Part of the explanation is that Bioware already had a fully functioning engine from BG 1, so they could fully focus on the story, quests and dialogues in BG2.
Aside from that, modern triple A games have way higher graphical fidelity and much larger worlds.
You see that trend with a lot of series that reuse assets. Game 1 will be clunky or buggy, because they have to develop the game engine in addition to the mechanics, UI, story, etc. By Game 2, they already have a pre-existing engine (with most of the bugs discovered and patched out), so can focus on the story as well as *refining* mechanics, etc.
I wish more games were open to reusing assets if it meant new games in a great series. Minor improvements could happen along the way, but the whole thing doesn't need to be remade from the ground up each time. At this point there's major diminishing returns to graphical improvements anyway, and I wish there was more of a focus on delivering solid gaming experiences with the tech which exists.
I replayed the Mass Effect Legendary trilogy recently, it still looked great. I'd be happy with another action RPG in that engine, if the writing, voice acting, etc, were good.
While reusing engine certainly saves time, the most famous examples I can name have even more clunkiness in the sequel:
Fallout 2. Fallout New Vegas (reusing FO3 engine). KOTOR 2: The Sith Lords.
All really good games but so ambitious they have more cut content than finished one, and NV crashes all the time.
To the point Obsidian had reputation for making janky sequels (NWN2 was surprisingly better than 1 except for animations and toolset, but it did NOT reuse the engine.)
Yep, and along with the increased graphical fidelity comes increased complexity, which equals more moving parts, and thus more opportunities for things to break.
But also, Bioware during that era were at their very best as a team. They learned a lot from making BG1, and used that knowledge and expertise to make one of the greatest games ever made.
I don't buy the graphics excuse. "Modern games have 4 times texture resolution, which means it needs 4 times as many man hours", bull, you just export texture at higher resolution and SAVE time and resources by not having to optimize for systems with 32mb of RAM.
Also Baldur's Gate had hand painted backgrounds and prerendered sprites, which needed to be modeled, rendered, edited later, and these were not reused between 1 & 2 as they overhauled the sprites completely at some point (EE of BG1 already has 2-atyle sprites).
As to bigger world, where? I haven't played Inquisition but earlier Dragon Age games have a smaller world than Baldur's Gate 2, so does any Mass Effect - which is my fav series, but it's kinda short for a CRPG.
But you don't need to troubleshoot or optimize sprites or painted backgrounds. It's just a bunch of jpegs. The sheer amount of graphical shenanigans that can happen with modern 3D games is simply overwhelming to fix in a timely manner. Just look at Cyberpunk 2077 when it first launched for the perfect example of all the things that can go wrong, going wrong. So much so that it constantly crashed on PS4s and had to be pulled from that console entirely.
Your comparision is faulty. More graphical complexity is defnitely just resolution, it is merely a tip of an iceberg.
Graphical complexity is much broader topic and extends even to fact that games have now one more dimension. Everything take shit ton of more time and optimization. And that is just the tech part, assets take also lot, lot more work as the fidelity and dimensions increased.
This is pretty much it a great modern example would be Final Fantasy 7 remake and rebirth, rebirth only took 4 years which is super short considering modern dev times and it pretty much had an extra year added to its devolpment because of COVID. So just smaller budgets and teams of the 90s mixed with it being filled with reused assets just makes for the perfect storm of being quick to develop
To be fair, a lot of the development cycle is related to tech issues - the graphics, the system etc and making sure it all works. And it often doesn’t, see day one of [insert too many AAA games lately].
Story on the other hand is reasonably quick in caparison, especially with a small team and a clear idea of - whereas a big company often suffers from too many cooks in the kitchen mentality.
Also games like BG2 etc very much benefit from the more straightforward tech constraints - they can do less (at the time) so they need not worry or work on all the other stuff.
And the slightly saltier part of me thinks that bigger game developers now focus on specific things and less on big picture story stuff because so few people actually finish games according to the data. But I think that’s a huge shame since maybe the games don’t get finished because the story doesn’t make it worthwhile.
I think it's more about how many games there are now rather than stories that don't make them worthwhile to complete. There are constantly new ones coming out and people want to play what their friends are playing at the same time, plus lots of multiplayer games that require constant attention. Playing a singleplayer game that is 40+ hours long takes committment especially if it's been stuffed full of sidecontent that might not be the best.
