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The Infinity Engine: All Good Things Begin And End With Breach
Arivia
I Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered User regular
I Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered User regular
The Infinity Engine
The Infinity Engine is a 2D engine built in-house by BioWare Corp to power the latest and greatest games running on the 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ruleset and saw its first release on December 21, 1998. It drove five separate games and four expansion packs until it fell out of use in 2002.
Not an incredibly versatile engine, nor the easiest to work with, or even the prettiest, it has still managed to power some of the most compelling and complex role-playing experiences to date, from sprawling epics across the Sword Coast to heart wrenching and emotional planehopping adventures to discover one's self to slogs through dungeons fighting the fiercest creatures in Faerun's Frozen North, the Infinity Engine never failed to deliver an amazing experience that constantly built on what was done before.
The Best Games Ever Made
Baldur's Gate
It all began on December 21, 1998, when a small, largely unknown developer from Canada that happened to have been founded by two medical doctors released the game that singlehandedly revitalized the dying RPG genre.
Building upon what had been done in previous AD&D CRPGs, BioWare built Baldur's Gate, a large, sprawling game set around the Forgotten Realms city of Baldur's Gate.
You are a young orphan of your choice of gender, race, class, appearance, and voice that has been raised in the monastic fortress library of Candlekeep under the tutelage of the wizard Gorion. You and your foster father are to be leaving Candlekeep today, though he won't tell you why or where you're going. After leaving, it's only a short while before you're ambushed by a large man in dark and intimidating armor who speaks to Gorion about wanting his ward. Gorion yells for you to run and stays behind to delay pursuit.
In the morning you're met by your old childhood friend Imoen who followed you out of Candlekeep unbeknownst to Gorion and she joins you. Now you two are alone and stranded in the wilderness of the Sword Coast with only a letter left behind by Gorion suggesting you seek some of his friends at the Friendly Arms Inn.
Planescape: Torment
Almost a year later, on December 12, 1999, Planescape: Torment was released, making it the second game to have used the Infinity Engine and the third game total for Interplay-owned developer Black Isle Studios. It is constantly hailed as one of the deepest and most meaningful RPGs ever made if not the deepest and most meaningful RPG ever made. It's filled to the brim with interesting characters and interactions, rich role-playing possibilities, and a storyline interesting, twisting, and heart wrenching.
You are the Nameless One, a heavily scarred man who wakes up inside a mortuary after having been brought there as a corpse. You have no memory of who you are or where you've been and you seemingly cannot die. With a cryptic message carved into your back and a floating talking skull your only companion, you set off into the city of Sigil to discover who you are, what you've done, and why you cannot die, and one question above all will follow you on your quest.
What can change the nature of a man?
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale was Black Isle's second IE game and was released on June 20, 2000 and marked the first dungeon crawler on the Infinity Engine. It takes away the compelling plots and character interaction of the previous games and instead throws you into a hack and slash adventure across the Frozen North in a series of challenging and compelling encounters.
Your band of adventurers has found itself in Easthaven, one of the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, the northernmost region of Faerun. It's a cold and inhospitable place populated with the some of the fiercest and most cunning creatures to walk the surface of the continent. You've taken to resting in the town's tavern when your party is approached by Hrothgar, leader of Easthaven, who asks you to take part in an expedition to the nearby town of Kuldahar. Word has come that strange things are afoot and Hrothgar wants to investigate.
The expedition starts as it should, but soon the caravan is ambushed by giants and you're waylaid in the wilderness of Icewind Dale.
Baldur's Gate 2
Baldur's Gate 2 marked the second and last BioWare game to be made with the Infinity Engine. It was released on September 24, 2000 to wide acclaim and commercial success, outdoing every single IE game thus far. The series remains large and sprawling and decidedly amazing and has moved down from Baldur's Gate to Amn and most specifically centering around the city of Athkatla, the City of Coin, a city built around mercantilism and all the scheming and backstabbing both literal and figurative that entails.
