Dragon Age Is Not the Next Baldur’s Gate
Baldur's Gate III: Shadows of BioWare
We can cite their names like the holy litany of computer role-playing games: Baldur’s Gate I and II, Planescape: Torment, and (to a lesser extent) Icewind Dale I & II. They are all unified by the now dated, but once sacrosanct Infinity Engine, which I love like my own future hypothetical child. They, alongside Fallout 1 and 2, are the greatest gifts Black Isle Studios gave to posterity. Any single one of these titles would have rightfully inscribed Black Isle into the pantheon of legendary game design, excepting maybe the wonderful but oft-underappreciated Icewind Dale series (which I think is a damn shame considering that it did so successfully what other lesser but vastly more popular games have struggled to do, which is to translate D&D faithfully to an action RPG environment — Neverwinter Nights, anyone?). To their undying credit, Black Isle delivered not one, but seven beautiful titles, each of which occupies a space of high privilege in my memory.
'Only slightly more imaginative than Dragon Age'
So it’s not surprising that my proverbial neck follicles went on high alert when Ray Muzyka, BioWare’s CEO cum Electronic Arts vice-president (after selling BioWare to them) came along with a press release in 2008, saying, “We’re thrilled to be returning to BioWare’s fantasy roots, with Dragon Age: Origins representing the culmination of over a decade of experience. Dragon Age: Origins is a dark heroic fantasy that doesn’t pull any punches. Our fans are in for the most emotionally intense gaming experience we’ve ever created, and we hope to surprise them with just how dark and gritty it gets!” I don’t know who first described Dragon Age as the “spiritual successor” of Baldur’s Gate, but that phrase caught on like wildfire across the blogosphere and review community, taking on the veritable quality of fact. We were all calling it that, and we all very much wanted it to be precisely that. And we had good reason, too.
In 2008, BioWare was the strongest candidate for creating a plausible successor to Baldur’s Gate. It was BioWare that developed the Infinity Engine, which introduced the revolutionary fusion of real-time and turn-based strategy into role playing games, and was an integral component of Baldur’s Gate’s success. To their credit, they have produced a number of high-quality role playing games since then, including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I and II and Mass Effect I and II, which both employ a three-dimensional combat system that, like the Infinity Engine before it, enables the action to be paused so the user can issue strategic commands. They’d also proven themselves to be competent storytellers. It really seemed that if anyone could make a successor to Baldur’s Gate, it had to be BioWare. And it would certainly seem, if you were to go by the strident voices of mainstream critics, that they succeeded. Let’s look at the facts.
A flawless, visually stunning masterpiece. One of the best games ever made.
Over at metacritic, Dragon Age: Origins has received a glowing 91% “metascore”, aggregating 65 critic reviews, a whopping 8 of which deigned to convey grades of 100% (a ninth mincing some particular qualms to impart only 99%, and I wonder why he even bothered). That’s 8 declarations of perfection. 8, I would assume professional, reviewers out there who consider Dragon Age to be a flawless masterpiece, or one whose flaws were so trifling, so inconsequential, as to make denying BioWare a perfect score an affront to the ethics of criticism. Let’s not forget the 44 other reviewers who gave 90% and up — for all we know theirs may have been the highest possible score permitted by their editors, and which may for all intents and purposes describe a broad reviewer tendency towards perfection. If I were to be cynical, I might suggest you could almost see the bandwagon careening down the path of gaming history, a coterie of followers clinging desperately to it, hollering such indications of their hard-earned fealty like, “Remember me? I was your champion! I gave you 100%!”
To give some context, of the top 500 PC games of all time on metacritic, Dragon Age is (at the time of this writing) ranked #64. It’s score, 91%, is only 4 percentile behind Baldur’s Gate II, ranked #6 of all time. It is rated more highly than such incredible games as Portal, Deus Ex, Civilization 3, Duke Nukem 3D, Starcraft and even Fallout. Now to reveal my personal viewpoint (not altogether mysterious based on this article’s title, I expect): Though I don’t actually hate Dragon Age, I do consider it to be a work of remarkable mediocrity and unoriginality, in no way worthy of the hyperbolic accolades it has received from all quarters. I’m most inclined to disparage it, frankly, because it has positioned itself to be one of the best games of all time, a true successor to one of my absolutely favourite games, and it is anything but.