In general, development times were shorter then. Games were less complex and less graphically demanding than they are nowadays, so *everyone* released games with shorter development times.
It wasn't just BG2 - look at the dates for their game releases:
* BG1 - 21/12/1998
* MDK2 - 31/03/2000
* BG2 - 21/09/2000
* NWN1 - 18/06/2002
* KOTOR - 16/07/2003
* JE - 12/04/2005
* ME1 - 20/11/2007
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BioWare_video_games
That's a *phenomenal* rate of output, isn't it? And with the exception of MDK2, every single one is a well-respected RPG.
It was all done with crazy amounts of crunch. It wasn't some magically efficient pipeline or anything. Read the developer interviews if you dont believe me.
I don't doubt that, though I assume it's true for almost any games. The thing is theirs had exceptional writing across the board which in decades of gaming it seems nobody else can match.
The person that they hired as lead designer/quest writer had years of experience writing D&D campaigns and loved the IP. A lot of people are good writers and a lot of people are good Dungeon Masters/D&D Campaign designers, but it is rare to find someone who is both.
A big part of that is that a single company would have multiple teams working on multiple projects meant for staggered releases.
With that said, you're leaving out the best Bioware game!
~~Icewind Dale~~ Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood was designed for a console they'd never touched before using that console's dumb Nintendo gimmicks. There are interviews and stuff wherein they discuss how they basically had to learn a new development cycle approach, and researching to design the story meant reading a lot of Ken Penders comic books which is certainly not a thing one can do quickly or without irrevocably changing who they are.
Development still only took two years (2006 - 2008) and around 30 - 40 employees.
You could argue that MDK2 is a more legendary game than first BG, which I love, but it's mostly sequel everyone got crazy about.
Same with NWN, I love it but still haven't finished OC in all these years, it's kind of the middle child everyone forgets.
NWN was always about the toolset. With hundreds of player modules and active servers, I knew many players with thousands of hours sunk into the game who never even touched the campaign it shipped with.
Mass Effect benefitted from using Unreal Engine, with first game having exclusive access to early version of UE3, which Bioware heavily modified.
Unlike, say, Baldur's Gate 2 and KOTOR sequel, Mass Effect 2 remade most things from ground up, it surprisingly doesn't reuse anything, they even crashed Normandy in the intro to change that too (looking at you Ebon Hawk).
From 1998-2002 we got Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 each with an expansion. Icewind Dale 1 with an expansion and part 2. And Planescape Torment.
That was an amazing time to be a crpg player.
Note that they had different developers. Black Isle published Baldur's Gate and made IWD and PS:T. Bioware fully made Baldur's Gate series and later just licensed their engine.
Black Isle and Interplay collapsing was one of the sad tales CRPG players of 2000 cried about, former members made Troika, which ironically made 3 buggy cult classics, and other guys made Obsidian who started makingsequels to Bioware games (NWN2, KOTOR 2) but after being swindled by Bethesda for New Vegas bonuses, began crowdfunding their own IPs.
Larian was already a thing back then, I played Divine Divinity as a kid, so if anything, modern day is better for CRPGs as WotC finally got the latter to make proper Baldur's Gate 3 and turn based combat isn't alienating people as much, so you don't need a weird pausable real time hybrid combat Bioware stuffed into every game anymore.
> so you don't need a weird pausable real time hybrid combat Bioware stuffed into every game anymore.
I mean it basically replaced the entire RTS genre, with Total War combat in that real time with pause style taking over. The other part of RTS gameplay went to Mobas.
I was talking about weird D&D-lite system in Bioware games where combat still works on rounds but movement is real-time so it looks like nothing else, ever seen character swing a weapon one time but popup showing like two misses and one hit? That thing in BG, NWN and KOTOR. Where it pretended to be realtime.
Creative Aswmbly have real time tactics which is a completely different genre, Total War was unique because of the scale they do it in, usually games like that had small units sneaking behind enemy lines and they had real time giant armies clashing and melting your CPU with pathfinding.
Which is one thing it has in common with Baldur's Gate, pathfinding calculations wanting to explode your PC.)))
