LordHoban wrote:
Brian, I don't remember full well for BG1, but I know in Balder's Gate 2 each of the players can open up dialogue with various NPCs, even if they have to resolve them one at a time. You can also roleplay amongst the group.
Even so, the Baldur's Gate series, while very good, was just too constrictive for multiplayer gameplay. A singleplayer plot like those just isn't sufficent for multiple players, and roleplaying doesn't cut it if you can't have the game world support it.
I played Neverwinter Nights with a group of friends and we had been looking forward to it for about a year before it came out, and when it did we were all let down pretty hard by it. It seemed more like another sequel in the BG series, rather than the gameplay, non-linearity, and flexibility of Pen and Paper D&D. The official campaign was predictable, boring, and did not lend itself to roleplaying at all. The game engine was too confining, and even though in 3D it was the same as the BG games' in terms of gameplay. Not to mention that while they included an incredibly user-friendly toolset, they included no additional unique content that mod makers could use to make landscape different than what the main campaign offered.
This isn't to say that NWN hasn't grown beyond that due to it's dedicated modding community, but it still has the constrictions of the game's engine. To me, an experience far closer to PnP D&D would be Morrowind. After playing that, I can't see myself playing an RPG that isn't first person, non-linear, and HUGE. Now I know that the actual main plot of the game is supposed to be pretty linear, but actually after playing the game for TWO YEARS I can say that I STILL have NEVER played the main storlyine. Yes that's right, I've been playing an RPG for two years, and yet I haven't yet explored the game's main storyline. To me, that is awesome and describes perfectly the flexability of PnP and what future RPGs should aspire for. I just hope someone puts it into a multiplayer package some day.
-Brian
