When everything is done right

At university, between the geeky atmosphere of D&D comics, computers, videogames and people that loves stories, I was told about Baldur's Gate, and was give Baldur's Gate 2 to try. Later on I also played Baldur's Gate, and a bit of Neverwinter Nights 2.

I didn't finish any of them. While they were indeed very nice games, I found them hard and overwhelming, with too many people coming at you and asking you to do quests. The characters, though seemed quite nice, and the atmosphere and style of play was certainly fun. It seems to me it took too long for me to advance much and found the good/evil alignment present in the game a tad simplistic and somehow didn't quite catch me enough to finish them. It's hard to describe, they were nice games but also not so easy to play them, somehow? 

One factor for sure was the combat, real-time based with the option to pause. Combat tended to get very chaotic very fast, having to just pause constantly or just letting chaos ensure. There were also a lot of options and it wasn't very clear what builds were good or not, in my opinion. Anyway, the point is that I played them a bit, thought they were cool but not good enough to finish, somehow. 

So, years and years later, the announcement of Baldur's Gate 3 didn't impress me at first. However, after the first 2 Baldur's Gate games I did play other rpgs with similar style, like Pillars of Eternity. I really loved Pillars of Eternity, seemed to me that game did the same as BG and BG2 but did it correctly, and one of the best points of that game was the reputation system, which I haven't seen it done as well anywhere else. Anyway PoE pre-conditioned me to being more accepting of the style, so when there were more news about BG3 coming out I did check it a bit. And what I saw impressed me.

First, the studio: Larian Studios is an independent studio, they make their own games the way they want them with no interference from a bigger publisher or mother company, like it's commonplace at the moment. So, they have a certain vision and can stick to it. They had experience in other RPGs, turn-based, and everyone said they were really good too, although I had not played them. They are European-based, there's even an office in Barcelona, they seem to treat their employees well and try to respect people. In a year where big companies have fired thousands just so they can claim profits to their shareholders, the approach Larian seems to be having is certainly refreshing.

Then, the process: They've been developing the game for years, and there has been a public beta going on where the input of players has been taken into account as the game progressed. They've been re-releasing better and better versions until they were satisfied with the result and then released the game, focusing on the devices that worked and not stressing about making one single global release or anything like that.

Then the acting: They've gotten really really good actors, charismatic, really good at their job,and they've dedicated a lot of resources in recording lines and lines and acting them out, fleshing out the characters with the help of the actors and the team, and really taking care of getting the right expressions and voices at each moment.

Regarding the gameplay, instead of real-time combat, since this is D&D roleplaying, the devs had done it in a turn-based system. That was reassuring, and it made sense, a lot of powers and skills are meant for turns, converting them to real-time was more complex than just leaving them as they were. With turn-based you can calmly plan what you're doing, check the orders, and create strategies for each combat and try different things.

The graphics look very vey good, especially considering the massive areas the game has, and the character design and details are very well thought. Maybe there's games with better graphics, but with so many characters and combinations it's perfectly fine if the game still looks like a game, although the character's expressions are very detailed and communicate their feelings very well. 

Finally, the story and the quests: It seems they polished these to absurd amounts. The moment I saw some videos about the game, I saw the liberty they were given to the player. You could use your skills talking with people or interacting with the world, you could jump, you could fly, you cold throw things, you could do quests in a thousand of ways, and the game let you try them and also was prepared for it. 

So, I had to get it. And I did. And it's one of the best games ever. All the things I've mentioned come together into such a work of art, of love, of inspiration, where people did their best and offered their best that you can feel it while playing. I mean, it's not perfect 100%, there's a few things that have issues or could be improved, and in then end it's D&D, with its shortcomings of being very battle-focused, but anyway, this game is almost perfect, it's a glorious example of what to do when doing games. 

The game also offers cross-platform and multiplayer. The cross-platform is especially impressive, you can save your game in the cloud and then play form your pc, ps5 o xbox, as long as you have the game in each one of these systems. This means buying the game twice, but I confess I did just that, I was so impressed by them after playing a bit on my pc first that I thought they deserved it, and I've played in my pc and my ps5 at different moments. 

What is impressive is the sheer amount of combinations that are allowed, pre-thought and codified inside the game itself, with dialogue included to address them all. It needs to be experienced, but there's one case I saw which I will explain:

In the first act of the game, you find two camps, a druid camp with refugees inside and a goblin camp that is attacking the refugees and druids. Plot-wise, it makes sense to fight the goblins, since they're working for the big bads of the game, but you're given liberty about how to act. The druids have one good leader missing and the second-in-command is an asshole, that wants to basically kill the refugees living with them and perform a magic ritual that will isolate the druid camp from the rest of the world, to protect themselves from the goblins. 

