Darklands on Steam… retro can’t get better.
BTW another thing about BG3 I always said evil playthroughs are far to tame and boring kindergarden style… Oh boy BG3 Dark urge story line can be realy realy evil. It’s a fun experience… kind of.
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I think what BD3 is doing really well, if you are going anything evil aligned, is that you don’t actually get mass slaughter dialog options everywhere, but everything is kinda “reasonable” even within that evil aligment. (Not speaking of Dark Urge, but general evil playstyle)
Surely, you can just slaughter everything regardless of dialogue, but I think they did most of the evil/ruthless stuff pretty well without being too cringe.
And even though some of these evil dialogue options with very specific cutscenes or animations are not aroudn every corner, some of them are really brutal.
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Well if you have ever played at an actual table and been bold enough to actually use a wish spell, you are ballsy thats for sure.
Wish has a few “set” options generally, that never fail.
When you go “I wish I was as fast as a horse” and you get turned into a horse, thats no ones fault but your own.
DMs usually(least the ones ive played with) tend to make examples out of people trying to ruin the game experience with wish.
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If you’ve read any old school lore or come from those days, this is apparently EXACTLY how Gygax intended this spell to be handled when he created it. 
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If I give away any of the ways I would use it, I guess it would be devaluing my suggestions, but I like both the positive and negative ways of using the spell. I think if you centered half the content in your game around it and allowing it to be useful, it could get interesting very quickly also. 
I played in one of Gygax’s games at a very early GenCon. He was a killer DM and generally an @$$%*!e.
As far as normal (table top) D&D, level 12-20 play is just fine. It’s just that most DMs are not experienced enough to play at that level. I have run 1-20 campaigns for 43 years and I have no issues whatsoever with levels 12-20 play.
Even more, a video game can simply not offer “problem” spells as options in the video game. There’s no rule that says excluding Astral Projection, Foresight, Power Word Kill and Wish somehow negate the fact that it is 5th edition D&D. That’s just nonsense. The very definition of D&D is that every DM modifies the rules. Larian is the DM here. Just modify the rules (ban problem spells).
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That is a helluva flex my friend. Damn that must have been an experience.
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I’d argue it’d be more interesting if devs would implement problem spells in a way that would actually be fun. I mentioned earlier, there’s just a general lack of willpower and creativity around those. You see the same thing in comic books where power creep with characters has gotten so bad that there’s nothing interesting the authors can do to challenge them without writing the characters as being complete idiots. Either way, the solution is to get more creative rather than to nerf or sand everyone down.
The D&D campaigns that don’t allow them are also less fun for lacking them. If you have a really creative group of friends who are willing to play along, and a clever DM, you can use each of those spells in really fun ways. The issue always is whether or not the DM can think of how to allow players to use powerful spells and do what they want to do while still creating interesting events and encounters.
Going back to comic books, I always think of The Watchmen when I think of how to use powerful characters or overpowered spells in stories. The better story you tell the more interesting those things can be made to be.
Yes, but not including the more problematic spells is a very valid way of not having them break the game.
Saying it is a lot easier than doing it.
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Quoting a great man, “Yeah, [Creativity] is [hard.] But that doesn’t mean we, for the rest of human history, back away from wacky hi-jinks and grand projects. You just think about it and get more creative.”
I think people dramatically underestimate what is possible because what’s easier and valid is also safe and rewarding enough not to care. People too often don’t give up the good for the great. That’s part of why our culture is rotten these days.
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5 chars…
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I picked up the game in '79 and am still playing. I’m envious you had that opportunity. Like getting the chance to play baseball in the dead ball era with Jackson and Cobb.
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The thing is all the DM’s that change the rules sadly never tell you all the rules they changed in the beginning. Banning problem spells? Where do you start? With a Ray of enfeeblement that can make str so low the toon dies because it’s literly no longer fit to life by the games rules? The caster player whoms answwer to everything is “Fireball!”?
I think every DM should change rules with his players because if you don’t know anyone all that well the only thing you have that helps you are the rules. Groups that play togheter for decades are another cup of tea but I had once a DM who changed the rules to a clownfiesta and since thn I stay away from people who probe every weeknes of a game to powerplay and I avoid DM’s who tinker with the rules and guess what? All is fine ^^.
