The Decision to Not Have NPC Player Companions. Good or Bad?

[Harry]

Before I ask you all this question, I should let you know what I think myself. I am a massive fan of all of the Infinity Engine, Ad&d games that were made. Atnd I am old enough to remember them the first time around!

I think it is accepted amongst the gaming community, that the Baldur's Gate series, was better received than the Icewind Dale one. Especially BG2, which many regard to be the finest of the genre.

Now, I was thinking why this was. Why did Icewind Dale get the reputation of being Baldur's Gate's poorer cousin? Now, I know here especially, many people might not share that opinion, but if we look at the general impression, that is what people think. Icewind Dale is a great game though. It has a unique atmosphere, and setting within the Forgotten Realms.

I think the decision to make the game fully player controlled, party wise, rather than have recruitable player companions with their own stories and quests, has definitely something to do with it.

Although there will be people who prefer this option. It certainly is not the most popular design choice with crpg's, as later games all generally opted to go with the recruitable player companion option.

I think a lot of what charms people about Baldur's Gate 2 in particular (along with a lot of other reasons) are the various interactions and different aspects that the player companions give to the game. They actively change the game, depending upon who is in your party and what you decide to do.

Do you think Icewind Dale would have been better served with this kind of design choice? And why do you think they omitted this option from the game's design?

[MaikElPipas]

baldurs gate series was more about freedom, characters, and stories. Icewind was more about combat.

For me it was never " a poor man baldurs" it was just another kind of game, more a "dungeon crawler" than a "role adventure"

[Grenix]

Originally posted by Bouchart:

Back in the day I preferred Icewind Dale over Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate had a difficult early game if you didn't know what you were doing, and a low level cap. Also it was on five CDs that you had to swap constantly. Icewind Dale had more customization options and was more combat focused.

This for me too. Eventually after few tries (some fails) i start to love BG more and more.

[Harry]

Originally posted by Bouchart:

Back in the day I preferred Icewind Dale over Baldur's Gate. Baldur's Gate had a difficult early game if you didn't know what you were doing, and a low level cap. Also it was on five CDs that you had to swap constantly. Icewind Dale had more customization options and was more combat focused.

Aye, I used to find this a lot in AD&D 2nd edition in general. Especially with magic users. The pay off was, especially with mages, that in higher levels you would get a lot more powerful. So for example, say in a low level game, in pen and paper, a fighter, or barbarian (especially 1st edition Barbarians, and Cavaliers, but that is a whole different can of beans!). They could survive a lot easier than say, a low level mage who had terrible armour class, terrible hit points (having only a 1d4 hit points per level), usually they would also have a terrible constitution so they would not even get a HP bonus! So a 3rd level mage could have between 3-12 hp's (plus con which is unlikely) whereas a Barbarian having a 1d12 hit die could have 3-36 hp's plus their con bonus, which for a Barb, a player probably had.

So usually a low level pc could get crushed very easily, and even then, had very little if anything to offer in return. Maybe a magic missle - and then nothing. Or maybe a sleep spell, charm, something like that, but still not very useful. A Mage pc is a lonely player with very little agency in these perilous times...

However should they weather this storm, and get through this high difficulty spike they become gradually more and more powerful, and by the time they are able to cast 9th level spells, well they are virtual Gods! Casting wish spells, and disintegrating opponents! Making clones of themselves, the list goes on, and on! Meanwhile, you will find that your fighter friends, who were so full of bluster at the low levels are now quite redundant. Nothing more than punching bags to occupy your enemies, whilst you set up a deadly attack!

I agree though, to new players especially, BG was ruthless. I remember my first experience of the game was when I went to my friend's house to get a go of it. I did not have a pc myself at the time, and he was raving about this new AD&D game, that I just had to try.

After taking a good hour or so to make my party, I was unaware of the first encounter where you get ambushed. My friend, being a bit of a sadist, and probably wanting to get revenge on his DM, failed to tell me about the pause button in combat! So, as you can imagine I went through wipe after wipe, trying desperately to fight in real time!

Anyway, I agree with you guys that IWD is more of a linear dungeon bash game, than the more explore-style with BG series. I wonder if they will ever make an IWD 3, seeing as how Larian have done a BG3?

[Bouchart]

Originally posted by Harry:

Originally posted by Bouchart:

Anyway, I agree with you guys that IWD is more of a linear dungeon bash game, than the more explore-style with BG series. I wonder if they will ever make an IWD 3, seeing as how Larian have done a BG3?

