Similar Exploration to BG1?

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The one thing I always enjoyed the most in Baldurs Gate 1 was to walk around in a world and explore. After a bunch of replays, this looses its apeal. Among other reasons, becose near every magic item, monster, named opponent etc is located at the same place every time. Also, respawns are predictable, everyone knows where every single trap is (and more often than not, what type, and how much damage it does, and how high a trap detect you need to get rid of it).

Does anyone know of other CRPG games that have similar style/feeling of exploration ?

Closest thing I have found is Arcanum and Fallout 1. both good and enjoyable but just not the same, as both have large quantities of "nothingness" inbetween the locations.

Alternativelly, the idea to make Baldurs Gate 1 into an open ended game, where the history is "seccondary", and randomise near everything that does not have a very set reason to be in one specific place (example spiders Bane, and Davaeorn). Been wanting to have a go at that mod for ages, but never gotten around to learn enough modding to do so.

[ September 17, 2007, 15:02: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

Well, if I'm not mistaken there already is a mod that switches stuff around, though I'm not sure if it randomizes every time or only shifts things once.

 

Fields of the Dead.

Playing it now, it changes everything (once, so same next time I play). Itis a good start and will make the game playable for me 2-3 times I guess. The mod is good though

But I was thinking more along the lines of IWD1 style random items, where next to no items are ever locked in place.

 

Unfortunately I've never found a game that entertained me quite like BG1. You could try the Diablo series (if you havent already), it is alot more hack and slash but does have elements of RP. You could also try Neverwinter Nights persistent worlds, some of them are well made and capture a BG like feel. I've heard the Elder Scroll's series are good but never played any of them.

 

Indeed, Morrowind is quite a game, but it's somewhere between BG1 and Arcanum in "nothingness between areas". Very large scope, so you may get newness by fully exploring areas that you didn't last playthrough. However, it's a first-player one character game rather than the top-down party-oriented game that the IE games are. Combat is mostly a click-fest, but you can spice it up by sneaking around for a backstab, taking aim with a ranged weapon, or if you want to make the game harder, you can go with magic (slow cast times and kinda crappy combat-wise).

Oblivion, as I understand it, fixes the combat a bit, but craps out on everything else but graphics in comparison to its predecessor. Fortunately, both are highly modable (they give you the tool they *made* the games with), so things you don't like can be fixed.

 

Somewhat familiar with the Edler Scrolls games, If I try any of them its Daggerfall, but the FPS view really ruined it for me.

Let's not get into Diablo shall we ?

NWN persistent world could be worth checking out. Thanks for the suggestions so far, keep them coming if anyone got any more.

 

Betrayal at Krondor and the Ultima games has alot og exploration in them. Old games though, but great gameplay. NWN and Diablo are pretty much the same. Just hack your way from A to B, then go back to A and get a new quest. Oblivion and Morrowind are great though. You don\t have to use first person view in them by the way. You can switch the camera to follow your character from behind.

 

Daggerfall - the Elderscrolls part two (before Morrowind) - had an enormous world to explore, but the game is a bit outdated. I found joy in BG1 with Easytutu after almost 6 years of break.

Sorry Raptor, hadn't seen you post...

[ September 15, 2007, 21:43: Message edited by: Shaitan ]

 

If you want to talk about old stuff, then
The early Ultimas were really open-ended. The Gold Box series also gave you quite a bit of freedom. Especially the FR ones.

 

The Might and magic series had alot of exploration too. And open endings. You could actually continue playing after the main quest was done.

 

Fallout 2 has alot of exploring but it does suffer a sort of "nothingness" between places deal. Although, there are random encounters and even special encounters when traveling between spots so it's not totally nothing. Then again, I've had entire hour-long runs with little to no random encounters.
Fallout 2 does have all the quest related and major stuff in the same place each time you play though. So after the 3rd or 4th playthrough, you stop reading dialogue and just pick your choices.
I highly recommend Fallout 2.

 

Might and Magic 6 comes pretty close to BG in terms of ability to just go out and explore (although some areas are far, far too difficult for a beginning party). MM7 and 8 have smaller outdoors and don't have the same "just go out and lose yourself" feel. All 3 games have unofficial patches that makes it easy to run them on WinXP (and for MM6, it fixes a nasty bug introduced by the latest official patch).

If you don't mind older games, Might and Magic 3 to 5 also rely heavily on open-ended exploration. Ultima 4 to 7 have a lot of that as well, and all are excellent games (4 and 5 have graphic and sound upgrades that make them look far less dated)

Betrayal at Krondor is an excellent choice! It runs fine with Dosbox, and was made freely downloadable by Sierra years ago (the legal freeware copies are still floating around in many places on the web). Like BG, structure is very tight but the format is completely open. It's also organised into chapters, but in-between doing the main line quests you can go do what you want and see what you want.

The Gold Box games are fun, but are more like BG2 than BG. There is a lot of wilderness but it's all empty space, and wilderness movement uses a different engines than the actual exploration (which is only used in cities and dungeons).

 

I forgot about Might and Magic. Might and Magic II was also open-ended exploration. After that inital quest to go through all the portals and donate at the tempals, I remember finding myself without much direction. It was all open-ended exploration. Even more so than Baldur's Gate. I forgot about that old game after it got lost in the mail when I was trading with a friend who had moved some distance away.

I never got to play Might and Magic 3 or above, as in the era of the games I was using an Apple II and didn't upgrade for many years due to my family falling on hard times.

 

You can download might and magic 3 at abandonia.com. free and legally. The site also had a bunch of other groovy rp games as well. Have to run them in the dosbox program though.

 

Eh ... nothing really comes to mind that you can explore in the same way as BG1. The only thing that works might be a spiffy little freeware RPG called Dark Disciples. Probably isn't what you're after though.

 

Try NWVault's list of Hall of Fame or top-vote modules for Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2? Just perhaps not seeing them as a game or expansion each, but rather as a longer quest line of one character you carry around?

Darkness over Daggerford was quite Balduresque, so to say. The upcoming Mysteries of Westgate might be or might not. Ici voila, anyway.

Strongly in favour of Morrowind and the Might & Magic series.

 

For randomly generated levels and items, and general looting and adventuring, you can't go past the Diablo series. I'm surprised other 'proper' RPGs haven't yet used randomly generated levels (and items) to increase replayability. All those non-critical areas could be randomly generated. Even all those random encounters in BG2 would be a lot more fun.