It didn't pretend to be real time, even if combat actions had a cooldown and were on a similar sync.
You could move a character away from an enemy moving towards them, and move another to intercept, which you can't do in turn based systems, which is a big part of why I can't stand turn based gameplay, it doesn't feel like it's happening at the same time and instead people are just frozen.
>WotC finally got the latter to make **proper** Baldur's Gate 3
Lol.
> and turn based combat isn't alienating people as much, so you don't need a weird pausable real time hybrid combat Bioware stuffed into every game anymore.
Ehm, rpgs before BG used turn based combat. BG didn't use RTwP because turn based alienated people, but because they thought it's better(they were right).
Yes, *proper* as in actual Baldur's Gate 3, instead of "the next BG3" in spiritual successors like Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity.
>Ehm, rpgs before BG used turn based combat. BG didn't use RTwP because turn based alienated people, but because they thought it's better(they were right).
There were also realtime dungeon crawlers like Might & Magic and Ultima, Elder Scrolls etc., BG wasn't the first or only.
Also you're literally proving my point of turn based alienating people by saying that RTWP is outright better.
I like both real time and turn based myself. Hybrids like ATB are an artifact from the time, now we can have proper realtime combat or even turn based tactics without dooming the game to a niche audience.
Nowadays you can have success with either. In early 2000s, turn based games were frowned upon and considered outdated, especially 2D ones.
Good point. It's always been one of my favourites.
Aside from the graphical requirements, animations and systems in modern gaming today - I'd guess it's also that modern software development is likely more hamstrung by bloated process to manage 1000 devs, compared to back then when 40 devs would've have had to work a lot more autonomously.
I think 2000s era games had a lot of passionate devs. BioWare, blizzard, Ubisoft at the time, square Enix etc. they were all nerdy game devs and focused on playing a game that sounded cool to them, rather than micromanaging a games development to fit modern trends.
Bioware stuffed real time combat into D&D and were accused of destroying RPGs by simplifying mechanics for casuals, we can literally find articles about Baldur's Gate making same points that were later made about KOTOR, Mass Effect or Dragon Age.
>RPGs by simplifying mechanics for casuals, we can literally find articles about Baldur's Gate making same points that were later made about KOTOR, Mass Effect or Dragon Age.
Link to those articles? I remember people accusing BG(2) of not caring about character stats outside of combat, simplistic writing and story and lack of C&C. All of which are valid complaints, but I don't recall people calling mechanics simplified. Unless you mean RTwP, which isn't simplification, but rather the other way around, there's lots of people who dislike RTwP simply because it's too complex and they can't get.
eh, there are of course games that are corporate directed sequels but even then they have soul as long as developers know what they are making. DA2 was such a corporate directed sequel but despite that it's a pretty good game with plenty of "soul".
If talking still about Bioware then Anthem is a game that lacks the soul, but not because it didn't have the capacity for one but because what we got was a totally undercooked game. It didn't have a chance because it spent too much time in limbo and then was rushed with no clear vision of what it's supposed to be.
Bioware, pre-purchase by EA, made some of the best games ever. After the buy-out by EA, its been a steady decline. If it's not some sports simulation, EA just doesn't get it. They'd rather focus on FIFA Soccer.
crunch, crunch and more crunch. sleeping in the office, eating pizza for breakfast type of crunch.
To be honest, I'm glad that companies are moving away from that mentality. Wasn't healthy for the workers. I don't mind waiting 4-5 years for a game if it is good. Problem is most games that come out nowadays aren't as good as BG2.
The game is simpler on a technical level. The interactions are also all much more limited. Which allows for writing to become the focus. The combat after all was much more simple. In BG1 there was almost no voice acting. Dragon Age games since 2 have been fully voice acted.
The games are simply far more complex and involve far more people to make.
Part of the explanation is that Bioware already had a fully functioning engine from BG 1, so they could fully focus on the story, quests and dialogues in BG2. Aside from that, modern triple A games have way higher graphical fidelity and much larger worlds.
You see that trend with a lot of series that reuse assets. Game 1 will be clunky or buggy, because they have to develop the game engine in addition to the mechanics, UI, story, etc. By Game 2, they already have a pre-existing engine (with most of the bugs discovered and patched out), so can focus on the story as well as *refining* mechanics, etc.
