Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough

[warty goblin]

Eurojank is probably best described as a subcategory of games with high ambition, and low resources. A lot of these types of games are created in eastern Europe, hence the name.

Eurojank games tend to be feature rich, innovative, and off-the-wall, but also, well, janky. Shoddy coding, weird translations or speech patterns, and just an all around feeling of being off in a charming way.

Yeah, it's like they come at fairly conventional ideas (often third person action RPGs) but about 30% out of phase and 50% under budget from what you'd expect. My favorite example of Eurojank is probably Spiders, because everything they make is at once kinda normal... except for the completely bizarre parts. So they'll do an RPG, but it's set on Mars in an unimaginably distant post-Earth future, or a Soulslike, but it's during the French revolution and also you are a robot. They're probably low-Eurojank, certainly by the time you get to their titles that anybody has actually played, but the jank is still there.

The thing with Eurojank is that it kinda either works, in which case it's this lovable, kinda rough round the edges, fresh take on some basic idea. Or it really doesn't, and it's just the boring, broken mess version of those ideas. Eurojank is like a box of chocolates, except some of them are 5 year old cheap chocolate that has been in the sun too long and has started to separate.

the classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, the latter of which is considered the primoridal Eurojank game which popularized the idea.

At STALKER, the only game where I'd occasionally be walking around and explode, and be unsure whether I had stepped on one of the mostly invisible explode-your-face anomalies, or it had just bugged out. I also never figured out of the entire level that got overrun by horrible giant mutant rats was intentional, a real bug, or one of the unplanned happy accidents of the AI system.

[LibraryOgre]

Baldur's Gate 3 III: Four Shalt Thou Not Count

[Psyren]

The Cyanide Game of Thrones RPG is pretty good if you have high tolerance for Eurojank*. There's plenty of ways to create variability in a game without magic, magic is just the easy and incoherent shortcut.

"Pretty good" seems rather generous given its review scores. And the first three reviews I read talked about repetitive/tiresome/tedious combat, which is exactly what I'd expect from a low-magic RPG in that vein.

Nothing wrong with low-magic RPGs, although Westeros as a setting is definitely built for grand scale conflict and doing a Song of Ice and Fire RPG well would probably mean incorporating elements of strategy games. For what it's worth I've long been fascinated by the idea of making a game that still feels like a CRPG while operating on a scale of armies, I think that could be a really cool thing, but I do suspect Larian might want to do something more traditional.

Grand strategy is niche enough without then getting experimental on top of it. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but there's no way they'd gamble the license on something like that unless it was an indie pet project, and either way they wouldn't be getting Larian.

Where I could see a Game of Thrones license working is in a different genre - say, a Dishonored/Assassin's Creed-style game with hack-and-slash and stealth elements where you play as Arya Stark, growing her martial prowess and over time eventually supplementing those skills with her more supernatural abilities. Something like that would probably generate enough buzz and word-of-mouth to justify an AAA price tag. But that wouldn't exactly be Larian's bag either, you'd want a studio like Arkane.

[Errorname]

Grand strategy is niche enough without then getting experimental on top of it. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but there's no way they'd gamble the license on something like that unless it was an indie pet project

Wargaming is already a fundamental part of the DNA of CRPGs, so it'd probably be less experimental than I'm making it sound, and I do think to make a Game of Thrones thing that captures the appeal of the franchise you would need to include strategy elements, since feudal politics and warfare is such a huge part of the story.

Either way they wouldn't be getting Larian.

My contention was more that if Larian wanted the IP, they could probably get it, not necessarily that they did want it. I agree it doesn't really fit their style

[Eldonauran]

Baldur's Gate 3 III: Four Shalt Thou Not Count

This one has my vote.

[Cikomyr2]

Wargaming is already a fundamental part of the DNA of CRPGs, so it'd probably be less experimental than I'm making it sound, and I do think to make a Game of Thrones thing that captures the appeal of the franchise you would need to include strategy elements, since feudal politics and warfare is such a huge part of the story.

So more of a Crusader Kings/DnD mix than a Warhammer/Dnd mix i guess?

Id love a proper grand strategy of characters forming mageocracies, bastions of military might, thieves/merchant guilds, theocracies...

[warty goblin]

"Pretty good" seems rather generous given its review scores. And the first three reviews I read talked about repetitive/tiresome/tedious combat, which is exactly what I'd expect from a low-magic RPG in that vein.

