Posted February 12, 2017
crumb24: I think BG2 might be a better fit for you than BG1. In BG2, your party NPCs have dialogue with you and with each other every so often, which does not occur in BG1 so much. It also has romances you can try. And there are a lot fewer wilderness areas to explore that don't have to do with any quests. There's still a lot of optional content, but overall I think the quests are more varied too.
The first half of Chapter 6 in BG1 is almost all dialogue and no fights as you return to Candlekeep and explore its library too, so I would continue your game, especially since you are getting fairly close to the end.
Now that was really informative thank you. I'll continue on focusing on the main quest (still talking to random guys I come by but not wandering off to wilderness). But that's what I mean by pacing if huge part of the game is mostly fighting and then it get turned on its head for the last chapter. Mass Effect had the opposite problem for example, where the beginning in Citadel Station had lots and lots of story and talking and lasted quite long and then after that you were fighting, grinding resources and having much simpler encounters for most of the game (with some notable exceptions). Good to know I'm slowly moving towards the end, with people claiming hundreds of hours I thought that was not the case. The first half of Chapter 6 in BG1 is almost all dialogue and no fights as you return to Candlekeep and explore its library too, so I would continue your game, especially since you are getting fairly close to the end.
(on a sidenote, when I was very young I read the Baldur's Gate novelisation btw, don't remember much of it, but the game doesn't seem to remind me much)
Stig79: 6. Cash and XP is not limited in BG. Not at all. You just don't get loads of it right away. I think I ended up on 30k gold and nothing worthwile to spend it on, when I beat it last time.
That was about IWD not BG, I quoted Hickory, not you. Obviously what I meant is the same as you, in BG i'm just overflowing with gold and relatively powerful items. Stig79: All the dialogue makes it feel longer too.
3. That vendor in Beregost still has way more to say than most of the Diablo NPCs, and the Diablo ones are main NPCs.
5. the backstory /of Diablo 2 NPCs/ is very very short. You can't even ask any in-depth questions. You basically just click an "information button" and the game just tells you stuff. No options or branches in the conversations at all.
Yes, Diablo2 doesn't have branches, point for Baldur's gate, but as for the rest, I'm having an impression we're playing different games. 3. That vendor in Beregost still has way more to say than most of the Diablo NPCs, and the Diablo ones are main NPCs.
5. the backstory /of Diablo 2 NPCs/ is very very short. You can't even ask any in-depth questions. You basically just click an "information button" and the game just tells you stuff. No options or branches in the conversations at all.
Stig79: The pacing is good. If you keep wandering off into the wilderness for 30 hours, it will, of course, feel a bit off.
Well, if I don't, I can't complete many quests that I'm getting. I explored half the map before I finally found the captain of the guard of Nashkel. And I also worry that if I don't explore I'll end up underpowered for the main quest. There's no way to tell, if the game as a whole offers you much more power than needed or is it balanced tighter. And shouldn't optional locations offer similar quality as the main quest in an open world game (see for example Fallout 1&2)? I can refer you to Ben "Yahtzee" Crashaw's opinions about open world design if you want to know the philosophy about the whole thing to which I subscribe, if you know the guy. Stig79: Once you get to Baldur's Gate itself you get a myriad of topics. Different ones for each district in the city, really.And you get LOADS of information that fleshes out the earlier bits in the game too.
Well I'm currently exploring Baldur's Gate, and it does feel more RPGy, I agree. The problem is it took me so much time to get here. And yet still, it feels very bare-bones compared to what I'm used to in other RPGs. But we'll see about that chapter 6 thing Crumb24 mentioned. To reiterate: all of this is not about the quality of Baldur's Gate itself, it's about Baldur's Gate in comparison to others. It is said to have "more" story and world-building than other games, whereas I find many strong examples to the contrary. It's more about WHAT Baldur's Gate than HOW GOOD it is. I had quite a lot of fun with a few caveats (like that moment on 3rd level of Cloakwood mines when I realised I have to dump huge pile of loot or end up backtracking a huge distance to sell it cause I have no more inventory slots even after trying to be selective about what to carry...)
Post edited February 12, 2017 by CaveSoundMaster