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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Hey guys glad to have the show back I was concerned on what had happened. I’m sorry to hear that Jordan is gone, does this mean you need a replacement?
@Activision: Speaking of them only having a few actual games they are reviving the Sierra brand apparently. If you go to http://www.sierra.com you can see the trailer they have released for this.
I am not sure what to make of it, since more will be revealed at Gamecon. When you mentioned them only having a few games that belong to them this got me thinking that this may be in part reason why they are reviving the Sierra brand to make more games. I don’t know if this means they will hire the old Sierra game developers, get new ones and what will be the quality of the games, what should we expect? I think I will keep my expectations very low on this one.
@ Disney revenue up: Yeah, Ouch indeed “we have money now that we’ve restructured a bunch of people out of jobs”
@Sony lawsuit settlement: No matter what Sony does they still look bad for holding back that information, why they thought that idea was good is beyond me.
@Yogcast Kickstarter: Everyone of these is I think a Investment, since gambling to me is more a game of chance like with dice, horses, sports, etc. If you don’t do your research then yes you are gambling the money. However as Jonah pointed out find out if they are a experienced game maker and it’s less of a risk. I trust Obsidian because of their impressive resume of past games they have made. I’ve been that careful with the other projects I’ve backed or kept an on. Paul is right as well as you need more then just a neat or cool idea, you need to know how to make that idea happen. So with that in mind I think you can use Kickstart to smartly invest in a games future and avoid games that will likely not make it.
@ Spaced Invaders: I think Paul is right here and that this is going to be another Battleship movie. This doesn’t seem like a good enough material to make a movie out of that won’t seem generic. We have so many of those already as Jonah tried to point out. This could be fun IF they make it tongue in cheek parody like Mars Attack was. But they will probably take the over serious tone and try for a Independence Day and fail. Maybe they will get a good writer and director but this does seem like a desperate grasping at straws.
@ PC and Console decline: Really? You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means.
QotW: With more digital games this certainly seems possible, making it easier to beta perhaps and find bugs to be fixed later.