The combat was pretty repetitive, I didn't find it worse than a lot of RPGs, and better than some. I actually finished it for one thing, which is more than I can say for the Pathfinder games, which have magic running out of every orifice and absolute scads of boring and repetitive combat. I guess I don't really see much association between number of spell buttons and how engaging the combat is.

It also helped that it was a very credible attempt to engage with the structure and at least one of the themes of the first novel. Having two leads who are co-equal main characters is pretty novel for an RPG, even today, and I thought it delivered a quite solid story on the question of how much does one owe another person's children. Not flawless by any means, but substantially more thoughtful, and thought provoking (at least for me) than I'd have any reason to hope for in an RPG.

[Psyren]

The combat was pretty repetitive, I didn't find it worse than a lot of RPGs, and better than some. I actually finished it for one thing, which is more than I can say for the Pathfinder games, which have magic running out of every orifice and absolute scads of boring and repetitive combat. I guess I don't really see much association between number of spell buttons and how engaging the combat is.

To some extent this sort of thing is going to be subjective, but I'm comfortable in saying that your opinion of PF CRPG combat (assuming you're referring to the Owlcat games) is in the minority - and while popularity doesn't necessarily equal quality, it does matter when it comes to the idea of greenlighting a AAA project from a ROI perspective.

It also helped that it was a very credible attempt to engage with the structure and at least one of the themes of the first novel. Having two leads who are co-equal main characters is pretty novel for an RPG, even today, and I thought it delivered a quite solid story on the question of how much does one owe another person's children. Not flawless by any means, but substantially more thoughtful, and thought provoking (at least for me) than I'd have any reason to hope for in an RPG.

I agree you can tell a great story in a GoT game - but you don't need a bombastic Larian CRPG for that when something much cheaper like visual novel or an adventure game would work just as well. CRPGs live or die on their gameplay, and while it's possible to have varied and engaging gameplay in a fantasy setting with low magic, I think it's an unnecessary handicap.

[warty goblin]

To some extent this sort of thing is going to be subjective, but I'm comfortable in saying that your opinion of PF CRPG combat (assuming you're referring to the Owlcat games) is in the minority - and while popularity doesn't necessarily equal quality, it does matter when it comes to the idea of greenlighting a AAA project from a ROI perspective.

To be fair, GoT combat is sort of targeted directly at my personal biases, i.e. a bunch of big armored dudes smashing each other. Owlcat's Pathfinder games are very much not so carefully targeted, since it's pretty much walk into room, do my one weird character build trick, walk into the next room, do the same trick again, and repeat until the blandoid encounters crush my desire to continue playing. The build variety is great and cool don't get me wrong*, but I can't tell the difference between the proc gen encounters in the DLC and the hand designed ones - the encounter design is so boring it's literally like an AI made it. And not one of the smart AIs, one of the chunk pre-generated modules together ones. BG3 is relatively unusual in cRPGs in that the encounters generally don't feel like they're just a change of background texture away from happening on a 20x50ft room hastily sketched onto graph paper with a couple of orc minis dropped in one corner. Solasta at its best does this really well too, but it also has a distressing number of really boring fights, not least because they decided to include random encounters, which are pretty much always a source of boredom and repetition.

I agree you can tell a great story in a GoT game - but you don't need a bombastic Larian CRPG for that when something much cheaper like visual novel or an adventure game would work just as well. CRPGs live or die on their gameplay, and while it's possible to have varied and engaging gameplay in a fantasy setting with low magic, I think it's an unnecessary handicap.

I already said I very much hope Larian doesn't do something licensed next, I think their original stuff is too much fun, and actual original ideas are in extremely scarce supply right now in anything above indie/low tier AA development.

That said, I think Larian incidentally made a quite reasonable template for a GoT game with Dragon Commander. Knock off the insane setting bits, and you've got a character driven multiple faction politics game with a strategy layer. It's an incredibly natural fit for GoT, and benefits substantially from the (for the time) quite good graphical presentation.

*I have gotten far more enjoyment and time out of the character generator in Wrath of the Righteous than actually playing the game. Probably by a factor of two.

[Lycunadari]

So apparently a DLC was planned was scrapped because nobody actually *wanted* to make it. Also, the next game is probably not going to be DOS 3 but "still familiar". The mention of something they had planned before makes me think of the cancelled Divinity: Fallen Heroes game. Maybe they'll build on that/incorporate that in some way?

