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TKU
Learned Scribe
USA
158 Posts |
 Posted - 30 Oct 2023 : 06:46:11
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In regards to Mystra, it's unfortunate that because of this game I'm starting to hear about 'Mystra the groomer' propagate in multiple other places as a sort of meme, but also something people sincerely believe, much like the 'mindflayers don't have souls' business, or a number of other places where Larian's loose approach (and/or lack of research) gets the context/details wrong.
Whatever's going on with Baldurian and Moonrise towers could probably deserve its own thread, it's quite a bit messy.
Now I don't consider myself quite the expert on Realmslore as some of the people here, but I have noticed that they seem to get Drow lore pretty consistently wrong in rather avoidable and easily researchable ways, which is odd to me, because that's one of the more popular sections of the settings, so should be harder to make so many simple mistakes-for example, Minthara has an exchange where she tells Gale that the drow kill every male child after the second in a household...which isn't accurate, they kill the third one the first time they have three male children at the same time...a one time sacrifice. Her own house had Gromph, Dantrag, Jarlaxle and Berg'inyon alive at the same time because house Baenre already performed said sacrifice, otherwise Berg'inyon wouldn't have survived to adulthood.
Changing Viconia, Sarevok, and possibly Mystra I think shows that Larian not only doesn't have a particularly strong inclination towards the lore of the setting, but that they don't necessarily have a particularly strong affection for it either, particularly in regards to the original saga, which just feels bafflingly *wrong*. And in nowhere else is this more clear than with how they treated Sarevok and Viconia. There's no way a writer who actually liked the previous games would write a line where the narrator compares sarevok to a...dried....'bodily fluid' stain left behind by Bhaal, or the whole incest subplot. |
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Azar
Master of Realmslore
1308 Posts |
Posted - 30 Oct 2023 : 08:10:22
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That's the problem when you apply modern real-world mores to fantasy that was (is)...fantasy.
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Originally posted by Seravin
If Larian picks up the Gold Box games (as stand alone adventures of Pool of Radiance and (Curse of the) Azure Bonds) I would be the happiest guy in the world.
The very thought makes my stomach turn, my skin crawl and my blood run cold; they need to make their own adventures and stay the hell away from any established Realms lore/journeys.
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Originally posted by Zeromaru X
Like all drows, actually.
Nope. There are black-skinned Drow (remember them?). There are Drow with angular features (as opposed to a full human-esque physiognomy) and a slope to their eyes.
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Originally posted by Irennan
Also, this game *is* Baldur's Gate, but 5e/1490s.
Incorrect. This has nothing to do with graphics. This has nothing to do with the rules. Hell, this has nothing to do with the year. From the explosive attention-grabbing spectacles, the contemporary sounding characters, the hurried/pointlessly vulgar romances, the mood-whiplash inducing scenes, the relatively squashed maps, the (visually) off-model races, the butchered recurring personalities, the mishandling of lore and more, this is not Baldur's Gate. This is a Larian game that took two IPs and kind of played with them a bit...using that which was convenient/profitable and downplaying or discarding the rest. I can keep pointing back to the Vincke interview all day long. |
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
Earth names in the Realms are more common than you may think. |
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mastermustard
Seeker
USA
78 Posts |
Posted - 01 Nov 2023 : 02:44:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Irennan
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
It is incredibly amusing seeing folks try to twist themselves into pretzels in order to defend/rationalize
I know it's hard to fathom such an exotic possibility, but hear me out for a moment: what if discussions aren't necessarily about attacking and defending, but about exchanging information? In this case, exchanging experiences with the game.
Also, this game *is* Baldur's Gate, but 5e/1490s. You prefer the 1360/70s Baldur's Gate--and trust me, so do I--but I repeat: this is indeed Baldur's Gate. We're extremely unlikely to get a game set in the past, because WotC is interested in garnering interest in the present of their IP, in the "fancy new stuff", and because most people who play videogames or D&D nowadays don't give a single flying about Baldur's Gate in the past or the Realms in the past. Sad, but true, and yet I'm still glad we got a good game out of it, even if it isn't the 1360s/1370s Baldur's Gate.
Rather than simply skipping forward in time, this game takes place in a different universe. The ruleset changes in new editions are equivalent to changes in the physical laws of the universe, not to mention the geographical and historical retcons that are unexplainable in-universe.
