Is Dragon Age really a BG successor?

Is Dragon Age a genuine successor to BG?

  • Yes!

    Votes: 38 33.3%
  • Yes, but it won't be as good

    Votes: 11 9.6%
  • No, BioWare doesn't make them like that any more

    Votes: 41 36.0%
  • No, EA will make it too mainstream

    Votes: 24 21.1%

  • Total voters
    114
I don't know what you guys are smoking, but comparing NWN to BG is an insult to BG. (edit: I mean, BG as a series)
But well, the OC of NWN and NWN 2 is just too bad and I don't bother to get the X packs, may be I missed something.

I agree, and you did. Mask of the Betrayer is great, and Hordes of the Underdark is quite entertaining too, as dungeon crawlers go.

Thing is, NWN was originally intended as the BG2 sequel. You were even supposed to be able to import your characters. They only changed that when D&D 3.0 came out and they decided to go with that instead.

"Spiritual successor" is a vague and nebulous term and needs to be anchored somewhere for it to mean something -- and it's bound to mean different things for different people. Someone installed all the possible romance pack mods in BG2, which probably means they feel that all the intra-party drama was what made it so awesome. Someone else carefully crafted a perfectly min-maxed kensai/mage and soloed through the damn thing, which probably means they're looking for rich character development options and challenge. Someone else liked the freeform early part of BG2 with its wide variety of sidequests, some tailored to specific characters. Someone else liked the hand-crafted 2d art. Yet someone else has the hots for Minsc. (Hell, there's probably someone out there dreaming of Boo.) And so on and so forth.

BG, based on AD&D, has
- Complex (if not TOO complex for kids nowadays) combat experience. I still remember all the spell counters.

NWN and NWN2 was also based on D&D and is at least as complex in terms of combat.

- Hard combat that involves using your ability (a.k.a. your brain) instead of grinding exp.

Please explain.

- Character advancement that isn't just looting "shinnies". Epic levels that's really EPIC

Also present in NWN and NWN2.

NWN? I steamrolled it with a barbarian and never looked back, it is easy, simple, it can be translated to a hack n' slash game easily.

Yup, it's easier than BG -- although if you crank up the difficulty, it can become more challenging. NWN2 in Hardcore, especially. And you can always try different character builds -- playing as a bard or rogue is much more rewarding in many ways than playing as a barbarian.

NWN2? I *think* I played it with my friend. But sadly I can't even remember if I finished it. You can tell how *good* a game it is, I think.
edit: Oh and not to mention, the loading times.

Ok back to DA.
No multiplayer? How could it be BG if it doesn't have multiplayer?
End of discussion.

I always keep forgetting about that, never having used multiplayer in any of these games.
 
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I though it showed promise before the new look web-site and advertising. I'm waiting to see the actual game elements and staying away from the hype machine atm.
 
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JDR13 said:
I don't think BG was a lot less fun than BG2, in fact, many people even preferred the first game. As far interesting combat is concerned, BG, IWD, and TOEE all had very good combat imo.

To someone that was unfamiliar to D&D system, BG felt more tedious. This is not to say that it wasn't a great game, since I was commenting only on the combat system.
 
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I agree.

NWN 1 anyways. I'll hold my opinion on NWN 2 for when I actually get around to playing it. :)

I personally love all of NWN 1 and 2 and all of the add-ons. But that is just me. Like BG2 better though.
 
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"Spiritual successor" is a vague and nebulous term and ..
Thus my conclusion. If we're just looking at "getting similar game experience" as definition of "Spiritual successor", well, I had great multiplayer experience in BG, non would be in DA, so IMO, DA will never be a spiritual successor of BG to me.
NWN and NWN2 was also based on D&D and is at least as complex in terms of combat.

Please explain.
Yes, both based on DND. No, pardon me for skipping details, I never imagine I can beat BG with my NWN-Barb-Hack-N-Slash playstyle.