So, my first though is that I wanted to save the refugees, and maybe some druids, but wanted to kill the second-in-command. But most games are binary, so its either one camp or the other, and the first times I played I just killed the goblins, where you get a lot of freedom since you can infiltrate them first and talk with several characters there and get info and do quests as well. Anyway, after the first time I revisited, and tried to side with the goblins up to a point where I was supposed to betray the refugees and it was too evil for my taste, so I ended up killing the goblins again anyway. So I played a third time. And the third time I discovered an option where you propose to the refugees to kill the bad druid. And you do, but then I was found out, and refugees and druids started to kill each other in a massive fight. And then the goblins came and congratulated me for this, but I didn't do it, it was accidental! But that the option that I really wanted was there was quite refreshing, and that this scenario was not talked in any of the guides I was checking to see options speaks of the level of detail this game has, most people may not even know this is a possibility, especially for "evil" play-throughs in which you don't want to slaughter the camp straight away.

Things just get more complex from there, with entire plot points being different depending on what you did and what characters survived, like the fact that one evil character that I just killed at first can be a companion later on depending on these same actions. 

In general the "Good" options are more polished, with less bugs, I guess because more people were selecting them and reporting issues, but the "Bad" options are still quite complex and different and there's just so many paths you can follow to your objective...

The game is actually pretty hard. In normal difficulty, if you just barge into fights unprepared, unequipped and don't use the right skills, you will die and die fast. You need to think carefully and plan and anticipate, and sometimes to have a bit of luck too. Some endgame fights are especially challenging and unfair, especial mentions to the Shar practitioners fight (like, a 20 against 4 pileup) and the Raphael fight (this one is purely optional, being the hardest fight in the game, but the music and the epicness of it omg, it's a must to experience it....)

Another good point of the game is that it just trashes the "Good"/"Bad" system and instead you have more or less affinity with your companions. Being bad once does not prevent you from doing good later, and in general you're just tied to your stats, but you're free to investigate options and do things anyway you want. It's also worth mentioning that thanks to the writing and the acting, the characters feel alive an deep, they do feel like your companions and you want to help them and progress the plot with them. Especial mention to the main actors, that have seen a lot of well-deserved success thanks to BG3 and all the interactions they're having with fans, their streaming of playing with themselves and in general being great people.

Finally, what they did with the support deserves another comment: They just keep improving the game and releasing new content. I mean, at a certain point maybe it's too much, but they added an epilogue, they improved several key functionalities that players complained about, they fixed bugs, changed texts, clarified things and in general just kept adding to the game, even when everyone had already bought the game.  

It's no surprise they've won "Game of the year" in every contest they've participated, it's that good, yes.

And as a last note, this is what happens when everything is done right, and when people make games thinking about the players, about what they would like to play themselves, about having fun, and about being fair and good and treating their employees fairly.

If more companies were doing things like this, the game industry would be much better...

A Story worth Playing

A while ago I mentioned that I started playing Pillars of Eternity(PoE) and I liked it, but that it was very story-based. Well, this is true, and I just finished it recently actually because it required some commitment to follow all the quests and explanations and all that.

It was an amazing experience and I want to review it.

As I mentioned before, Pillars of Eternity is an old-fashion RPG with isometric perspective like Baldur´s Gate. You have a main character, that you can customise at will, and you can get a number of companions with different personalities that assist you in your quests and travels. If you´re not convinced with the named companions, you are free to hire random Adventurers that fill the space and help you with fights and such things, but I'd say it's really worth to travel with characters that have their own plots and personalities.

The game is similar to D&D but uses its own classes, lore, skills and rules for combats and interactions. And it's based around quests. You see, killing enemies in PoE doesn't give you experience, so there´s no grinding possible, you only advance by making quests. There´s lots of them, and they're quite varied and with lots of options and possible resolutions, really using the different skills that you may have. Not many require to kill enemies, and the ones that do tend to be about one single big enemy, no need to bring back 10 wolf pelts and similar stuff.

From the start, you can feel the game is heavily story-based. Shortly after beginning, you find a moment where the game explains a situation with narration and text, where you can choose a course of action, but where your skills points and previous experience can change the outcome or the options. This is really immersive and opens thousands of possibilities outside the normal game mechanics, where having high intelligence or good athleticism does matter and can get you the best results. For example, you find some kind of mechanism next to a closed door. If you have good strength, you can break the mechanism. If you have good mechanics, you understand how it works and operate it. If you have a high intelligence, maybe you recall a previous mural and understand the steps to use it. All are different options that result in the same, opening the door, but unless you have the required attribute they will not even appear to you, or will fail if you try them. This moulds your character a lot more than what I´ve seen in other games.

