I think that is because a lot of the disapproving remarks in DAO had a sarcastic tone rather than a flat out rejection of my words or deeds. I think it reflects the DnD alignment structure as compared to the grayish morality of DAO. Not sure. But I definitely feel more at ease around DAO NPCs.



As to gameplay--the fighting part of gameplay anyway--my primary point of comparison is: in BG you have to manage your resources within a fight AND outside of fights. In DAO you manage your resources within the fight almost exclusively. In BG, after a fight, you spend quite a bit time collecting and recharging resources: healing, sleeping, buying and selling even. In DAO you are more often immediately ready to go and can go go go. One other difference is I feel more confident in fights in DAO. In BG it just seemed that you could more often get wiped out. Whether I really did get wiped out more often once I got BG down, I don't know, but like with the NPCs in DAO, I usually feel more comfortable entering a fight in DAO compared to BG.



Which game is better? Who cares. The REAL question is who, between your BG toon and your DAO toon, would get their ass kicked by the other?



Thanks

[AlanC9]

Franpa wrote...

BGII has more items, more item effects, more weapons, more weapon types, more spells, character reactions to stealing, more diverse quests and sub-quests, many more types of enemies and weaknesses, better dialog fitting the environments/current situation.

BGII wins

Couldn't you have just said that BG2 is a bigger game? About the only thing you've got there that isn't related to size is reactions to stealing.

[Haexpane]

Murphys_Law wrote...

Haexpane wrote...

BanditGR wrote...

Your comparison serves very little point I'm afraid. Most people nowadays are probably...too young to realize that Baldur's Gate was released under a different gaming philosophy, favoring content and an amazing storyline over stunning graphics and Hollywood actor voice overs. By focusing on a rather limited amount of characters, spanning over 1-2 games (and expansions) allowed players to form bonds with the characters, understand their personalities and ultimately appreciate them more for what they were. You are correct that most featured RPG characters nowadays are largely forgettable, with a few exceptions that simply verify the rule.

The truth of the matter is, Baldur's Gate took no real risks, as a CRPG, considering that it "borrowed" the Forgotten Realms world and the AD&D ruleset.  al and steps are taken in the right direction. Personally, I'm trying to stay positive and optimistic.

Well you make a great case for why BG2 was a better game (which is unarguable, BG2 is considered one of the best games of all time, probably the best party based RPG)

But BG2 didnt borrow AD&D it licensed it.    

You heard it here folks, it is "unarguable".  You are not even allowed to have an opinion because it is a fact of the universe.  How can Dragon Age stand against this ultimate truth, who cares if the "truth" is blinded by nostaglia and rhetoric?

ANd here come the insults "nostalgia and rehtoric" I've already stated that I played BG2 the first time in 2009, nostaligia has nothing to do with it.

The VAST MAJORITY of the gaming critics and public place BG2 as one of the best RPGs of all time, that *is* unarguable.   DAO is considered a very good game.  Your opinion might be you like one better than the other, but you simply do not hear many people even attempting to claim DAO is best RPG of all time.

BG2 is constantly called this.  Nostalgia is not the reason why, even in the recently posted screenshots others are agreeing that an 11 year old 2D game's graphics compared to DAO... it's not a clear cut winner on either side.

Again I REALLY REALLY like DAO.  I own it, I played it, I beat it.  But BG2 is better, whether I play it today or 5 years ago wont change the game.

[Haexpane]

CybAnt1 wrote...
 -- since I continue to maintain that while the maps may not look nice, who cares,

The people playing the game and looking at them care.  Just a shot in the dark?

[Haexpane]

CybAnt1 wrote...
 Any verticality was purely artificial. I don't get why this shouldn't be MORE important.

 

Because it had minimal effect on gameplay.  The hills were blocked off by artificial invisible walls that you have to run around and follow the linear path.  The 3D of the battlefield had less effect on gameplay than it did in the true 2D game Final Fantasy Tactics.

Even SUmmoner 1 on the PS2 has more use of height in battle context (+ or - penalty to attack)

[Haexpane]

Rictras Shard wrote...

Haexpane wrote...



This isn't a "which is the more realistic dragon slaying game" it's simply "which was better"

And since the DA maps are actually maps, that makes them better.

This is just as valid an opinion as yours.

It's "valid" I guess, it's "better" because it looks more like what you imagine a paper map to look like is the reason?

The BG2 maps look better, have more detail, etc.. those are the reasons I like them better.  If you like DAO maps better because they look worse, I guess yeah, you can't argue against it.  But objectively you can understand it's the same as saying you like to date ugly girls instead of pretty girls because it's more realistic to what girls looked like in 2000BC?