For games… well BG3 does a lot of stuff right in that case. Sure it’s still worlds appart from a TTP&P session but it’s glorious compared to othertitles of the genre and that’sa feat of it’s own. Still as a player who mostly fiddled around with 3.5 the whole 5e system is a big abomination for me thatruined the game more then it helped and I’m a bit confused by politics that want to remove halfelfs from the game because they are racist or whatever. Then again I don’t know 5e all to well and might simply look for an online group to see if it is as bad as I think or if I’m wrong.
They did implement problem spells but in a way that makes them not problematic. The whole combat system of BG3 is riged so there is nothing problematic to find outside of enemys rolling D40s while you have only D20s 
.
In P&P sessions a lot of encounters were solved by mage players starting to be able to cast fireball X times a day because that spell does a stupid ammount of damage on average and in a big area. That’s very problematic if you are a Fighter or a Cleric and want to help somehow.
In hte versions of D&D I played it was easy to get advantages through spells I thought were realy problematic while I as a rogue player made sneak attack after sneak attack and even spells that made it possible to do coup de grâce attacks left and right.
I think problematic spells are alwas homebrew made problems because every spell has it’s problematic parts to it as the above mentioned Ray of Enfeeblement that was at least able to turn a cloud giant into a human toddler strength beeing.
Well I helped a friend out as an NPC with the mission to kill the whole group. They were almost allmighty but as they slept and let me take the guard because i was such a friendly and nice guy I killed them all and stole their stuff. If you take Watchmen as an example it’s a bit so so because in the end you see that there was only one OP toon in there no matter how powerfull Manhatten was. So far I think it’s a bit so so. Dark Moon Chronicles do a good job in telling how to deal with OP persons on the way to becoming OP themselfs to thrw one of the fantasy comics I like in the ring here ^^.
To me the biggest problem is the scope of things. With lvl 20 you normaly do what? Have what kind of equip? To start to rule what land for the lulz? Beeing head cleric of your godess? have brought peace to the region you were active and now… drink a coke? LvL 20 is BIG and I think even lvl 12 is a bit over the top in BG3 unless the very end for sure. Upper underdark and tentacle dudes… yeah well it’s not fun to meet them or to be there but lvl 12 is big leagues already isn’t it?
On top of it… why the actual F there is NEVER at least one capable person in Baldurs Gate to fight back? Are they all occupied elswhere or is the town such a shithole noone realy cares to be there or keep it save or make it home to a hero or two? The town was in a pickle so many times I would tear it down and plow salt into the earth so noone comes back to that cursed turf .
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Follow up video
If your standards are game of thrones or rings of power, you are setting your standards too low(a cannot say anything about dune). Those series are infamous for how they had zero respect for their source material and how poor their writing is.
money is not the problem, it never was - TALENT is the problem, and in fact you are more likely to make your money back with a low budget than with a large one anyways.
Peoples expectations are in the garbage bin, with every game having day 1 dlc, being made more for a political statement than to make a good game, requiring hundreds of dollars of microtransations for someone to be competitive and being incomplete on release - what do you think people expect from a game?
It has gotten so bad that games like vampire survivors(indie game), binding of isaac(originally a flash game) and even minecraft(originally indie) are cultural phenomenons. And all of these games have obviously low graphics
Supergaint games started out super small
EHG has recieved TENCENT money, the idea that money is a major issue is false - also from the looks of LE at the current moment, it is in a better state than most AAAs on release, the idea that they cannot approach the quality of other games is ridiculous because they already look to be on the way.
This book could be titled: “Everything I Know About Game of Thrones, I learned By Reading Reddit”. Rings of Power is an entirely different story, since it was clearly developed with the intent of placating social narratives, instead of telling a Tolkein story (like just about anything developed by Netflix or HBO in the past 4 or 5 years). In either case, the talent pool and resources available to either of them were light years ahead of anything any independent shop could hope to come close to. That is Caius’ point – it had nothing to do with how much you liked any of the series he mentioned, but instead about the talent and production quality available to the show(s).
I wouldn’t think the problem is necessarily about getting your money back, it’s getting people to watch it at all. I can’t count how many times I’ve had discussions about some straight-to-video film, or SciFi channel series that people just couldnt/wouldnt watch because of shitty effects or production quality. The core story itself never gets a chance to get told, because so many people can’t get past the package’s wrapping. The biggest hope for an indie title is that it attracts a big name that wants to tell the story, and isn’t interested in a payday, so people stick around to see them in it.
