Never was into rpgs back in the day

NWN was a toolkit from the outset. Its base campaign can't be used as a metric for them
try Shadows of Undrentide or Horde of the Underdark, or try Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 (skip to 2 for in depth character writing, but expect to have missed 1's relevant plot)

Bioware was always a meme developer that never made a single decent game in it's life.
The only reason BG is passable is because they had Black Isle sitting on their backs doing quality control.

10495160
I agree with this. The cinematic end battle was cringe. Wannabe movie. DAO is pure cringe, too at points. Parts like in the castle with killing the kid seem to be about gritty edge for the sake of it. It's a terrible experience going thru that plot and the gameplay isn't worth it.
Out of all Bioware games I only liked ME2 as a spaceship building crew daddy simulator… which would no doubt be better if another company made it, but there's nothing like it on the market.

Thanks.

Thats because Bioware righting is shit, period. Especially Neverwinter Nights, insanely shit writing and not that great of a game overall. Never understood why its so popular. When someone told me to play it because I loved Baldurs Gate, I was instantly insulted by this game after booting it up.

They pulled of a DnD universe once, somewhat well, simply because its hard to fuck up.

Does anyone have the chart/table image showing how Bioware basically rewrites the same characters over and over?

Actually never seen that.

Seconding request.

This?

Is Jade Empire any good? It's the only Bioware game nobody ever talks about.

While that is interesting, that's not it.
It dealt specifically with the characters. The one I remember is the parallels between Morrigan and Miranda.

The OC is shit, you're supposed to play SotU and HotU, the latter being a direct sequel to the former which you're supposed to port your character across from. HotU is the real brightspark of the campaign, SotU is pretty bland but sets the story and gives you all the story setup and equipment you need for HotU, as well as giving you an easy enough environment to learn the game mechanics, HotU will fuck you up if you don't know what your doing.

Some of the characters in the OC will show up in HotU but they're not nearly as relevant.

In conclusion, play SotU with a level 1 character, then port the character over to HotU when you're done.

As for NWN2, play MotB and don't touch anything else.

I've played it once and forgot everything about it, seemingly like everyone else, so at least it's not so bad that it's unforgettable. All I remember is John Cleese, a threesome, and a twist I saw coming in the starting area.

Ah, never seen it, but it's pretty obvious they've been doggedly following Joseph Campell's monomyth formula with their plots and characters.

You were fooled by biodrones. BioWare was always shit.

It's just decent. It's not terrible, but it's not great either.

It's bland and forgettable, despite having the most unique setting out of all BioWare RPGs.

The combat is the worst out of all BioWare games (and that's saying something), the writing is shit, the characters are equally shit and uninteresting, the choices are the same boring crap they give you every game.

Basically, unless you really want to play an RPG set in Fantasy Asia Land you needn't bother.

aww man

It's not an image, it was an article.

gamesradar.com/recycled-characters-you-see-in-every-bioware-game/

Whoever wrote it clearly never played Baldurs Gate, as many of those characters fit into the typification presented here.

THE WORD SLAVES
THE SOURCE STONE
THE WORD SLAVES
THE SOURCE STONE

They are, but it's because of the gameplay, not the writing.

If you have Mask of the Betrayer, get the MotB Revert Pack if you patch it. There are some changes people don't like, like pic related.

yep. if I remember correctly its a total of 2GB, which was pretty big for the time

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You were lied to, they were never good. They always made shitty "rpgs" for teenagers, FFs of the west.

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Bioware never did a single good game.

Rpgfags are like the fags that play point n click games, they were the precursors of sjws and walkign simulator games. All fags, just older.

This. /thread.

Samefag.

Nah. RPGs are usually shit, some of their features do work in other genres, but only when modified (Roguelikes, Diablo-clones, etc). There is not a single traditional CRPG with good gameplay. None of them are fun or enjoyable experiences, just bland, boring, and utterly depressing.

Unlike video games in general?

Geeez user, sucks to be you.

