Why did players believe they were in a time crunch for the BG series?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

I've read various reports about how players felt narratively compelled to finish the BG series quickly due to implied narrative time crunches.  The only time I felt like I was in a time crunch in all of the BG series in-game was in BG2 when mechanically we are.  Otherwise, I knew that the plot would wait for me.

Thankee!

[jastey]

I am playing BG1 currently and I do understand the feeling of being rushed. There is a pending war to be stopped. Not as dramatic as in SoD, but still. I think up to the point where the PC is ready to investigate the shady organisation inside the city it's not that rushed, but definitely afterwards.

But it's no comparison to what BGII created.

[StummvonBordwehr]

I always feel the urgency.
 

You are targeted by assasins in cabdlekeep, on the road and in city - somebody really want to see you dead. 
As a low level adventurer I feel the urge to find out what causes this in a hurry; before they send a high level party to dispose of me. 
 

Once you get to the main plot of the game, the urgency still remains - for the reasons Jastey points out.

The feeling of urgency is also one of the reasons why I hate the Balduran/werewolf quest: Hey we are about to get into a war, but lets take a month off to go on a archaeological trip…. 

[Trouveur80]

25 minutes ago, StummvonBordwehr said:

The feeling of urgency is also one of the reasons why I hate the Balduran/werewolf quest: Hey we are about to get into a war, but lets take a month off to go on a archaeological trip…. 

When TotSC was released, you could import you party from the final save after Sarevok death to do the new quests and it made so much more sense.

In BGEE we luckily have Endless BG1 for that too.

[StummvonBordwehr]

On 1/10/2023 at 11:28 PM, Trouveur80 said:

When TotSC was released, you could import you party from the final save after Sarevok death to do the new quests and it made so much more sense.

In BGEE we luckily have Endless BG1 for that too.

Then it makes sense. I bought the 5 cd pack, where TotSC was integrated into the vanilla game already. 

[sirnicklaus]

Now that you mention it, I do remember feeling the urgency playing BG2 back in the day.  I had not played BG1.  Right from the start I felt like I was missing out on stuff in the outside world, waking up as a captive in a dungeon.  And shortly thereafter, felt like the main villain dude was going to be doing bad things in my absence.  Good narrative design on the part of the developers I guess.  And perhaps being young enough not to realize, as you suggest, that the narrative would indeed wait on me.  Then, finding the speech to fighting ratio of BG2 too high, Icewind Dale hi-jacked my attention.

[jastey]

8 hours ago, sirnicklaus said:

speech to fighting ratio

Heh. I like this term. (I'm one of those who want a high value here.)

[subtledoctor]

On 1/8/2023 at 4:18 PM, Endarire said:

Otherwise, I knew that the plot would wait for me.

No - you knew that the game would wait for you. But the plot - the writing inside the game - sets up a situation where your childhood friend is abducted and in the power of a clearly evil entity who has already shown you that he is willing and able to visit the most gruesome tortures imaginable upon innocent beings. Imoen could be tortured, murdered, or worse* at any moment. As far as Charname knows, she could very easily end up like Rielev before being saved. That sets up a situation of pretty dire urgency.

Maybe you don't care about that because you the player know it doesn't matter how fast you do things, but the game's writing is at odds with its own mechanics. Neither the writing nor the mechanics is wrong on its own - a game could work fine either way - but the variation between the two is what comes under criticism.

* In fact, Imoen is tortured/murdered/worse. What you say you know about the game - that "the plot will wait for you" - is in fact wrong.

Spoiler

The plot does not wait for you - it never does, no matter how fast you move. Charname is always too late to save Imoen from having her soul ripped out of her.

It's there in BG1 as well, but in the late part of the game instead of the early part. Once BG City opens up the plot suggests that you move very quickly to the end-game, even while also giving you a whole city to explore and a raft of new side-quests. In my most recent run I went along at the suggested pace of the plot, and thank goodness for the EndlessBG1 mod because I left a lot of content to be done after handling Sarevok.

Edited March 9, 2023 by subtledoctor

[sirnicklaus]

Spoiler alert.

You may want to throw a spoiler alert in there.

Edited March 9, 2023 by sirnicklaus
Got rid of spoiler material quote

[subtledoctor]

13 minutes ago, sirnicklaus said:

You may want to throw a spoiler alert in there.

Good point; done.  And you may want to remove the quote from your post! 

[StummvonBordwehr]

I think spoilers are ok in this thread and other threads as well.
 

The core game has just turned 25 years, so I feel that its time that we dont treat the plot as secret and more the grown adult it is. And after all. Its a forum dedicated to modding, so newbies enter at own peril.

Spoiler tags for mod content is off course obligatory.

[subtledoctor]

I agree; but I don't want to be presumptuous.

Also I have noticed on places like Reddit that there is a small but steady trickle of young people coming to these games for the first time, even now. Which is cool.

[sirnicklaus]

17 minutes ago, StummvonBordwehr said:

The core game has just turned 25 years, so I feel that its time that we dont treat the plot as secret and more the grown adult it is. And after all. Its a forum dedicated to modding, so newbies enter at own peril.

Spoiled it for me.   Then again, the aforementioned speech to fighting ratio probably would have kept me from ever finding out anyway.  God, I sound like a gen Z'er with ADD.  I have a healthy attention span, I swear.

[mickabouille]

1 hour ago, sirnicklaus said:

Then again, the aforementioned speech to fighting ratio probably would have kept me from ever finding out anyway.

continue, continue, continue, continue ?

[StummvonBordwehr]

It is certainly nice, that new and younger people try the game out. Some of them even turn out to be helpful modders or otherwise contributing to the community. That is neat.

I think spoiler tags are obligatory in threads on Reddit and many threads on the Beamdog Forums. I just think that spoiler tags on a Forum that hosts the popular “toss your semi useful weiDU Marcos” isnt to be expected. But I will not be a spoil sport, so I will try to keep it spoiler free from now on.