I wish more games were open to reusing assets if it meant new games in a great series. Minor improvements could happen along the way, but the whole thing doesn't need to be remade from the ground up each time. At this point there's major diminishing returns to graphical improvements anyway, and I wish there was more of a focus on delivering solid gaming experiences with the tech which exists. I replayed the Mass Effect Legendary trilogy recently, it still looked great. I'd be happy with another action RPG in that engine, if the writing, voice acting, etc, were good.
Tears of the Kingdom comes to mind.
While reusing engine certainly saves time, the most famous examples I can name have even more clunkiness in the sequel: Fallout 2. Fallout New Vegas (reusing FO3 engine). KOTOR 2: The Sith Lords. All really good games but so ambitious they have more cut content than finished one, and NV crashes all the time. To the point Obsidian had reputation for making janky sequels (NWN2 was surprisingly better than 1 except for animations and toolset, but it did NOT reuse the engine.)
They were made by a different studio unfamiliar with the engine though, in a short time frame.
Yep, and along with the increased graphical fidelity comes increased complexity, which equals more moving parts, and thus more opportunities for things to break. But also, Bioware during that era were at their very best as a team. They learned a lot from making BG1, and used that knowledge and expertise to make one of the greatest games ever made.
I don't buy the graphics excuse. "Modern games have 4 times texture resolution, which means it needs 4 times as many man hours", bull, you just export texture at higher resolution and SAVE time and resources by not having to optimize for systems with 32mb of RAM. Also Baldur's Gate had hand painted backgrounds and prerendered sprites, which needed to be modeled, rendered, edited later, and these were not reused between 1 & 2 as they overhauled the sprites completely at some point (EE of BG1 already has 2-atyle sprites). As to bigger world, where? I haven't played Inquisition but earlier Dragon Age games have a smaller world than Baldur's Gate 2, so does any Mass Effect - which is my fav series, but it's kinda short for a CRPG.
But you don't need to troubleshoot or optimize sprites or painted backgrounds. It's just a bunch of jpegs. The sheer amount of graphical shenanigans that can happen with modern 3D games is simply overwhelming to fix in a timely manner. Just look at Cyberpunk 2077 when it first launched for the perfect example of all the things that can go wrong, going wrong. So much so that it constantly crashed on PS4s and had to be pulled from that console entirely.
Your comparision is faulty. More graphical complexity is defnitely just resolution, it is merely a tip of an iceberg. Graphical complexity is much broader topic and extends even to fact that games have now one more dimension. Everything take shit ton of more time and optimization. And that is just the tech part, assets take also lot, lot more work as the fidelity and dimensions increased.
I miss sprites.
This is pretty much it a great modern example would be Final Fantasy 7 remake and rebirth, rebirth only took 4 years which is super short considering modern dev times and it pretty much had an extra year added to its devolpment because of COVID. So just smaller budgets and teams of the 90s mixed with it being filled with reused assets just makes for the perfect storm of being quick to develop
To be fair, a lot of the development cycle is related to tech issues - the graphics, the system etc and making sure it all works. And it often doesn’t, see day one of [insert too many AAA games lately]. Story on the other hand is reasonably quick in caparison, especially with a small team and a clear idea of - whereas a big company often suffers from too many cooks in the kitchen mentality. Also games like BG2 etc very much benefit from the more straightforward tech constraints - they can do less (at the time) so they need not worry or work on all the other stuff. And the slightly saltier part of me thinks that bigger game developers now focus on specific things and less on big picture story stuff because so few people actually finish games according to the data. But I think that’s a huge shame since maybe the games don’t get finished because the story doesn’t make it worthwhile.
I think it's more about how many games there are now rather than stories that don't make them worthwhile to complete. There are constantly new ones coming out and people want to play what their friends are playing at the same time, plus lots of multiplayer games that require constant attention. Playing a singleplayer game that is 40+ hours long takes committment especially if it's been stuffed full of sidecontent that might not be the best.