I doubt there will be an Icewind Dale 3 and I doubt an official ID3 game would be done competently. I'd prefer some indie company come up with some clone of it.

[Evil_Sarevok]

No, I think they're both totally different games, Baldurs Gate was always focused on main story and party characters, Icewind Dale was generally about the journey itself, the people you meet (as opposed to party characters), and being able to optimise your party.
Of the four games, I actually prefer Icewind Dale 2, which in a way moved into the way Neverwinter Nights works, your players, you, are the face, and you dont need to worry about what your party thinks.

Now, ignoring modding and the fact you can technically change characters as thats not the base experience, and heres how the two games generally go.

Baldurs Gate 1 is a rather harsh experience, with ambushes, and zones that you can wander into way higher than your CR will allow, and it often ends up you getting optimised characters and taking optimised routes, I've soloed the entire game with a cleric, which is helped by the fact you can buff your flat stat attributes, but your characters are still mechanically weak, and often unoptimised due to character design, and few of them have any real interactions over the "main few" that accompany you into BG2. BG1's main focus is the main story, and you becoming who you are. I'm also going to remind some of you that the worst words you can hear in the entire game are "Heya, its me Imoen".

Baldurs Gate 2 is more party character focused than the prior, BUT it has heavy caveats, similar to Edwin and Minsc from the first game, a good number of them have time restraint quests, or they will flat out break party, fight to the death, or leave as scripted events. Viconia and Valygar were always the big two for that, and they were both solid characters, similar to Korgan and Aerie (which is still amusing when he threatens to eat the baby), Korgan can also permanently leave if you dont do his recruitment quest in time, so getting him too early with some parties can be incredibly difficult to keep him. There is also Keldorn who, is a fantastic character, but if you want to solve his questline "well", you'll let him go and be with his family, removing a character again. So while the focus is party characters, its also its achilles heel. Combat wise the game is fine, its fairly easy bar the final boss, moreso if you ported an utterly broken character from BG1 with the attribute books.

Icewind Dale 1 is likely the one I remember the least, but I remember it being fairly harsh, the early game goblins and specifically the ogre is very much a boss for low levels, capable of OHKOing non fighters, bar that its mostly about the journey and characters you meet along the way.

Icewind Dale 2, as I said, is the one I prefer, its easier to create a party that by the end of the game will not have any issues going forwards, my personal A team is always 2 fighters, 2 clerics, 1 thief, 1 wizard. One cleric will always be designed for buffing and healing, the other for debuffing and damage, with some overlap. Now you get into the game proper, you're all mercenaries, you arrive to a dock in turmoil, removing goblins, clean it up, get your marching orders, visit the town, and you're set for the adventure, at this point its all journey, your interactions with people on that journey, but your party is the face, rather than your single PC, unlike in BG you do get a fair amount of XP for RP interactions, you also get rewarded or punished for your interactions, being one of the few games that actively punishes you for trying to talk down the army breaking the shaengarne bridge, the good option is not an option, its all about speed and efficiency massacring the attackers, no quarter is rewarded, as your foe for a change wants to give you none, and they're deceptive in that regard.

Moving on gives you further interactions depending on what you found, or didnt find earlier on, before dealing with the fort, and the minor interactions in there, the Barghest being one of the bigger ones, after dealing with the threat, you go back to town, get paid, buy new gear and get your next marching orders, having to then deal with the Aurilites, speaking to Sherincal you can get a bit of nuance in her personality, shes fairly noble, and is actually a little unhappy that she dropped a prisoner who struggled, but duty-bound still fights you to the death, again, she has a cause, but isnt a one note boss to slap if you open up that interaction.

The chapter afterwards is about exploration, dealing with the fell wood and its "problem", with side issues, that you can interact with or not. Then onward to the monastery (which I actually dislike), with minor a trip to the underdark, and a good showing of how its people act.

Following that you're on a journey back to familiar places (if you played IWD1), with area revisits, dungeons, mostly more combat, with the final chapter opening up a lot more interaction with characters, moreso if you have a half-race in the party, there is also a bit of interaction between the old banites and "new" followers of Xvim which can be exploited a little, plus the final interaction with the Barghest whelp later on, if you kept all the corpses in the game, you did, didnt you? You kept them for social company right? Right? If you never did, you may want to.

