That’s fantastic news. It’s so lame how there hasn’t been any serious move to take wikis off Fandom and make them independent or even just on another platform. Fandom is just the worst, and it’s terrible that Google suggests it as the top result now over the independent wikis.
Like, Bulbapedia is head and shoulders a better resource than the Fandom Pokemon wiki. It’s been around forever, it’s very active, it has far more information, yet Google always suggests Fandom first anytime I do a Pokemon related search. It’s gross.
If anyone ever gets annoyed at Wikipedia asking for donations, go spend time on Fandom with ad blockers off, and remember that’s the end result of public information wikis relying on ads.
I really cannot stand fandom sites. It always lacks content so pages are filled with useless information such as links to review sites. Also, it’s an atrocious experience on mobile.
The number of CSS hacks needed to make the site anything but obnoxious even on desktop is obscene. Not just the ads, but the constant pushing of unrelated content and wikis, popovers, auto-play videos... it's awful.
One of the few successful fan wikis that got away from fandom has been the Path of Exile community. I don’t play the game anymore because it just got to be too much for me and demand too much time, but I really appreciate that they collectively got pissed enough at fandom that they made sure that poewiki.net took off.
Edit: even better, the developers (Grinding Gear Games) apparently agreed to take over hosting of the wiki about a year ago so that the community members that started it didn’t have to deal with the financial burden. Definitely a good idea for them to take over hosting so there’s no concern of the owners taking a valuable resource offline.
Successful games really should have the dev/publisher hosting the wiki. It's better for everyone involved. I'll always appreciate Arenanet for hosting the Guild Wars 1 and 2 wikis.
it’s fairly annoying how SEO’ed Fandom and Fextralife are. The Don’t Starve wiki is borderline useless through both Fandom, but good luck finding the better Don’t Starve Wiki being listed through just a google search.
Thankfully we have extensions for browsers like IndieWikiBuddy that redirect to much better wikis getindie.wiki
Note, that's not the joke, wikia images are just weird. For whatever reason the ?cb=whatever bit causes hotlinking to fail. Stripping that leads to an image of a ...bouncer? from the show Gravity Falls with face tattoos reading "head" and "chin" https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gravityfalls/images/3/35/S1e3_works_for_me.png
Corporate isn’t going to take away the lessons we might hope. Folks at corporate at going to ask things like, “how much money was left on the table?” They can only fuck things up through paying attention.
The funny thing is I (and probably many others) didn’t even consider pirating it. It had great reviews and was readily available pretty much everywhere without any obvious drawbacks. So I spent full price for it.
My point; DRM doesn’t matter if you produce and sell your game in a consumer friendly way.
I won’t lie. I flew the black flag on BG3. I’ll pick it up when it goes on a Steam sale, but I’m just not going to spend $60 on a video game no matter how good.
This has already been confirmed a non story. He said this around the launch time and Larian have since confirmed that the section has been found and played.
This article shows the poor state of gaming "journalism". Stories taken from each other and no actual work done by the "journalist". So false rumours spread.
It’s worth noting that this guy is talking not of old Bethesda but modern Bethesda. The writing team behind Morrowind and half of Oblivion absolutely cared about the details that only 1% of people might see. Morrowind especially is a world built around you exploring the world building. It’s not about levelling up (wowee I can miss the flying fuckheads 2% less now), it was about exploring the politics and cultures in the world.
At some point, Bethesda games became about the mechanical exploration, about going over there because that looks like it might be interesting, oh it’s just a cave with combat in it oh well maybe over there will be interesting.
No. Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Baldur’s Gate 3 all draw influence from Skyrim. I think open world games are better because of Skyrim.
Dragon Age: Inquisition and Witcher 3 both began development in the same year Skyrim released. I don't know if I can really say they were influenced by Skyrim because of the timing, but I haven't played either.
Baldur's Gate 3 drawing influence from Skyrim I will have to vehemently disagree with. That assertion just makes no sense at all.
My point was that Skyrim didn’t ruin RPGs because there still exists demand for RPGs and quality content. Without seminal games like Skyrim, you don’t get proper investment in games like BG3.
Without seminal games like Skyrim, you don’t get proper investment in games like BG3.
What are you even trying to say? BG3 wouldn’t exist without Skyrim? did you ever play Diablo 1 or 2? World Of Warcraft during Burning Crusade or Wrath Of The Lich King?
Skyrim didn’t bring anything new. Skyrim is just a drop in the ocean, with no impact on Baldur’s Gate 3, as there were tons of greater and more impactful games before that.
Now we’re talking about money? Do you have the slightest idea of how much of a cash cow WoW have been for Blizzard since 2004? In 2010 WoW had more than 10 millions subscribers. $100m a month, not counting the price of the expansion packs.
