Baldur's Gate 2's co-lead designer was asked to make Baldur's Gate 4 after Larian declined: 'Having to compete against Baldur's Gate 3? That would be insanity'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/baldurs-gate-2s-co-lead-designer-was-asked-to-make-baldurs-gate-4-after-larian-declined-having-to-compete-against-baldurs-gate-3-that-would-be-insanity/
353 points · 66 comments · view on lemmy.world
66 Comments
KindaABigDyl@programming.dev · 103 pts · 45d
Here's how it's gonna go down:
TwinTitans@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 45d
You could insert so many different companies they’ve acquired into that… so sad.
BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 44d
Microsoft would have to buy hasbro in it's entirety because wotc is the only piece worth anything, they'd never drop it. Other than that, disgustingly plausible. Could imagine microsoft buying hasbro just for wotc and shutting everything else down
twilightwolf90@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 45d
I wish that happened... Because it would be karma. You should check the employment history of hasbro's execs. Chris Cocks? Ex-microsoft. Before him? Cynthia Williams? Ex-msft.
And whatever you do, do not read this interview unless you want to be super pissed. https://www.theverge.com/podcast/890703/hasbro-toys-games-magic-exodus-ai-tariffs
mursejoy@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 45d
This is hilarious. I doubt Microsoft buys anymore IP at this point. Seems like they are failing hard but who knows they make the craziest decisions.
Either way it’ll end in layoffs.
oyo@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 43d
Even if everything they did from now on was wildly successful there would be layoffs.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 45d
depressingly plausible. I've long wondered if microslop was hoarding studios, or just gobbling up IP....
thermal_shock@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 45d
All this after they pack on debt and extract all the money from it.
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 44d
Also. Somehow... Loot boxes. After a call from EA.
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 44d
God, comparing the cast of characters from outer worlds 1 (didn't touch 2 so I won't judge) to BG3, that would just be cruel to make obsidian follow up bg3. Lambs to the slaughter.
jtrek@startrek.website · 91 pts · 45d
I enjoyed bg3, but DND 5e is not a system I enjoy nor want more of. It's surprisingly shallow.
tynansdtm@lemmy.ml · 43 pts · 45d
This is how I feel. And honestly how the developers of BG3 seemed to feel. Additional context for other readers if not necessarily for you, but 3.5 and Pathfinder have a lot of what they call the "magical Christmas Tree effect" where someone using Detect Magic on a player character would see a magical aura around every single one of your body parts. Barring specific character build decisions there was usually a best-in-slot magical item for every place you could have one, and the difficulty curve of the game assumed that you would.
5e, especially early 5e, attempted to curb this. Magic items were rare and powerful, but more importantly interesting. Strict numerical bonuses were powerful but boring so they were mostly eliminated. Flash or nothing was the name of the game, and indeed some magical items literally do nothing but enhance looks.
BG3 said no to this. Many possible character builds can only be done, or are strongly encouraged, with sets of magic items. It was an attempt to add depth and choice back in while restricted by a system that had little of it.
jtrek@startrek.website · 15 pts · 45d
Yeah, but unfortunately they kept 5e's design principle of "you barely get any feats". I want my characters to be interesting because of who they are, not because of what glowing doodads they looted from more interesting dead people.
Also class + level is so coarse. I'd rather be able to, like, buy individual things I want. Get XP for doing a quest, buy more sneak attack. Or a spell slot. Maybe hit dice. Really let me mix and match.
But DND 5e is designed to have a small decision space in builds. They want the half paying attention guy's character to perform about as well as the optimizer, instead of the huge gap between those archetypes that 3e had.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 45d
i really liked the... I think it was the Oracle class in pathfinder. that would be fun.
Zarobi@aussie.zone · 4 pts · 45d
I always thought it was the most interesting class because each power comes with a weakness, and they grow in power as you level up. Very X-Men like. Here's some curse examples for people who don't know what the class is about:
It's one of the reasons I love Pathfinder more than DnD. So much variety and creativity in the classes. More reading
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 45d
Clouded vision was the curse/perk I wanted to pick! It looks so fun to play. And my vision sucks so I could lean into that aspect of my self for the character rather than something more annoying
fushuan@piefed.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 44d
BG3's Devs didn't feel like 5E was too shallow, iirc they said that their next game wouldn't be 5E because it was too complex and they felt it didn't correctly fit what they wanted in a game. Have you checked the divinity games? Their systems are much, much simpler than 5E is.
