The commodificaiton of Baldur's Gate

 

I've got a bit of controversial one for ya- I like Baldur's Gate 3. I know, wild one. And the thing is- so do a lot of people across the world who have found themselves brought closer to the ludicrously giant brand of Dungeons and Dragons through it's rampant and raging success. Larian took the licence for the property, through a hefty fee, and went off practically on their own to create what would come to be known as a studio defining masterpiece, as a follow-up to their last studio defining masterpiece. Baldur's Gate 3 shouldn't have happened, by the natural laws of reality, and though I'm glad it did I think we all await for the elastic band to snap back into place and return reality to the masses. That band being the fact that the owners of Dnd are currently a bunch of weird little gremlins that delight in squeezing as much blood out of property as humanely possible- and Larian handily just gave them the keys to the Baldur's Gate engine.

Besides the perfect gameplay and gorgeously expansive story with layer upon layer creating opportunity for players to craft such personal stories that until a few weeks ago one of the origin companion specific player endings had been viewed a grand total of thirteen times- (That is insanely rare, good god!)- what makes Baldur's Gate is really it's cast. Iconic characters all, those faces and personalities seem to wiggle perfectly into the hearts and minds of players through the way they grow close or further apart in step with the adventure in a manner that feels truly authentic and not in rhythm to the comparatively lethargic Bioware shuffle which I very much suspect we're going to get an example of in the coming months through Inquisition. (A chance to see just how great of a job Baldur's Gate did. Prepare for the unfavourable comparisons.) 

So how do those two facts coincide? Simple. If you are the owners of DnD and you're looking to create an easily manipulated mascot for the current new life of Dnd- what do you use? That used to be Drizzt and his gang of ever-suffering friends; but they've kind of grown ridiculously over-exposed across the years. What we need are some newer, fresher, faces that still kick with an 'oomph' factor that those old hats don't. More modern, more metrosexual, more appealing. Maybe take characters that were left in the hands of community and just, you know, pluck them back out of those 'uncouth' hands to dance a bit more for their newer, less artistically inclined, masters? All for the delight of an audience only very slowly coming to terms with how the characters they love are slowly being turned into commodities. 

But what is a commodity and how does that differ from the characters we know? Well, I suppose it's this kind of vapid image of brand engagement wherein people are drawn in by the faces they are extrapolated as interest within the containing brand and thus those images are utilised as fly traps to draw attention where it best suits the broader company interests. Need people to be more interested in you DnD edition coming out? Why not print of the image of the Baldur's Gate team on the front cover and make believe there's any real connection there? Need to pump up the existence of your printing label? Baldur's Gate 3 comic series, on the way! Animated shorts? Never say never! But within all of that the spark that made them special will slowly, inevitably, diminish.

Characters are driven by inexorable purpose and drive. We follow people who are on a journey that changes and moulds them, which made the Baldur's Gate 3 cast so an interesting group to manipulate and watch reshape across an entire playthrough. But icons, which are what DnD main are looking far, can't really be dynamic, can they? You can't really make adventures about Ascended Astarion the tyrannical vampire dictator trapped in a corrupted cycle of fruitless vengeance, or burned-out Karlach, or recently-suicided Lae'zel. Nah, they need those characters captured perpetually within their perceived primes! Trapped within a glass jar to be viewed like a model on a museum plinth. Pretty. Complacent. Non-living.

For the time being it is fun to see these characters persist past Baldur's Gate 3 and live in the hearts of the actors who helped bring them to life. Neil Newbon in particular seems protective over Astarion for the amount of his heart and soul he imbued into that story and as long as they are combined together at the hip I have some belief the character won't be bastardized. But that's kind of the thing, isn't it? These characters won't be joined with their actors forever- not when the cast start to move on to newer roles. And then what? Larian have given them to Wizards- no one with respect to how these characters are and what they represent will be left safegaurding them and they'll be free to be turned into marketing machines from that point onwards.

What really scares me is what they're going to do with the property next in terms of a follow-up, because there is a non-zero chance that Dnd are currently receiving a plethora of offers to work on a new Baldur's Gate game and I'm no so certain they're going to be turning away unsatisfying attempts. BG3 had to be earned by Larian, but right now Wizards have themselves a deficit of player trust with is being bridged by a successful movie and an even more successful game- I'm pretty sure standards within in the face of hard reality. Will we get a follow-up game utilising this same cast of characters outside the control of Larian? And will such a sequel go the extra mile to take into account the branching web of possibility that makes up Baldur's Gate 3?

Honestly I do want there to be a Baldur's Gate 4- and I think there's enough left over story for it to follow this same cast of characters. And in that light, given that Larian aren't going to be the one's on the helm, I can kinda justify the proliferation of these characters in order to keep them in the hearts and minds of the community. Better that then to let them fade entirely from the zeitgeist. But only if it's going somewhere significant and these aren't just desperate corporate marketing plans to try and robotocize the very living and breathing hearts of the Baldur's Gate 3 game. I just want a bit of respect on the game that brought Baldur's Gate back to the forefront of gaming- pretty please?

The billion dollar gambit

I'll be honest. I'm not a big fan of Hasbro. Maybe it's that name. The presumptive expectation that they are like a brother to me. Who do they think they are? To covert the title of 'Kyodai' without fronting the requisite blood, sweat and tears to be considered worthy of my respect- to think they could stand back-to-back, shirt off, in the midst of a  Kamurocho street brawl and hold their own? What absolute pretentious hacks! Or maybe I'm just reading too much into a stupid name and my real problem is actually how they've conducted themselves particularly in regards to Wizards of the Coast. Or even more specifically- Baldur's Gate 3 and what they want to start doing to my Gaming hobby. (I'm not exactly looking forward to the coming years.)

Of course, any company that grows big enough unchecked is something of a Megacorpo in my eyes, and thus worthy of only my disrespect. ("Destroy all Corpos, V. Delete all Corpos. Eradicate the Corpos, V") When you see something so cynical and soulless weigh into matters of life and love, surely those aren't the kinds of voices you take seriously- are they? If your calculator jumped to life and gave you pointers on how to ask out that girl you like, would you listen to it? (I mean after you got over the life reshaping shock of finding out you've essentially been lugging around a sentiment being you've forced to work for you like the slave owner you are.) Of course not, it's a calculator- the hell does it know! And what is art but a manifestation of matters of life and love? And Hasbro but a big corporate calculator trying to add together assets to output some revenue? (I'll admit, I kind of freeballed that analogy but I think it came together in the end.)

But what Hasbro has in mind is particularly foul for the Games Industry, if not entirely unexpected. Turns out recent years have alerted Hasbro to the actual value of the property they have under them, Dungeons and Dragons. Not least of all the successful movie promptly followed by Baldur's Gate 3- currently the most universally celebrated video game of all time giving it's unique slate of cross-industry awards it has swept. Essentially Hasbro has been sat on a goldmine for a very long time and only just realised that today- and what do you do if you're a 1940's Baron with no regard for human life? You kick off a rush of course! Not for gold- that stuff is played out- but for the great green jewel! Uranium fever! (Okay, that analogy ran away a bit, I'll admit.)

What I'm trying to say is that Baldur's Gate 3 did a little too well and now Hasbro want another Baldur's Gate 3. They want infinite Baldur's Gate 3's- year after year in perpetuity. Imagine that sting of disappointment you felt when you heard Larian were going to stop development on Baldur's Gate DLC and move on- now multiply that by twenty and put on a business suit- you'll be cosplaying Hasbro when they heard. Now Hasbro have to try and court any one else with a pulse to be their new superstar video game developer and lacking the industry connections to actually meet with some solid talent, or the ambition to reach out and create such connections- Hasbro are doing what every hack does: they're throwing money at the problem and hoping that will do.

In an interview during the Game Developers Conference Hasbro head of game studios and publishing apparently declared that video games are "an integral part of Hasbro's strategy going into the next 100 years." Which is an absolutely unhinged ultimatum to just drop out of nowhere. These fellas are so wired in they've got the next 100 years of their business laid out before them like they're receiving consultations from the damn Bene Gessirit. I wonder if video games are only in their view for the next century if because after that Hasbro is going to evolve into a cult-gang of marauding motor-heads scouring the desert wastes of scorched Earth that remains, inspiring fear across the Wasteland through brutality and feverent faith to the unspoken horror of the before-god: 'Peppah Peeg'.