Remember Jon irenicus? remember how you beat him?
/* spoiler */





Me and my friend see him weaving spell in his immune bubble,
my rogue friend think it might be a good idea to put some nasty traps under him since he's ignoring us.
what happen after the conversation is, well, he's dead by the traps as he lower his bubble, my party aren't even on the same screen when he dies.

This is what I call use your ability to beat a game.
It doesn't need to be open end/sand box/open world.

Yup, it's easier than BG — although if you crank up the difficulty, it can become more challenging. NWN2 in Hardcore, especially. And you can always try different character builds — playing as a bard or rogue is much more rewarding in many ways than playing as a barbarian.
But it'll basically be the same, there isn't alternative way to finish the plot.
And there's still plenty of immunity gear to trivialize everything.

Relax… you don't have to argue with me, I'm a BG fanboy and my opinion is biased.
edit: and I'm really really disappointed when I play NWN.
 
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I will miss the MP too. I think any party based RPG should be able to offer coop MP in the vein of BG, but very few have (and noone has done it better).
 
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I will miss the MP too. I think any party based RPG should be able to offer coop MP in the vein of BG, but very few have (and noone has done it better).

I first know about "no MP" in a 1up video interviewing the bioware doctors.
The host actually kids that the interview is over when they announce there will be no MP in DA.

What piss me off is, they claim "it cannot be done".

You can do BG more than a decade ago with MP.
Now with all the new Tech more resources and you CANNOT do it.
IMHO, They care more about their profit than their users, us gamers.
I don't give a damn to their EXCUSES. Bioware is a no for me ever since then.
WTF would I buy their game funding them when they're not working for the gamer's best game experience.
 
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People actually played the MP for Baldur's Gate? I thought IWD would of been a better choice for multi-player. That game was basically made for mp.

As for why they didn't make implement it. Easy answer, how many games tried to implement MP and had a great singleplayer experience? Not many. I would rather they focus on one and not the other.
 
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People actually played the MP for Baldur's Gate? I thought IWD would of been a better choice for multi-player. That game was basically made for mp.

As for why they didn't make implement it. Easy answer, how many games tried to implement MP and had a great singleplayer experience? Not many. I would rather they focus on one and not the other.
Actually I played both series. Good o' college days.
BG is more like a ... story experience to me, a journey. .
And IWD feels more "gamey" to me.

As for why they didn't implement it. Simple question:
Once upon a time they made BG, they made a great SP experience as well as implementing MP. Now they "can't".
Does it mean they're actually getting WORSE in making games?
If not, does it mean they can do it, just they WON'T?
If they won't do it, why they would do it BACK THEN but not NOW?
Either way, why would I support such developer?
 
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As for why they didn't make implement it. Easy answer, how many games tried to implement MP and had a great singleplayer experience? Not many. I would rather they focus on one and not the other.
Eh … Baldur's Gate? :) Another example is Hidden & Dangerous. If done like Blizzard with online community support (store characters, group with online friends etc) you may get some additional piracy protection too. Another game that works like this is Guild Wars. Someone might disagree, but it's basically just a coop-game with online hub locations or Baldur's Gate with some added online options.
 
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Good one hishadow :) Sorta got zinged with my own answer. Still, I played BG2s multiplayer and didn't like it one bit.

If it is cheaper to get rid of it all together then I'm all for it. Focus on making a great sp experience and leave out the rest.

@TheNevers Times change. It's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a game now than it was back then. Plus, I would imagine getting rid of MP means they have more money elsewhere. Say for example hiring talented actors like Cladia Black or Kate Mulgrew. If having MP means getting rid of the actors then I definitely think they made the right decision.

That's just me, though. I prefer the emphasis be focused on SP. MP would be useless for me in this game. If I ever want to play a MP game I'll load up NWN or even NWN 2.
 
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People actually played the MP for Baldur's Gate? I thought IWD would of been a better choice for multi-player. That game was basically made for mp.

Oh, IWD is better for MP since there is less dialogue, but Baldurs Gate is still among the best coop RPGs in existance. RPGs are in deed not always the best games as the roleplaying tends to leave one of the players waiting while the other is handling dialogue and whatnot. This is the strongest argument against story driven multiplayer RPGs.