You effectively end up with a game at the end, you didnt have interpersonal character problems, free choice as the face of the party (with all members), with the characters you meet and the journey the focus, this tended to be the way a lot of games went after that, from Neverwinter Nights, to Mass Effect, the character interactions were less "terminal", while some characters could die, it was less likely to be "X doesnt like X, so time split the party up", more banter, slights and arguments.

I tend to play evil characters on the whole, lawful or neutral rather than chaotic stupid, and they can well interact with other alignments, unlike the BG series where each opposite will hate each other to a fault, as well as doing good, or doing evil; and while a paladin wont like you doing evil, as would the blackguards not like you doing good, evil characters tend to prefer their own goals, so they dont mind doing "good" if it gets their own way, rather than the flat alignment issue you have with Baldurs Gate, you can find the game at times has a lack of nuance in that, and causes problems, this isnt an issue in IWD, you interact with the world as much, or as little, as you want to, I find it more like tabletop than BG is, which is more story, and party interaction based.

tldr - Baldurs Gate is Main Story and Party Character focused, Icewind Dale is about the Journey and the people you meet, they differ very much in style, adding party interaction to IWD would neuter the experience the same way Baldurs Gate can struggle at times, and you'd struggle to get replacements.

[Harry]

Originally posted by Evil_Sarevok:

No, I think they're both totally different games, Baldurs Gate was always focused on main story and party characters, Icewind Dale was generally about the journey itself, the people you meet (as opposed to party characters), and being able to optimise your party.
Of the four games, I actually prefer Icewind Dale 2, which in a way moved into the way Neverwinter Nights works, your players, you, are the face, and you dont need to worry about what your party thinks.

Now, ignoring modding and the fact you can technically change characters as thats not the base experience, and heres how the two games generally go.

Baldurs Gate 1 is a rather harsh experience, with ambushes, and zones that you can wander into way higher than your CR will allow, and it often ends up you getting optimised characters and taking optimised routes, I've soloed the entire game with a cleric, which is helped by the fact you can buff your flat stat attributes, but your characters are still mechanically weak, and often unoptimised due to character design, and few of them have any real interactions over the "main few" that accompany you into BG2. BG1's main focus is the main story, and you becoming who you are. I'm also going to remind some of you that the worst words you can hear in the entire game are "Heya, its me Imoen".

Baldurs Gate 2 is more party character focused than the prior, BUT it has heavy caveats, similar to Edwin and Minsc from the first game, a good number of them have time restraint quests, or they will flat out break party, fight to the death, or leave as scripted events. Viconia and Valygar were always the big two for that, and they were both solid characters, similar to Korgan and Aerie (which is still amusing when he threatens to eat the baby), Korgan can also permanently leave if you dont do his recruitment quest in time, so getting him too early with some parties can be incredibly difficult to keep him. There is also Keldorn who, is a fantastic character, but if you want to solve his questline "well", you'll let him go and be with his family, removing a character again. So while the focus is party characters, its also its achilles heel. Combat wise the game is fine, its fairly easy bar the final boss, moreso if you ported an utterly broken character from BG1 with the attribute books.

Icewind Dale 1 is likely the one I remember the least, but I remember it being fairly harsh, the early game goblins and specifically the ogre is very much a boss for low levels, capable of OHKOing non fighters, bar that its mostly about the journey and characters you meet along the way.

Icewind Dale 2, as I said, is the one I prefer, its easier to create a party that by the end of the game will not have any issues going forwards, my personal A team is always 2 fighters, 2 clerics, 1 thief, 1 wizard. One cleric will always be designed for buffing and healing, the other for debuffing and damage, with some overlap. Now you get into the game proper, you're all mercenaries, you arrive to a dock in turmoil, removing goblins, clean it up, get your marching orders, visit the town, and you're set for the adventure, at this point its all journey, your interactions with people on that journey, but your party is the face, rather than your single PC, unlike in BG you do get a fair amount of XP for RP interactions, you also get rewarded or punished for your interactions, being one of the few games that actively punishes you for trying to talk down the army breaking the shaengarne bridge, the good option is not an option, its all about speed and efficiency massacring the attackers, no quarter is rewarded, as your foe for a change wants to give you none, and they're deceptive in that regard.