In the meantime, however, Hasbro have boasted that they've already invested $1 billion into it's internal studios to try and drive those innovation metrics and maybe one day stand up to the behemoth that is Lego but not really because that is a pipe dream. (If they wanted to, Lego could buy all the land around you, demolish your home, buy out your local government when you try to complain, and overthrow your national government if you tried to take it higher.) Now it should be said that Hasbro aren't just throwing all their eggs in the Dungeons and Dragon's basket. They do still own the pig, so there is a not 0 percent change that the next genre defining mega block buster is designed around the vast and complex world of... let me check here... wait... she lives in 'Peppatown'? The town is named after her? Or wait... is the world named after her? Is all the reality of the TV show merely a construct of her eldritch powers, a fake shadow of reality entirely under her control through which she conducts the mundane lives of the animal residents like a puppet master, delighting in how she can bend and twist their little minds without breaking the simple beings of our toy world? Is that why no lessons ever stick, nothing is ever learnt? Because these characters have no agency over themselves and their lives, they aren't even really 'sentient' in the traditional sense. They are flesh puppets on a pastel stage manipulated by a megalomaniac who plasters her name on the townhall- they will never be free. (What- is this blog about again?)

Now of course the funny thing about all this is that Hasbro don't really know what they're doing. Like many of these multimedia brands who get a bit of taste for the industry, they expect to be able to just tip their toes in, wave a bit of funds around and make something of a name for themselves. Which sure, 15 years ago that might have worked- we're in a bit of a different stage nowadays. In the modern industry you either have to have Money (note the capital and the bolding) or be passionate enough to stand out from the crowd. Even if they were to invest that full billion into the production of a single game to try and top Baldur's Gate 3, they would only have put in enough capital to make one third of a GTA 6. Try and swallow that one down! You ain't gonna outspend your way into the games industry, you'll have to do the Larian route and talent your way in with overwhelming passion and drive. Good luck there!

But at the end of the day I welcome newcomers to the industry. Unless they are Amazon. I never welcomed them and I still kind of cringe whenever I see New World being advertised. (In the middle of my watch-through of the Fallout series? Have some tact!) Heck, Hasbro have even already gotten ahead of laying off 1000 members of staff- they're really getting into the games industry way of doing things, aren't they? Still- they now know that people like Dnd Video games still, so perhaps we may get a Icewind Dale style side game based on Baldur's Gate 3 ground work- that could be cool! Or hell, maybe they could put in the base amount of effort into getting Icewind Dale 2 up to snuff so Beamdog can make an enhanced edition of it? That'd be cool. Wouldn't need a billion for that... 

DnD vs Wizards of the Coast

  Forward! Forward! The DnD Brigade!

The struggle between big corporations and small creators feels like it started from the genesis of man. When the big megacorporation of Heaven, with it's tyrannical overlord big man God decided to crack down on the independent efforts of small time Lucifer- actually, maybe this doesn't make for the best comparison, somehow. Yeah, for some reason I don't think this is a favourable way of equating the D&D Community running up against the publishers of the game, Wizards of the Coast. Instead I guess I'm going to have to actually touch on the raging fire of chaos which is the fandom as I explore what on earth is happening in what should be one of the more chill corners of gaming. Because I mean, you really wouldn't expect the developer of a board game which encourages adventures that are told largely within people's heads to interact with it's community enough to cause upset... but you'd be wrong.

Afterall, how do you actually go about making a profit off a property that doesn't actually have all that much in the way of physical goods? Thinking like a soulless megacorporation would, obviously. Well, you want to charge for the ruleset and updates; although that information is easy to find online for free which makes for poor recurrent pay value. Provide a 'convenience' platform that requires subscription, Dnd Beyond! Sell merch wherever you can, licence games (most of which are bad) and a movie. (which looks a little bad too) But what do you do when the well runs dry? What do you do when there's multiple billions flying around your industry and profits are seeing less than a fifth of that? Well there's nothing for it, I guess; but to pull the reigns and slowly strangle the community until they start sliding their funds your way in order to keep their favourite pass-time alive. Because as the trend goes so often in the gaming industry; DnD might make a lot of money... but it doesn't yet make all the money.

As I understand things, the way that Wizards of the Coast used to handle their franchise and intellectual property was under a standard known as the OGL, or 'Open Game licence'. A fairly permissive standard that permits for the modification and alteration of Wizards DnD content to be created and even distributed without royalties or exclusivity, providing it's content that evolves on formulas and doesn't just nick a character or an original DnD race. (Which apparently applies to Mindflayers despite how eye-wateringly derivative they are.) The OGL is a fairly complicated little document designed to keep the spirit of personal creativity that bore DnD and table-top gaming in general, alive and well whilst the company moved into becoming more corporate and profit-driven. Of course, that OGL is also part of the reason why mega brands like Critical Role can exist under DnD without being pay slaves to Wizards of the Coast, and you can bet they don't like that one bit.

In fact, last year there were already furtive eyes being shared around the community after a leaked memo from Wizard's and Hasbro high-ups revealed their concerns on DnD; calling it an 'under monetised' property. An insane thing to say for such a huge brand that has a movie and AAA mega video game on the way in the very near future, both of which are not exempt from royalties, by the way, products of that type aren't protected by the OGL. As such, the cautious were doing what us in the video game do whenever news like this drops; they were bracing for impact over the next few years as Wizards slowly put their plans in play to- or they just turn around and do it obviously and plainly for all the world to see? Wait... have Wizards learnt nothing from the years of greedy industry encroaching that happens all around them, or are the Wizards show-runners just increadibly impatient? I can only assume that CEO, Cynthia Williams, has a daughter with one big-ass sweet sixteen coming up and she needs to start offsetting that bill now.

2023 started with a RPG splash as Wizards brand new OGL 1.1 leaked to the public after being shoved at creatives with all the subtly and care of a jack-hammer enema. This new license, itself a prelude to a full 2.0 licence that we can only guess about at this stage, made great 'shifting the goal posts' statements, from demanding immediate royalties from big enough entities, forcing the complete surrender of creative rights and requiring a brand new 'check in' system with Wizards so that all new projects need to go through them before being published. Absolutely antithetical to the heart of DnD and largely naïve to think such a proposition would go 'under the radar' or be 'swept away after a week' in an industry populated predominately with highly market literate nerds who loves to check the small details and care a lot about their pass time not being stamped on. Wizards should have known this fight was coming a mile away.

Of course, Wizards response to this is pitifully weak. They want people to know that they aren't going to turn around and steal content, and that only the obscenely successful will be paying royalties and only the hateful and inappropriate will be censored. (Which is itself questionable given that Wizards have shown such an overzealous approach to 'censorship' that they removed the badass cruelty from 'Dark Elf' lore so as to be less 'racist'. Dark Elves are blue, Wizards; Black people tend to be brown; from my experience as being half of one.) But the problem is the precedent that this sets. With 1.1, Wizards have deliberately put themselves in the position to start clamping down on independent DnD content and created an environment where in sudden hairpin policy changes are possible. Who's to say that they don't suddenly start getting desperate and start stealing someone's homebrew character guide to sell it to bump up a slump season? That would be legally within their right to do so under this new policy.

Backlash has been severe and swift with a general movement started to start cancelling DnD Beyond Subscriptions, as that is proven to be one of the key immediate metrics that Wizards relies on to measure their success; but no one has been as proactive with this as Paizo has been, the publishers of Pathfinder. Pathfinder, despite being the property behind one of my favourite CRPG computer games of all time, is itself an offshoot of DnD created after a spat with Wizards led to a team that was working under them having rights ripped away so that Wizards could centralise their brand. Basically, they're a team that fully recognise this face of Wizards and know how to face it. Which is why it was probably with a practised ease that the team got around to reaching out to other TRPG friends and drafting their own, freer, OGL with rights to be held by a third party that then passes it on to a non-profit so at no point can the terms be changed by some greedy suit-wearing Beholders ten years from now. (Get it, because Beholders had a long history seeped in slavery before Wizards' nuked that lore out of exsistence because it reflected on their own practises too neatly.)

Which brings us to our current holding pattern. The 1.1 OGL has been held back and hastily withdrawn, whilst the Wizards higher-ups wait for the community aggro meter to run out so we'll all go back to our neutral, wary, state. 2.0 is the real threat and is very much bubbling in the bowels behind each and every story, waiting to explode forth with apocalyptic potential whenever it is that we'll least expect it. Now the table top community have found themselves stuck right in the tug-of-war between consumers and creative leads that the games industry has maintained for the past ten years. Where every bit of land preserved is at the cost of chipping away nuggets here and there until we don't even recognise the standards we set out trying to save anymore. Here's hoping that the community here are a hell of a lot more successful preserving their dignity than we've all been! 