The second argument is balancing, going from one character to two changes the dynamic of combat. But that is a non-issue in party games such as Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights 2, just split control of the characters between the players!

Provided one is prepared to overlook the first point it should be pretty darn trivial to implement MP in games where you control a party rather than a single protagonist, so I dont really buy the line of defense that it has to be difficult to implement, you just tack on an extra layer. Since the infinity engine essentially was a RTS engine this was extremely straightforward back in the case of Baldurs Gate.

As for why they didn't make implement it. Easy answer, how many games tried to implement MP and had a great singleplayer experience? Not many. I would rather they focus on one and not the other.

Baldurs Gate, IWD, and Neverwinter Nights spring to mind. If we are a bit more generous in our definition of RPG Dungeon Lords for all its faults have MP that is at least as enjoyable as SP. Outside that we are pretty much down to the hack n slash genre.

I'd say the omission of multiplayer has more to do with a choice to move to more cinematic gameplay and a perceived lack of demand from the player base than with actual technical problems. After all a RPG requires many hours of gameplay, and getting players together for a session becomes more difficult the longer the game is. It is easy to get a group of friends together for 5-30 minutes of FPS or RTS play, but much harder to find the time for 120h of Baldurs Gate:p
 
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Me and my friend see him weaving spell in his immune bubble,
my rogue friend think it might be a good idea to put some nasty traps under him since he's ignoring us.
what happen after the conversation is, well, he's dead by the traps as he lower his bubble, my party aren't even on the same screen when he dies.

I always considered the trap implementation in BG2 so badly unbalanced that it was tantamount to a cheat, and therefore I stopped using it. But to each their own, of course.
 
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Oh, IWD is better for MP since there is less dialogue, but Baldurs Gate is still among the best coop RPGs in existance.
I don't know about that. IIRC, multiplayer mode didn't work well at all in those Infinity Engine games (never tried IWD, to be honest). I remember all kinds of problems and annoyances with it. Diablo before that was perfect as a CoOp MP game but was only an ARPG. NWN was the first real CRPG with a reasonably good MP mode, but suffered a bit from bad camera controls.

edit: my, so many abbreviations. I'd better explain them…
 
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I don't know about that. IIRC, multiplayer mode didn't work well at all in those Infinity Engine games (never tried IWD, to be honest). I remember all kinds of problems and annoyances with it. Diablo before that was perfect as a CoOp MP game but was only an ARPG. NWN was the first real CRPG with a reasonably good MP mode, but suffered a bit from bad camera controls.

edit: my, so many abbreviations. I'd better explain them…

What kind of problems?

I didnt have any technical issues at all, MP was both straightforward and bug-free for me. IWD is identical to BG in terms of MP technology so you havent missed much if you disliked Baldurs Gate MP. The only annoyance was that whoever wasnt playing the protagonist tended to not be involved in the dialogue much. I actually had more issues with NWN1 (XP allotment is pretty iffy in MP, and you tend to be a few levels behind the intended level progression making some boss fights much harder in MP).

Agree that hacknslash games like Diablo are good for MP, but Diablo had to be rebalanced for MP since change the party size (unlike Baldurs Gate).
 
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Spiritual, ay?

Well, the Infinity Engine for BG was designed to allow the same single player experience to be playable with 6 real ppl taking a character each.

You'd roll your character then you could take NPCs in the party for more content, or real players for more awesome.

I've played BG and IWD 1 and 2 with a friend taking just one character each.
"
When I think about the "sprit" of the game the first thing that comes to mind is wandering around the BG1 forests fighting Xvarts with a friend.

Why did carry across characters die out? I loved taking my guys from Champions of Krynn all the way to Dark Queen of Krynn. yeah?
 
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so I dont really buy the line of defense that it has to be difficult to implement, you just tack on an extra layer. Since the infinity engine essentially was a RTS engine this was extremely straightforward back in the case of Baldurs Gate.