And, it’s the same for games. I know many people who won’t try games like Chronicon, Slormancer, etc because of the 8-bit graphics, or clumsy UI/controls. The world is far more superficial than you are giving it credit for. It goes back to what I mentioned in another thread about Indie vs AAA shops. I said we could compare the core gameplay of the two, but we can’t realistically compare the ‘finish’, since Indie shops can’t compete with the resources to produce voice acting, cut scenes, slick graphics and/or animations, etc.
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This in a nutshell is exactly what I was trying to get at. Thank you for being way more succinct and clear about it than I apparently was. It had zero to do with ‘how well it was adapted’ or any other subjective reason. Nothing wrong with these for determining if something is not to your tastes but far, far too many people who’ve never worked as artists FOR A LIVING vastly underestimate the power of money OPENING MASSIVE opportunities and resources. Hell, it’s why I loathe the term “INDIE” film these days because 95% of what the mainstream sees as ‘independent’ is so far from it it’s laughable.
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Money is always an issue. Nobody knows how much they got nor for how much (other than <25%). Unless they received several years worth of run-rate (& some of the funds would have gone to the other owners to buy the shares) they’ll always be concerned about managing their funds. Given they likely don’t have a significant and persistent revenue stream (mtx) they’ll be worried about cash.
I was the FC (Financial Controller) for a small software developer, while I don’t know their specifics I have been in a related industry and probably not a dissimilar size.
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The interesting thing is that, unlike film, gamers don’t require huge budgets to love the games. They just require it to be finished and fun, and not throw cash shop advertisements in their face constantly.
In example hades, celeste, moonlighter, stardew valley, dave the diver, vampire survivor.
None of these titles were big budget by any measure, and yet they are some of the higher popularity games. Sure unpopular AAA games still often sell more, however thats primarily just brand and advertising differences.
If blizzard made dave the diver exactly as it is now, it would have been even more successful. Baldurs gates success could be linked to the insane scope for sure, but the biggest selling point is it was fun and it worked. People arent expecting every game to match it on letting you murder squirrels and screw bears in super high quality cutscenes, theyre expecting every AAA game to match it on actually finishing their job. Indi/small dev studio games have an excuse for it, but AAA doesnt.
I.e. when they say “nonsense scope” of baldurs gate 3, they mean 400+ devs over 10 years. Meanwhile diablo 4 spent the same time, with 20x as many devs, and the scope of what they were trying to do was much smaller overall… yet they released a game with incomplete features and that begs for more money. I think this is the focal points of the “standard” not the overall expansive style of baldurs gates giant dialogue/quest trees.
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I’m not sure anyone has said it is impossible. They said it was very, very difficult. Out of 100s of titles (whether film or game) developed each year, 95% of them will never make a dime. And based on a couple of those games you mentioned, in the film world, those companies would not even remotely be ‘actual’ independent companies. For instance both Hades and Celeste are second games after the ‘relative success’ of the those companies first projects (Bastion, Towerfall).
Innovation should always be pushed. People should always be looking to make engaging work as best they can. I loathe the microtransaction commidities of today because it means the efforts of the designers are being tasked first and foremost to make as much money as possible. It’s a business so it is what it is, but it’s genuinely why I like companies that set limits on the business aspect in order to balance as best the aesthetic/creative side. I love Crate. They have said on numerous occasions there are things people have asked for that they could do and would make them way more money but it would be counter to the goal and quality of the game.
The independent world (again both film and gaming and I do mean independent, not the definition pop culture has hijacked) is the only place where a creator can say screw it, I’m going to try to make the best game I can. Most will fall short because that’s the nature of art and storytelling. As soon as they start answering to other voices (i.e. investors/share holders/etc) that BY NECESSITY has to be compromised because they have to focus on making money.
Now you can certainly argue a GREAT game WILL make money. And you’re right. Just like a good movie will as well. The dilemma is getting it seen. But making a great movie or game isn’t easy (certainly doesn’t mean people shouldn’t try) and ‘tastes’ and ‘subjective opinions’ are as fickle as the weather in Samuel Clemons Missouri. The engines that drive these AAA games can throw a lot at the wall to see what sticks. An indie game maker only has one egg. Two if they’re lucky.
TLDR: This isn’t as easily solvable as many people think it is. People should give constructive feedback to these companies 100%.
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