Having survived the events of the first game, you have been capture near the city of Baldur's Gate by unknown assailants. They have transported you to a dungeon in an unknown location along with your compatriots and you have been kept there for an indeterminant amount of time. You and Imoen have been tortured and broken and experimented upon by the crazed mage Irenicus.
It isn't long before his lair is assaulted by unknown attackers dressed in black and Imoen seizes the opportunity and escapes before releasing you. Finding a few old allies and one new, you must make your escape and reach the surface, wherever that may be.
Finally reaching the surface, you stumble out into Athkatla's Waukeen's Promenade and straight into a magical battle. Irenicus in his show of magical strength in dealing with his attackers has attracked the attention of Amn's Cowled Wizards who seek to capture and imprison him. He eventually relents and allows himself to be taken, but demands that if he is to be taken, so is Imoen.
And now the race is on to find Imoen and Jon Irenicus in the fortress prison of Spellhold and find what it is Irenicus wants and why he needs it so badly.
Icewind Dale 2
Icewind Dale is the third IE game to be made by Black Isle and overall the last IE game to ever be made and see commercial sales. Released on August 27, 2002, Icewind Dale 2 is a very similar experience to the first Icewind Dale but for one difference: Icewind Dale 2 is the first and only Infinity Engine game to use the 3rd Edition D&D ruleset.
Your party is a band of adventurers out of the city of Luskan responding to a plea for help from the town of Targos, another one of the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale. As our adventurers arrive at the town via ship, the find the docks and all its ships ablaze. Goblins are attacking and you have to put them down. While that's fairly easily done, soon the main force attacks and your party and a few ragtag defenders are all that stands between the goblin forces and Targos.
The Mods
The Infinity Engine was never designed for easy modding and was never really intended to be modded, but a few enterprising individuals have figured out how to do it quickly and easily and with a minimum of mod conflicts and game breaking problems.
As of now, there is a staggering number of mods for the IE games, all of varying quality, of course, but you can find nearly all of them at the Pocket Plane Group's modlist: http://modlist.pocketplane.net/
(This was copied from Pancake. Thanks Pancake.)
(Sequel thread to http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=47830)
The Infinity Engine is a 2D engine built in-house by BioWare Corp to power the latest and greatest games running on the 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ruleset and saw its first release on December 21, 1998. It drove five separate games and four expansion packs until it fell out of use in 2002.
Not an incredibly versatile engine, nor the easiest to work with, or even the prettiest, it has still managed to power some of the most compelling and complex role-playing experiences to date, from sprawling epics across the Sword Coast to heart wrenching and emotional planehopping adventures to discover one's self to slogs through dungeons fighting the fiercest creatures in Faerun's Frozen North, the Infinity Engine never failed to deliver an amazing experience that constantly built on what was done before.
The Best Games Ever Made
Baldur's Gate
It all began on December 21, 1998, when a small, largely unknown developer from Canada that happened to have been founded by two medical doctors released the game that singlehandedly revitalized the dying RPG genre.
Building upon what had been done in previous AD&D CRPGs, BioWare built Baldur's Gate, a large, sprawling game set around the Forgotten Realms city of Baldur's Gate.
You are a young orphan of your choice of gender, race, class, appearance, and voice that has been raised in the monastic fortress library of Candlekeep under the tutelage of the wizard Gorion. You and your foster father are to be leaving Candlekeep today, though he won't tell you why or where you're going. After leaving, it's only a short while before you're ambushed by a large man in dark and intimidating armor who speaks to Gorion about wanting his ward. Gorion yells for you to run and stays behind to delay pursuit.
In the morning you're met by your old childhood friend Imoen who followed you out of Candlekeep unbeknownst to Gorion and she joins you. Now you two are alone and stranded in the wilderness of the Sword Coast with only a letter left behind by Gorion suggesting you seek some of his friends at the Friendly Arms Inn.