The 5e realms is a similar but different universe to previous editions, with a different timeline, different but similar races and different physical laws. |
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Irennan
Great Reader
Italy
3805 Posts |
Posted - 01 Nov 2023 : 09:18:56
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quote:
Originally posted by Azar
Incorrect. This has nothing to do with graphics. This has nothing to do with the rules. Hell, this has nothing to do with the year. From the explosive attention-grabbing spectacles, the contemporary sounding characters, the hurried/pointlessly vulgar romances, the mood-whiplash inducing scenes, the relatively squashed maps, the (visually) off-model races, the butchered recurring personalities, the mishandling of lore and more, this is not Baldur's Gate.
A bunch of hyperboles or outright falsehoods.
The butchered recurring character is one, and she wasn't butchered because she was OOC, but because the quest associated with her was subpar, so it has nothing to do with this "being BG" or not.
The characters don't sound "modern", save for Karlach.
There's nothing anti-Baldur's Gate with spectacle, I don't even know what's this supposed to mean, and I'm pretty sure that, had Biowared had the same tools as Larian, they would have made such scenes too.
The map is quite large, and remember that the Upper City was cut before release. I'm pretty hopeful they'll reintroduce it after it's polished and cleaned of bugs.
The romances... As I said, I rarely do romances, and didn't do any of them in BG3, but your insistence that they're rushed and vulgar made me chek them out, and nope: you're just acting on prude prejudices. Not only the romance approach varies from character to character to fit their personality and needs (you even have the old school, pseudo-"no sex until we marry" romance in Wyll, or the classic "we talk and just spend time together romance in Shadowheart), but the romances feel much more natural than 2 characters just kissing in the last act of the game, like it usually happens. If you actually want to engage in romance content, it's obviously much better to see characters form a relationship in the early stages of the game and see how it evolves, than have no romance throughout the game, and only start it at the very end, when it no longer matter anyway because the game is basically over. Also, remember that the FR are VERY open from a sexual perspective, so if you really want fealty to the lore like you claim, hypeer-delayed romances should feel very out of place in such a setting. And for the love of the Realms and life, don't call sex vulgar. It sounds like some stuck-up Catholic priest going to young people and forcing the flawed aspects of his morality on them.
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So, this is indeed BG, this is the Realms how they are now (and, in some part, as they've always been). The year and edition matter a lot, and denying it like denying that fire exists. The Realms change with year and edition, and we all know it. For example, people now (and before too, tbh) want elves to just look like "hot humans" with longer lifespan, so they now look like "hot humans" in 5e (the 5e description doesn't even mention angular or chiseled features, just "fine features", which means a whole load of nothing except "hot", which in turn means a whole load of nothing, and is not something you can use to create models).
I repeat: we'll hardly get any novel or game set in the old Realms, it just is very unlikely to happen. This is how the Realms and BG look now, and you have 2 choices: either stay away from all D&D/FR products for the time being (because old school fans are a tiny minority, and companies will hardly make products for us), or accept them for what they are, rather than looking for stuff they'll never provide, and see if any of them can be of your enjoyment.
I'm not saying "be a eat-it-all", far from it. I'm arguing for evaluating the new stuff for its own value as entertainment, not compared to the old Realms. For example, I stay away from new FR books or movies (save for Ed's, George's, and others' stuff on DMguild), because books and movies are for stories, and the new stories that carry the FR/D&D brand (many of the old ones too, actually) tend to be hilariously poor, or trite and cheap. Videogames, however, aren't mostly for story: they're for interactivity and freedom and gameplay, so I check them out to see if I can find some fun in it, even if I far prefeer the old Realms. I don't try to summon up arguments related to old FR to rationalize away my enjoyment of a game. Returning to the example of elves, yes, they look like humans in BG3 (and in 5e D&D/FR), but that doesn't make the game less fun by any stretch of the imagination, even though I was hoping for fae-like elves like in DOS2. That's because the game remains (for the most part) well crafted, *immense*, and it'll only get better as Larian gets about fixing bugs, adding even more options, and reworking some quests, like it happened for DOS2.
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This is a Larian game that took two IPs and kind of played with them a bit...using that which was convenient/profitable and downplaying or discarding the rest. I can keep pointing back to the Vincke interview all day long.