I'm hyped beyond belief for the next divinity game, Divinity, but I warn you, the game system will be much simpler.
shroomato@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 44d
Either way it's a system designed for pen and paper, which inevitably imposes some limits compared to something custom tailored for a video game format from the get go.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 45d
It's among my favorites, and I'm nervous for whatever Divinity's got in its place.
ahornsirup@feddit.org · 15 pts · 45d
That's a controversial opinion but I agree with you. Going by the Original Sin games I prefer 5e over the rules Larian made for Divinity.
pennomi@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 45d
Zarobi@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 45d
Functionally it kind of just removes the curtain and reveals how effective health points (EHP) vs total health points actually works. But God it felt really shit to actually play. It goes against gaming convention.
dogslayeggs@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 45d
While BG3 was a better game, the combat in Divinity was more fun. Not only was cheese encouraged, it was almost required at higher difficulty levels. Summoning a lava worm to shoot a laser beam at some tossed out fire traps to cause a million damage? Sure, why not?
Womble@piefed.world · 3 pts · 44d
Its so interesting how differently people view things, that sounds horrible to me (and matches my short experience with d:os). I want a game that has hard difficulty that I can beat by making smart decisions, not figuring out how to break the underlying system.
dogslayeggs@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 44d
I like ridiculous things to happen. I also hate misses in any game. That's too realistic for me.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 45d
Given how much more likely one is to have played 5e than any other system, it's probably not all that controversial.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 45d
5e is a great system for a “Rule of Cool” style of DMing. That’s amazing for a decent DM and inexperienced/less technical players.
But it is not a good CRPG system or a good system for experienced and technical players. There’s a lot of “can I…” and “I want to…” that slows down combat even when you know the rules.
Plus, there’s stuff like “can a centaur ride a horse?” where 5e is inconsistent. Or the infamous peasant rail gun.
jtrek@startrek.website · 6 pts · 45d
It's not even that good at that. Fate, for example, is a much lighter and better system for that. Aspects are a very simple system for setting expectations and letting players do wacky things based on them.
If I was going to run a game for new players I would absolutely not reach for 5e. It provides too much fertilizer for "can I move that far?" and "if he's flying 30' up can I still shoot him?" minutia.
Zarobi@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 45d
Yeah to me 5e is in a weird place right now. Not quite narrative focused and not quite crunchy numbers focused either. It's like a middle ground where some parts are highly specific but others are left to interpretation. I've found people mostly get confused by this ambiguity.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 45d
I probably had fewer "can I...?" questions in BG3 than any other CRPG, if for no other reason than that all of the enemy attributes are exposed at all times, and your spells tell you which attributes they interact with. It's that same quality that allows the technical design of Larian's engine to shine, and it made large swaths of the genre feel dated immediately. Either in the video game or the tabletop, my combats don't have many questions to bog them down.
Cethin@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 45d
I disagree. It's a poorly designed system that fails at accomplishing anything better than alternatives. The thing it has going for it is the name/marketing. There are lighter systems that are easier and cooler, there are heavier systems that are more tactical, and there are equivalent systems that are less jank. The fact that there's things like the bonus action, that was added so late in development it was never playtested, in 5e makes it pretty awful to play. There are so many exceptions you have to learn to even start too. It's not a good system for noobs and it's not a good system for experienced players.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 43d
I've not yet played divinity 2, currently playing baldur's gate 3 for the first time and really enjoying it. So I'm actually kind of excited for divinity 3. Looks like it's a couple of years away anyway tho.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 43d
I played Original Sin 2 after BG3, and at first it leaves a huge positive impression, but then more and more problems present themselves as time goes on. The armor systems create stunlocking issues; the XP system encourages genocide; the skill system feels freeing at first but ends up landing on dominant strategies very quickly. It's still a good game, and they've said in an AMA that some of my biggest criticisms won't be in this new Divinity, but their track record thus far is that their own RPG systems are not as good as 5e.
Divinity might also be closer than you think. If they go early access, which they haven't committed to, we might be playing it next year.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 43d
Really? Well that sounds mostly good news to me! Early access divinity would be exciting. And yeah, I know divinity 2 is an older game, I'm expecting to have some issues with it but I'll certainly give it a try.