Racist space DND

 huh.

Dungeons and Dragons is one of the most wide spread table-top role playing engines that exists within the world today, and it remains so relevant today through the way that the game manages to constantly empower the imagination and creativity of players. When the stories are created in your own heads tied only to set of rules that are as malleable as you need them to be, there really is no limit to the number of stories one can feasibly tell using hardly more than the base veneer of Dungeons and Dragons; which is why so many role playing and tabletop games over the years have sought to either adapt the DnD ruleset or specialise their offerings of rules to hone in on a specific type of experience that Dungeons doesn't cover. Dnd is kind of like the baseline. But when you have so many personalities and ideas adding to the tabletop roleplaying world, as with anything that becomes a collaborative effort, you open yourself up to... influences. Not always the best kind, either.

One of the oldest Table Top roleplaying games from all the way back in the eighties (if you're curious, Dnd dates back to 74) was on Star Frontiers, which took the renewed interest in high-flung Science Fantasy bubblegum to launch a system that was... moderately received. It doesn't sound like people really liked it all that much, which is probably why you've never heard of it whilst Warhammer and the like are niche, but have a following even to this day. If anything, it serves as a slice of retrofuturism for those that find the quaint charm in that subsector of sci-fi; and though it's splash in the annals of history may be slight, it still matters to some people even to this day which is the most anyone can ask for; isn't it? Huh? It's coming back? But... but why? (Actually there was another revival but I can find next to no information on it despite an apparent recent launch so I can assume it didn't do exceptionally.)

The original Star Frontiers was actually published by TSR, the original publishers of Dnd, which makes it a special kind of symmetry that this new edition of the game, entitled New Genesis, should be targeted today by Dnd's new caretakers; Wizards of the Coast. This new 'edition' of the game is published by TSR LLC, who apparently aren't the TSR who made the original because they were bought and then allowed to go defunct by Wizards. This is a new TSR who uses the name after Wizards allowed the old one's name to run out on Copyright and this is all very confusing and I don't know why I spent half an hour reading up on it all. Except for I guess it helps us draw lines of distinction between the players in this little party. TSR proposed to make this new edition, Wizards bought the rights to Star Frontiers back when they bought the original TSR, so this was already heading for a bit of a kerfuffle; but a recent public filing against TSR to block the publishing of this game has unveiled a few extra herbs and spices in this particular story.

You see, TSR's current custodians have a very questionable grasp over the copyright they claim ownership over. In fact, the entire history of the people who have assumed the name TSR and then been scared of it to start their own companies is sizable. Now the current CEO is a guy called Justin LaNasa, and all I can find about his version of TSR up until now is the fact that they published a game called 'Tales & Tots' which appears to be some sort of 'my first roleplaying game' system aimed at 2 year olds. I have no idea what is in said system, but considering the sort of stuff that Justin is into, I wouldn't recommending picking up that system for you Toddler. It might start giving it very strange ideas about the concept of race equality. (Ah, but I'm getting far ahead of myself.)

LaNasa, seemingly blatantly flaunting in the face of basic copyright law, recently released a playtest of his new version of Star Frontiers, which then was promptly leaked onto the Web for all to see and it is a doozy... When I heard tell of Wizard targeting this version of the game for 'racist ovetones' I scoffed a little bit. Wizards have grown embarrassingly oversensitive about appearing 'racist' after a few unfortunate parallels were drawn between snippets of lore in their game, which has now blossomed into such a paranoia that they're hastening to rewrite Dnd to ensure that no races can have anything remotely 'evil' or 'bad' in their past which could be interpreted as a racial bias. Which means Dark Elves lose a lot of that evil edge what made them cool (you could have just renamed them to Deep Elves or something) and they've even gone some distance to soften up on the lore of Beholders. Yes, the giant eyeballs with tentacles that turn people to stone. I'm not going to lie... there is literally nothing you could conjure up in your script-brain storming sessions that is going to make people not see a giant floating death eye as anything less than an evil monster from hell. It is a floating eye. Come on. What I'm trying to say is; Wizards are prone to exploding over nothing these days, so I took these allegations of racism in a competitor's product as little more than legal spin to strengthen their case; then I read the points of contention.

It's all in that spineless tongue-in-cheek approach to racism where literally everyone in the world can read between the hilariously thin veil and read the obvious subtext, but the writer maintains the vague whisper of plausible deniability to throw his hands up in the air and say he's being framed. Not least of all for his race of, naturally unintelligent but decently physically strong, rage of dark skinned aliens he just happened to name after the Spanish word for black as if the basic connotations aren't obvious. Using the double connotation of the word 'sub race' so he can example Asian, African and Mexican people as 'sub human' whilst hiding behind the excuse that he's 'just discussing systems'. Explaining for the 'looks' attribute that  a 0 is 'unbearably ugly' with providing examples such as 'large noses or narrow noses, large or thin lips or oval eyes. Be creative.' And then literally just throwing caution to wind and asks if you are a "SJW warrior pushing your values onto others." My man wrote this in a book full of sad dog whistles desperately trying to code his personal ideology into a table top play system in the hope it spreads to others; how's that for irony?

And if you're curious about the kind of man who would bother to try and make a Dnd System just to try and 'stick it to the libs', I'm decently sure he's an ex republican mayoral candidate who left his own party because, in so many words, they weren't 'Right enough' for him. So that's the kind of guy you've got trying to muscle his way into the Table top space recycling names that don't appear to belong to him. I do wonder how a man who ran for public office can't seem to grasp basic copyright law, which the only reason I have to doubt that little snippet of lore, but the images from the news corresponds with his Twitter so I can only assume that is a fact. This genius thinks he can brag his way through copyright law whilst virtue signalling about how overbearing the 'libs' are compared to himself. And you though table tops were all fantasy no drama!

Wizards have had a lot of scrutiny dunked on them over the past few years for perceived racial bias in a fantasy world, and they've folded under that pressure time and time again in a bid to try and prove they're not weaving some deeply racist tabletop conspiracy. And maybe after this lawsuit those same people who rant at every piece of Dnd lore that isn't entirely fangless will be able to contrast an actual racially charged nutjob with a the stuff Dnd is doing and realise; "huh, maybe I'm shouting at phantoms?" At the very least I can probably say that this kerfuffle is the single biggest jump in exposure that Star Frontiers has ever had as a franchise. (If only the original creators could see their baby now.)

It's horrifying- but we need the Elder Brain Dragon in Baldur's Gate III

 Why do I court pain with such glee?

As when it comes to any large scale cultural stable, there's always a route of influence one can follow in order to pit see the evolutionary tract and genesis of modern entertainment or societal trends. Such is the case with the humble 'Role Playing Game' and the heart of Dungeons and Dragons that beats not-so-deep within that chest of theirs. That Tabletop game has remained one of the most well known and enduring pop-culture brands of all time, and unlike many with a history as long as theirs, Wizards of the Coast have endeavoured to forever keep Dungeons and Dragons resplendent with new editions, new content, and even iterations of their classic game system translated to new media. (Some of it is even good! The movies are not an example of that, however. Please stop with the movies.) My connection to Dungeons and Dragons is through the video game tracts, of course, thus I do find myself peeking in on what the original table top has going on for it in order to catch glimpse of things that could, or should, be disseminated to the other branches of DnD. And lately, oh boy have we seen a preview worth talking about.

The latter part of this year has seen plenty of teases from the tabletop side of DnD for quite the exciting reason, a new source book is in development and should be arriving before too long. Sourcebooks are essentially materials worth of DnD lore, be it characters, classes, historical events, or creatures that can serve as lore repositories for the thousands of Dungeon masters across the world as they make their games. Of course, part of the fun of DnD is that the adventure is your own and that anything read in a guidebook is subject to the whims of the DM and their decisions about whether or not it'll stay, but by putting out inspiration-sources every now and then, Wizards can help ensure that most stories still end up around the basic familiar framework that is Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe the game will be set on a homebrew new plane of existence, with brand new characters and world events, but if the creatures and combat are still somewhat based on the DnD source material, it's still their game deep down.