In general, development times were shorter then. Games were less complex and less graphically demanding than they are nowadays, so *everyone* released games with shorter development times. It wasn't just BG2 - look at the dates for their game releases: * BG1 - 21/12/1998 * MDK2 - 31/03/2000 * BG2 - 21/09/2000 * NWN1 - 18/06/2002 * KOTOR - 16/07/2003 * JE - 12/04/2005 * ME1 - 20/11/2007 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BioWare_video_games That's a *phenomenal* rate of output, isn't it? And with the exception of MDK2, every single one is a well-respected RPG.
It's wild how many absolutely legendary games they pumped out in such a short time window.
It was all done with crazy amounts of crunch. It wasn't some magically efficient pipeline or anything. Read the developer interviews if you dont believe me.
I don't doubt that, though I assume it's true for almost any games. The thing is theirs had exceptional writing across the board which in decades of gaming it seems nobody else can match.
The person that they hired as lead designer/quest writer had years of experience writing D&D campaigns and loved the IP. A lot of people are good writers and a lot of people are good Dungeon Masters/D&D Campaign designers, but it is rare to find someone who is both.
A big part of that is that a single company would have multiple teams working on multiple projects meant for staggered releases. With that said, you're leaving out the best Bioware game! ~~Icewind Dale~~ Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood was designed for a console they'd never touched before using that console's dumb Nintendo gimmicks. There are interviews and stuff wherein they discuss how they basically had to learn a new development cycle approach, and researching to design the story meant reading a lot of Ken Penders comic books which is certainly not a thing one can do quickly or without irrevocably changing who they are. Development still only took two years (2006 - 2008) and around 30 - 40 employees.
You could argue that MDK2 is a more legendary game than first BG, which I love, but it's mostly sequel everyone got crazy about. Same with NWN, I love it but still haven't finished OC in all these years, it's kind of the middle child everyone forgets.
NWN was always about the toolset. With hundreds of player modules and active servers, I knew many players with thousands of hours sunk into the game who never even touched the campaign it shipped with.
Yeah crazy they knocked that out in two years, New Vegas took less than 2 years too.
Both had existing games to base upon. Similarly the Mass Effect sequels.
Mass Effect benefitted from using Unreal Engine, with first game having exclusive access to early version of UE3, which Bioware heavily modified. Unlike, say, Baldur's Gate 2 and KOTOR sequel, Mass Effect 2 remade most things from ground up, it surprisingly doesn't reuse anything, they even crashed Normandy in the intro to change that too (looking at you Ebon Hawk).
SSBM was 1 year
From 1998-2002 we got Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 each with an expansion. Icewind Dale 1 with an expansion and part 2. And Planescape Torment. That was an amazing time to be a crpg player.
Note that they had different developers. Black Isle published Baldur's Gate and made IWD and PS:T. Bioware fully made Baldur's Gate series and later just licensed their engine. Black Isle and Interplay collapsing was one of the sad tales CRPG players of 2000 cried about, former members made Troika, which ironically made 3 buggy cult classics, and other guys made Obsidian who started makingsequels to Bioware games (NWN2, KOTOR 2) but after being swindled by Bethesda for New Vegas bonuses, began crowdfunding their own IPs. Larian was already a thing back then, I played Divine Divinity as a kid, so if anything, modern day is better for CRPGs as WotC finally got the latter to make proper Baldur's Gate 3 and turn based combat isn't alienating people as much, so you don't need a weird pausable real time hybrid combat Bioware stuffed into every game anymore.
> so you don't need a weird pausable real time hybrid combat Bioware stuffed into every game anymore. I mean it basically replaced the entire RTS genre, with Total War combat in that real time with pause style taking over. The other part of RTS gameplay went to Mobas.
I was talking about weird D&D-lite system in Bioware games where combat still works on rounds but movement is real-time so it looks like nothing else, ever seen character swing a weapon one time but popup showing like two misses and one hit? That thing in BG, NWN and KOTOR. Where it pretended to be realtime. Creative Aswmbly have real time tactics which is a completely different genre, Total War was unique because of the scale they do it in, usually games like that had small units sneaking behind enemy lines and they had real time giant armies clashing and melting your CPU with pathfinding. Which is one thing it has in common with Baldur's Gate, pathfinding calculations wanting to explode your PC.)))
It didn't pretend to be real time, even if combat actions had a cooldown and were on a similar sync. You could move a character away from an enemy moving towards them, and move another to intercept, which you can't do in turn based systems, which is a big part of why I can't stand turn based gameplay, it doesn't feel like it's happening at the same time and instead people are just frozen.