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Yes. It is.
After Pillars of Eternity I decided to go back and play some classic RPGs (that I haven't actually played before).
And this notion that the old Bioware games were any better than todays ones is absurd. The writing is actually even worse.

The entirety of Baldur's Gate reminded me of Borderlands 2. The character has one or two character traits, let's take them to the extreme. -Everyones- favourite character was Minsc, and what does he do? He screams and shouts about protecting his witches and his space hamster. That's literally his entire character.

Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age Origins is the peak of their writing capabilities. And even then DAO is a generic but well made one, and ME1 was butchered with the sequels.

I don't play RPGs though. Name one classic RPG with gameplay that isn't tacked on to justify it being a video game and not a fucking book?

So why are we not shitting on nintnedo? They have done much more harm than Bioware ever will.

Fallout.

Pool of Radiance

I never liked DA:O, it's so goddamn bland, it has nothing that would help it stand out, be it in terms of worldbuilding, writing, reactivity or gameplay.

It's just boring.

Because Nintendo has fuckall to do with RPGs?

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Yes, it is bland and generic. But it is consistent.

So is the shit I had this morning. Doesn't mean it wasn't shit.

It wasn't shit. The writing was better than the average RPG, hence it must be said it's good. What, you want to compare it against the awful fuckin' writing of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale or Neverwinter? Do you realize just how convuluted and nonsensical the worldbuilding those games? The forgotten realms games are just idiotic.

No, it was not. It was even more boring than Forgotten Realms, and that's as generic as fantasy gets.

But that's wrong you stupid fuck.

Nope. Try again.

Nope.

Ok, Ultima IV

Next you are going to say, "the only good games are a very narrow band of FPSes in the mid-90s, nothing else the industry has ever made has been good".

Consistency is not enough. Generic and bland stories are so because they copy situations that work. My problem with DAO is that it copies on the surface level. All those standard fantasy stories have a moral lesson be it killing is wrong or learning when to forgive and be merciful. Here's the thing with DAO - it doesn't have it. It's a nihilistic tale where every choice is justified and there is no deeper meaning or theme to anything. When deciding to do the dark fantasy shtick, they did away with anything that made stories human. It became edgy situations and difficult choices which never had a pay off in any way except game acknowledging what you did in the ending cinematic.
You killed that kid? Okay, here's your cookie. Bravo for making a choice!

What is this edgelord shit? Where are the themes? Why doesn't my character descend into evil as he does stuff like this?

Neverwinter is far far below average RPG writing fam.

Every time.

Go back to cuckchan.

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Better. Not good, but better.

Alright nigger, hold the fuck up.

He points out a mistake you made. Then, you pull out the echos. YOU done fucked up, not him.

Now take yo' bitch ass, and get the hell out of here, because (((You))) clearly don't belong here.

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Maybe you should check who I said was samefagging
You fucked up and now you're paying the price.

You were calling samefag on people who were saying Bioware's games are shit. Yes, they ARE shit. They follow the same fucking formula every time, with small variations.

Hell, the chart in is surprisingly accurate.

Now, here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to call you a double nigger, because you fucked up twice, and I'm going to tell you to go back to reddit. Sound good?

Get the fuck out, and go back to Reddit, you double nigger.

It was amazed how in every fucking dialog there was a lawful good response, a neutral good one and cartoonish evil one. There was absolutely no role-play. Either you are a super villain who spits on puppies or a chivalrous Sunday morning super hero.

Is that from your myspace profile?

Maybe you should check their ids.

I see your point, but this is never going to change outside of a niche set of RPGs, unfortunate as it is. And you need only look at the situation with Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4. The mainstream plebites don't even acknowledge New Vegas while boasting of the perfection that supposedly is FO4. A game which entirely killed the roleplaying aspect of the RPG.

One could compare KOTOR 1 and KOTOR 2 in this regard, as well, and though KOTOR 2 expanded upon the morals of Star Wars in ways that uniquely critiqued its predecessor, people don't remember if fondly precisely because the consolite -need- to be told if they're good or bad.

TL;DR People are idiots who need to be told they're doing good, or doing evil and there's no wiggle room.