New sourcebooks can be exciting for everyone, a chance for whole new crazy concepts and ideas to help further enrich our imaginations or even, sometimes, to help expand upon our favourite DnD properties. The recent DnD campaign book 'Decent into Avernus', for example, was set within the city of Baldur's Gate, and at least partially touched upon events following those two games and acting as a prequel to the third. (So it's not all about feeding imagination, sometimes we get some cold, hard, lore bits) This coming book is not so story-heavy, however, 'Fizban's Treasure of Dragon' more acts as sort of a reference book which will go into great detail in explaining the many various different types of dragons that can appear within the DnD world, with some old favourites from previous editions of DnD bought back into the canon, and some brand new monstrosities drummed up from the pits for good measure. 

Given the name of the game I'd imagine you don't find it too hard to imagine that Dragons are some of the most sought after creatures whenever it comes to expanding the lore, thus this has been a book of particular interest around the community. And for me, I've always been drawn to the narrative concept of 'dragons' and the typically final, sometime even pathos-heavy, role they serve within the 'hero's journey' archetype. And much more mechanically than that, I really like killing dragons in CRPG games, there's a primal thrill which comes from besting some huge, ageless, timeless beast with a motley crew of misfits that just can't be beat! So I'll admit to being interested in the new dragons, what kind of cool things they have going for them, and so a little preview of a couple aired in Dragon+ really caught my attention. Actually, it was one in particular. The one from the title. The Elder Brain Dragon.

So I probably just put a picture of the thing next to this paragraph. You see that? You've absorbed all what's going on there? Let me explain what you're looking at. So 'Elder Brains' are well known as the last stage in the life cycle for the Mind Flayers. (The lean, tentacle men from DnD that are based on Lovecraft's Cthulu) They are essentially giant brains, usually suspended above a pool of brine and baby illithid tadpoles, that serve as living centres of Mind Flayer cities. For how terrifyingly powerful just one of these brain eating monsters can be, going against an Elder Brain is like squaring up to an entire cities-worth of them, because often-times the hive mind of the Mind Flayer collective is centralised within the Elder Brain's sinewy neuro pathways, and so those blood-chillingly iconic psychic abilities are amplified tenfold from the brain. Now throw that ontop of a dragon and you have the worst thing ever.

You see, one of the only things that mark the weakness of an Elderbrain is the fact that for all of their power, they are immobile. They have to be kept forever suspended above a pool lest they are stranded. Also it's a brain, you typically don't want adventures whacking those with their pointy sticks. Only with the Elder Brian Dragon that is no longer the case. Fused with the being in some unknowable eldritch ritual, the guide describes the union thusly; "The Elder Brain forms a sac on the dragon's back and covers it with membrane and tentacles- it also extends tentacles into the dragon's brain to take control of it's body" So that's... horrible. One of the worst parts of this combination, if any of this is worse than the other parts, is that the dragon's breath now consists of a stream of brine with tadpoles. (significant because Illithid tadpoles are the things which worm into people's brains and begins to turn them into new Mind Flayers) This is an end of campaign boss even for a game based around Dragon Slaying, it's an Avengers level threat, it's the worst of the worst of the worst. And I want it in Baldur's Gate III.

For those who've somehow avoided it, don't worry I won't go into spoilers, but Baldur's Gate III has positioned itself heavily around the lore of Illithids, to the point where the logo is a Mind Flayers face sprawled around the roman numerical three. These tentacle lads are key to the story, their forced tadpole-fuelled metamorphism literally forms the main impetus for the first chapter of the plot and it very much seems like they're destined to be the final boss of whatever grand scheme is in wait for BGIII. But here's the thing, we've already seen Mindflayers in Baldur's Gate. 2 had a couple cities worth of them, and even a one-on-one fight with a an Elder Brain itself, and their species didn't even have a significant stake in that plot. So how will BGIII up-the-ante now that they have centre stage? How about by introducing an Illithid presence so horrifyingly powerful and unstoppable that no one in the Dungeons and Dragons community has ever faced it before? How about- the Elder Brain Dragon!

Of course, mechanically this would be a little weird as Baldur's Gate III has already been in full production for a few years and this Dragon book hasn't yet released but I have to think that Wizards of the Coast have lines of communication with Larian and it would be incredibly cool if the two studios envisioned this monster together. What's more, I'd seriously love to see something so gross envisioned in the cinematic style of BGIII, all grotesque and stomach-churning as it preens with the gaudy grace of a peacock, whilst stomping charred and malformed bones into the ruins of the Elfsong Tavern, all of which is just enough to make our adventurer seriously wonder "Am I really that invested in saving this place? Maybe it's just Baldur's Gate's time to go." (And god knows how much of a sucker I am for boss fights so tough that I tear my hair out) So there's my pitch. Either give us this as a final boss of the main game in BGIII or save it for DLC. (The latter proposition terrifies me, though, because if it's in the main game then Larian have to at least attempt to balance the thing.)

Baldur's Gate Review

 Paying deference to the Grandfather

Chalk that one off of the bucket list whiteboard because I've finally done it. After years of hearing this game revered and praised and sung from the high heavens as the all-mighty godfather genesis of western roleplaying games as we know it, I've finally had the chance to play Baldur's Gate. Or rather, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, which is mostly just a remaster with some significant touch-ups under the hood, so for all intents and purposes I have played the original Baldur's Gate to competition. That is total competition, by the way, as in- the main game, Tales from the Sword Coast, the Blackpits and even the homebrew 1.5 DLC which Beamdog cooked up in 2016, Siege of Dragonspear. I'm telling you, I didn't want to miss a single slice of the Baldur's Gate pie just in case there was something there that I ended up really liking. And was there? Well you'll just have to read this review to find out, won't you?

Baldur's Gate is a Classic RPG dating all the way back to 1998, and the series is often cited as one of the best two Bioware series' ever made. (I tend to lean more towards the other candidate: Knights of the Old Republic.) The premise sought to take the 2nd Edition D&D ruleset and transfer it into a game with realtime pauseable combat, the likes of which hadn't really been executed in this way ever before. Even now when you look at these sorts of isometric RPGs, realtime combat is usually reserved for ARPGs, and those games generally won't allow the player to up and pause the minions of hell coming to carve off your face so you can sit around and have a think. This is also an RPG that featured the coveted 6 companions limit which it feels like every team-based role playing game has been judged against ever since. ("What's that? You've got a whole cast of lovingly fleshed out companions in your RPG? Well that's cool and all but how many can I hire at once? Only four? Meh, you should've worked harder")

Coming to this game after all this time is sort of like facing the final boss of my CRPG discovery tour, although that's not to say it'll be done after this. (I'm literally downloading 'Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire' as I write this.) Everytime I'd dive into Dragon Age, or The Elder Scrolls or any of the other number of RPGs that owe their linage back to this game, I'd feel it's presence niggling at the corner of my subconscious, goading me to pay respect to my elders. Well it took some time, but I've fulfilled the prophecy; and in doing so I feel like I've had a decent number of revelations regarding why many of these games play the way they do, what it is that had people so entranced for years after the series went defunct and why some people can't bring themselves to look on Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 as a true sequel. (Although that last point is honestly worthy of a blog on it's own. I won't be touching that.)

The story of these games is what really interested me, for in my younger days I always looked upon Bioware as being master storytellers and thus assumed that a renowned game from their early days would similarly shine with that effortless narrative spark. An older version of myself can look back and see how a lot of those Bioware stories I championed were pretty tropey, but I still attest that they're good for what they are and certainly still have punch for anyone coming to them today. (How else could Mass Effect Legendary Edition sweep up the Internet by storm a few weeks back like it did?) And yet even acknowledging all that, I came away from Baldur's Gate 1 feeling a little disquiet at a narrative which seemed closer to Black Isle Studios Fallout than it did later Bioware. Not to say that it itself was bad, I actually found the story itself to be hugely compelling. Rather the presentation wasn't what I was expecting.

It's a curious approach wherein most of the key narrative points are placed into the world to be discovered by optional observers, not so much told to the player directly so that they are aware of the rising stakes at all time. It's a hands-off and irregular method for telling a story, but one that I honestly respect and feel the effect of when done right. Going to bars and buying some drinks in order to hear the rumors surrounding the diseased iron and then overhearing conversations on the street about the nearby nation of Amn and the possibility of their impending invasion, it all felt a lot more involved and active on my part. The downside of this being the point at which factions and ideas are bought up to which I feel unequipped. I didn't know what the Iron Throne were for half of the game, which is insane given how important they are to the story and their role within it, I just didn't see that first story hook where I was supposed to be introduced to them and thus wandered from quest objective to quest objective a little bit bewildered. I was also unaware as to what The Time of Troubles was, something which I think had an able chance to be naturally explained to the player thanks to the setting of the intro to the game. (A library of scholars? Just have the game start in the middle of a history lesson, that way even players who aren't paying attention will have the information passively relayed to them.)