Planescape: Torment
Almost a year later, on December 12, 1999, Planescape: Torment was released, making it the second game to have used the Infinity Engine and the third game total for Interplay-owned developer Black Isle Studios. It is constantly hailed as one of the deepest and most meaningful RPGs ever made if not the deepest and most meaningful RPG ever made. It's filled to the brim with interesting characters and interactions, rich role-playing possibilities, and a storyline interesting, twisting, and heart wrenching.
You are the Nameless One, a heavily scarred man who wakes up inside a mortuary after having been brought there as a corpse. You have no memory of who you are or where you've been and you seemingly cannot die. With a cryptic message carved into your back and a floating talking skull your only companion, you set off into the city of Sigil to discover who you are, what you've done, and why you cannot die, and one question above all will follow you on your quest.
What can change the nature of a man?
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale was Black Isle's second IE game and was released on June 20, 2000 and marked the first dungeon crawler on the Infinity Engine. It takes away the compelling plots and character interaction of the previous games and instead throws you into a hack and slash adventure across the Frozen North in a series of challenging and compelling encounters.
Your band of adventurers has found itself in Easthaven, one of the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, the northernmost region of Faerun. It's a cold and inhospitable place populated with the some of the fiercest and most cunning creatures to walk the surface of the continent. You've taken to resting in the town's tavern when your party is approached by Hrothgar, leader of Easthaven, who asks you to take part in an expedition to the nearby town of Kuldahar. Word has come that strange things are afoot and Hrothgar wants to investigate.
The expedition starts as it should, but soon the caravan is ambushed by giants and you're waylaid in the wilderness of Icewind Dale.
Baldur's Gate 2
Baldur's Gate 2 marked the second and last BioWare game to be made with the Infinity Engine. It was released on September 24, 2000 to wide acclaim and commercial success, outdoing every single IE game thus far. The series remains large and sprawling and decidedly amazing and has moved down from Baldur's Gate to Amn and most specifically centering around the city of Athkatla, the City of Coin, a city built around mercantilism and all the scheming and backstabbing both literal and figurative that entails.
Having survived the events of the first game, you have been capture near the city of Baldur's Gate by unknown assailants. They have transported you to a dungeon in an unknown location along with your compatriots and you have been kept there for an indeterminant amount of time. You and Imoen have been tortured and broken and experimented upon by the crazed mage Irenicus.
It isn't long before his lair is assaulted by unknown attackers dressed in black and Imoen seizes the opportunity and escapes before releasing you. Finding a few old allies and one new, you must make your escape and reach the surface, wherever that may be.
Finally reaching the surface, you stumble out into Athkatla's Waukeen's Promenade and straight into a magical battle. Irenicus in his show of magical strength in dealing with his attackers has attracked the attention of Amn's Cowled Wizards who seek to capture and imprison him. He eventually relents and allows himself to be taken, but demands that if he is to be taken, so is Imoen.
And now the race is on to find Imoen and Jon Irenicus in the fortress prison of Spellhold and find what it is Irenicus wants and why he needs it so badly.
Icewind Dale 2
Icewind Dale is the third IE game to be made by Black Isle and overall the last IE game to ever be made and see commercial sales. Released on August 27, 2002, Icewind Dale 2 is a very similar experience to the first Icewind Dale but for one difference: Icewind Dale 2 is the first and only Infinity Engine game to use the 3rd Edition D&D ruleset.
Your party is a band of adventurers out of the city of Luskan responding to a plea for help from the town of Targos, another one of the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale. As our adventurers arrive at the town via ship, the find the docks and all its ships ablaze. Goblins are attacking and you have to put them down. While that's fairly easily done, soon the main force attacks and your party and a few ragtag defenders are all that stands between the goblin forces and Targos.
The Mods
The Infinity Engine was never designed for easy modding and was never really intended to be modded, but a few enterprising individuals have figured out how to do it quickly and easily and with a minimum of mod conflicts and game breaking problems.
As of now, there is a staggering number of mods for the IE games, all of varying quality, of course, but you can find nearly all of them at the Pocket Plane Group's modlist: http://modlist.pocketplane.net/
(This was copied from Pancake. Thanks Pancake.)
