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posted by
martyb
on Saturday December 22 2018, @07:35AM
from the how-about-a-nice-roll-playing-game-like...dice? dept.
from the how-about-a-nice-roll-playing-game-like...dice? dept.
The product of three exhausting and exhilarating years of labor by a team of roughly 15 people who didn’t know enough to be daunted by the task they undertook, Baldur’s Gate was a genre-stretching, disc-space-testing hybrid that broke new narrative, technical, and gameplay ground and established the identity of one of the past two decades’ most storied studios. “It just redefined expectations of what a role-playing game could be,” Oster says. “I think it really relaunched the whole concept of what a Western RPG is.”
Was Baldur's Gate that important, or just a reprise of Ultima?
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How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG, or Did it?
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(1)
(1)
Stop me, before I kill again!
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 22 2018, @08:19AM (6 children)
I never liked games. But what I did like about them is that you never fucked with their hamster. [wikimedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @09:09AM (1 child)
So what? If it comes to that, I never fucked with any hamster.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @01:17PM
It's easy.
Just make sure you have sufficient duct tape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @10:17AM (1 child)
Jesus - hamsters. Do you have any idea how many hamsters it takes to make a man-sized breakfast? NOBODY fucks with hamsters, or chipmunks, or field mice. The food chain starts with squirrels. Two or three squirrels can make a meal. Hamsters? Fuck you, man.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Saturday December 22 2018, @01:09PM
One. But they tend to eat [1d4chan.org] more than just one man for breakfast.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday December 22 2018, @11:37AM (1 child)
Not just any ordinary hamster, a miniature giant space hamster! Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kalas on Saturday December 22 2018, @10:46PM
At first I thought I saw a motherfucking Megatokyo reference on SN, but after doing some digging I can see I got it backwards. The hamster named Boo in that series is just a reference to this game. Never would've guessed that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Megatokyo_characters#Boo [wikipedia.org]
"Go for the beer, Boo!"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @09:17AM (11 children)
BG1 had very little character development, outside of the protagonist and Saravok. There was some banter between characters, and a few scripted events if you had specific party members, but it was far less than earlier games, such as Wasteland (Which I will note was penned by Michael Stackpole, well known for some of the most memorable Battletech, Star Wars and other expanded universe science fantasy/fiction of the 90s and 2000s.)
Baldur's Gate 2 definitely improved production values and non-linearity compared to other games of its era, but it was also 2d in an era that was pushing 3d boundaries.
Personally I would daresay Shattered Steel did more to advance the Mecha Genre than Baldur's Gate did to advance the RPG genre. And Neverwinter Nights, well it was pure hyped garbage. Some of the later games turned out alright based on later iterations of the engine, but NWN1 was a godawful mess, nevermind their lie about linux support to avoid the class action lawsuit from the thousands to tens of thousands of us who bought it under the promise of Linux support, which they preached from early in development until 6 months after it was released when they finally relented that they hadn't really planned for it, including not having support for the miles sound system or bik movie formats on linux, both technologies they had seriously tied themselves to, even while SDL had already been available and polished for years.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday December 22 2018, @11:44AM (9 children)
It may have been a semi-crappy port but I never played NWN1 on anything except Linux and I played through the entire game several times as well as quite a lot of LAN play with friends.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Saturday December 22 2018, @01:26PM (8 children)
What other network games like that from the same era that run on linux can you suggest?
I had no idea this was even an option--and I own the game!
Makes me wonder if it might be worthwhile for someone to write an occasional journal about older games that the Soylent crowd might want to play. We seem to draw an intellectually different audience than what one may find impulsively commenting on youtube channels...
I just picked up Divine Divinty Original Sin 2 for myself and the missus so that we could play on the LAN in between cooperative Borderlands 2 sessions. I hear DDOS2 (that sounds... wrong... writing it like that as a network engineer) is really good as a CRPG.