TBH baldur's gate 3 has been the first game of this type I've played. Was never into D&D stuff, so I'm not really aware of what could be better or different. I'm only just now learning that I enjoy games like this!
ampersandrew@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 43d
Nice! If you got used to your ability to "use X on Y" to solve problems creatively, that's Larian's special sauce, so unfortunately, you're unlikely to find that kind of depth in any other video game besides those last two Divinity: Original Sin games. As far as the combat and skill dice rolls go though, there are definitely plenty more of those.
iamthetot@piefed.ca · 10 pts · 45d
The dnd 5e-ness of BG3 was among the worst parts of it.
huey_m@reddthat.com · 9 pts · 45d
jtrek@startrek.website · 11 pts · 45d
This is true. However,
It's kind of bad at that goal. It's really fiddly and full of friction points. What bonus do you get for 16 strength? Why do they insist on keeping that mapping.
Further evidence of it not actually being great at casual play.
Which leads me to
Counter argument: it's actually really bad at that. It's so specific and idiosyncratic it pushes people away. Uncountable players just bounce off the whole genre because their first impression is fiddly "what does 15 strength mean again?" and "sorry, you can't fit your cool idea into this class/level system"
Fate Core or Accelerated would be much more in line with how people think about this sort of stuff.
huey_m@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 45d
jtrek@startrek.website · 2 pts · 44d
I mean, this is true, but if you ignore enough rules you're essentially playing a different game. I talked to someone once who "played DND" but didn't use skills or spell slots, and I think they just let casters interpret spells based on the names. That's so different it's arguably a different game. Or at least as different as a Chihuahua and a husky.
I agree with this, but note those systems are far more crunchy than DND. Something like Fate goes in the other direction, and I think is why it's better for fast games.
Though as an aside, a downside of Fate is it's so open it can cause a tyranny of the blank page effect. DND puts you in a pretty small box, and that can be helpful for people. The small decision space is a positive for some kinds of players. Though if you were doing Fate, you could just tell people to pick from some core ideas similar to character classes.
This is also undeniable. Someone who's going to half-ass it will drag down a game in any system.
I think we agree more than we disagree for what it's worth. Check out Fate though. It's free ( https://fate-srd.com/ )
huey_m@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 44d
tal@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 45d
D&D was optimized for pencil-and-paper-and-dice play. I mean, it has to keep the math simple to keep the game going.
I think that a ruleset optimized for computer RPGs would probably look somewhat different.
jtrek@startrek.website · 6 pts · 45d
It's funny because while 5e has simpler math than the predecessors, it's still kind of clunky. 1d20 + proficiency + modifier isn't that bad, but I've seen a lot of players who can't correctly add 16 + 7.
I really liked the nWoD system where you roll a bunch of d10s and just count how many came up >= 8. No addition or subtraction.
Also 1d20+stuff is flat probability, which feels bad.
But also 100 times this. You could do so many things that would be painful to do by hand at the table.
TipRing@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 45d
The variance on a single d20 is miserable after playing games with better probability curves.
Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 45d
I love the three d6 curve from Hero System
TipRing@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 45d
I like Fudge dice, but understand if people want higher variance than that. I do like that characters tend to succeed at things they are good at (but not always) and fail at things they are bad at (but not always). Some people liken this to diceless, but my experience is that it's just enough variance to keep you on your toes and add drama.
Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 45d
Iron Kingdoms uses a nice system too, where the better your are the less variance your roll get.
tal@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 44d
https://old.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1jphv4b/favorite_calculator_for_the_table/
One can grab an inexpensive calculator if it's a matter of being able to do it at all, I suppose. Or use a phone calculator app. But...even with a calculator, there are just going to be some limitations on how many modifiers one can reasonably have and how they can interact. Like, if you have, say, four or five inputs for a check that all have percentile modifiers from various equipment or spells or statuses or whatever, it just starts to become a pain to deal with. A computer won't notice that, and there, it's fine. But for TTRPGs, one doesn't want to turn a play session into a bunch of people just playing Sim Spreadsheet. Kinda bogs down the game, kills the flavor.