(Sequel thread to http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=47830)
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- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
SCS1 has the same kind of mage absurdery, except with lesser globe of invulnerability blocking out *everything*.
Edit: I can explain in more detail why SCS is silly, but if you don't know what Pages from the Mages is, you might not be ready for the amount of nerdery involved.
Six DVDs for a game with mediocre graphics at best? Shit no, son.
Plus, I remembered something Michael Caine said: what is the obsession with remaking good shit? Remake bad shit so it's good.
EDIT: Has anyone ever seen a really dedicated attempt to translate the Baldur's Gate series to 3.x or 4th Edition?
Many of the game concepts used in Baldur's Gate (especially 2) don't exist in 3e, let alone 4th. Although dovetailing the Shadow King with the heresy of the Rising Sun would be sweet.
Wrong generation there, son.
For example, in 3.5, Baldur's Gate would have a level cap of 10; Shadows of Amn a level cap of 20; and Throne of Bhaal a level cap of 40.
From there, you can figure out what classes a character would need to be a faithful representation in-game. Jaheira might be a Druid 5/Fighter 4/Harper Agent 1 at the end of BG, for example; Druid 11/Fighter 4/Harper Agent 5* by the end of SoA; and Druid 26/Fighter 4/Harper Agent 5/Nature's Warrior 5.
Things like monsters and magic items would obviously be trickier, but doable, I think.
*IIRC, Harper Agent only goes to 5. I could be wrong.
Also, I approve of the thread title.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
If it ever did happen, I think Icewind Dale should probably be re-done first since it's really the combat that's the main feature of that series. Get that down and you wouldn't lose a lot by re-imagining the environments, character models etc. (though again, areas like Kulduhar still look better than current-gen RPG graphics).
IWD2 was a damn sight better than NWN1, and there's little difference between its 3.0 and 3.5.
Edit: Also, Durlag's Tower needs less ghasts and having skeletons on the random encounter table is just silly.
If you do that, he tells you to get something else instead.
I didn't even know the Temple of Lathander had an item you could swipe.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I think you get that one normally if you're of a low enough reputation. I think.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Most games with morality systems make you the psychopath for doing bad things. Baldur's Gate makes you do things to keep the psychopaths and holy warriors happy. I had to off a random beggar else Viconia would have left me a few minutes ago.
Anywho, I'm taking my BG 2 run slow and steady, one fight at a time.
It was at 100. You must have increased the posts per page like I did.
"Evil, meet sword. SWORD, MEET EVIL!"
I'm kind of glad I turned off SCS before ToSC - it's always good when a mod author admits he's cheesed a fight he made. Good luck if you're playing with it.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
So now there is a difference between 2e and 3e? The last thread told me there wasn't.
Warning: the above post is a fucking understatement.
In what way? I mean, from a video game translation perspective, 3e basically allows you to do character customization, where 2e had none.
From a D&D in general perspective, 3e was the first time the game was re-examined as a whole instead of continually evolving and getting more warty. 4e is totally different.
From a Forgotten Realms perspective, there's little difference between 2e and 3e, and nothing noticeable in computer games. Like, there's an off-hand reference to the Silver Marches in NWN, and that's it. 4e, however, is like they played darts using a map as a board and kinda threw nuclear bombs wherever they hit.
EDIT: Actually, I forgot something very important. 3e games don't have BGII's mage fights, with the layers of protections and breach fetishism. Part of this is that 2e doesn't have the coherent spellcasting rules that 3e does, which necessitated protective spells so wizards could beat up on others, and spells like breach so wizards could beat up on each other. Additionally, spell triggers and contingencies were minimized, and somewhat replaced by a function of the character generation system called metamagic feats. Effectively, spellcasters in 3e have less varied options to defend and dispel, but the ones they do have are more effective.
If you're not playing it tabletop or care about the setting, then no, there's no difference.
