Re: Baldur's Gate 3

On Sun, 18 Aug 2024 07:56:36 -0400, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 17 Aug 2024 19:02:40 -0500, Altered Beast
<j63480576@gmail.com> wrote:
>

I decided to call it a day when I couldn't remember that wizard's name.
All these people that have been thrust upon me and I still don't know
who they are.  Meat pie.  My ex-girlfriend used to get into Skyrim with
me and there it's a million generic people and a Jarl so far as I can
tell.  I'm going to put a few hours into Elder Scrolls V.

>
One of the reasons I don't buy modern RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 and
Witcher 3 is because I think the game is going to place too much
emphasis on bullshit fluff that I don't care about like cutscenes and
characters endlessly talking to each other. I am not sure if that is
true or not in these games  but your post is not giving me any
confidence.

<chuckle> You remind me of a gamer we once had in our tabletop RPG
games, who similarly didn't like all the 'talking and play-acting' the
rest of us indulged in. They wanted us to focus more on the fighting,
the loot, and the leveling up.

Which isn't a bad thing, but it seemed to miss the whole point of a
ROLE-PLAYING game. They didn't stay with us very long. We parted
amicably after I made it clear that I -and the other players- were
fine with the game as it was currently being played and maybe they
should seek out another group, or another hobby (I recommended they
consider looking into tactical battle games like Warhammer 40K or
Battletech, since those games focus more on the style of play they
were interested in).

I'd say the same here, except to some degree you do have a point.
There is a significant difference between modern CRPGs and old-school
games from the 80s and early 90s. Those earlier titles focused heavily
on the mechanical aspects of the game -the combat especially- and
character-interactions and narrative were fairly simplistic compared
to what more modern CRPGs offer. Of course, this focus was a result of
the limitations of then-current hardware (especially disk-space, since
dialogue and world-building take many more megabytes than stats and
combat rules). Even back then, I'd frequently bemoan that CRPGs
weren't really role-playing games at all; they were mostly tactical
combat sims. But they were as close as computers of that era could get
to the tabletop experience, so we called them role-playing games.

But I personally have no complaint that modern CRPGs have advanced
past that model (even if they still fall far short of tabletop
gaming). And there are, fortunately, lots of options for people who
prefer the 'old-school' style, although many of them have been
redesignated as different genres. For instance, 2013's "XCOM" probably
would have been considered an extremely full-featured CRPG in 1990,
but now we call it a tactical strategy game.

But whatever. The nice thing about modern gaming is there's pretty
much a game for everybody's taste, so if you don't like GAME-X, just
move onto GAME-Y and that might suit you better.

;-)