zlacker

> big cohort of millennials...

I feel slightly offended being thrown into the same pot as those weird millenials ;)

Absolutely everybody who owned a PC for gaming in the late 90's played BG1 and BG2, no matter the age. Video games are not just for teenagers you know.

>>flohof+(OP)
I'm about 40 and am usually grouped as a millennial (at least for the common purpose of blame, e.g. killing cinemas), though I somehow missed Baldur's Gate; played the hell out of the Ultima series though!

>>pixelp+i6
This is something I wish could come back. Ultima was a great series, and I even liked the trash heaps that were Ultima 8 and 9.

Unfortunately, EA still holds the rights. The new mmo-ish game that Garriet made is one I have not really dived into yet

>>flohof+(OP)
I had a gaming PC in the late 90s and absolutely did not play BG1 or 2. I briefly tried PlaneScape: Torment several years after its release on the urging of one of its fans, but didn't make it past the early parts due to being annoyed by the random thugs that would assault you if you stood still for too long, and the pseudo-realtime 2e-based combat being Byzantine and off-putting.

>>aoanla+sc
Yeah I haven’t played a game other than Minecraft in two decades, although I was a huge gamer in my teens. Never touched BG.

>>flohof+(OP)
I have games plenty, but had never even heard about the Valeurs Gate franchise until last week. I must have been in a different bubble with Dune 2, Red Alert, Some City 2000, Tomb Raider, GTA3, Dungeon master and probably some more that I can't recall now. But the whole fantasy RPG wasn't really my thing I guess

>>tda+Ms
I think only GTA 3 is contemporary to it. Others are earlier games, which might explain things.

>>flohof+(OP)
While I think "everybody" is stretching it... the general idea here is accurate. From my memory, the first two "rounds" of good D&D games on the PC were the SSI games (Eye of the Beholder, Pools of Radiance, etc) and then Baldur's Gate. Both of those series, when they came out, set the bar for D&D RPG games (and RPG games in general, to some extent). If you played that type of game, you played those games (and likely Bards Tale and Wizardry).

To this day, there are quotes that live on from Baldur's Gate ("Go for the eyes, Boo!"). It has place in a lot of people's hearts. Had BG3 been bad, it would have been a horror show of hate for the developer. But it looks like they delivered, and the adoring fans of decades ago appreciate that.

>>Ekaros+Dt
I thought all these games were end of nineties, but I didn't check and am not so good at this. Anyways, I never stopped gaming since

>>torgia+e8
The Ultimas were (mostly) wonderful, especially Ultima 7, but I don't think there's anything particularly valuable about the "IP".

It was really about Garriott exploring innovative ways in how to translate the tabletop RPG experience into a computer game. You don't need an Avatar or Britannia to pursue ideas like Ultima 4's virtue system or Ultima 7's interactivity.

>>tda+Ms
I agree with you, but eventually realized there was a specific reason. RPGs at that time were much less immersive, so much so that I had no interest whatsoever in the genre. And no I neither enjoyed eye of the beholder 2, nor lands of lore, nor ultima underworld , nor ultima, nor baldurs gate.

Modern rpgs ( Witcher 3, dos2, etc), on the contrary, are amazing : technology has finally caught up, and my mind no longer has to compensate for the rather bland visual/sounds/lack of voices/limited freedom/etc.

I used to play dune2, red alert, sim city, etc but these days I play rpgs !

>>pixelp+i6
> played the hell out of the Ultima series though!

this is Wizardry III erasure.

(i'm a bit older and solidly GenX)

>>flohof+(OP)
> Absolutely everybody who owned a PC for gaming in the late 90's played BG1 and BG2, no matter the age.

Maybe among your friends? Sales numbers don't back that up and anecdotally among my friends and classmates barely anyone played BG, but everyone played Quake, StarCraft, Diablo, Need For Speed, etc. Even among RPGs Morrowing and Fallout were much more popular and accessible back in the day.

>>RHSeeg+4u
Eh, I am an exception - I played Eye of the Beholder a bit (but never completed it), and I had Bard's Tale (and never completed it), but I never got the Baldur's Gate games (despite being an active computer gamer at the time, and liking TTRPGs). To be fair, though, that's partly because my experience in not being able to finish the above too games due to the difficulty of the combat put me off CRPGs almost completely (until the more recent era of combatless or near-combatless RPGs with things like Disco Elysium).