[Errorname]

I agree you can tell a great story in a GoT game - but you don't need a bombastic Larian CRPG for that when something much cheaper like visual novel or an adventure game would work just as well. CRPGs live or die on their gameplay, and while it's possible to have varied and engaging gameplay in a fantasy setting with low magic, I think it's an unnecessary handicap.

Is Fallout handicapped by not letting the player be a wizard? There's nothing wrong with trying to make a game that feels like D&D, but that's not the only thing a CRPG can be.

[Anonymouswizard]

So apparently a DLC was planned was scrapped because nobody actually *wanted* to make it. Also, the next game is probably not going to be DOS 3 but "still familiar". The mention of something they had planned before makes me think of the cancelled Divinity: Fallen Heroes game. Maybe they'll build on that/incorporate that in some way?

It's also apparently bigger in scope than BG3, so we'll know in a decade.

Maybe they've decided to one up Bethesda and Bioware by making a sci-fi CRPG that's actually good (not that I've played Starfield, I need to see if my motherboard can actually accept enough RAM).

Is Fallout handicapped by not letting the player be a wizard? There's nothing wrong with trying to make a game that feels like D&D, but that's not the only thing a CRPG can be.

Except for Fallout 4, where the PC is clearly a wizard

[tonberrian]

Maybe they've decided to one up Bethesda and Bioware by making a sci-fi CRPG that's actually good (not that I've played Starfield, I need to see if my motherboard can actually accept enough RAM).

Remember that Rogue Trader is a sci-fi CRPG that is actually good!

[Anonymouswizard]

Remember that Rogue Trader is a sci-fi CRPG that is actually good!

Science fantasy. Is it an important difference? No but I'm still going to relentlessly point it out.

[Errorname]

Science fantasy. Is it an important difference? No but I'm still going to relentlessly point it out.

Honestly, space games are common enough that it'd still feel kind of stock setting to me. Same with post-apocalypse. I definitely wouldn't complain about seeing Larian take a crack at a Mass Effect or Fallout sort of setting, but if you aren't doing a high-fantasy those are next most common RPG genres.

[Psyren]

A science fantasy or space opera setting could be a good route for Larian to go, especially if they're trying to one-up Bioware at every turn.

Maybe they've decided to one up Bethesda and Bioware by making a sci-fi CRPG that's actually good (not that I've played Starfield, I need to see if my motherboard can actually accept enough RAM).

You're not missing anything. Play it on GamePass if you must try it.

Is Fallout handicapped by not letting the player be a wizard? There's nothing wrong with trying to make a game that feels like D&D, but that's not the only thing a CRPG can be.

Fallout may not have magic, but it's not a gritty medieval setting like GoT either. And when you throw in more fantastic things like AI and mutants, it's not even really a gritty gun setting.

[Errorname]

Fallout may not have magic, but it's not a gritty medieval setting like GoT either. And when you throw in more fantastic things like AI and mutants, it's not even really a gritty gun setting.

Sure, but it's not handicapped because it can't just copy D&D. CRPGs should build their mechanics around what suits the roles their players will end up roleplaying. That might mean not even having proper combat, Disco Elysium was an entirely talky CRPG and was pretty unanimously praised.

ASOIAF does have it's handicaps for making a CRPG, the worldbuilding is established in ways where you can't easily build the mechanics and the setting in tandem and many of the fun setting defining elements that players will want to use were designed as dramatic elements of a story rather than pieces of a balanced game system. But being bound by established fiction is a handicap common to all established franchises regardless of their level of magic.

[Psyren]

Sure, but it's not handicapped because it can't just copy D&D. CRPGs should build their mechanics around what suits the roles their players will end up roleplaying. That might mean not even having proper combat, Disco Elysium was an entirely talky CRPG and was pretty unanimously praised.

ASOIAF does have it's handicaps for making a CRPG, the worldbuilding is established in ways where you can't easily build the mechanics and the setting in tandem and many of the fun setting defining elements that players will want to use were designed as dramatic elements of a story rather than pieces of a balanced game system. But being bound by established fiction is a handicap common to all established franchises regardless of their level of magic.