The critics have spoken. 'Just not as good as Dragon Age.'
Let’s take a more discerning look. What criteria should a game be evaluated on? Storyline, graphics, gameplay? On these points, Dragon Age is at best entirely average, and at worst a resounding flop. I know saying this is in staunch opposition to the public consensus, but really how can anyone who has earnestly and soberly tried the game claim it is a pioneer on any of these fronts? The story, for instance, is notable only for being one of the most hackneyed and derivative ones I have encountered in recent memory. It employs virtually every conceivable trope of the Fantasy genre: a daemonic blight is encroaching, plaguing the land. A hero must rise to unite the divided kingdoms and stop the great nemesis. Elves are sequestered in their remote, ancient forest, tending to their trees and xenophobia; mages are governed by a militant authority that fears an outbreak of untrammelled magic: they are consigned to a great tower to conduct their studies. Dwarves live underground in stone halls and are excellent blacksmiths. The blight itself consists of trolls, orcs, goblins, ogres, and an archdemon. What here is even slightly original? The whole narrative smacks of an inexcusable laziness, considering that it is a story-driven game that demands the player navigate through countless cut scenes of plodding, uninspired dialogue about unimaginative and two-dimensional characters, on a quest utterly predictable in its every twist and turn.
Breathtaking.
The graphics, while in a limited sense contemporary and decent enough, are in terms of imagination, wonder, and pure raw creativity just as banal and uninspired as the story. The environments are generic dungeons, castles, and small towns, utterly bland in comparison to the intoxicating, dark, and wonderful city of Sigil in Planescape: Torment, or the richly detailed and original hand-painted locations in Baldur’s Gate II (like the creepy organic Beholder lair, or the variously delightful and horrifying planar spheres). The voice acting is good, but the character animations are invariably wooden; it is disconcerting to be given a riveting speech about action by a character who has all the subtle mannerisms of a marionette. The magical effects are for the most part colourful light blooms and explosions. There is no great inventiveness, visual play, or breathtaking artistry here.
Displayed here: the best generic golden rings, generic belts, generic longbows, and generic armor in the game.
The gameplay is not much better. The battles often feel tacked-on, as if the enemies were not there owing to some plausible aspect of the plot, but rather because it is a fantasy game and as such requires copious slaughter. Nor are they especially fun. The fact that your characters heal instantly after each encounter makes things feel like an arcade game, the enemies the limitless hordes of some fantasy version of Smash TV. The action feels hollow where it is clearly attempting to be ‘streamlined.’ The skill system, invented from scratch, is not just contrived and bizarre, but sometimes outright confusing. For a long time I had no idea what any given skill was good for, and what’s worse, I could never really bring myself to care. To my dismay, since every single point invested in a particular tree unlocked an entirely new ability, it required an instant and complete familiarization with the entire system’s subtleties and nuances, lest I accidentally acquire at the outset skills for which I had no real use. Case in point, Alistair uses dual weapons, but I selected the two-handed weapon skill not realizing that these two skill trees were basically incompatible. A skill point was thus wasted, irrecoverably.
'Mostly derivative, unlike Dragon Age.'
New characters likewise become sources of frustration and tedium. Do I choose between this spellcaster with a preference for healing spells, even though I know her interactions with Morrigan will result in conflict and an overall reduction in their approval levels? Somehow the game’s designers succeeded in making secondary character interactions annoying exercises in trial and error, as I tested one and then another “gift” on different people to derive the most positive reaction, and felt compelled to replay certain dialogue sequences that resulted in a dramatically poor character reaction because I happened to choose the wrong dialogue option. To completely reveal their personal story trees you must skillfully and attentively nurture their approval ratings (not only difficult, but annoying to do), yet the unfolding stories proved to be so underwhelming as to be unworthy of the effort required in unlocking them. Contrast this to the marvellous secret lives of your party members in Planescape: Torment. For example, I still think about the joys and immediate rewards of unlocking each of Dak’kon’s incredible philosophical discs.