What about GTA? 400 millions copies sold.
Skyrim could have failed miserably, you’d still be able to play BG3 in is exact same form as today. Skyrim is no exception. As a matter of fact, Skyrim wouldn’t exist if it was not for previous successful games.
You named two games that are entirely different. Those two made their money on multiplayer. Skyrim is a single player RPG experience that encourages mods. Skyrim’s success as a single player experience enabled games like Dragon Age Inquisition and Witcher 3 and Divinity OS2 to get the funding they needed to become fully realized.
Skyrim is a triple A RPG. I haven’t made one change to my argument. My argument is not even my argument. It’s the “Standing on the shoulders of giants” metaphor. If you like what you see today, then you have to give credit to the works that impacted the current environment.
BG3 has nothing to do with Skyrim. The gameplay has nothing to do with it. The story has nothing to do with it either. BG3 exists because of BG1 and BG2. You would know that if you’ve ever played one of those game. But you didn’t because you are to young to know shit. As a matter of fact, every Larian’s game exists because of Baldur’s gate. The world didn’t begin the day you grab your first controller you know?
Now, if we stop talking about gameplay and talk about money like you did, BG3 never had to wait for Skyrim to be a success, as there were tremendously successful games before Skyrim already.
Keep repeating yourself if you like, it won’t change how wrong you are.
Why is BG3 not BioWare if it evolved on its own merits? You don’t even have a point you’re trying to make. You just want to tell me that I’m wrong. In order for me to be wrong, one of the most influential games ever would have to have zero influence on the development, funding, or reception of Baldur’s Gate 3. You don’t have any argument because I literally can’t be wrong about it.
If Larian tried to make a game that wasn’t Skyrim, it’s still a positive impact that Skyrim had.
If Larian wanted to make one of the best RPGs, then they’d have to make it better than Skyrim. Net impact, good.
If Larian wanted to make a business case for why they deserved $100M to develop, then they pointed to the success that Skyrim had as validation.
If you think that no one in the 6 years of development compared the game to Skyrim in any way whatsoever or any game inspired by Skyrim, then you have an opinion so dumb that it’s not worth talking to you.
You admitted that you don’t have a point. Lol. I’m going to go play a rogue/fighter/wizard and fight dragons and have my choices impact the outcome and be a dragonborn and have mods.
At this point I’m expecting you to tell me that BG3 copied Skyrim because there are Elves and Dwarfs and Dragons in both of them…
You do realize that the Mother figure in both Skyrim and Baldur’s Gate is a representation of Lilith, first wife of Adam and mother of all demons right? Which is a figure at least as old as the fucking Old Testament? Right? Have you ever heard about Dante’s Hell?
Now, do you realize how ignorant you look like right now?
You seem like a decent person. A lefty who loves cats? Definitely my jam. But man, you’re just terrible at arguments.
You can’t just spit opinions and expect people with actual knowledge to agree with you.
I get it, you love Skyrim and you want to think it’s a genius piece of art which invented everything. But it’s simply not true. It’s a just a rewriting of very old stories. Like almost every RPGs to be honest - and the books LOTR, and the books GOT, and everything Fantasy really - but that’s not the point.
I simply hope you don’t make political arguments the way you led that conversation, because damn that was bad.
I didn’t even play Skyrim until 2020. I think it’s like a B-. You have no idea where I’m coming from opinion wise. I didn’t say an opinion. I’m saying that BG3 was influenced by Skyrim. That’s all I’ve tried to say this whole time.
This is legitimately not an opinion that I’ve tried to convey. It’s insane to me that you think the impact is 0.00000%. It’s not a coherent thought. It’s like saying my uncle didn’t have any impact on me because my dad is older than he is.
I’m not arguing an opinion. I am not mad at this or debating a position. I’m stating a fact and am being told it’s not a fact. I’m shocked that you don’t understand what I’m trying to say. If you think I’m arguing, then you must not understand what I’m trying to say.
If you are upset by what I’m saying, then I am genuinely concerned. I don’t know what part of what I’m saying can be so wrong that you feel the best to argue. This is surreal to me. Can you acknowledge what I’m trying to say?
My entire statement is “Skyrim had a non-zero impact on Baldur’s Gate 3”. Do you understand that is what I’m saying?
Or maybe you’re just so unbelievably stupid you don’t even know what the Old Testament is ? Gotta admit « Old Testament RPG » is a fun way to talk about the Bible.
Divinity OS2 to get the funding they needed to become fully realized
Divinity
Get the funding they needed
Lol don’t talk out your ass just cuz your point is running out of steam. I don’t wholly disagree that Skyrim wasn’t a massive impact in gaming, but it wasn’t this massive turning point for RPGs to suddenly become popular.