There are plenty of major counterexamples, you know. Stuff from D&D/FR that hurts the story and game, but that they kept. Tons of people really disliked the D&D mechanics (me included), so that didn't help the game, yet they kept them. The whole Sharran and Dead Three take on evil was sheer idiocy (except Bane, Bane's could actually work on the scale it was portrayed working), yet they stayed true to the lore. They could have made the cults far more interesting and engaging, had they chosen to ditch some of the lore and rewrite it. Like actually making the Sharran tempt people with relief from pain and painful emotions. Or give Bhaal more appeal, and even a semblance of point, by making him a twisted version of Hoar. This would have helped the game, but they stayed true to lore.
As for merging 2 IPs, I don't see any trace of Divinity lore in BG3, so Idk what you're talking about. |
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. |
Edited by - Irennan on 01 Nov 2023 10:11:25 |
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Irennan
Great Reader
Italy
3805 Posts |
Posted - 01 Nov 2023 : 09:45:39
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quote:
Originally posted by mastermustard
Rather than simply skipping forward in time, this game takes place in a different universe. The ruleset changes in new editions are equivalent to changes in the physical laws of the universe, not to mention the geographical and historical retcons that are unexplainable in-universe.
The 5e realms is a similar but different universe to previous editions, with a different timeline, different but similar races and different physical laws.
How can the laws of Physics change if they've never been defined in first place? Let's not pretend D&D has any semblance of well-defined magic system. Stuff happens because "uhh... a wizard did it", and magic can do literally whatever the hell a wizard wants it to do, you just have to pour in enough bullshittium to make it happen.
But 5e rules are fairly similar to old rules (they're no 4e), and you can chalk most of those up to "ah well, the Weave has changed", and/or to "races have been cross-mating like mad, so there's hardly anything like a "pure elf" on Faerun, you always have a certain, small % of human in them.
Basically, when you have a fictional world so loosely defined, and so prone to radical changes, it's really easy for massive changes to be justified by time. Good design? No, I wouldn't say, because it lacks identity, but that's what we've been getting for decades. |
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. |
Edited by - Irennan on 01 Nov 2023 10:04:55 |
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Marc
Senior Scribe
657 Posts |
Posted - 02 Nov 2023 : 17:59:03
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| only Divinity parts were those paintings you could find of Fane, Lohse etc. and starting items like the Mask of the Shapeshifter |
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Azar
Master of Realmslore
1308 Posts |
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Werthead
Learned Scribe
United Kingdom
187 Posts |
Posted - 13 Aug 2024 : 19:10:38
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I met Swen Vincke and one of the other BG3 writers at WorldCon in Glasgow this weekend (where BG3 added a Hugo Award to its vast library of other awards) and saw a panel on the game. They had an interesting bit where they discussed canon and what they could and could not do, and apparently after the first year or two of development of being very careful in tracking canon, Wizards of the Coast told them they couldn't keep tabs on the immensity of everything they were doing and suggested they'd simply declare BG3 itself not-exactly canon to the tabletop game. So they proceeded on that basis and that made development easier.
They still tried to stick to FR/D&D canon, but in the broad strokes, and if they needed to simplify something to make it work and fun in the game, they did that. So the official stance is that BG3 itself is not canon, but broadly speaking the game happened, but what precise decisions etc are canon will only be decided by WotC in later game materials that reference BG3 (which they might avoid doing too much). The other writer, who was mainly responsible for Lae'zel and the githyanki, talked about having all this material from the githyanki (starting with Charles Stross's original Fiend Folio article from 1979; Stross, now a major SFF writer, was at the convention, amusingly, but did not talk about his contribution there) that he was able to use but he had some areas where he could invent things, like precisely how githyanki reproduction worked. But that's not necessarily now canon in future D&D products going forwards unless WotC confirm it is so. |
Edited by - Werthead on 13 Aug 2024 19:11:21 |
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Zeromaru X
Great Reader
Colombia
2470 Posts |
Posted - 14 Aug 2024 : 04:51:53
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| So, canonish, as all videogames are, according to Ed Greenwood. |
Instead of seeking change, you prefer a void, merciless abyss of a world... |
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Explore the entire city of Baldur's Gate in BG3
