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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7685259" data-attributes="member: 37579">Again, they weren't dishonest. But neither did they go out of their way to temper expectations or focus on the strengths of the game. They didn't go around correcting people who expected it to be Baldur's Gate: Redux, which is a *huge* problem, not just for the appearance of lying but because you're not marketing to the right people. There's lots of hack-and-slash fans of action RPGs who might have dismissed this game as being too "turn based". Even at the time I noted the silence from the company and the lack of hard information. They were not a transparent game company. They said their talking points and then just let the fan hype build. They did nothing to manage expectations. Which probably seemed like a good thing at the time, since it was free publicity, but it should have been easy to see how it could backfire. But I really do feel there was something... disingenuous... about their marketing campaign. They focused on just the right phrases to make people think of BG and the like, even mentioning the CEO's relation to BioWare and DragonAge over his many other credits with other companies (he was a director, which is very managerial. And even then he was more involved in Sonic than DA:O). They really wanted to attract the D&D/Baldur's Gate crowd even though the game was very different. I find it much more like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance in that it's more inspired by D&D and is focused on multiplayer hack-and-slash against endless waves of enemies. The thing is, there's lots of "classic" D&D games and a wide variety of different genres and styles. You have the Baldur's Gate or Dark Sun Shattered Lands games but you also have the first person Eye of the Beholder games, beat-em-ups, realm management, action side scroller, fighting, and so many others. They could have emphasized what classic game they were emulating. Instead, they just said "classic" and hyped the DM tools and let people speculate away. There are some weak voices. There are some great voice actors in the industry, and many have a fondness for D&D. Instead, they hired people who's biggest role was bit parts as unnamed characters in movies, little more than extras. Sometimes it shows, with weak or even silly readings of lines. There are still some good voices, but it's uneven and there is a lot of ridiculous accents. It's not the worst part of the game, but it's certainly not as praise worthy as some reviews single out. Thanks. I'm hard and critical but I try really hard to point out both the good and bad and give fair criticisms. Is the game unfinished?Y'know, I might disagree with that as well. I've played a lot more games where the end is patched or DLC. Heck, you could make that complaint regarding Baldur's Gate II or Diablo 2 or Dragon Age Inquisition. The game feels fairly complete. Now, the DM tools are a different story. Whether or not you include them as "the game" is something else. Those are woefully incomplete and lack some basic functionality (the ability to write quest text that is more than just "accept" or "decline" for one, basic monsters, some very simple scripting, more details quests like finding or delivering an object, and the like). Plus features like being able to run though with a pregen party to test. Whether or not that counts towards the game as a whole being "unfinished" depends on if you were looking forward to running for friends or not.</blockquote>

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