Also, the level system is more stratified, you can't really ignore level like you can in 2e, because numbers are more important. For example, you can do pretty much any dungeon in BG 2 right off the bat, though you would be insane to do the Unseeing Eye or Domain of the Dragon first. The reason being that difficulty in 2e is based on saving throws, and pretty much only saving throws and Beholders force a great deal of those.
If you understand 2e you can pretty much jump right into 3e and vice versa.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Speaking of which, is anyone making a real RPG with 4e, or they just going to go right into MMOs since RPG is a dead genre?
For example, pretty much all non-combat social abilities are condensed to a single skill.
Last time they said that, we got Baldur's Gate. So...
Who was saying that? BG came out a year after FALLOUT! o_O
Oh, right.
(Development cycles are simply longer for modern games. :P)
But I know I missed out on a ton of shit, because I was just picking feats that sounded cool, and the complexity of 4-class characters, prestige classes, and all the prereqs escaped me. Even with more experience now, I still think I'm "missing" some things, because some of the prestige classes seem to be absolutely ass.
When I went a little overboard with character planning, I downloaded this NWN2 Excel character planner, and it really dawned on me how unbelieveably complicated this shit was. The order of my class levels mattered, the order of my feats mattered, the levels on which I spent skill points mattered. The damn file is 27.7 MBs and has 50+ sheets in it.
And the thing is in the end, I'm not really sure how much actual character customization I did. Everybody took 4x levels of Fighter, my meleers all went for Epic Weapon Focus & Epic Weapon Specialization and then either Whirlwind & Strength or Perfect Two-Handed Fighting & Epic Prowess. My casters went Empower, Maximize, Extend, Persistent, Spell Focus, Stats, and ranged characters all go Epic Weapon Focus & Spec & Improved Rapid Shot.
(Though to be fair, I did try NWN1 too. I can't remember how my character came out, because I was too full of rage.)
Well, from what I've read of the two Players Handbooks for 4e (just skimming borrowed copies, not really poring over them in-depth), it seems like it'd be really, really difficult to translate into something real-time. You have abilities that you can perform at-will each round that you have to manually target each time, stuff that shifts enemies around the battlefield that work fine on a grind-based dungeon map, but not so much with more "vague" distances in a real-time situation, and so forth.
I can only see a 4e game working in a turn-based Gold Box style, personally. With the rumors that Cryptic Studios, who are now owned by Atari, are doing a Neverwinter Nights MMO, which would almost certainly be based on 4e, I guess we'll find out how they plan to implement it eventually.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Unless you are comparing it to Supreme Commander or something, I don't see how that statement could ever be uttered and be a true statement.
But yeah, its ridiculously complicated. You are correct in assuming that most of those prestige classes are ass, too.
You know what they say. You can't always get what you want.
But apparently by that logic what we need is more MMOs, so that can't really be right either.
The radial menu can eat a dick. It's barely passable for single-player, when you can pause while you navigate a fucking flowchart, but is horrible multiplayer.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
It's not that streamlined. You still have diplomacy, bluff, and intimidate as separate skills. A lot of the vast numbers of skills from 3e were combined into more generic skills like acrobatics and athletics, though.
4e is pretty complex, but it's fairly easy to pick up and the combat is much more fun and dynamic than in past editions.
He was implying that its better than BG's interface. And while BG's is too large when played at any resolution that existed at the time, its still more usable than either of the NWN interfaces from a functionality standpoint. It requires no hotkeys because everything is right there in plain sight. I've played MMOs with less clunky interfaces than NWN 2. For instance, all of them.
edit: oh, the radial menu. Why did you remind me of that? What did I do to you?
I was implying that the character build UI is better. As for the main UI, I dunno. NWN can just eat a dick in general, and NWN2's wasn't so bad I thought. Not as good as the Infinity engine one, but there've definitely been far worse UIs in the history of gaming. (Birth of the Federation, anyone?)
Just earlier, playing IWD, I was trying to dual-class a Fighter/Druid. Could not for the love of me figure out why I couldn't. I finally just used Dalekeeper, upped all the stats to 18, dual-classed, and then restored the original stats.