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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Veterans to the rescue!
Maybe I’m not a ‘true’ veteren but I’ve been writing in for over a year now so I’m starting to fall into that category, I guess.
Anyway, I’m waiting for the plane to leave after a week’s vacation in Sicilly which I used to relax on the beach and at the pool but also to give Metal Gear Solid another go (hurray for the Vita!). I played through MGS3 (19.5 hours – embarrassing) and I really enjoyed it despite my two previous unsuccessful attempts to get into the game. Do you guys have any experience with the series?
@qotw
You mentioned Red Dead Redemption in the episode. I played tens of hours of the game, including MP (Platinum, yo!) and I had to play in the violence-less mode because it was impossible to focus on anything else with people riding around and shooting each other in the other mode. I tend not to play MP games a lot but when I do I try to get together with people from specific communities from podcasts and message boards. This decreases the number of unpleasant encounters.
Hey guys, I didn’t comment on the last two because I felt that I had answered the QotW and didn’t have anything to add.
@Dungeon Keeper: I think the Mobile version of the original is very poor with these arbitrary time restraints. I agree that players get very tired of being nickeled and dimed. It doesn’t feel like a real game with these limitations.
@Bartle: I’d like to second Jordan’s comments that your segment on this was so through that I can’t really add anything myself without being a broken record on this topic. I really do feel that the Free-to-play games need to change and find a different way to work.
@QotW: I have to second what Pawwel said, I tend to stick with a close nit group of people who I know relatively well. I remember once trying Red Dead Redemption in MP and got sniped three times by the same person in the starting area, I quit MP of that game right there. I feel like Paul in that I am getting older but also been quite content to play single player. I found the WoW experience to be “Too many people in the pool”. I’m not very comfortable even with the anonymity of the internet with just talking with random people. Perhaps because I never forget these are real people I am talking to and never just a handle and avatar.
There was also a StarCraft II custom Map game called ‘Mafia’ that my Polycast group played. In it you are a Town trying to find the Mafia members before they kill all the Towns people during the night. There was a number of trolls going on with that game, those not taking it seriously and just trying to ruin it for everyone that did cause me to quit a few times.
So yes the few times I have done Online MP where random strangers were involved I have quit. Hence why I stick to people I know well enough.
I wanted to add a question:
You talked about Rockstar Games in a previous episode and how the hero dies no matter what. I remember at the time it upset many people that this happened. It also happened in other Rockstar Games, *spoiler* LA Noir *spoiler* and I’ve been told each GTA protagonist dies by the time you get to the next game. So I wondered why when people don’t want the “cliché” happy ending and they get the Hero dies ending instead, that they get upset about. They can’t seem to make up their mind if they want a good ending or a “bad” ending (by that I mean the Hero dies or something similar).