Pre Rendered / Fixed Angle Gaming
A lost, under appreciated artform that's due for a resurgence.
Background
I’ve been a Forgotten Realms fan since the early 90s when I first played Pool of Radiance on Nintendo and then discovered the Azure Bonds novel at a Goodwill of all places. It’s been my preferred D&D setting to DM for over 25 years, and the majority of my favorite CRPGs and novels are Forgotten Realms titles.
My friends, knowing this, were shocked I didn’t dive right into Baldur’s Gate 3 when it launched. My reply was that I was waiting for it to go on sale, and had better things to play at that time.
They pulled the tired, intellectually lazy “you just hate anything new and popular” schtick with me. With how many throwback games exist and are popular now, it’s such a stale way to dismiss opinions anyways.
The reality is, I don’t like buying new games anymore. I’ve been burned so many times paying 60$ for a game that takes a year or two to get patched up to playable states, if it ever even gets that far. By then, the game is discounted down to 40$ or less, so I could have just waited. That is what I do now.
Paying to be a beta tester is about the dumbest thing we as gamers can do right next to continuing to support paying for moronic DLC or defending a game because “the modding community made it better”. Why do I want to pay 60$ at launch so the modding community can fix a professionally produced, yet unfinished game… for free?
Anyway, mini rant aside, I finally got BG3 during the holidays and…I hated it.
Nitpicks include:
The game itself breaks the fundamental “when to roll dice” rules of TTRPGs by overwhelming you with constant dice checks that drain from the fun and turn the game into the most rigid, unforgiving “wow the DM is a dick” style D&D session.
Plus you also only get 4 party members, as opposed to the de facto standard of 6 that GoldBox D&D games, and the other BG games had. Eye of the Beholder being the only real exception I can think of.
The Rant
What really drove me nuts though, of all things, was the camera. I will agree, it sounds stupid, and it definitely caught me by surprise. You can’t tilt it.
It does try to intelligently tilt itself when you stumble around. However, let’s be honest with ourselves, we are beyond the N64/early PS1 days of terrible “smart cameras”. Those days sucked. We’ve been having free reign with 3D environment cameras for at least 2 decades now. Wandering a 3D world with bad character pathing and clumsy camera controls just made me irritated while playing. If I want to see down a ridge or something, since I can’t tilt, I have to swing the camera out and around, and then zoom out, and HOPE that I can see whatever I’m trying to look at. Why produce this 3D environment and limit my ability to really look around?
Because of how the environments react and control, often at bouncy fixed angles where there really is only one good way to see and walk through an area, I said the obvious:
”Why in the fuck isn’t this just isometric like every other Baldur’s Gate?!”
I feel like Wasteland 2 handled hybrid 2d/3d RPGing better 10 years ago. It had the right blend of zoom/camera for the environments. To me it seems that Baldur’s Gate 3 kinda got away from itself with some of the controls in a modern day quest to be realistic. Dealing with your gerbil brained AI party members, traps, and 3D all at once is added tedium for no benefit in an RPG. It’s hard to enjoy the 3D environments when someone’s shoelace brushes up on a fantasy claymore and blows everyone up. If I want to deal with real time action elements, I will play an action game. You have to revert to “turn based mode” in BG3 and individually send your goof troop through hazardous areas. Not a new concept, but definitely made more tedious with 3D concepts like jumping (sucked in Ultima 8, still sucks now),
Back to my comment about N64/PS1 era camera controls. In addition to not having the means to easily control a camera without thumbsticks, the machines also weren’t powerful enough to render fully explorable highly detailed 3D environments yet. Even on PC, we had that era of 3D CRPGs and adventure games that weren’t quite there yet because of blocky textures and environments, and texture warping while rotating, etc. Tomb Raider is probably the most standout game from that era for doing great things, but even it had annoying camera problems.
That is how we ended up with that pocket of time where some games that really stood out were the ones using pre-rendered backgrounds. Standouts for me include the aforementioned Baldur’s Gate, Final Fantasy VII-IX, Diablo 2, Parasite Eve, and Septerra Core.
These games were great for putting you into what felt like photo realistic(ish) paintings. Because there was never a concept of having to rotate, you got very nice imagery, exactly as the artists intended, with a lot of flair and detail snuck into every corner of every scene. It allowed for dynamic angles and immersion. Resident Evil 1 and 2 were great for having horror movie angles baked into the game to throw surprises at you. The initial zombie scene in RE1 wouldn’t have been quite the same if you just did the rotatey 3rd person “lets see whats around the corner just because I can” shenanigans. Same with the first Licker in RE2.
The dogs in the hall were also pretty masterfully executed with that horror movie hallway angle.