We may just have to agree to disagree then, because none of your counterexamples actually address my point. Whether we're talking about Baldur's Gate's heroic fantasy, Fallout's science/post-apocalyptic fantasy, or Disco Elysium's surrealist fantasy - none of those settings have anywhere near the handicaps that trying to reproduce Succession-era gritty medieval fantasy Westeros with any degree of fidelity into a Larian-style CRPG while also maintaining deep and engaging gameplay would.

A High Valyrian prequel or Essos campaign I could maybe see... but making a game about those would rely on GRRM to actually sit down and write them - which, you know, good luck with that.

[Rynjin]

Eh, there are plenty of status effects and the like that can be made without ovbert magic. Take a cue from all of Rogue Trader's non-Psyker classes for instance, and/or put a focus on dealing status effects and using terrain features. The latter of which Larian is very good at.

[Psyren]

I'll believe it when I see it.

[Errorname]

We may just have to agree to disagree then, because none of your counterexamples actually address my point. Whether we're talking about Baldur's Gate's heroic fantasy, Fallout's science/post-apocalyptic fantasy, or Disco Elysium's surrealist fantasy - none of those settings have anywhere near the handicaps that trying to reproduce Succession-era gritty medieval fantasy Westeros with any degree of fidelity into a Larian-style CRPG while also maintaining deep and engaging gameplay would.

Then maybe I'm not understanding what sort of handicaps you think would prevent the setting from working in a CRPG. I don't think you need magic to make an engaging combat system and I don't even think you need a combat system to make an engaging CRPG, which is sort of the point of those examples. The big handicap I see is leaving the comfort zone of high fantasy D&D-likes for a different genre, and that's very much a challenge I would love to see Larian solve, to the point that I'd say the actual reason I wouldn't want them to do ASOIAF is that it wouldn't be enough of a departure.

A High Valyrian prequel or Essos campaign I could maybe see... but making a game about those would rely on GRRM to actually sit down and write them - which, you know, good luck with that.

I think both of these ideas are bad because you're shifting the focus outside of the actual core of the setting in order to chase making a game that's more like the sort of RPGs that already exist instead of doing what makes sense to capture the actual core appeal of the franchise.

[Psyren]

Then maybe I'm not understanding what sort of handicaps you think would prevent the setting from working in a CRPG. I don't think you need magic to make an engaging combat system and I don't even think you need a combat system to make an engaging CRPG, which is sort of the point of those examples.

Your examples don't have magic but they all have something other than swords, bows and horses.

The big handicap I see is leaving the comfort zone of high fantasy D&D-likes for a different genre, and that's very much a challenge I would love to see Larian solve, to the point that I'd say the actual reason I wouldn't want them to do ASOIAF is that it wouldn't be enough of a departure.

And I think your desire is too niche to be worth their time, but that's just my honest opinion. I could see a decent indie or AA game in that vein though.

I think both of these ideas are bad because you're shifting the focus outside of the actual core of the setting in order to chase making a game that's more like the sort of RPGs that already exist instead of doing what makes sense to capture the actual core appeal of the franchise.

I think they're bad ideas too, but not nearly as bad as a Westeros CRPG would be - which we saw fail firsthand.

[Errorname]

Your examples don't have magic but they all have something other than swords, bows and horses.

You can make a perfectly fine game out of Swords, Bows and Horses. Hell, I'd argue Disco Elysium proves you can get away with less.

And I think your desire is too niche to be worth their time, but that's just my honest opinion. I could see a decent indie or AA game in that vein though.

I feel like you didn't understand what I meant by that. I think ASOIAF is too similar because it's still basically high fantasy just grounded in a faux-historicity. What I want is to see Larian take a crack at a genre besides traditional fantasy.

[Anonymouswizard]

You're not missing anything. Play it on GamePass if you must try it.

I've got years to update my PC, I don't buy Bethesda games until they're on sale for a tenner or less. For Starfield maybe I'll wait until it's a fiver.

You can make a perfectly fine game out of Swords, Bows and Horses. Hell, I'd argue Disco Elysium proves you can get away with less.

Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment both have the bizarre do the heavy lifting, it's one of the reasons Tides of Numenera falls flat. Disco Elysium also gets away with a lot due to not having combat as gameplay, tactical combat with it's protagonists would be really boring.

But I don't think that means a low fantasy CRPG is impossible, I should really give Age of Decadence another go.