These are just some of many objections I could raise. The game is riddled with issues concerning pacing, design, and, simply put, fun. What’s more, these objections are fairly easy to see. Within moments of playing the game I was struck by its overall lackluster and generic qualities. Where is the critical review mindset that addresses the merits and flaws of a game regardless of the hype around it? I feel that, out of the fervency of our desire for this hallowed successor, we have dulled our collective better judgment as to Dragon Age’s real worth. I say resolutely that Dragon Age is not the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate. Earlier, I deliberately held off mentioning one striking coincidence: Dragon Age and the original Baldur’s Gate both scored 91% on MetaCritic. Is this a manifestation of our collective will to power? Did we all so strongly wish for Baldur’s Gate III that we willed a mediocre and unoriginal fantasy RPG up to the status of legend? Or perhaps it’s a testament to the brilliant marketing of one of the most successful video game publishers in the industry? I leave these questions to you to answer; for the time being, in my own eyes, I will continue to consider the true successor as yet unnamed.
I can easily tell by the screenshots that this game was developed by tired, cynical, lazy hacks who do as little work as they can get away with and space out when they should be designing, fantasizing about just getting the fuck home, eating an entire pepperoni pizza, and getting a blowjob from their whale-like wives.
The truth is that when anything is corporatizes, its quality quickly plummets into the nether-regions of anti-art, or in this case, anti-games. The people that design these games have no desire to create fun, exciting games. They care exclusively about money, or in the case of the lower-level designer, doing just enough to avoid getting fired so they can get paid.
If another Baldur’s Gate is going to be developed, it will have to be developed through one or more small, independent presses by people who really love games. It’s up to us to make good RPGs now, because it’s sure as hell that no company these days is willing to put the kind of effort and dedication it takes to do it.
When we describe Baldurs Gate 1 or 2 as a 9 or 10. Then Dragons Ago Origins can only, at most, be a 7. I was grossly disappointed.
“We’re thrilled to be returning to BioWare’s fantasy roots, with Dragon Age: Origins representing the culmination of over a decade of experience. Dragon Age: Origins is a dark heroic fantasy that doesn’t pull any punches. Our fans are in for the most emotionally intense gaming experience we’ve ever created, and we hope to surprise them with just how dark and gritty it gets!”
I think you’re probably expecting to see something like this from game companies:
“We’ve been working on a title for the past five years, which we expect to be received as both unimaginative and derivative to the highest level, with no interesting characters nor thrills, not to mention its clunky combat system, but we hope you players can bear with us on this one and, showing your everlasting support, buy it anyway. That would be great, thanks.”
One thing I find interesting is seeing the word “overrated”, peppered all over, everytime something comes up that everyone else seems to like except me – not in this article, not the word, at least.
The fact is: your opinions about anything are your own, not written in stone.
My opinion is, we can continue playing the same old games for the rest of our lives, or we can play a new title just for what it is, without making pointless comparisons. Both are all right, as long as we’re happy with it.
Bashing out a game, because it’s receiving more attention and praise than you think it’s due, it’s just “full of birds”, in my arrogant opinion. As I can see by articles like this that, by being arrogant, I might make a point true to others.
I like dragon age better than both Baldur’s gate I and II. I haven’t played Planescape yet but I doubt i’ll like it more than Baldur’s Gate. With that said I got to say I love Baldur’s Gate but the presentation of the story is just not on the same level as Dragon Age Origins. It’s true DA has quite a cliche story line but then so does BG and in fact most RPG games tend to have rehashed story lines. If you are looking for “high art”, video games are not the place where you’re going to find it. I love video games and I love being able to manipulate the story but I never play them expecting to gain some deeper understanding of the world around me. To say that today’s video game developers are bunch of lazy pizza eating, blow job loving good for nothings is pretty ignorant. I think developing a high quality video games is much harder today than it ever was ten years ago, when just four guys in a garage could produce a game that was considered high quality for it’s time. Those times are gone. If you don’t like today’s mainstream games then go revisit the old school games or play indie games, don’t go insulting people when you most likely haven’t produced anything that anyone would ever bother touching.