Skyrim was an ambitious project that somehow didn’t bite Bethesda in the ass. It taught tons of valuable lessons including laying the grounds for the great open worlds we have now. Nobody in 2011 was imagining games having the scale of open world we see in shit like Elden Ring, but Skyrim showed a glimpse to the future.
The flip of that being that Skyrim didn’t save RPGs from disappearing and they were already a massively popular genre and to say that future RPGs relied on its success, especially 12 years down the road, is a huge overstatement that reeks of fanboyism.
I think we made some progress in my point, so I just want to try to drive it home. The original argument was “Skyrim was a blight on the games industry.”
The reason I am trying to say that “Skyrim is influential on modern RPGs” is to disagree with the blight comment. I believe there are many ways that modern RPGs benefit from Skyrim’s contribution to the genre.
If Skyrim were truly a blight, we’d have more like the new Assassins Creed where it’s a massive world with little content to discover. To me, the problem with that argument though is that Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed are still pretty fun without the narrative content.
FWIW, one of the lead developers of Dragon Age Inquisition confirmed that a lot of decisions around that game were EA wanting them to make Skyrim (for instance, the addition of mounts) Source: youtu.be/4Q5_RsII_Ho?si=a9CTmyHpEpgfuPTe
on release, skyrim was lauded as being ambitious af. and many reviews being surprised it wasn't bethesda biting off more than they could chew (yes, even with the bugs)
but after the perpetual string of rereleases, I can understand the general public forgetting that zeitgeist
Skyrim is a great game.... for its time. Todd Howard is the blight on the games industry for putting so many resources toward so many Skyrim remasters/re-releases/money grabs. Even if he outsourced all that work, those are dev houses he could have spent their time helping Bethesda actually fill their huge open worlds and perhaps get the same feeling of "every decision actually matters" that Larion did.
It’s good in some ways. I was disappointed in the removal of attributes and how the equipment stats were kind of simplified and boring. The lack of proper stat scaling, since there’s no stats.
I was also sad to see spellmaking go.
There’s still plenty of good in it, don’t get me wrong.
It’s very good already, and as a fan-run site, I’m willing to spend time contributing to it. What a refreshing change it is to get away from Fandom/Wikia and Fextralife. Nice work, Taylan!
“This is a bad game because the bad choices are not marked red and the good ones are not marked green” -“Game Designer” turned “Professor” of game design at some random college, as reported by one of his Discord students.
Yeah exactly… I was hoping for something more insightful, but it just made me feel that is you get to this level you become rigid in your ideas and reductionist in trading this apart to match your rigidity. Can’t say I completed the whole article though, because at some point I got fed up with the argumentation
So I succeeded the DC99 check with a crit success (it was my only success in these checks). Later, at the end, in the very final fight, the netherbrain started with about 60 less hp and a debuff that said that it was very surprised I could succeed this check (not the exact words but you get the idea).
Iirc it started with 246hp instead of 300. I don’t remember if the debuff did something else.
Is it really an optional rule? I play dnd and we’ve always treated it like that. Maybe our group just subscribes to the rule. But that’s really handy on those 25+ locked doors!
True. I just had this whole image in my head for one of my characters. He had those tattoos and got them when he started worshipping Bhaal. Meanwhile they’re just like… infernal IKEA instructions. Dunno whether to shake the hand of someone at Larian or slap them.
Imagine doing some elaborate deal with Raphael for the promise of greater power through understanding of infernal runes only to get this fucking translation done.
If I ask the party for a perception check and they all fail the party should be aware of their choices (in this case, perception is important). If I then surprise them with an enemy they are clear why that happened.
Alternatively in this case it’s to locate something, maybe they want to spend a luck point, flash of genius, or other similar ability.
One of the reasons why, as a DM, I like the Passive Perception mechanic in 5e. It takes some of the thrill of a roll away from the players, but it gives me the tools to resolve these sorts of situations without tempting the players to metagame.
It’s a really odd mechanic that only one person is involved in the conversation. Are the rest of the party just stood back twiddling their thumbs? Very rarely do people converse like that in real life.
It really does diminish the power of tailoring your party to specialties.
If the guy I’m talking to starts being a dick why can’t I choose to have my badass character intimidate him? If they’re nice why can’t I use my charismatic character? Should be able to choose who responds to what whenever you like, it would make dialogue with NPCs so much more involved.
Intimidation is a charisma skill. A hulking half-orc barbarian with violent tendencies is less intimidating than the party bard.
As a piper, obviously, the bard could threaten to play the bagpipes out of tune so I can see where WotC were going with making it a Cha skill, but still.
It varies. In some dialogue the whole group is taken, but in most other you can do your life while someone is talking. Some actions may start a fight during the dialogue though (offensive or forbidden actions).
baldurs_gate_3
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.