Back to Baldur's Gate, I didn't play it when it first came out, but did buy the remake. It felt like it was an enhanced isometric version of something like the older SSI 'gold box' games, like Pool or Radiance or the Curse of the Azure Bonds (also a decent book in the forgotten realms setting). But it otherwise felt like a spirtual successor to Dragon Age: Origins/Awakenings, which I actually played first. That did not feel like an older SSI 'gold box' game; if that makes sense, even if BG did--and that isn't relating to the forgotten realms aspects)
(I also approve of the miniature giant space hamsters in the bioware series, which perhaps had mutant space brethren that made an appearance in the Mass Effect series...maybe the Reapers used hamsters to first scout out society?)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday December 22 2018, @02:13PM (4 children)
Not bloody many without using wine. Mind you, that is absolutely an option for most games of that era and resource usage. Starcraft and Warcraft play fine under wine last I checked, for instance. Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 I haven't checked myself but winehq gives them good enough ratings they shouldn't cause you too many headaches.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @05:49PM (1 child)
Until patch 1.18 or so, and wasn't really playable until 1.30 or 1.50. The last patch of the original game was 1.9x after both expansions, neither of which were supported on linux on the release day patch. Hint: market demand had been there for the game from the start. They had even claimed for about a year into development that a BeOS port was on the way (Even though NONE of the ports had been started. The OSX port came out before the linux port, even though it was started later but had been announced as a release day feature up until a few months before release.)
I don't know if any of the old forum posts are still available on archive.org, but there are whole threads discussing the blatant fraud Bioware pushed during this time, including discussions of a class action lawsuit (I don't know if anything happened with it, but it was an important facet in ensuring that linux port got released. A port which never found its way into either NWN2, or KotOR, both of which were based on enhanced versions of the same engine, and which should have as a result had the majority of the porting work already done.)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday December 22 2018, @06:23PM
That'd probably be why then. I played it as soon as I could and never worried much about patching unless there was something broken affecting me specifically.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeVilla on Saturday December 22 2018, @07:11PM
There are several D&D titles on GOG that have been port to Linux recently. There is even a recent re-port of NWN. Beamdog has been doing a lot of ports for Linux. The Icewind Dale games are there. I've bought them but haven't gotten around to playing them yet.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Saturday December 22 2018, @11:32PM
I also played the original NWN on linux.
In order to do so, you needed to download a patch file that added linux executables for the game. The DLC for NWN also worked on linux, I specifically remember playing the Infinite Dungeons DLC.
I now have the Beamdog Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, which is also supported under linux and has been designed for compatibility with modern computers.
As for NPCs: Long Live Deekin!!!
Deekin was a kobold bard that could change classes to a Red Dragon Disciple (a D&D 3.5 prestige class.) He had the best dialog in the game (It was hilarious.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by Crypthulhu on Sunday December 23 2018, @01:28AM (2 children)
TES3MP is a multiplayer fork of openmw (open engine for The elder scrolls 3 morrowind) .
https://github.com/TES3MP/openmw-tes3mp/ [github.com]
I logged into a server for the first time yesterday to find christmas trees. Seems to be functional enough, I went on a quest with a random stranger. An admin showed up and fed me an "elf on the shelf" potion which shrank me and led to much hilarity.
*NORK*
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday December 23 2018, @02:32AM (1 child)
I saw it mentioned on the OpenMW wikipedia and then watched some footage on YouTube earlier today. Except it was just a partial playthrough of the main quest. Sounds like it can get much more wild.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Crypthulhu on Sunday December 23 2018, @04:12AM
Within the first few hours there were miniature nekkid fist fights(between serious questing). Admins seem responsive though, and the server browser etc, works fine. I'm running a 1.2ghz dual core laptop in the back of a 1985 chevy g20 van hitting a wifi repeater setup. If I can run it, you can run it.
*NORK*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 22 2018, @01:19PM
Care to bitch about the lack of character development in Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Saturday December 22 2018, @02:14PM (2 children)
Ultima games had more alive and dynamic worlds. Baldur's gate had better production values and D&D 2nd gen combat system which was popular at the time, but terrible. Clunky, unbalanced, and restrictive. I think The Bard's Tale did more to advance the genre. Or Pool of Radiance. Or even Dungeon Master/Eye of the Beholder. Hell, even Elder Scrolls: Arena & Daggerfall.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday December 22 2018, @03:17PM
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind saved or "killed" the genre, depending on who you ask [wikipedia.org].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMW [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday December 22 2018, @09:56PM
I loved The Bard's Take. But you're talking mid 90s, same with Pool of Radiance. I played Champions of Krynn a lot at the time too. On my C64.
But Baldur's Gate was what, 10 years or more later? Maybe I'm thinking of number 2 though.
I liked it but found it difficult to get far in. But that's ok.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 22 2018, @03:12PM
I remember playing one of the Baldur's games, maybe Throne of Bhaal, don't remember. Messed around in the town for 30 minutes, then died in the first fight instantly and just ragequitted. Maybe I'll try it again.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]