Similarly, the concept of morality, good or bad, has been developed here much further than other rpgs. Things are not as simple as good or evil, with good points or evil points. Here you have reputation. And reputation includes lots of things. You may have a reputation from being clever, diplomatic, honest, cruel, violent, benevolent, tricky, misleading, rational, etc. This depends on your conversations, on what you say and on what you do, and having a high reputation in one of those aspects does not mean you cannot use a completely different action in a certain situation....but it also opens chances to use this reputation for your advantage. For example, being honest allows people to trust you at your word. Then again, because people trust you on your word, if in certain moments you lie people don't expect it and trust you anyway. Or if you´re rather diplomatic, then new conversation options will show up that will help you resolve conflicts differently. Or if a certain town or faction has a good impression of you, their interactions will change. You may get more rewards, more information, better prices, etc....At the same time you can gain bad reputation with cities, factions, etc. At some point of the game, for example, you need to choose between some factions, and good reputation in one will probably be obtained because you will get bad reputation with another.

In general these details add a big layer of complexity to the gameplay when you interact with others, and allows you to really shape your character. You´re not limited to the goody two-shoes or the evil psychopath with more moderate behaviours being punished by not having special interactions. Here you can develop a benevolent character that lies and still will fight at the drop of a hat. Or you can be cruel but honest. In general, you can really, really personalise the way your character is perceived and interacts with others, and there's no out-of-character, you could be honest most of the time and still trick people sometimes, or be diplomatic and once or twice straight up murder someone who´s being  a total idiot. The level of flexibility you have in this is amazing, rewarding and really interesting. And this same reputation changes conversation options and also these scripted-text only interactions where you choose different actions, so it manages to expand your choices and the way you resolve problems.

The story itself is rich and detailed. PoE creates a different world, with lots of races, factions and interests, that sometimes it's a bit hard to follow from scratch. It immerses you in a complicated zone with conflicts and troubles, where a plague is making children to be born without a soul, not dead but not moving or reacting to anything. In this world souls can be fragmented, used, reborn, split and manipulated, they can be ripped apart or be eroded, and a big part of the lore is around these things. There are gods that oversee the world with different skills and responsibilities, but they seem far from the daily lives (at least in the beginning). All the world has also ruins of some ancient civilisation that manipulated souls at will, with strange machines of unclear purpose that can provide light and power or just as easily convert to dust all the people nearby. As the main character, from an initial moment where you don´t have any clear purposes, you get inflicted with what seems to be some curse/blessing that may drive you mad, and in your travel you're searching for a solution to your problem, while helping others, influencing the local politics and trying to find clues about the plague that the region is suffering. Things start slow but turn into epic proportions after a while, unravelling a complex plot and discovering several refreshing takes on the fantasy genre.

The named companions you can get help you along the way but also have their own motives and stories, and you can help them resolve their issues and know them better, gaining their trust and learning about them. There's also a sense of familiarity created as you travel with them and they talk with each other and interact also with people you talk with. Some of them are less interesting or do not fit quite as well with your style, but all of them are worth exploring, and most of their quests are really interesting, although sometimes you need to wait to advance a lot in the game to complete them. The shame is that you're limited to 5 of them, and also that, of course, they need to adapt to your class to combine well as a party, so you usually have a strong core of characters that must be with you at all times and then one or two slots where you can change things and explore different options.

Apart from the stories and conversations, there's combat of course. The fights can be challenging and intense, with a lot of micromanagement needed to succeed, but also very rewarding. You can also keep doing quests, go up levels and make your life easier by reaching top levels early on, and this way have a kind of god-like strength. Combat is based on endurance, which indicates how tired you are, and once you run out of it you pass out. This means you can still win the combat with other characters, or even restore yourself with some healing skill. However you will be hurt and will need to rest afterwards to recover. You also have life, which cannot be restored really except with one or two excepcional skills, so when  it's low you also need to rest. Characters that run out of life are dead for real and cannot be recovered, and if your main character dies or all your party becomes unconscious, it's game over. However there's lots of autosaves every time you enter a map, so you're never that far behind after this happens. Even with top level, some fights are really really hard, but also some of those have Pacific ways to resolve the issue or avoid conflict, although it may depend in a lot of other factors.

I played the main game and 2 expansions, and made sure to left the end boss for last.  All the storylines were really great and it was extremely satisfying to reach the last boss extremely overpowered and manage to defeat them with ease, by that point you're really involved and want to finish them. I played as mostly good, and I'd like to try the opposite in another playthrough, but I dont know if i'll do that or just play the second part that seems also very very nice.

All in all a great experience, really immersive and interesting, and I highly recommend it.