They really should of just said they wanted to make this a single-player game and left it at that. A lot of people seem to be foaming at the mouth over how they said it would be difficult to implement. I sorta get why they said it, but they had to know a thousand and one people would be saying how easy it is to just tack it on.

Maybe you're right and it's as simple as that tacking on an extra layer (have no idea what that means btw ;)). Here is the thing, for me at least, out of all the Baldur's Gate game I only tried BG2 multiplayer and I hated it. I was always losing connection (maybe because I'm in Taiwan or not) and I was always losing the person I was playing with. I'd be halfway across the map and they'd still be at the beginning. We never even made it out of the dungeon before we said "forget this, let's play Diablo." BG2 and Coop play did not work well together at all.

Like you said RPGs are in deed not always the best games as the roleplaying tends to leave one of the players waiting while the other is handling dialogue and whatnot. This is the strongest argument against story driven multiplayer RPGs.

That is exactly how I felt and I hated it. Take that same person and drop her in Diablo 2 and we had a blast. I was still faster, but in that game she caught on quick. Take that person again and drop her in NWN and once again it was ten times better than BG2.

There are some games that are just meant to be played as a single player experience. What is so god awful about that? I'm not saying you think it's god awful, but TheNevers isn't the first person I've heard scream bloody murder over not having some silly MP feature. I really wish Bioware would of kept their trap shut about the technical side of it and just told everyone "Hey, we're making a single-player game. Suck it up!" Maybe that would of made people a little more forgiving.;)

Baldurs Gate, IWD, and Neverwinter Nights spring to mind. If we are a bit more generous in our definition of RPG Dungeon Lords for all its faults have MP that is at least as enjoyable as SP. Outside that we are pretty much down to the hack n slash genre.

I'd say the omission of multiplayer has more to do with a choice to move to more cinematic gameplay and a perceived lack of demand from the player base than with actual technical problems. After all a RPG requires many hours of gameplay, and getting players together for a session becomes more difficult the longer the game is. It is easy to get a group of friends together for 5-30 minutes of FPS or RTS play, but much harder to find the time for 120h of Baldurs Gate:p

110% agree with everything except Dungeon Lords. That was a fun game if you were very forgiving, but it definitely was a hack and slash :p
 
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Maybe you're right and it's as simple as that tacking on an extra layer (have no idea what that means btw ;)).

For a game like BG it is simple, for a game with a single character like Gothic it would be a nightmare (having to rebalance the whole shebang as combat dynamics change).

My point is that all you, in games where you play a party anyway, in principle only need to add code to put some of the characters under remote control by another player. No re-balancing or anything, just adding one feature to a system that already should be pretty modular in nature. I am not terribly up to date on how that is programmed, but arent there APIs for this?

Here is the thing, for me at least, out of all the Baldur's Gate game I only tried BG2 multiplayer and I hated it. I was always losing connection (maybe because I'm in Taiwan or not) and I was always losing the person I was playing with. I'd be halfway across the map and they'd still be at the beginning. We never even made it out of the dungeon before we said "forget this, let's play Diablo." BG2 and Coop play did not work well together at all.

Ok, I played it over LAN so I cant comment on internet play. Unstable connection is naturally a killer, but as a programming challenge it is a separate one from designing a good roleplaying game (ie an extra layer;)).

Like you said RPGs are in deed not always the best games as the roleplaying tends to leave one of the players waiting while the other is handling dialogue and whatnot. This is the strongest argument against story driven multiplayer RPGs.

That is exactly how I felt and I hated it. Take that same person and drop her in Diablo 2 and we had a blast. I was still faster, but in that game she caught on quick. Take that person again and drop her in NWN and once again it was ten times better than BG2.

Yep, this is a big issue and is impossible to work around. You pretty much need to be able to sit together for hours. Games in other genres (Football manager springs to mind) offer multiplayer in spite of this downtime issue though, so I think there still is a market for storydriven multiplayer games in spite of the "downtime".