Moving on gives you further interactions depending on what you found, or didnt find earlier on, before dealing with the fort, and the minor interactions in there, the Barghest being one of the bigger ones, after dealing with the threat, you go back to town, get paid, buy new gear and get your next marching orders, having to then deal with the Aurilites, speaking to Sherincal you can get a bit of nuance in her personality, shes fairly noble, and is actually a little unhappy that she dropped a prisoner who struggled, but duty-bound still fights you to the death, again, she has a cause, but isnt a one note boss to slap if you open up that interaction.

The chapter afterwards is about exploration, dealing with the fell wood and its "problem", with side issues, that you can interact with or not. Then onward to the monastery (which I actually dislike), with minor a trip to the underdark, and a good showing of how its people act.

Following that you're on a journey back to familiar places (if you played IWD1), with area revisits, dungeons, mostly more combat, with the final chapter opening up a lot more interaction with characters, moreso if you have a half-race in the party, there is also a bit of interaction between the old banites and "new" followers of Xvim which can be exploited a little, plus the final interaction with the Barghest whelp later on, if you kept all the corpses in the game, you did, didnt you? You kept them for social company right? Right? If you never did, you may want to.

You effectively end up with a game at the end, you didnt have interpersonal character problems, free choice as the face of the party (with all members), with the characters you meet and the journey the focus, this tended to be the way a lot of games went after that, from Neverwinter Nights, to Mass Effect, the character interactions were less "terminal", while some characters could die, it was less likely to be "X doesnt like X, so time split the party up", more banter, slights and arguments.

I tend to play evil characters on the whole, lawful or neutral rather than chaotic stupid, and they can well interact with other alignments, unlike the BG series where each opposite will hate each other to a fault, as well as doing good, or doing evil; and while a paladin wont like you doing evil, as would the blackguards not like you doing good, evil characters tend to prefer their own goals, so they dont mind doing "good" if it gets their own way, rather than the flat alignment issue you have with Baldurs Gate, you can find the game at times has a lack of nuance in that, and causes problems, this isnt an issue in IWD, you interact with the world as much, or as little, as you want to, I find it more like tabletop than BG is, which is more story, and party interaction based.

tldr - Baldurs Gate is Main Story and Party Character focused, Icewind Dale is about the Journey and the people you meet, they differ very much in style, adding party interaction to IWD would neuter the experience the same way Baldurs Gate can struggle at times, and you'd struggle to get replacements.

I good, thought-out post. It's been many years since I played IWD 2. All I can really remember was that it used the new edition of AD&D, and that the ten towns was undersiege at the beginning of the game. Had it received the upgrade treatment from Beamdog?

[Evil_Sarevok]

I don't think they had the ability to enhance it, might have not had the original source code, I've got a very old copy that I install via disc and it works on Windows 7, GOG has a copy as well but I've not tried that version, its said to work on all current OSes however.

As a side note, the launcher also has heart of fury mode should you play through once and want another run with higher level enemies, and better equipment available, so you can run a level 20 party.

[Usurper]

Im glad Icewind Dale doesnt has this.
I mean almost every other Rpg has Npc Companions.
Its one of the many Reasons why i always have an easier time to come back to icewind dale than to Baldurs Gate or all the others,also the newer ones.

To me these Companions got really boring over the Years and i started to appreciate ID more and more.Only exception was Tyranny,but even there its like in all the others.

Icewind Dale is more friendly to a player if he just wants to dive into some Dungeons and make up most of the Storys in his own Mind.

Thats the great thing about these times,market is so huge that there is something for everyone and not everything has to be the same.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Originally posted by Usurper:

To me these Companions got really boring over the Years and i started to appreciate ID more and more.

That's the lower replayability factor due to story companions offering fixed/scripted personality (for alignment and reputation adjustment) and fixed/scripted content, which player has experienced before. The available story companions also don't cover enough classes/kits and roles, especially not if taking into account alignment.

Of course, the enhanced editions of the Baldur's Gate games added the "Create Party" button, so you can play those games in the same way as Icewind Dale with 1-6 party members you've created yourself. Mostly that works fine in both BG games - less so because of Imoen's story. I mean, you can ignore her in BG 1, you can skip SOD, but a big portion of BG 2 is about her. Not so pretty, if a fully party goes through the trouble of rescuing her only to dismiss her then.

Originally posted by Usurper:

Only exception was Tyranny,but even there its like in all the others.

Tyranny only features a very few story companions, and the fixed classes and skill trees reduce replayability. The game tries to improve the options a bit with the addition of companion combo abilities and a dependency on companion reputation (Loyalty/Fear vs. Favor/Wrath for factions). Yet the overall outcome doesn't give much incentive to replay the entire game with the same story companions.