Once the actual meat of the story gets going and the players are set into their roles, the journey of Baldur's Gate is actually a really wild ride, taking the player all the way up the Sword Coast in a tour that did a fantastic job of just familiarising me with the world before I even touched Baldur's Gate proper. In fact, I was actually a little disappointed when Baldur's Gate showed up, because it just felt like another stereotypical fantasy city, at least in raw appearance. (Although I might be saying that because a lot of fantasy cities from then onwards owed their inspiration to Baldur's Gate) I kept coming back and thinking "This is the famous city they even named the game after? Feels like a little bit of a wasteland". Perhaps I just found a little more charm in the various residents of the Friendly Arm Inn, or the town of Beregost, which I took to affectionately naming 'Inn City', for it being a town with no less than five competing Inns within streets of each other. And hardly a day's walk from Baldur's Gate itself. (How does anyone remain in business?)

I really did fall for the quirkiness of this world and the characters you find here, especially the various companions and their very distinct personalities. D&D character creation always dictates people be created with their 'moral alignment' squarely stated from the getgo. I always felt this was a weakness of character creation, serving as a nudge to less devoted role players in helping them give themselves to the fiction perhaps, but reductive in the overall symphony of character driven storytelling wherein a person can start as one thing and evolve to be something completely different by the end. Seeing how Baldur's Gate uses these very alignments as basis to create a simply humungous cast of detailed characters with predilections and duties leading them to all corners of the moral compass, made me release how powerful a well oiled alignment meter can be. These characters might perhaps be a little bit unrealistically eccentric, but that's what make the bunch just so darn loveable. (I found myself wishing the companion cap was bigger so I could spend quality time with more of them.)

Speaking of Character Creation, Baldur's Gate did a decent of job of streamlining this aspect without leaving players completely confused as to what they were doing. I was a little disappointed by the number of races available, you couldn't even play a full Orc, let alone a Dragonborn or Tiefling. (I just want the chance to play a somewhat interesting race sometime, you know?) My character ended up being a Neutral-Evil Gnome Cleric called Knud, and the tooltips were very handy in explaining how my character should be built in order to properly advantage those choices. With an exception towards telling me that all weapons, even those made for clerics, have a mid-level strength requirement, instead of a Wisdom one. Now you could say that is a mistake caused by my own hubris, not realising that stat improvements are nigh-on impossible in base D&D, but the result was me going around the entire game with no weapon better than a club. (Thank god I picked a support class)

The quirky nature of an avaricious Cleric not brawny enough to pick up a Morningstar fit in great among the cast of character that make up the 25 companions that this game has to offer. Yes, 25! You might think that's a tad too much, and truthfully it sort of is, but that does mean I always felt like whatever challenge I went up against I'd have enough people in my back-up roster to handle things. I can't say I had the pleasure of experiencing all of these companions, or even most of them for that matter (I only played with around 15 of them) but amidst those I did pick there were a good number of memorable and great characters. Such as Minsc, (the Barbarian of questionable sanity with his pet Space Hamster Boo) Dorn (the Half-Orc Blackguard who lives up to the 'evil mercenary' persona and then some with his unfiltered brutality) Neera (the Half-elf Wild mage who can literally turn the tide of your battle eitherway on the whim of a die thanks to her unpredictable magic) and Imoen. (The ever supportive childhood friend who's your rock no matter what bad choices you make.)

The sheer number of companions is perhaps necessary given the way that Death works in Baldur's Gate, which is a mix of my least favourite parts of D&D alongside some of their own twisted choices. First of all, I hate the fact that most forms of death can be reversed with a simple spell in D&D. Okay, it isn't exactly a simple spell, but it isn't a rare or unheard of one, any church cleric can do it. It removes a lot of the sanctity of death and makes one wonder why you don't see regular enemies popping up to get revenge more often. (There's some rules in there about keeping the body intact and the soul untouched, but I still don't love it.) In Baldur's Gate, there is no unconsciousness state, meaning that anytime your HP reaches 0 that person instantly dies. If they die in an unlucky way (i.e. Get immolated) They're dead forever. Although, honestly, it's usually just worth reloading if someone dies anyway because they drop all their gear and that's just a hassle to re-equip again.

I thought that Pillars of Eternity's system was broken for the way it rarely ever contributed to actual dynamic gameplay moments and just meant that you had to hoof it back to an Inn every now and then; but Baldur's Gate gives that a run for it's money. Suddenly, every fight could lead to a reload or heavy backtrack because your mage was standing at the wrong place and got swarmed before getting out of the way. I can't help but feel like there must be a better CRPG system for handling death out there somewhere, between Tyranny's overly lenient 'wounds' mechanic and BG's hardedge 'total death' approach. Surely someone found an accord somewhere!

Now that we're onto gameplay, I must say that I was surprised how similar this game played to the CRPGs of today, proving how timeless this style of game can be. It essentially comes down to throwing your band of adventurers at the band of enemies and waiting for them to bash each other to death, maybe taking a pause to reposition someone every now and then. Of course, as things grow more complicated other factors come into play, and soon you'll be managing spell slots and throwing up buffs before fights. (Although the rest mechanic for recovering spell uses and healing was far too spammable. They try to throw up the odd ambush to put you off but those were just annoying. I usually slept 8 hours after most significant encounters, which isn't very D&D-like at the end of the day.)

One issue I had with Pillars was the way in which magic casters were inundated with far too many spells with effects that I never learned, but in Baldur's Gate this is negated significantly to the point where I knew what pretty much every effect was and could build my clerics and mages to the situation. (Which was important for some of those endgame challenges) I don't know whether this was a simple effect of my growing familiarity with the genre or if Baldur's Gate really did just throw less new cleric spells at me upon level-up, but by the end of game I had a really strong grasp on how everyone played and for boss fights I typically wouldn't let the AI whole-sale manage anyone, it was all stop-n-start strategy for me.

The difficulty curve of the game can be largely attributed to another strange quirk of the D&D ruleset, one which got excessively annoying for the harder encounters in the game. Essentially everything comes down to armour class and the fact that if the behind-the-scenes dice rolls (aided by stats, buffs and the gear you equip) doesn't pass some arbitrary value, your character doesn't hit. It invokes, predictably, Morrowind levels of helplessness where you come across enemies you simply cannot hit no matter how much you swing that darn wooden stick. At these points you're not simply facing off against Goliath vs David odds, but total massacres where no matter how many buffs you throw around your fight is useless, because you haven't got this one specific +3 weapon yet. I prefer simply staring at a too-long healthbar and slowly chipping it away over dealing literally no damage because the giant monster has a THAC0 of -2 or something stupid. For the main game this isn't really a problem however, and I actually found the challenges presented to be very fulfilling to resolve, even if there wasn't a great many of them.

Where things really kicked into gear was with Legends of the Sword Coast, the expansion for the original game which added a few new very fleshed out questlines which were all real playthrough standouts on their own merits. However, they each featured at least one encounter which I feel crossed the boundary of 'tough' and entered into plain 'unfair' territory. The island quest was incredibly fun, but contained one boss fight against monster that can only be hurt with three weapons in the entire game. Two of which can only be found in the room with him. (How often do you loot a room before clearing it out?) Another is a spectacularly long and involved dungeon which easily eclipses anything the main game had to offer as a truly unique epic dungeon trekking adventure. However the end of quest fight, upon returning the dagger, is simply wacky for the amount of rules it introduces and expects you to just know. (Like the fact that every NPC in the room needs to die before the boss lest that creature is reborn through one of them. What the heck?)

My main problem with those difficult fights is that key mechanics aren't explained before you're chucked into them, leaving you helpless. Such is not the case with 2016's DLC, Siege of Dragonspear, which similarly features endgame-level threats but lets you know all the chips before you commit, so that you're not stumbling around for ages and resorting to forums just to figure out how to go about the darn fight. In fact, I really liked what Beamdog did with a lot of Siege of Dragonspear, and now do hope they get the chance to one day make a fully fledged D&D-based CRPG of their own construction because they could likely do something special with it. I'm being serious, I may have grown to like Baldur's Gate, but I actually loved Siege of Dragonspear and felt it actually told it's story better than base BG did. (Even if base BG has a better actual story to tell. If that makes any sense.)