And the average writing of an RPG is shit.

I just did. They were all different, except yours.

The only one samefagging there, was yourself. Fucking amazing.

Find the door, and walk through it, you triple nigger.

It's almost like it was a joke, right?

Nah man, it is very simplistic and not very ambitious. The story is very cookie cutter and people like it because "lol better star wars story".

I too played KOTOR2 first, multiple times before I ever played KOTOR1. The first game is an okay game, but I had to suffer through the no equipment crafting (there was some but it might as well not exist as it was all hard gated and lacking in variety) and having the game stop me to tell me that Carth was feeling lonely so I should talk to him, instead of letting me decide when to talk to my companions.

KOTOR1 did planet eye candy better, I'll give it that. I don't know why Obisidian did not put more effort into that.

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Now you really done fucked up.

You fucked up by jumping the gun and now your retardation is on display for everyonee.

And now you're shifting blame.

WAS ONLY A PRANK BRO, I WAS ONLY PRETENDING, JEEZ

I really like your comparison to Bethesda's Fallout titles. It's a much easier way of explaining it in less words.

DAO makes it hard not to roleplay as a nu male with the most dull stare in your eyes. I wanna get out of my basement with the game, not play a liberal basement dweller. So, I decided to go evil. I was so fucking pissed when nobody reacted to killing the kid with any passion. In hindsight, was the same impotence real progressives show when confronted with the fact that we can't welcome rapefugees: "But we can't do anything else so whatever". Never before has being an edgelord in a game make me feel like a total cuck with contempt for his own being.

Let me tell you about NWN, the project was a complete trainwreck. They developed the engine and wrote the game simultaneously which meant they had to scrap campaign content continuously. When time was running out they scrapped everything, finalized the engine and shat out the original campaign in like a week or two. It was a complete rushjob which would see a repeat in NWN2 under Obsidian who had their project be mismanaged and then the project leader jumped ship leaving the mess in Josh "iron-arse" Sawyer's hands to fix.

The first one was better, after it they fell for their own hype and only wrote schmaltzy melodrama. BG1 was much less in your face and much more subtle.

You should start with the two expansions (they're meant to be played through with one character but not the same as the one from the OC.) and the premium modules.

Just like Star Wars itself.

Well, Star Wars is shit.

Well, on nwn1 oc defense, chapter 1 is the worst on the game by far

That's because you're an idiot and can't get pass the western europe visuals.

The DA:O setting is good with good potential, but it led nowhere. The most interesting conflict was Templars vs. Mages, but the games never got deeper into it.

What you people fail to realize ism that after playing 200 RPG's over the last 20-30 years, almost everything feels like "been there, done that". And you want that old spark back, but you can't have it, because you've become to jaded by experience.

"bland and generic" are the of the most useless words used to describe any game

You want showed in moral lessons? You want pretentious bullshittery masked as depth?
Fuck you.
Get the hell out of my vidiya.

get lost cuckchan frenchie

Bioware were never particularly amazing at writing. Functional, sure, but not greatness. Modern Bioware however are fucking terrible.

Mask of The Betrayer is pretty great. NWN2 vanilla is meh.

FUCK OFF YOU SONY SHILL

Pics related look at the image name
He was defending Playstation Plus price increase.

he's right though. nintendo died when iwata took the reigns.

all of neverwinter nights suck ass. Bioware was never good. the star wars games suck ass too because star wars sucks in general and they added in the extra-suckiness of being made by bioware.

i'd rather 100% a playthrough of pic fucking related without a walkthrough than play another bioware game in my life, im dead serious.

You stupid, inbred edgelord.
The point is that a good child killing story needs to deal with the theme of his lord father losing almost everything and a child. And the game must explore the interplay between his resentment for you and his promises to you. Or if he doesn't care, then the game needs to show him to be a sociopath masquerading as a good ruler. Or at least show his acceptance as a man of tragic fate who laments and accepts it.
And your companions, especially Cucklistar and grandma, should resent you forever for it.
Instead we get kill the child or not and then we brush it away as "it had to be done". Why is this in the game? Just so there could be choice and because they decided to be edgy. It's a meaningless addition to game that lacks any substance what so ever.

