Baldur's Gate 3 and Neverwinter Nights 2 all-but-confirmed by Atari!

[Express]

Atari's involvement in this worries me. IMHO Ataris PC record has been shaky. Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil was rushed-and I am still upset over the botch job they did on release.

Even on the console side DnD Heroes is pretty mediocre. Maybe a better barometer will be FR Demonstone which Atari is publishing.

To me it just seems Bioware "gets" rpgs in general and DnD specifically. Not having them involved is a shame.

But who knows maybe theyll turn out ok.

 

[KenM]

I belive Atari has exclusive rights to publish any DnD computer/ console game. Any company can make it, but Atari must publish it. They forced Trokia to edtit stuff out of ToEE game.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Well...here's to hoping they're good. I dunno about NWN2, but I've got some hope for BG3 at least.

 

[Terraism]

As for the earilier points about how BG3 should have a different title because it won't continue the story of BG1 and BG2, sequels having little to no connection to the storylines of their predecessors is not an uncommon practice in the video game industry. Final Fantasy and Quake are just two franchises where the sequels have no storyline connection to the games that came before.

Right. But neither of those two franchises already have a precedent for the games being in series. Baldur's Gate does, and that's the difference. There have been four released products in the Baldur's Gate line, and they've all moved directly in chronological order (with allowances for TotSC.) Neither Final Fantasy nor Quake can say that.

 

[ShadowX]

Let me interject something. The Baldur's Gate 3 that was once under development at Interplay had to have the Baldur's Gate moniker as they lost all other rights to D&D games. Now neither of these two games are very exciting, yet. I want to see who is creating them first. I also did not like the NWN engine, and the campaigns were medicore, though the expansions had moments.

 

[frugal]

Atari's involvement in this worries me. IMHO Ataris PC record has been shaky.

Remember Atari are just Infogrames rebranded...

Infogrames was getting so much bad press that they bought Atari just to use the name

 

[gravyboat]

The Baldur's Gate games are very memorable for me. Excellent music and great environmental art (even though it was 2D). I know that the highly turn based system in Temple of Elemental Evil is much closer to the P&P game of D&D; however, I miss the speed of combat in the Baldur's Gate games. I'm hoping the combat system in BG 3 is similarly fast-paced like BG 1 and 2.

 

[KenM]

The Baldur's Gate games are very memorable for me. Excellent music and great environmental art (even though it was 2D). I know that the highly turn based system in Temple of Elemental Evil is much closer to the P&P game of D&D; however, I miss the speed of combat in the Baldur's Gate games. I'm hoping the combat system in BG 3 is similarly fast-paced like BG 1 and 2.

When I played the first BG, I had to turn on some of the auto pause options. Hard to do real time combat when you are managing a party of 6 people.

 

[Pants]

I've always loved the Infinity engine. While it could use some updates, I never had any problems with the faux 3D perspective they did - I certainly feel that Throne of Bhaal and, especially, Icewind Dale II looked far nicer than Neverwinter Night's (in 3D! [Rolls eyes]) did. Combat was better handled in that engine than most I've seen, though, especially for 3E, it'd probably be *better* done by something akin to ToEE's turn-based system.

Yeah, the Infinity Engine is really nice. Icewind Dale II was a very good looking game, while NWN was a very poor looking 3D game, plus it was a system hog. Although, if the new BG game were to use a new engine, I'd also like to see it use ToEE engine. That was some good 3D.

 

[gravyboat]

When I played the first BG, I had to turn on some of the auto pause options. Hard to do real time combat when you are managing a party of 6 people.

I definitely agree. Auto-pause was a life-saver option in BG.