Envisioned as a 1.5 entry, bridging the weeks-long gap between Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Siege of Dragonspear exists to answer the question "What exactly led to the 'dark circumstances' that drove the Bh- I mean Gorion's Ward-" (Keeping spoilers to a minimum here) "-to flee Baldur's Gate?". In this pursuit, Beamdog, who worked on remastering Baldur's Gate 1 for the Enhanced Edition before this, really pushed the Infinity engine to it's limit on impressive set piece scenes and more modern game design philosophies, some of which fit Baldur's Gate and some of which stuck out like a sore thumb to a new player like me. One example of the latter would be the enemy group compositions, which went from the small groups of base Baldur's Gate to instant giant hordes of death, much more indicative of the group compositions you'd see from games like Pillars of Eternity. (I used Fireball a lot more in Siege of Dragonspear)

For the DLC, Beamdog abandoned the free exploration in favour of a more linear progression of events with concentrated content and quality in the handful of locations shown off at one time. This allowed for the narrative to be much tighter, for cool game setpeice moments to drive the world along in a meaningful sweep and for the pace of the narrative to be keenly felt. Especially with how your home camp physically moves each chapter, mimicking the campaign across the land leading towards Dragonspear. I feel like there might have also been more opportunity for action and consequence to be in the story, albeit this was still limited in comparison to modern RPGs through plain merit of the base game engine's age. I think the main reason that I took to this DLC so much, however, comes in the raw setup. Because just like my favourite CRPG, Tyranny, you enter this world as a known quantity and have a place within it, thus giving weight to the character you choose to play in this position. Of course, in Baldur's Gate you're just the Hero of the city, a role given for beating the base game no matter how much of a monstrous heathen you were whilst doing it; rather than the brilliant customisability of Tyranny's protagonist. But anything that gives me even that slightest hint of Tyranny is getting extra points in my book.

Although if I'm being critical, much of the adventure which characterised the actual Siege of Dragonspear is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, and only really the final chapter does the work of linking Baldur's Gate 1 to 2. However as with any great D&D campaign, there's nothing wrong with going on a complete tangent for some sessions with a cool new villian, Caeler Argent, in order to do something super cool if non-progressive to the main plot, stop a crusade. Perhaps one might look at the meat of Siege of Dragonspear and call it a side quest, but when it's that fun of a sidequest, is there anything really to complain about? Also, I would be remiss for not commenting on how witty and fun all of the writing became for this DLC alone. I mean, it borders on overly sardonic at times, but for the most part it really breathed life into the character of the Ward that wasn't necessarily missing from Baldur's Gate, (I happen to think the original was written rather well actually) but was perhaps a little muted.

I saved The Black Pits for last, despite it being another expansion for Enhanced Edition that released before SoD, because it's entirely unrelated to the main game and in fact demands a new party of characters entirely. It tells the story of a death arena built by another entertaining companion from the main game, Baeloth the Entertainer, and you as a group of adventures that have been kidnapped to 'play' the games here. That being said, there's not a whole lot of story and the expansion pretty much consists of fifteen straight arena fights with a little bit of spending money to work with in the meantime. I found the whole thing to really be an exercise in how to test builds, and it helped me really familiarise myself with those last nagging tactics I needed to become a true asset to the tactical field. The Black Pits are fine, I don't think anyone would be missing anything by ignoring them in favour of the main game parts.

Overall, I seriously did enjoy my playthrough of Baldur's Gate and just know that going forward it's going to form my bare minimum basis of what CRPGs need to achieve to be worthwhile. At it's best times I truly felt like I was in throes of my very own D&D campaign, high on the endless adventure of the open road and at it's worst I was just frustrated by a poorly set-up encounter or badly explained mechanic, never was I bored. The Sword Coast, though basic, appealed to me as a game world in that 'blank canvas for adventure' sort of way, and the actual details of the narrative were genuinely thrilling during some parts of the climax, even if the execution was lacking. I would give base Baldur's Gate a B+ Grade, for a game that shows it's age a little bit but still holds up very well against the contemporaries of it's field. I give The Black Pits a C Grade, for something that didn't need to exist, and is a little buggy for having existed, but for what it is proves inoffensive. Siege of Dragonspear was actually the highlight of my play experience, mounting an excellent adventure with solid new characters and a compelling tie in for Baldur's Gate 2 tucked away at the end. Making it easy to attribute it an A Grade for it's trouble. Overall, then, I'd have to rank Baldur's Gate a mean of a B Grade, with the stipulation that I seriously enjoyed my time and look forward to moving onto the next game. For my 130 or so hours I gained a new appreciation for CRPGS and old school Bioware whilst getting saddled with a burning desire for this campaign I already know doesn't get resolved. (Might as well enjoy the heck out of the journey, then.) 

Why is DnD Dark Alliance so bad?

 Someone forgot their saving roll for this release

There's always something special about returning to those seminal franchises that influenced huge swathes of pop culture. It's why we all smile on the inside whenever that nostalgia wave hits, why Star Wars and Star Trek will always remain popular no matter how often they disappoint their fans, and why Dungeons and Dragons will weather the storm it's going through and the one it has coming. For the future I fear this upcoming Dungeons and Dragons film that's hurtling towards us, because I've seen the first DnD film and I know what to expect. (Also, it's currently called 'The Dungeons and Dragons film'. If the filmmakers can't be bothered to think up an actual title I can't have too high hopes for the total film.) And for the time being the big screw up is none other than DnD Dark Alliance the video game, which has arrived with about as much fanfare and wide spread adoration as the Black Plague.

Let me start by reiterating that this is such a shame. I remember first seeing this game announced and being so excited that the plethora of lore and characters from the prime DnD world were being presented in such an accessible manner, Faerûn was finally approachable by the everyman, but at this point what everyman in their right mind is going to play this DnD game? Hack and slash action without having to pick through stat sheets and the like; casual bliss, no? But that was me then, now I'm even more distraught at all the missed opportunities this game had to harken upon and exemplify all that DnD stands for and represents in clever and involving techniques. This seemed like such a perfect chance to create a dumb slasher that was smart underneath the hood... and yet... that didn't happen. So my question is why it went wrong. But it's too early for that at the getgo, so let's just focus on the things that went wrong themselves to try and determine if I was lying to myself or if there was a good DnD game here somewhere in the depths of Avernus.

First of all comes the most simple downfall to any game out there, and yet a useful smokescreen for others, the game is buggier than a summer afternoon in the Bayou. Now we're all familiar with the Cyberpunk effect where NPCs seem to have chewed on their AI packages such to the point where they're non responsive, but I'm talking about a game where the enemies don't work. Yeah, that's a bit of a problem now isn't it? Enemies don't seem to be able to spot the player unless they stand in front of you for several seconds. Really takes away from the illusion of being 'death defying adventurers' when half your job is stabbing catatonic goblins. Hit responses are as bad as vanilla Fallout 76, drop out is prevalent, load in gear glitches run havoc. Just about everything that could go wrong for an online game has gone wrong, short of a glitch so bad it bricks your console. Anthem still holds the record there. (If, indeed, that bricking glitch was real and not just an anecdote run wild.)

But it all runs much deeper than that, because of course it does. Just as with Cyberpunk, the glitches are what makes the headlines, but behind that is a game that's flawed to it's core and fails on the basic promises we were sold to. However, I will say that Cyberpunk at the very least has great combat, something which cannot be said for Dark Alliance. Enemies are too easy and go down too quickly, even when their AI packages are working, classes lack any role definition so that everybody just ends up being damage dealers for the most part, loot collection in this loot-based game is utterly weak and none representative of the missions that the player is going on, (so harder missions rarely offer better quality loot) and of the several classes that are offered out off the get go, none of them are spell users. That's right, we're talking about a DnD video game with no dedicated magic casters. How do you make that decision? And don't turn around and tell me this is in order to get around spell slots as though this game cares about core DnD rules like that. Weapon rarity wouldn't even exist in a purist DnD ruleset game, so we can rest assured there's no excuse lying in there.

