Baldur’s Gate isn’t too old, it was released in November of 1998, but that’s still a bit dated now. The gaming industry isn’t friendly to the years, often working in what seems to be accelerated “dog years” in terms of technological advancements. It figured this was worth covering because it’s one of the best selling and considered a top tier single-player RPG by most accounts.
It was also developed by BioWare, who, at the time, only had one other game under their belt from two years before called Shattered Steel.
The story begins just after a devastating event in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign called the “Time of Troubles.” This was a great twist in the standard D&D campaign, it caused all curative magic (clerics) to lose their ability to heal unless near their deity, magic didn’t function correctly (I believe this is where the Wild Mage came from) and was unpredictable and gods walked the earth as mortals which caused magic to, in effect, die while the gods were away. Since the storyline starts slightly after this event, the game contains healing and magic but the storyline is impacted by prior events of course, people have trust issues.
The game was made great because it held “mostly true” to the 2nd Edition D&D roots so the learning curve for D&D player’s wasn’t so rough; some things were adjusted to handle the real-time effect of a video game RPG. You could party with up to six Non-Player-Characters (NPC’s) whom would swap in and out of your active party over time as part of the storyline (something also implemented by the US release of Final Fantasy 2).
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Almost missed this episode.
@Microsoft’s decision to reverse its online policies
Dunno about it. I think it’s a bit too late. Just like a commented to a youtuber, similar hardware, smaller price – I think PS4 is better placed.
And due to using similar hardware, I expect the game libraries to be similar.
If you ask me, it’ll be the price and the exclusives that will make the difference.
@EA’s Soderlund states next-gen consoles should have come a year earlier
… idiot.
Hardware takes time and resources to develop. It’s not like you can set up a day one patch for a piece of hardware. Oops, the CPU bus should have been 256 bits wide, well, no worries, we’ll ship a day one motherboard replacement …
@Fish claims Fez 2 won’t come to Xbox One due to anti-indie policy
mmm not sure about it being a fit. I think that Team Meat was also a bit angry at the new consoles. So …
Thing is, while something to be praised, making such a stand can cause them some financial grief. I mean the devs built some communities on the platforms they released their games. Switching the platform could mean a smaller community, possibly a smaller market.
@Better late than never
It’s never late to have a new generation of consoles. If it came a year earlier, it would most likely be more expensive. Or less refined. Still, I can barely wait for the PS4. The Microsoft swing did nothing to change my mind.
I still will be getting a PS4. Probably will import it because of the atrocious Europe and UK price markups. I know there are taxes involved but we have to pay almost as much in pounds as you pay in dollars.
@Premium games
At the beginning of the previous generation here in UK games cost almost £60. But it quickly fell to £40 which was the price of premium games last generation. No one in UK is going to pay more than £40 for a game. Especially now that the consoles are region free.
@Betrayal
I agree with Alien. I know that Microsoft won’t turn back on their new promises as it would be financial suicide. But I hear a lot of people saying that they don’t trust Xbox anymore and won’t buy the Xbone. I think Microsoft shot itself in the foot pretty bad. That and the price. Here in UK the price differential is pretty bad(£429 vs £349) It will make a lot of difference here in UK.
@Star Wars Battlefield
Battlefront was a blatant rip off of Battlefield and now seeing DICE have the development is quite strange. I am just glad the game is being developed by someone. I loved the first 2 games and the Lord of the Rings: Conquest atrocity which came out some years ago was a poor representation of the series.
@There is something Fishy about the Microsoft East Indie Trading Company
I quite enjoy indie games on Xbox 360. Recently played White Noise (multiplayer rip off of Slender) which cost as much as a can of coke and gave me more fun than most premium games. I would love to see greater support for Indie games in the next generation. A note on Fish rant, if Microsoft policies are so anti-Indie than how did those thousands of games made it to the Indie channel?
@being impressed
None really. I mean, the games are good but none of them struck me as particularly amazing. Probably because I don’t tend to watch much trailers and just wait for the games. If I was to choose one then I enjoyed the Battlefield 4 gameplay. Looking forward to bringing down skyscrapers and reducing maps to rubble. And 64 player console battles. The game itself looked just like Battlefield 3 thou.
@loosing a game disk on a territory of your own bedroom
I think the problem here is not that Alpha Protocol disk was easy to loose because its tangible but because you are a scatterbrain. A digital copy won’t fix that.