I bet that there are some people who won't even play D&D in its present form because of the math.
searches
https://old.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/177rybf/have_a_friend_who_struggles_at_math_what_can_i_do/
orenj@leminal.space · 3 pts · 45d
I think I'd rather see more 4e than 5e at this point. Its so one-dimensional
agentTeiko@piefed.social · 3 pts · 45d
Yep I moved to gurps it was a game changer
Jyrdano@lemmy.world · 48 pts · 45d
Id rather see NWN 3, or even better yet,
hear me out
something new.
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 14 pts · 45d
NWN 3: The Winter
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 45d
I have it on mostly dead authority that it's coming!
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 45d
Give me Dark Sun!
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social · 4 pts · 45d
Dungeons and Dragons: Birthright.
Let's do it! Bring us back to Aebrynis!
I'm probably the only person out there who wants this. Some pen pusher would compare it to kingmaker which is just not the same at all.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 45d
Is that Elvish for "Ay! Bronies!" ?
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 37 pts · 45d
Given the success of BG3 it would be very hard to do BG4 successfully, and another studio will get raked over the coals for anything not as good, which is a very high bar. It’ll be first dismissed as Hasbro continuing to ruin D&D, then the studio will get called crappy and hit their reputation.
Hasbro/Wizards could instead have a few other studios build out some smaller standalone campaigns for half or a third the target price and see what sticks.
Imagine a Phandelver or Ice Spire Peak, or a Waterdeep series of campaigns with a smaller world and more linear story progression (you still need player choices to matter) — get the core mechanics right, build up some tight stories that players respond to, THEN take it open world with many characters and after that build out BG4.
BG2 to BG3 was a long ass time. I think fans would prefer BG4 done well even if it takes longer than having to pretend there is no BG4 in Ba Sing Se
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 45d
Even if they really want to use an existing series for the brand recognition, they could do Neverwinter Nights or Icewind Dale or something.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social · 8 pts · 45d
IMO Don't try to make a sequel, just make another story in the world. Call it Baldur's Gate: GameTitleGoesHere
I'd take IWD though, I loved those games and own physical box copies I picked up at compUSA, and i'd even take it as a combat heavy spinoff with light story, just like the first one. Getting bogged down with dialogue in every city is a turnoff for me as much as I adore BG2/3. Was so nice bringing my own party and exploring the world, one dead beetle, lizardman or undead at a time.
ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca · 2 pts · 45d
Ooh, another Icewind Dale would be amazing. It's been 26 years.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 45d
While we're at other properties, when's the last time Drizz't made an appearance? We should do a Drizz't game.
ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca · 2 pts · 45d
I am half concerned WoTC forgot the lore in the intervening 13 years since the last book, but they did release the Magic card a little while ago so perhaps they will do something interesting with him again.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 45d
and he'll be double wielding... i don't know, nunchucks this time. because WoTC
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org · 5 pts · 45d
That is kinda funny. My advice on how to save Halo was very similar. Smaller more focused campaigns. One big multiplayer every one can play.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 45d
To be fair, bg3 is more Divinity Souls 3 than BG3...
They just slapped some BG paint on top of it.
Trying to find a studio that can make a sequel to that isn't going to work out well. They need to make the tough call of finding another studio that will take the franchise and make a good game how they know how to make a good game.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 44d
I would love it if someone made a modernized successor to BG2. Real-time with pause. Probably something other than D&D 2.x - then again maybe something based on an osr ttrpg ruleset could be interesting (look, I just don't like thac0). At least a full 6 member party, and full party control.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 43d
They're gonna learn all the wrong lessons from bg3 and copy it
The lesson should be to let studios do what they're good at. They need to find a good studio they trust, give them BG4, and trust them to make a good game even if fundamentally different than bg3 or bg2.
It's the antithesis of COD or Madden that release carbon copies every year, give people a new game with a familiar setting
justdaveisfine@piefed.social · 18 pts · 45d
I suspect Hasbro went ahead and continued offering BG4 to studios until one of them took the bait.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 45d
Classic Hasbro trying to brute force success when they have no clue what they‘re working with. One can only hope nobody takes on the project when Hasbro approaches them. Best thing that could happen is that nobody really cares and the game is forgotten quickly since it would be nothing like any of the other BG games. Worst case it tarnishes the franchise forever.
Kolanaki@pawb.social · -5 pts · 45d
It's only insanity if you don't have ideas and can't think logically about how the player could do any given thing in the game.