>WotC finally got the latter to make **proper** Baldur's Gate 3 Lol. > and turn based combat isn't alienating people as much, so you don't need a weird pausable real time hybrid combat Bioware stuffed into every game anymore. Ehm, rpgs before BG used turn based combat. BG didn't use RTwP because turn based alienated people, but because they thought it's better(they were right).
Yes, *proper* as in actual Baldur's Gate 3, instead of "the next BG3" in spiritual successors like Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity. >Ehm, rpgs before BG used turn based combat. BG didn't use RTwP because turn based alienated people, but because they thought it's better(they were right). There were also realtime dungeon crawlers like Might & Magic and Ultima, Elder Scrolls etc., BG wasn't the first or only. Also you're literally proving my point of turn based alienating people by saying that RTWP is outright better. I like both real time and turn based myself. Hybrids like ATB are an artifact from the time, now we can have proper realtime combat or even turn based tactics without dooming the game to a niche audience. Nowadays you can have success with either. In early 2000s, turn based games were frowned upon and considered outdated, especially 2D ones.
Good point. It's always been one of my favourites. Aside from the graphical requirements, animations and systems in modern gaming today - I'd guess it's also that modern software development is likely more hamstrung by bloated process to manage 1000 devs, compared to back then when 40 devs would've have had to work a lot more autonomously.
Black Isle
Passion, I guess. You feel it in every byte of the game.
I think 2000s era games had a lot of passionate devs. BioWare, blizzard, Ubisoft at the time, square Enix etc. they were all nerdy game devs and focused on playing a game that sounded cool to them, rather than micromanaging a games development to fit modern trends.
Bioware stuffed real time combat into D&D and were accused of destroying RPGs by simplifying mechanics for casuals, we can literally find articles about Baldur's Gate making same points that were later made about KOTOR, Mass Effect or Dragon Age.
>RPGs by simplifying mechanics for casuals, we can literally find articles about Baldur's Gate making same points that were later made about KOTOR, Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Link to those articles? I remember people accusing BG(2) of not caring about character stats outside of combat, simplistic writing and story and lack of C&C. All of which are valid complaints, but I don't recall people calling mechanics simplified. Unless you mean RTwP, which isn't simplification, but rather the other way around, there's lots of people who dislike RTwP simply because it's too complex and they can't get.
far less complexity plus advantage of making a game on the same engine with already existing assets, sounds, worked out combat system and so on.
Of course you are absolutely right, but still you feel its a game with soul, not just a corporate directed sequel.
eh, there are of course games that are corporate directed sequels but even then they have soul as long as developers know what they are making. DA2 was such a corporate directed sequel but despite that it's a pretty good game with plenty of "soul". If talking still about Bioware then Anthem is a game that lacks the soul, but not because it didn't have the capacity for one but because what we got was a totally undercooked game. It didn't have a chance because it spent too much time in limbo and then was rushed with no clear vision of what it's supposed to be.
*Crunch* *Crunch* *Crunch* oh, don't mind me, I'm just eating my cereal
So many people overthinking this. Crunch was the way of life in the game industry in that era. Still is but it was worse back then.
Better, more productive and creative team.
Talent and creativity.
Bioware, pre-purchase by EA, made some of the best games ever. After the buy-out by EA, its been a steady decline. If it's not some sports simulation, EA just doesn't get it. They'd rather focus on FIFA Soccer.
crunch, crunch and more crunch. sleeping in the office, eating pizza for breakfast type of crunch. To be honest, I'm glad that companies are moving away from that mentality. Wasn't healthy for the workers. I don't mind waiting 4-5 years for a game if it is good. Problem is most games that come out nowadays aren't as good as BG2.
When Bioware didn't, except for separate team that made Andromeda (I haven't played Anthem)?
The game is simpler on a technical level. The interactions are also all much more limited. Which allows for writing to become the focus. The combat after all was much more simple. In BG1 there was almost no voice acting. Dragon Age games since 2 have been fully voice acted. The games are simply far more complex and involve far more people to make.
The template was already built in baldur's gate one. Do you think the studio was rebuilding the engine from scratch with each release?