I dont quite understand how NWN is much better for MP though. Jumping in with a character that is far away from the protagonist in level as gameplay would be extremely lopsided. In BG I could just give my gf control over a few of the existing party members and she would be contributing right away, provided (major caveat) she knows the ruleset and the interface. We actually had way more fun with Baldurs Gate as we found gameplay more tactical with control over more than one character each, and also found BGs primitive RTS interface better for controlling multiple characters (henchmen control in NWN1 is a joke and I've found party control in NWN2 pretty frustrating as well), but that is to some extent a matter of taste.

There are some games that are just meant to be played as a single player experience. What is so god awful about that? I'm not saying you think it's god awful, but TheNevers isn't the first person I've heard scream bloody murder over not having some silly MP feature. I really wish Bioware would of kept their trap shut about the technical side of it and just told everyone "Hey, we're making a single-player game. Suck it up!" Maybe that would of made people a little more forgiving.;)

Nothing is awful about that per se (and I dont think it will break DA so I'm not screaming bloody murder), but as I like to play coop with my girlfriend I want more games of the kind.
 
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For a game like BG it is simple, for a game with a single character like Gothic it would be a nightmare (having to rebalance the whole shebang as combat dynamics change).

My point is that all you, in games where you play a party anyway, in principle only need to add code to put some of the characters under remote control by another player. No re-balancing or anything, just adding one feature to a system that already should be pretty modular in nature. I am not terribly up to date on how that is programmed, but arent there APIs for this?.

You probably know more about that than I do. The last language I used was Basic.

Ok, I played it over LAN so I cant comment on internet play. Unstable connection is naturally a killer, but as a programming challenge it is a separate one from designing a good roleplaying game (ie an extra layer;)).

I didn't mean the lag prevented her from catching up. I meant the game itself leaned heavily towards a single person progressing through the game. I really don't remember much other than the dropped connections and waiting around for her. I seem to recall something about the dialogues and controlling the other characters like Minsc and Jaheira that bugged the heck out of me. But I only played the MP version twice and we gave up after that, so I hardly remember anything other than I won't try coop play with Baldur's Gate 2 again.:)

I dont quite understand how NWN is much better for MP though. Jumping in with a character that is far away from the protagonist in level as gameplay would be extremely lopsided. In BG I could just give my gf control over a few of the existing party members and she would be contributing right away, provided (major caveat) she knows the ruleset and the interface. We actually had way more fun with Baldurs Gate as we found gameplay more tactical with control over more than one character each, and also found BGs primitive RTS interface better for controlling multiple characters (henchmen control in NWN1 is a joke and I've found party control in NWN2 pretty frustrating as well), but that is to some extent a matter of taste.

I liked NWN a lot more because it was basically designed for MP play. If you start the game from the beginning then there is no lopsidedness ;) Plus, everything ran as smooth as silk and the adventures were great together. As for the henchmen, we could live with or without the henchmen. They weren't essential.

Overall, you're right it is just a matter of different tastes.

Nothing is awful about that per se (and I dont think it will break DA so I'm not screaming bloody murder), but as I like to play coop with my girlfriend I want more games of the kind.

Once again just different preferences. :) Nothing wrong with that. Although there have been quite a few games that have tried to do too much and ended up being horrible. Dungeon Lords comes to mind. Who knows what that game could have been if they decided to put their resources to just the SP experience or reverse that and they put their resources to making a great MP experience.

Games like NWN were specifically designed for Online gaming (not mmo;)). The singleplayer portion wasn't that bad, but it was definitely secondary to what they were trying to accomplish and did accomplish. I think if more devs just concentrated on one or the other then the game really has a fighting chance at being what they wanted it to be in the first place. Games like Diablo 2, NWN, Sacred, Dungeon Siege (horrible SP game, but decent MP one), and Titan Quest.

There really aren't that many now that I think about it. You have it harder than I do. At least they still make story driven RPGs for SP, but you might get one every 3 years or so that is halfway decent that you can play with your girlfriend.

I can definitely see why you would want them to put in co-op play.
 
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