So the game is bad. Pretty bad. But could it have been better? And more importantly, in what ways could it have been better rather than the substandard "Well, if they fixed the bugs-" answer. Well we all have our own opinions to throw this way and that, but in my opinion (which I teased at the beginning) I think the secret might have lied in staying truer to the DnD soul. For example, there exists one mechanic in the game where you can choose to rest between missions, which heals everyone up but resets the multiplier for getting higher tier loot. (Though as I understand it, that multiplier is completely broken anyway at launch.) This would have been a perfect space for recharging spell slots, not just for the non existent mages but for all characters. This would solve the issue of healing spam that some classes can do, because they'd be limited and have to think before each spell, plus it would add a really tangible risk-reward factor as going to score that higher tier of loot might mean going into battle with no spells to back you up at all. There, right away, we've completely evolved the balance of the game to be more conservative but more thoughtful. See how easy that is?

What can we focus on next? How about we go to classes next? Out of the box you have four classes that are tied to four characters from DnD lore, the only one whom I recognise being Drizzt Do'urden, because he seems like the kind of character cooked up in a lab to be cool but overdone to the point of parody. (Oh, so he's a duellist-assassin Drow with silver hair and a 'stab-first ask questions later' attitude? I bet he's plays guitar in his garage band too.) None of them are interesting enough. You have a Dwarf tank, human archer, Drow assassin, and a human barbarian. Where are the shapeshifting Gnome Druids, the fire-raining Tiefling evokers, heck, where is the dedicated support class? (Coming in the DLC? Not good enough) I know that the idea was to create this high-octane action game where everyone could be the damage dealer in the way they wanted to whilst no-one had to play the support, but that's A: really hard to pull of in anyway that keeps combat feeling in anyway deep and B: isn't even really in line with the soul of DnD anyway. Sure, clerics can heal and kickass; but you want one on your team for their versatility. Dark Alliance's line-up, despite the duel classes, lacks any variety, and it makes the game feel one note.

Then there's probably the most unsaveable part of the game; the campaign. It's boring and forgettable, lacks any punch, fixing this would take the most amount of work but I'm going to put myself in the theoretical and not at all realistic position of having unlimited time to shift directions entirely. Because I think the best idea for a DnD game like this, focusing around dungeon diving and looting, would have been to focus development on a sort of Roguelite randomised core game. Sure there can still be the odd narrative driven adventure, but much smaller and mostly saved for DLC efforts, the core game should have been on something more generated; let me explain my idea. The team could have created a basic set of DnD enemies, (Your Gnolls, your Gibberlings, your Kobolds) tilesets of classic DnD locations, (Forests, underground ruins, Dark alleys) and then just fed that into a generator machine to keep churning out quests and loot for the player without having to rely on subpar storytelling. Effort from there could go into making minibosses that are strong on their own right, difficulty scales that change up how many and what enemies spawn and maybe even random special events that chunk random demons into a level, or dimesion door you to a realm from the Nine Hells. Take hints from other games like Diablo, and they way they keep things unique, or just Roguelite games in general, or even Minecraft Dungeons and the way that works. Would it have made a totally different game to the one they were going for? Yes. But I think it would have had much more staying power.

In the end, however, we got what we got and there remains no recourse except to deal with the outcome. And that outcome is another disappointment multiplayer title that, for some inexplicable reason, feels like it fell flat on it's face with looter aspirations. I may be imagining things there, because who can really confess to knowing intent this early on, but I smell another failed looter and it's starting to get ridiculous at this point. These aren't easy games to make, so I can't see why everyone and their mother keeps trying for it and failing. It reminds me of the MMO boom after WOW; just a lot of failed ventures and aspirations shot far above ability. Dark Alliance probably doesn't have a road to recovery ahead of it after a launch this poor, (but I'd love to be proved wrong) and so DnD fans will have to hope for other DnD universe games to get their fix. Good thing the next major game is Baldur's Gate 3 then...

What's the latest with Baldur's Gate?

Keeping up with the Illithids. 

I've really slept on Baldur's Gate 3, intentionally I might add, for the better part of the year or so since I first mentioned it. But that's only because I was so enamoured by what I saw that I wanted to wait until the game was out and I could play it for myself. Well, of course things aren't that simple and Larian have the tendency to hit a prolonged state of early access before the big launch , so there's actually gone quite a few months of everyone having a pretty good idea what this game looks and plays like, at least in it's first act. and up to level 4. Meanwhile I've been anxiously glimpsing from afar, looking at the odd patch note or sneaking a peak at the trailer, letting the need to play this game slowly creep up on me. But then came the time when I played another big CRPG in Pillars of Eternity (Which I'm getting the desire to play through again, honestly) and now I just can't hold back anymore. I really want to look at what is honestly one of the coolest feeling party-based games in a long time and just smother myself in that D&D goodness.

To that avail I've been catching up on a lot of what I missed, following threads on the months development from the eyes of the community, reading pages of information on what the game currently holds and how they want to expand upon that and, to cap it all off, watching the two hour Panel from Hell that Larian put together in order to celebrate their big Patch 4. (I've even dived a little bit into 'Baldur's Gate: Decent into Avernus': the tabletop prequel to Baldur's Gate 3) Does that make me the preeminent source on all things BG3? Of course not, not even close. The best possible experience I could shoot for would be playing the game for myself, but I'm just so not in the mood to be stuck playing the first act of a grand story over and over in perpetuity (There's enough of that in every Live service, afterall.) so I've restrained myself. Plus, paying full price for a quarter of a game... that just ain't me, you know? At least not intentionally... I may have confidence in Larian to deliver, they've done it with the exact same development path twice before, but I wouldn't be true to my penny-pinching ways if I relented. (Which just means you can go play it for yourself if you want ever more insight.)

So first of all I should reintroduce the game now I know it a bit better. Baldur's Gate 3 is the long awaited successor to the famed Baldur's Gate series though, as far as I'm aware, narratively unlinked to those first two games aside from in setting. It goes for a CRPG style similar to the originals, but distinct at it's core in that this isn't a free-action combat game but a turned based style more similar to Larian's own Original Sin series. This allows for the introduction of elements like Initiative into the raw gameplay (A concept from D&D that decides the order of turns based on rolls and/or stat bonuses) and a greater reliance on powerful abilities that feel like they shake up the battlefield. Most notable in BG3 is the way in which Larian have thrown their absolute all into making this undeniably the most AAA CRPG experience being worked on at this moment, with no equal. Every line not spoken by the player is voice acted, (amending a common short falling of this genre) every interaction is rendered with a cinematic flair onpar with Bioware, (Except with much better lip-tracking from what I've seen) and the whole thing is created with this beauty that's only improved upon with each update. Visually the game is just a star.

Larian have tasked themselves with really bringing Baldur's Gate 3 to a new level as far as this genre is concerned, and the storied nature of the series is fuelling a lot of that passion and desire to perform to their utmost best. The core pillars of this type of classic RPG games, character classes, roleplaying and levelling are all upheld or reiterated upon with gusto, and they've even gone so far as to institute one of their own pillars, utility, in a way that I really hope picks up steam. If you're unfamiliar, I'm referring to the way in which the world is constructed to allow for abilities that have use outside of combat scenarios, such as to ignite a cloud of poison to dissipate it. Utility is one of the most unique aspect of Larian's development style and it's an absolute credit to the creativity of it's customers, championing that makes Baldur's Gate 3 genuinely one of the most promising role playing games to date, in my eyes.

Development of such a grand idea in a game is going to take more than a bit of ingenuity and iteration, which is why I get so excited to see the team take this seriously and work in early access alongside the community to nail everything down. It's the sort of relationship that Early Access was built for but one we see too frightfully lacking in most examples of the service. Already this collaboration between developer and player has resulted in everything from bug fixes, to balance tweaking and even a few pivots in design direction that I think have really been a credit to the genre at large. For instance, and I'm unsure how much of this is fan suggestion and how much is something they were aiming for to begin with, but the Patch 3 change to make avoiding combat reward equivalent experience to engaging, is genuinely gameplay affecting. I remember my entire approach to Deus Ex shifting on a dime when I realised they had a similar mechanic. Great stuff so far.

As for Patch 4, their most recent and the focus for the Stream from Hell that Larian did a showcase on, there's some cool goodies to talk of there. The headliner though, the thing which got everyone talking, is the Druid class which harkens back to classic D&D. With a playstyle shaped around embodying the wild extremes of nature and magic, Druids posses the singularly awesome ability to 'Wild Shape'. I.e. Morph into an animal with all the benefits of that animal and a separate health pool to top it off. So far we've seen giant polar bears who can barrel into smaller foes, a badger who can tunnel under the earth and a bird which can soar to hard to reach places, all of which obviously comes with as must utility value as they do combat efficiency. For a treat the livestream showcased a solo run of what looked to be a difficult dungeon using the utility of a level 4 druid and it was genuinely impressive for the array of tools and abilities available to one single class. From flying past traps as a bird to stealthing one room as a cat and even quickly saving an NPC's life by porting around the battlefield in badger form. And then the entire thing fell apart as key saving throws were missed and the team ultimately wiped (as can happen in truly live events) but the showcase was impressive and fun regardless, really showing the extent of love and care which the team is dedicating to every playstyle. (All these CRPGs of late are reminding why I used to love RPGs as much as I did, I'm telling you.)

