WanderingWind said:
I do agree. I hope that somebody produces another RPG in the same vein this generation. I had hopes that DA would be that series. Alas, it is not to be. I think I'm beginning to come to terms with that.
I dunno I still very much see DA as the spiritual successor to the BG series. Nostalgia can be a tricky bitch and while I love the BG series to death... it has issues, ones that have come across with age more than anything else.
Some of those issues will never be a problem again (D&D 2e rules suck, especially when they are put into a video game. THAC0, AC, Spell Memorization, it all pretty much blows chunks. You had a TON of choices in BG2 but so few of them meant anything. Your race was pretty much cosmetic, if you were a warrior or rogue character progression was nearly nonexistent, and it was QUITE easy to break the game, hell Dual Class made it silly to rolly anything BUT human.
You character's alignment was set at the outset of the game with no (almost) way to change it, the game had difficulty spikes that were harsh and unforgiving, and it rarely felt like you had an impact on the world as a whole. Then there was the fact that its nonlinearity was frontloaded into Chapter 2.
What it did have was amazing writing, 6 characters in your party, a much more expansive quest, and the awesome feeling of leveling your character from a schlub to a god. Oh and some of the best NPCs in Bioware history.
That being said the scope that was BG2 is probably something that we won't see again, at least for a little while. It is simply too damned expensive to create art assets for a game that big. Not to mention having voice for all the dialogue, animate the cut-scenes, party members, monsters and the like. Dragon Age 1 took 5 YEARS, remember that.
Are we doomed then? No. The core of the BG series lives on in DA1 at the very least, tactical combat, an interesting world, great characters, and a cool story. DA2 looks to be cribbing even more from BG2 with its Chapters, city hub, and darker story.
As far as BG2 selling as well as DA back in the day... it didn't. According to an old NextGen article from 2006 up until that point the game had sold 480,000 copies, great for a PC game mind you, but it got its ass handed to it by Neverwinter Nights, and was only 10k in front of KOTOR. This comes from NPD data, and it is before the advent of DDL services.
Bioware tried to take the magic that existed in BGII and make it something that more people could get into. And it seems they succeeded. Whether or not you prefer DA to the BG series (I still prefer the latter, warts and all, as I said nostalgia is a bitch.) is up to you, but in many ways DA handles the game aspect incredibly well, and it has been rewarded with sales.
P.S. That VG Cats comic was awful, it could have gotten that point across in 6 panels maybe even 4. Why do webcomic artists almost always think more is better?