Or take the initial joining where Duncan kills a dude. His rationalization is hollow and stupid "it had to be done". There's no emotion, no lore showing off the brutal side of wardens anywhere else.
It's like devs decided to write a boring game with lower than average fantasy writing and then sprinkled it with meaningless edgelord shit. Then rationalized it everywhere by the same "it had to be done" throwaway line.

DAO is a piece of shit that plays our like an alien copying human work and deciding to be hip by being edgy without any understanding the meaning or why human stories are a certain way.

Shadows of Undrentide wasn't made by Bioware, it was only released by them. Baldur's Gate 1&2 have shitty writing all around, with all of the usual tropes modern Bioware is known for. Bioware has never made a single good game, they're only remembered fondly because most people were too young at the time to realize just how bad they were. Every single other cRPG at the time was better made and better written than the shit Bioware released.

Most of the fun in the old Bioware games is in seeing how broken you can make your character.

Yeah, because stopping to ponder and sob over every person you had to kill is so very deep.

And "it had to be done" is the best reason there is. No politicking, no moralizing. And sometimes, people just don't want to talk about painful/unpleasant shit.

And you don't even stay in that place after killing the child, so long-term consequences are kinda irrelevant. Not to mention that the end game does mention the results.

I do agree that Duncan killing Jory was unnecessary, but otherwise? No.

It's incredibly inconsistent within its own narrative. "It had to be done" is a convenient excuse thrown about until when it suddenly isn't. You can kill that child for no reason other than you want to, poison the arl, make deals with demons, slaughter anyone in your way, but then suddenly Alistar draws the line at allowing a villain to redeem himself by fighting the Archdemon threat? You know, that thing the Grey Wardens are sworn to do at any cost, personal issues get fucked? That's just one of the many times "It had to be done" suddenly doesn't show up, and it's both jarring and stupid.

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He's a turncoat.

It's not. Even I want to do it or I didn't want to risque it are better. Or in case of wardens, lets say we want to portray them as highly traditional and strict how about It's how it was always done. Literally any response besides "it had to be done" is better. This one is the generic I don't know how to writer character motivations way of handling things. Besides, it's not just that response. It's that the game doesn't follow up on anything you did.

DAO is literally chose a response and something awesome happens. Character motivations and consequences were handled better in DA II. Oh shit, I'm referencing the sequel as a positive example? Then you know your game fucked up hard.

Neverwinter Nights was the beginning of their fall from grace. You picked the wrong game.

Which is not to say that Baldur's Gate was god's gift to man or anything–just that it was an okay, entertaining D&D romp. There have been very few passable D&D games, and a lot of D&D fans.

I'm on season 3 of Babylon 5, and I'm legit shocked about how much shit is straight up ripped off and was repackaged into mass effect. Like almost every element of the games is in the show and done way fucking better. Same thing with Wheel of Time, and Dragon age now that I think about it.

I actually agree. DA2 was shit, but the way it handled dialogue and companion interaction was decent. Not as good as Dakkon from Planescape, but nothing ever will probably.

good job nigger

Killing a possesed child that murdered half a fucking town already - the lowest risk, safest choice. No other solution even appears unless you really look - many players never found it - , and that solution is a gamble.

So, yeah, "it had to be done" is a good reason. Something had to be done. the most efficient and best option was used.

How the fuck is that stupid, since that's basically the core motivation behind anything a human does. Why are you doing anything uncomfortable is it's not necessary? What other motivation do you need other than "I think it's necessary", because that's what it basically is.
Necessary why? To save the fucking village.

Just how detailed do you want the motivation to be spelled out? The more detailed it is, the less a character is yours.

At the time of Neverwinter's release people loved it for it's writing and world building, I clearly remember this. But it's so cliche and just cut and paste with all it's dialogue (those people in the houses pretty much exist to give you free evil points for murder) that now only it's expansion packs are liked.

What are some good Planescape modules for NWN2?