Posted February 10, 2017
Being a Planescape: Torment veteran and also having invested some time into Icewind Dale, I find the "legendary" BG slightly disappointing now that I finally got around to play it. Supposedly a more story-focused game than ID, I believe the fighting:dialogue ratio has even been slightly higher here than in ID and it's already chapter 5! Hell 99% of dialogues don't last more than one or two responses, and in ID in the first area there's a priest that is very talkative and then you get a huge voice-acted exposition by Arundel, and then a nice chat with the undead king, and so on... The dream sequences are quite nice, but atmospheric chapter expositions were also there in ID. And just like in ID 99,9% of xp comes from combat. The quests are few and far between and consist mostly of simple kill this, fetch that, and the rewards are lackluster to the point that most of the guides out there are filled with out-of-character recommendations like help out guy A, become his best friend, hug him, and then kill him for xp, and continue to be "good" because you didn't lose rep anyway.
Compared to linear ID the main difference seems to be the open nature of the world in BG. But most of the areas seem to be there for pure hack&slash, so while it was fun for a while, after an n-th area with story not budging an inch I began to wonder what I can skip not to handicap myself too much later on, and since there's no way to know (unless you spoil things with walkthroughs) it's quite a frustrating experience. At least in ID you always knew you were pushing the story forward with each dungeon level.
In short: I totally do not understand the opinion that ID = simple dungeon crawler, BG = story driven and more complex. It seem like they are about equal in both aspects, the only difference being the open world.
Meanwhile, based on reputation I thought I'll be comparing BG to Planescape more than ID. I was excited about the fact that you do not just create companions like in ID but they come with their own backstory... then realised it mostly amounts to a very basic quest and very short biography. The first disappointment came when I got my first companions and tried to talk with them... nope, not possible. A barbarian with a hamster friend? What a cool idea, I'd like to know more! But quickly I find out that all this relationship amounts to is just that it exists. No discovering Dak'kon's past. Or even Sulik from Fallout 2. Yeah, Fallout 2 came out same year as BG and Fallout 1 preceded it. Yet how extensive the dialogue trees were in Fallout, how complex the quests.
Don't get me wrong, I'm having some fun, but it's mostly some open world exploration + hack and slash type of fun with all the positives and negatives of the D&D Infinity Engine, not a pinnacle of RPG experience it's lauded to be, where combat, story, exploration, and role-play are all supposed to go hand in hand.
(I'll add a question: what can I skip if I want to focus on story, granted I play sub-optimal builds - loaded my warrior with some charisma and int/wis at the cost of other stats because I thought I'd be using such stats like I was in Planescape or Fallout when interacting with the world in a true-RPG manner - neither do I go the "reload till you get max possible HP on lvl-up" route, which feels to me like cheating or a design mistake)
Compared to linear ID the main difference seems to be the open nature of the world in BG. But most of the areas seem to be there for pure hack&slash, so while it was fun for a while, after an n-th area with story not budging an inch I began to wonder what I can skip not to handicap myself too much later on, and since there's no way to know (unless you spoil things with walkthroughs) it's quite a frustrating experience. At least in ID you always knew you were pushing the story forward with each dungeon level.
In short: I totally do not understand the opinion that ID = simple dungeon crawler, BG = story driven and more complex. It seem like they are about equal in both aspects, the only difference being the open world.
Meanwhile, based on reputation I thought I'll be comparing BG to Planescape more than ID. I was excited about the fact that you do not just create companions like in ID but they come with their own backstory... then realised it mostly amounts to a very basic quest and very short biography. The first disappointment came when I got my first companions and tried to talk with them... nope, not possible. A barbarian with a hamster friend? What a cool idea, I'd like to know more! But quickly I find out that all this relationship amounts to is just that it exists. No discovering Dak'kon's past. Or even Sulik from Fallout 2. Yeah, Fallout 2 came out same year as BG and Fallout 1 preceded it. Yet how extensive the dialogue trees were in Fallout, how complex the quests.
Don't get me wrong, I'm having some fun, but it's mostly some open world exploration + hack and slash type of fun with all the positives and negatives of the D&D Infinity Engine, not a pinnacle of RPG experience it's lauded to be, where combat, story, exploration, and role-play are all supposed to go hand in hand.
(I'll add a question: what can I skip if I want to focus on story, granted I play sub-optimal builds - loaded my warrior with some charisma and int/wis at the cost of other stats because I thought I'd be using such stats like I was in Planescape or Fallout when interacting with the world in a true-RPG manner - neither do I go the "reload till you get max possible HP on lvl-up" route, which feels to me like cheating or a design mistake)
Post edited February 10, 2017 by CaveSoundMaster