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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

Now personally, I would not have given the game a 10/10 because there were too many annoying bugs to warrant that. However, I felt that the game was a fun ride and in the end deserved a high score.

As for this article itself, it seems that the author is looking for things to hate. “I wasted a skill point” really? That’s what we have to complain about? Well I suppose Mass Effect 1 and 2, KotOR, and oh so many other games suck. And then going on to complain about the fact that NPCs react to how you play? The point is that you play and the NPCs react not you choose how to play to make them react. Again I guess all of those other Bioware games suck too. I mean should I make Commander Shepherd say something knowing that Thane might not like it? Should I play an evil mage in BG II knowing that Minsc will hate me?

And Ioannis, in case you couldn’t tell I have played both BG and all of the expansions and I still loved DA.