And even beyond the gameplay itself, I must voice that I positively adore the presentation of this game; it looks genuinely stunning. One of the new upgrades with this latest patch went towards the lighting and that alone breathes new life into already impressive looking scenes, allowing for dark to play off of light appropriately. (Something I hope they have fun with in the later acts) The effects of the abilities to, have this great punchiness to it that I wasn't really expecting. Other titles tend to have these whimsical and mystical effects with all but the biggest of spells, but BG3 with it's visuals and sound-design invokes a weighty feeling whip to all the attacks that I'm really coming to appreciate. It perhaps robs a little of the whimsy but it feels fast, electric and modern; matching the tone of this whole Baldur's Gate project nicely.

Baldur's Gate 3, with it's robust skeleton and fanciful frills, has the potential to really set a new bar for the RPG community and I'm absolutely here for it. Even as someone who never played BG 1 and 2 back in the day, there's enough here to really ignite the ol' fire and have me drooling entirely without the steel hook of nostalgia to rope me in. (Although, admittedly, that might be somewhat due to my known love for all things turn based) Everytime I see more of this game I fall in love all over again, and I'm at the point now where I can't even decide what I'll end up being on launch day. (I know I'll play Teifling, but 'Tiefling' Druid is sounding pretty cool around about now) I'm actually excited for the long road to launch and all the stops along the journey in the knowledge that, with the map editor tools that'll likely come to, this could very well be the next modder haven game too. Let me call it now that Baldur's Gate 3 is going to be the best it can be, and accept that I could very well be eating those words if things go Projekt Red-shaped a year or so from now. (It won't though. Right?)

Magic Legends

Mystique would be jealous...

Not too long ago, during the VGAs, I noticed a little trend wherein a traditionally single platform game, League of Legends, was actively trying to diversify itself with a bunch of new single player titles. Personally, I thought it was a great idea hindered only by the fact that LOL's lore is notoriously wishy washy, making it hard to build upon. 'Magic: The Gathering' on the otherhand is so much more robust in that category, and that just makes sense doesn't it, considering that Magic is run by 'Wizards of the Coast'. (The guys behind 'Dungeon's and Dragons'.) With that in mind, it's a no brainer for a 'Magic: The Gathering' extended universe game to be released. Why not expand that card game into something more substantial and build the brand, yada yada... but somehow there has been a little bit of a roadblock in that pursuit.

Before I proceed I shall be fully open for a second, I had no idea about anything surrounding this game until very recently. I had, and have, never played 'Magic: The Gathering' before, my knowledge of the game doesn't expand anywhere past that South Park episode on Magic and the announcement of Magic Legends passed right by me like a fart in a hurricane. But upon learning of the situation, I can't help but find myself entranced due to the odd similarities this all has to the 'Warcraft 3: Reforged' debacle with flying accusations of 'false marketing' and 'poor communication' confusing a community around a game that doesn't look so bad. (Although in fairness I'm told that Warcraft 3 was buggy as all get-out.) So I took a look at what I could find about this game and here's what I saw.

Our story begins all the way back in 2017 when I still had no idea was Magic was and 'Wizards of the Coast' has just gone public with their hiring of Perfect World and it's subsidiary, Cryptic Studios, on a very special project; Magic Legends. Cryptic, who were previously known for creating Neverwinter, Star Trek Online and City of Heroes, would be tasked with putting their MMO crafting abilities on the Magic universe in order to build the next step in it's lore. This would be "a new free-to-play, action MMORPG", which is a collection of words that bodes very ominously if previous experience is to be taken into account. Things get specific in the next bit of the PR, for "as a Planeswalker, you explore amazing worlds, combat powerful creatures and meet the legendary beings that shape the fate of the multiverse", whatever that means. (Oh, will the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor show up then? What about Pariah? I don't think Tom Cavanagh has played enough versions of Harrison Welles yet...)

So far so normal, right? A celebrated crafter of decent-MMOs has secured the rights to make yet another. Of course, now we get the standard trailer announcing the new game, and if you've ever seen a 'Magic: The Gathering' trailer before, you already know exactly what this one contains. A whole bunch of still 3D renders, a few drops of melodrama and a beat drop that's so loud it'll blow out your speakers. Honestly, I do wonder at what studio the Magic team gets to put these trailers together, they're barely any better then what you'd expect out of a 1st year graphics class, is the price of quality really that high? Will the sky fall upon our heads the very second you choose to display some actual honest-to-goodness gameplay in your trailers? (Okay, I'm getting a bit off track.)

After that announcement, you'll likely not be too shocked to hear that the community was treated to a generous helping of silence for the next two years. During this time there could have been any number of developments to the project, (As there evidently were, we'll get to that later) but no one in the teams involved thought it prudent to maintain a single avenue of communication with the audience. You know, the people who would be buying the product. It seems to stupid to shy away from the basic tenets of transparency so much in the modern gaming market, you'd think that No Man's Sky and the like would have roundly taught that lesson to everyone, yet every year there's a studio that has to learn the hard way, and this year it looks like that studio might be Cryptic.

I say this because it was this year that Magic Legends worked it's way back into the spotlight once more with another dull trailer and a revised description on it's website. "Magic Legends (is) an all-new online action RPG." Hang on, aren't you missing something, guys? Maybe the letters 'MMO'? On January 15th this confusion was cleared up a little when we got to see our first gameplay trailer, and we could see quite clearly that this was a title that hails from the genre that I'll just affectionately call 'a Diablo clone'. Now, don't mistake my frankness with disapproval, I'm actually quite the fan of Diablo-type games, but when hype and renown is mounted with the promise of one thing, it kind of sucks for the pay-off to be for something else entirely. (Unless we're talking about a movie twist, in which case that's very much the point.)

The reaction from the public thus far has been very mixed. Some people really like what they are seeing from this game while others are understandably confused about the fact that they were sold on a lie. To be fair, Cryptic at least had the courtesy to let people know that the game isn't what they originally promised, rather than release it and then pray people wouldn't notice. (Like Blizzard essentially did.) This just puts everyone in a weird position wherein they have to judge this game from an entirely new set of eyes. Plus, the crowd that was amassed looking for an MMO isn't going to be anywhere near the diablo-crowd, so I'd call this a grand marketing faux-pas for everyone involved. Look at me, for example; I lack the charisma and friends to play an MMO but I eat up Diablo-clones, and yet I'm hearing of this one because of the controversy it's sparking rather than for the merits of the game itself.

So this isn't quite the huge meltdown that Blizzard are currently up against, but the Magic community are feeling betrayed and that will hurt the ability for this game to grow. To make matters worse, the Diablo-like market of games has become rather crowded in the past couple of years, to the point wherein the next Diablo has already been announced with a substantial gameplay walkthrough. Magic Legends just seems to pale in comparison as it cannot match the muted semi-realism of Diablo nor the quirky colourfulness of titles like Torchlight 2, making this title seem like an inferior choice for everyone involved. The even worser-er part of all this, I don't even think this game'll be a good way to expand the Magic brand, an MMO would have been a much better vehicle. Maybe when the time comes we'll all be proven wrong and Magic Legends will be the next big thing; But I won't hold my breath.

This is all we have to go on for Magic Legends right now, and it's a real shame too. Just like with LOL, I think Magic is a huge universe worth of stories that would be a very interesting well to delve into; but somehow I don't think we'll be getting that. Cryptic will be working outside of their comfort zones to create a non-MMO and fans will be out of a fully-immersive massively multiplayer experience in favour of a gameplay-loop dependant title. It's actually quite amazing what a world of difference there is between the promised game and what we're seeing today, and I'm just struggling to figure out whether this change has been positive or negative. In the coming weeks, it'll be up to Cryptic to explain things with fans and get them on board, or they'll risk allowing the seeds of betrayal that they sewed to bloom. I will remain very interested to hear more on their response, just as I'll remain interested to see if this title ends up being better than it looks.