Dragon Age: Origins walked so Baldur’s Gate 3 could dash
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techradar.com
Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t the first successful attempt to marry cinematic aspirations with the traditional branching narratives and simulationist world-building of CRPGs. 2009’s Dragon Age: Origins had a very similar mission statement, offering a spiritual successor to BioWare’s earlier Baldur’s Gate titles long before Larian took us back to the titular city (and its surrounding areas).
Oh man, I loved playing Dragon's Age: Origins. I had a sort of "unexpected companion" when I played through it in college.
I was a computer geek; I had a gaming PC. My roommate was in a frat and had an Xbox 360. The only games he ever played were Call of Duty and Madden.
One day he came home with a copy of Dragon Age for the 360. He said, "This seems like a game you would know about. One of my fraternity brothers lent it to me. Have you played it?" I had just bought it a few days earlier but hadn't played it yet. Of course I'm expecting Call-of-Duty-Madden-360 roommate to hate it.
Later that week I was going to party and he was staying home -- a reversal of how things usually went. I got home very late, very drunk, expecting 360 roommate to be asleep. But no, there he is, playing Dragon Age. As soon as I walk in he says, "BRO I'M IN THE DWARVEN CITY HOW FAR DID YOU GET CHECK OUT THIS SKILL I UNLOCKED FOR ALISTAIR AND DUDE THERE IS A DOG."
We played through the campaign on our respective machines over the next week, sharing tips and strategies along the way. It was great.
That is an absolutely adorable story. I love that he got so into it.
Why does this article (and everyone else) seem to pretend like Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 didn’t exist?
Or how games like Neverwinter Nights came before Dragon Age Origins?
I don’t get the comparisons either. Dragons Age Origins was so boring I dropped it.
I felt like the article covered this, but more in a hand-wavey way. The article is really about the more cinematic aspects of the game, which is a more spiritual follow-up to Dragon Age Origins. Dragon Age Origins was very ambitious and was made by the same BioWare that made Baldurs Gate and Baldurs Gate II. They were trying to capture the spirit of the old games with a more fleshed out cinematic world where you could get up close and personal with the characters.
Arguably, Baldurs Gate III is the first game to successfully weave it's way through both. Divinity Original Sin and DOS II both lack this cinematic aspect. They both hem closer to traditional titles like Neverwinter Nights, where you have the three-quarters overhead view of your characters, but your characters are not explicitly detailed, nor do you get that many "close up" looks at them.
I'm fucking floored at being able to do a full on top-down view, and then being able to zoom in on incredibly detailed characters that exist in the world. It's arguably the best of both worlds.
Anyway, I see the article as focusing on cinematic aspects, which would be the ability to see detailed interactions among characters akin to a film, a thing we haven't seen much of in this style of game before, barring DAO.
Why is everyone acting like Dragon Age: Origins is the only fantasy RPG that ever existed? Baldur's Gate 3 is the next step in a long legacy of genre defining games.
I feel like JRPGs completely changed what an RPG video game is. They are watered down compared to the original cRPGs from the 80s and 90s. Then the "westernized" version of JRPGs watered it down even more. The old cRPGs were so big and so complex. OG Baldur's Gate, yes, but also Wizardry and Ultima too. I enjoyed Dragon Age because I liked the story, but I'd say Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 are more direct descendants of the old cRPG days (DA 2 & 3 bear no resemblance to cRPGs at all). I think Dragon Age games are good modern RPGs everyone should play but Baldur's Gate 3, imo, is a proper cRPG straight out of the 80s with 2023 graphics.
I'm so thankful this game is proving to be so popular. Maybe people are discovering (re-discovering) what RPGs used to be, and what makes them so great.
Dragon Age: Origins and it's expansion are still my favourite game of all time. I still absolutely love the origin stories. The other entries of the series could never quite catch what made the first one great.
I don't get the constant comparisons to Dragon Age: Origins... it was a terrible game! Bad graphics, bad animations, a terrible cliched storyline where every beat was telegraphed and predictible... I still feel ripped off and it's been 14 years ago now.
It's like nobody ever played GOOD fantasy RPGs, like the Gold Box games from SSI or Ultima, or Bard's Tale, or Wizardry?
The most important thing, which DA:O shares with Mass Effect, is that it gives the player an illusion that choices matter. That dopamine effect, together with a good but mostly linear story, and interesting companion characters, is a recipe for success with many people, like me. I mostly only play it once, rarely replay, so the illusion of choice isnt as easily ruined.
And companions is a big comparable thing between DA:O and BG3. Larian has really focused on that in this game, so of course it would make people compare it to DA.
I don't get it either, I liked the main plot in DA:O but most of the game is dealing with some big side quests that have next to nothing to do with it.
I don't remember having many big decisions either, a few characters might die but it doesn't really matter in the end.
One of my favorite games ever.
What finally decided me to buy it was a comment section of some random YouTuber talking about the game, and people saying how much it reminded them of Dragon Age Origins.
I've been loving this game. The spells are so cool sounding and looking. The characters all look amazing. When comparing it to DOS 2 I'd say that it's really made the roleplaying aspects shine. Divinity feels like the combat plus the puzzles start to overload everything into the second act.
Bg3 gets stronger in its second act in a lot of ways. Partially because your power levels scale up in satisfying ways and partially because the stakes get higher and the world more dangerous and bleak.
Many characters that appeared earlier really shine in the second act too.
Man, BG3 is all over the place, but after my bad experience with D:OS I'm really not sure about it.
Tell me more about what you disliked about D:OS. I'm playing through in co-op (in the endgame right now) and want to commiserate.
For me it was the bugs and some weird choices where things that should work to progress don't, and some progress is so convoluted that we had to look it up and we were like ugh wth.
Looking up stuff is annoying when something you're sure should work logically doesn't.
It was just very combat-heavy and very challenging, and not in a very fun way. Also I remember going through a period of finding combat just to get XP to be able to get gear to upgrade to or something like that, which prolonged the dragging. Overall it was a slog, which I carried through to see if I got some payoff. Looking back the payoff for me was "Avoid Larian games".
Fair. I was playing a warrior so combat wasn't as much an issue for me. Tbh when we were starting, someone told us to play DOS 2 instead of 1 since it's a better gameplay experience and I wonder if all these rough edges have been fixed.
I think I had a warrior-type too? You get to pick two characters, I recall.
I'm playing co-op, so I have one PC and manage one companion, and the other player does the same.