[Cikomyr2]

Eh, there are plenty of status effects and the like that can be made without ovbert magic. Take a cue from all of Rogue Trader's non-Psyker classes for instance, and/or put a focus on dealing status effects and using terrain features. The latter of which Larian is very good at.

I have been playing Rogue Trader and i have to be honest the whole experience left me dissatisfied after hearing how much its was hyped as a valid contemporary to BG3.

The entire game is just sequences of pre-planned semilinear encounter you never can deal with outside of open combat. The exploration is reduced to scourging the map for loot, but nothing is actually of note besides that. The primary gameplay loop is considerably shallow compared to the breath of experience you can enjoy with BG3.

[t209]

Well for sci-fi, there is Starfrontier (maybe not after recent issue…also even before then, it was obscure to the point that very few recall other TSR’s non-DnD works like Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World), Spelljammer (even if it should more be Battlefleet Gothic esque ship sim), Starfinder (though Owlcat would be the one to do that), and Traveller rpg.

[warty goblin]

If you want low magic tactical depth, it's perfectly doable. You just need to get a bit more in the weeds with stuff that high fantasy treats as more or less aesthetic preference, or ignore altogether. The big areas ripe for mechanical mining are probably armor, mounted combat, endurance/exhaustion, and combat movement.

This last one is something I think tactics games are well overdue to consider. The standard model is A moves up to B, then they stand in place hitting each other until one or the other is dead. Maybe things get spicy (in a Midwestern potato salad sense of the term) and A uses a charge ability to get to B, or B activates mega-block mode or something, but it's basically two dudes standing still and hammering on each other.

Because we're stuck with this boring as mud model as the only going "realistic" representation of pretty much the entirety of all armed martial arts ever, magic is about the only way to add spice, and we all know how that goes. This is only a requirement because the standard model is so empty, and nobody ever really expands it, they just complicate it with, like, giving axes a cleave ability or whatever.

But crack open your copy of Talhoffer or just go have a play fight with your buddy and a couple of sticks, and you quickly realize that people move around in a fight. They move a lot. They move to attack, they move to defend, when not even fighting they move in circles around each other. The default state in combat, particularly between small numbers where you don't have 30 buddies protecting your flanks, is movement.

That suggests that the fundamental action for a melee fighter isn't the attack, it's the move, which in turn carries the attack. If you want to effectively attack, you move to do it. Because you don't want to be effectively attacked, you position yourself so others can't move to attack you. Now combat isn't running two stacks of number up to each other and seeing if (my hp)/(your damage) > (your hp)/(my damage), it's chess. And it can be expanded in interesting ways, your fighters can literally learn new moves, you can have a really deep reaction system, add in some sense of facing or being engaged with an enemy, and things like flanking and overwhelming a target pop out as natural consequences.

[Eldan]

I do remember at least one RPG where all weapons had a length between 1 and I think 6, and the guy with the longer weapon had a pretty massive advantage, unless the guy with the shorter weapon managed a tactical "closing in" action, and then the other guy had a disadvantage if his weapon was too long. Sounds like something like that could easily be implemented in a computer game and built upon.

Edit: half-swording and pommel strikes etc. were also in there, with some weapons you could lower the damage slightly, but make them shorter, to negate disadvantages in a close grapple.

[Psyren]

You can make a perfectly fine game out of Swords, Bows and Horses. Hell, I'd argue Disco Elysium proves you can get away with less.

Disco Elysium is surrealism, which is about as far from gritty realistic anything as you can get without magic.

I feel like you didn't understand what I meant by that. I think ASOIAF is too similar because it's still basically high fantasy just grounded in a faux-historicity. What I want is to see Larian take a crack at a genre besides traditional fantasy.

And they very well might choose to. But given that they now command AAA licensing prices, again, good luck with that.

[Kardwill]

You can make a perfectly fine game out of Swords, Bows and Horses.

The entire Mount and Blade licence agrees with you ^^

As for turn-based combat where you have only mundane weapons, we have stuff like Banner Saga or Battle Brothers. Hell, Battle Brother is nearly a Westeros game itself, with its rival houses fighting it off and ignoring a larger threat. Sure, it has big surnatural threats, necromancers, giant wolves, undead and goblins, but your characters are normal, frail humans that face those with only steel weapons, tactics, bravery, spit, and blood. And, inevitably, death.