If at all, Tyranny's four paths through the game shall be of interest to role-players. Particularly the path of the rebels and the path of the anarchist (chosing Bleden Mark as primary ally).

[5k Chicken]

It would have done better if the story had more interaction. You're dealing with too many "shadows of former civilizations" mixed with large mobs of enemies. Once a certain someone dies, you're basically alone (when it comes to living companions/quest givers) to figure it all out. Making a full team was a good idea, I think companions would have been a mistake... but they should have added more interaction with the world.

[Clockwerks]

Unpopular opinion: I prefer custom characters to premade ones in both BG and ID. In fact I prefer it that way in any game of this kind, I like to see how well my custom characters fare in the same situations as the prefab ones that talk all the time. The only slight issue is NPC quests if one is grinding levels specifically. The issue with this game specifically isn't a lack of companions so much as a lack of things to do in general.

[Evil_Sarevok]

Originally posted by Clockwerks:

Unpopular opinion: I prefer custom characters to premade ones in both BG and ID. In fact I prefer it that way in any game of this kind, I like to see how well my custom characters fare in the same situations as the prefab ones that talk all the time. The only slight issue is NPC quests if one is grinding levels specifically. The issue with this game specifically isn't a lack of companions so much as a lack of things to do in general.

The pre-made characters in IWD were designed for people who couldn't make their own, the concept around IWD and IWD2 was to make a fully PC party, the premades were just to get new players into their first game, the same way there are pre-mades for Neverwinter Nights that nobody really uses, the BG series was the only one of the two with true pre-made party member NPCs.

Most of the extra XP stuff in IWD is roleplay, or investigation based... Like collecting all the corpses in the game and scaring the utter snot out of Yquog.

[Clockwerks]

Originally posted by Evil_Sarevok:

Originally posted by Clockwerks:

Unpopular opinion: I prefer custom characters to premade ones in both BG and ID. In fact I prefer it that way in any game of this kind, I like to see how well my custom characters fare in the same situations as the prefab ones that talk all the time. The only slight issue is NPC quests if one is grinding levels specifically. The issue with this game specifically isn't a lack of companions so much as a lack of things to do in general.

The pre-made characters in IWD were designed for people who couldn't make their own, the concept around IWD and IWD2 was to make a fully PC party, the premades were just to get new players into their first game, the same way there are pre-mades for Neverwinter Nights that nobody really uses, the BG series was the only one of the two with true pre-made party member NPCs.

Most of the extra XP stuff in IWD is roleplay, or investigation based... Like collecting all the corpses in the game and scaring the utter snot out of Yquog.

You do realize that everyone participating in this conversation has played the game before, correct? BG is character driven with a rich narrative and multiple verbose NPC characters that enrich the overall gameplay experience, whereas ID is player driven, and the story takes a backseat to the action, hence the lack of premade companions to spice up the storytelling. Implying that people can navigate through the obstacles of life but not select options on a screen after a brief moment of reading is strange to me.

[Bouchart]

As an aside I'll mention that anyone that likes Icewind Dale will probably like The Temple of Elemental Evil, which is also very combat focused without much emphasis on character development or plot.

[Evil_Sarevok]

Originally posted by Clockwerks:

You do realize that everyone participating in this conversation has played the game before, correct? BG is character driven with a rich narrative and multiple verbose NPC characters that enrich the overall gameplay experience, whereas ID is player driven, and the story takes a backseat to the action, hence the lack of premade companions to spice up the storytelling. Implying that people can navigate through the obstacles of life but not select options on a screen after a brief moment of reading is strange to me.

I was specifically speaking about your comment on that IWD had premade characters, it really doesn't, not sure what this tangent is for actually though.

BG also does not have verbose NPCs, BG2 has more character interactions, but they're certainly not that verbose, most lacking much dialogue after their minor quest is finished, the EE gave a little more dialogue but a great number of characters in both games are lacking anything other than a slot in the party, and initial dialogue.

And yes, people do navigate life and not select options on brief reading, they click through without thinking most of the time, and will click through things rapidly to get into things, or get popups off screens, its why terms and conditions are the most clicked, least read things in the world.

There is also no real guarantee that most players within the forum have played the game before, least so the original versions, I think you're adding a lot of yourself into the assumptions of others.