This article is a compass to the true believers. Those of you who have rushed through Faerun without picking every lock will never understand the exigency to replay the game when you realize you might have missed one.
Who can forget the enigma of the Golden Pantaloons? The secret slap you must give your wrist for looking too long at Planescape player Anna? The thrill of assembling, piece by piece, the armor and weapons forged from byproducts of a red dragon, only to arm your behemoth frontman with them to confront a still-living red dragon?
But no . . . my words fall upon the deaf ears. You Dragon Age players would never audition as the voice actor for NPCs when your wife is not looking! Oh no.
Perhaps the most revolting aspect of Dragon Age – and consequently, the reason why I lost interest in it after six hours of gameplay, was that the game is faux-nonlinear. It fronts to allow characters to roam about a free world to affect their worlds in unpredictable ways. Not so. Unlike Black Isle golden oldies, every dialogue choice and every course of action funnel down to the development of the same product by the end of the conflict.
I want my six hours back. If the gameplay is going to be so stitched with non-choices, if I’m not really navigating my character, I’d rather just watch the A-Team. Yeah, it’s predictable, too, but at least I wouldn’t be watching “marionettes” build a home-made tank from scraps.
Noah and Greg the posters below me are spot on.
There have been no games like Baldurs Gate and there probably won’t be for a while. Dragon does not even come close. A 7 out 10? Sure, but only when compared to other games. Compared to Baldurs Gate II, Dragon is a 5 out of 10 at best.
Remember how in Dragon Age you used to fight the “Blight” pretty much the whole game and you would get a few different other monsters here and there ( Golems, Trees, Dragons, Undead ). Now what did you fight in Baldurs Gate? Probably around 70 different kinds of monsters. How many types of Golems in DA? One. How many in BG2? About 4 types ( and maybe 10 different kinds with Mods installed ).
Very correct about corporations being money hungry. That’s the society we live in right now. Also not to forget the dumbing down of society in general each year passes by. Movies, Games, Music and Entertainment in general go down and only down.
A small or medium studio could only make a proper successor to the BG series if they would license a proper Game Engine. That means using a solid Engine that is relative easy to use and performs well. Right now I could think of the Unreal Engine 3 with the proper camera perspective would make a for good RPG.
A small studio will never be able to make it’s own Engine + Develop the game on it. Too much time and resources.
Then there is the other problem of licensing D&D, and the world of Baldurs Gate as a whole. But I think this could overcome one way or another.
The Diablo 3 Engine from Blizzard looks really nice, great graphics, design and animations. Imagine if Baldurs Gate 3 would run on something like that. We can only dream…
Black Isle could be reassembled. Staff from the Gibberlings 3 and Planet Baldur’s Gate, among other reliable modder sources could put together a team who proposal to Electronic Arts to recreate the subsidiary company based on the following business plan:
The team is payed only on the condition that a petition of 50,000 customers are interested in such a game, and that 15,000 customers pre-order the game for twenty dollars, which will be deducted from the total game price once it is developed. Once this benchmark is reached, EA agrees to officially open the project fo development.
Obviously, those who pre-pay for the game will understand that their money may be held for twelve to eighteen months, as this is a grass-roots project.
I honestly don’t think the above numbers would be hard to hit given the number of fans out there, but maybe this is just one of those things we’ll have to let rest in peace.
If they did, one could only imagine the level of advertisement that would be saved by word of mouth, alone. The blogosphere would do all the work for EA. They’d hit a hundred million in less than a year.
@WoW.
Come on, is difficult to make videogames today? i think they just say: Do you remember Diablo II? lets find a new engine and make that again. There is not thinking in that. Necessity is the mother of invention. 4 guys in a garage need to be creative to success. Do you like RPG? you dont even know what is that!. WoW is not a RPG, neither Diablo or DAO. Rol means to act. Do you really think people resolves all their problems killing lots and lots of bad guys? If a mage wants to get in the Castle, his only plan is to kill 400+ guards? I think he could just fly or become invisible and open a windows/door with spells… or whatever…I dont know. The good part in RPGs is to imagine a solution and make it possible. Games MUST allow that to the player. But when I see modern “RPGs” I cant see the rol side. I see Arcade games with a leveling system.