ToEE - Retrospective

I like ToEE precisely because it is more like a roleplaying adventure and not heavy on story. It's the old-school "let's go explore this crazy temple and see what we find!" type thing. You're not going to find many games like that, especially today. If any.

Originally Posted by Fluent
I wouldn't say those tastes are niche. Quite the opposite actually. Niche IMO is enjoying ToEE or IWD and games that are combat-heavy without an emphasis on the things you mentioned (story, dialogue, choices, etc..) I would say the modern RPG is much more about those things and the niche RPGs are the one that focus more on combat and exploration. IMO.

Despite the CRPG revival there's still very few developers making RPGs that appeal to me. I know, but I am very picky, basically I want, Fallout 1 & 2 with fewer mole rats / radscorpions. Or Dark Sun; my favorite D&D game by far. HBS at least seemed headed in that direction with their Shadowrun games. I'm very much looking forward to A New World, No Truce With the Furies, and Sacred Fire. And Copper Dreams, even though it will probably be more on the combat heavy side, at least their will be the option of stealth to spice things up. And I love Expeditions: Viking, I only wished the combat was more challenging.

Note to fans: Co8 is fully compatible with Temple+.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Unless they remove some of the combat encounters, that wouldn't appeal to me at all. IWD in that engine would probably take 200 hours to finish.

I would like a 200 hour TB role-playing game!

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'll be sure to ponder that as I'm walking around in shorts and sandals this winter. ..

Shorts and sandals in winter. Ouch!!!

pibbur who shivers even by the thought of it.

ToEE is a great game, but learning D&D 3.5 is a PITA and I won't do it again.

Originally Posted by wolfing
I don't know if IWD2 is any better, but I couldn't play IWD1 past like 20 hours. It was all the same, like one big dungeon, no forests, no villages, no real story, just go there and keep going until you kill the boss. I think picking IWD to make it in the ToEE engine is the wrong choice.

By the way I played both Baldur's Gates almost turn-based, I think I set autopause very liberally.

Originally Posted by wolfing
By 'wrong choice' I mean IWD is just combat after combat after combat, and besides the game is already out there and there's even an Enhanced Edition version of it if I'm not mistaken. My point is that it would have been more attractive if they had implemented one of the many other D&D modules out there that have more 'meat'.

IWD isn't just combat though. It is indeed combat heavy, but its not just combat. Its set-piece combat, in the main. It provides a vast array of varied monsters all with different abilities and challenges to the point where the combat is actually the puzzle element. Instead of working out what order to pull the levers you have to work out what order to kill the enemy in etc. This is quality design. Obviously, if you don't perceive combat as anything other than just combat then there's not a lot anyone can do to make you like the game, but I feel obliged to correct anyone who uses the platitude of just combat with regards to IWD. I loved IWD, but I hated Diablo, so, no, it's not about there being just combat… That kind of analysis is the genre's biggest red-herring.

Originally Posted by wolfing
If the soundtrack is one of the big selling points of the game, no wonder I didn't care for it. I don't care about music in games, like at all.

Heathen. The sounds of the game are what makes the world, what swims in your mind as you play, what makes you want to instantly replay a game just from hearing the first few notes of your favourite track.

Sure, turn it all off and listen to whatever you like. You could do that while watching ballet as well if you wanted…

There's a George Lucas quote, to the effect that if you want a bigger picture, you need bigger sound. (I don't remember the exact quote. Google fails me.)

Originally Posted by lackblogger
Sure, turn it all off and listen to whatever you like. You could do that while watching ballet as well if you wanted…

Oh no I do listen to the game's music, it just doesn't do anything for me. I guess my mind is too focused in the gameplay and totally ignores the music. For example, I'm currently playing Divinity Original Sin 2, like several hours a day for the last week, about 50-60 hours so far… if you ask me anything about its music I couldn't tell you a thing, I don't remember anything at all.

Originally Posted by wolfing
Oh no I do listen to the game's music, it just doesn't do anything for me. I guess my mind is too focused in the gameplay and totally ignores the music. For example, I'm currently playing Divinity Original Sin 2, like several hours a day for the last week, about 50-60 hours so far… if you ask me anything about its music I couldn't tell you a thing, I don't remember anything at all.

Not sure what to say about that except that I feel kind of sorry for you.

The almost only things I remember from TOEE are :

- Atari not showing any kind of serious support, especially internationally
- the excellent in-game help
- the CO8 "GULP" mod for German players of the game
- the difficulty
- the NPCs taking so much stuff for their own

But most of all I remember the less than unpleasant support by Atari. Atari was the new name of Infogrames even then, and despite Infogrames being a French company they denied international players of the game patches.

That company was a more difficult beast. IMHO the real problem was Atari's organizational structure. All things related to DnD have been handled by Atari Inc, which was the former GT Interactive, a completely american company. So was its focus. To me, Atari Europe seemed to have close to no influence on the product at this time. My experience with Atari comes from NWN2, but Franck Sauer from Appeal/Outcast also complaint about some kind of rivalty between Europe and US - we all know that the US branch won that competition. My personal impression was, that Atari Europe tried its best to support EMEA, but simply suffered from low priorities within Atari US.

Originally Posted by wolfing
I think picking IWD to make it in the ToEE engine is the wrong choice.

It is a good choice because it is less ambitious. It is a prototype of the process of porting an IE game to the ToEE engine. Maybe they will port Baldur's Gate in the future?