In terms of RPGs, you’re often going to strange places in fantasy lands, and at the time, 3D was not at a state to provide that.
It’s ironic really. At the time, we had FMV games pushing realism through actual human actors and pre-rendered backgrounds pushing some sort of attempt at realism.
Now? We just have high system requirements, high costs, and diminishing returns. What are we really getting out of new 3D RPGs that we weren’t getting 10-15 years ago? We’re still not at realistic. However, now, the GOTY for 2024 doesn’t even let you tilt the camera while forcing you to play around with 3D environments. Being GOTY sets standards and expectations. I expect better from what is awarded as the best game.
“Progress”
The Point
My point is, 3D RPGs generally suck now. They seem to be overproduced messes with massive production budgets wasted on dicking off with the 3D bits without really accomplishing anything great gameplay wise for all the trouble. The credits list on some of these games is staggering. Is it worth it?
I am still waiting for a western 3D CRPG to come out and wow me the same way World of Xeen did over 25 years ago.
I feel like they’ve generally morphed into mediocre FPS games with bad RPG elements AND bad FPS elements, or they’re 3rd person bores with 3D engine problems and generally gravitate to action combat now.
In some ways, the 3D makes the game seem worse. We have to worry about getting stuck, clipping, “you can’t go there even though you can see it because you’ll get stuck”, etc.
We thought wandering massive 3D areas was fun 20 years ago, but now, for me at least, it’s tiring. It’s boring. Spending 15-30 minutes walking through a field only to realize you’re at a dead end is exactly why MMOs added fast travel. The seamless world thing was fine when Ultima 6 , 7, and Ultima Online did it, because the world was small-scale. It had an implied distance without any of the tedium of some sprawling zones.
Final Fantasy 11 practically ruined my patience for traveling big 3D zones. You’d follow the map (that you had to buy in game with scarce money) and realize it kind of lied to you and now you’re in some gulley with no way out besides backtracking. Monsters in that game aggro’d infinitely, and dying made you lose XP. You could die and de-level. Imagine walking for 1-2 hours, getting trapped in a weird clearing because of a corny map, and then you die and lose hours worth of XP. It sucks. Bad game design, plus tedious 3D environments generally turns into a bad experience.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s done right. Lord of the Rings Online has some really stunning areas to explore. However, even that game has me fast traveling because one really does not simply walk into Mordor. It’d take hours on end of just holding the W key down while I steer a hobbit around. It isn’t fun.
The implied scale that isometric games used back in the day solved this problem perfectly. Dual scale (world map with transitions to towns/dungeons) gave you all the sense of distance you needed and will ever need.
I am thankful we’re still seeing games doing this, but what I am not happy about is that they don’t get the same level of attention as the AAA BigBudget 3D-as-shit-better-buy-a-new-video-card titles getting pushed yearly. We seem to be encouraging one type of thing while discouraging another. Why not encourage both at these big companies, and stop acting like new RPGs have to be bleeding edge 3D engines? 3D RPGs have essentially peaked, and did so years ago. Unless we’re going to revive the FMV movement in 4K with actors and elaborate sets, this is basically it. It’s not going to get much better. We’re going to drop thousands on video cards every 3-4 years to play the same shit.
Divert more funds and production to the story. To the testing. To releasing a finished game on launch day.
It makes me wonder how good a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 would have been if they had that much budget for the game and only had to do a 2D isometric presentation along with fancy cutscenes. How much content would we have been drowning in? How many problems with the game would just go away? We could have probably got 2-3 games, plot and all, for the same price.
Larian isn’t even making a follow up by way of a Baldur’s Gate 4 or Icewind Dale 3. We’ve been starved for solid D&D games ever since Neverwinter Nights, finally got what can be considered one, and now we are back to nothing. All that effort goes to waste as a result. Maybe they are going to drop some new RPG with the same engine. I don’t know. I’m holding out for InXile to somehow acquire the rights to make a D&D game.
Extra Point/Rant
There are still games doing the whole isometric thing. Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera being two.
The Avernum games and such from Spiderweb Software being another long standing series, with a recent successful Kickstarter for the next re-iteration of Avernum. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spiderwebsoftware/avernum-4-greed-and-glory
However, the rate that we get good new RPGs like this to play is disappointing. We used to get more. Wizardry, Might and Magic, Ultima, Baldurs Gate, etc. etc. had faster cadences years ago. Some of those series are just dead now, killed by bad publisher nonsense. Thanks, Ubisoft lol.
To me it seems like we should be seeing more of these kinds of games than we are. We’ve got a handful of Diablo clones that sort of do the thing, but story-rich party based RPGs? Where did they go? The obvious answer is that big companies blow this stuff off. The games keeping the faith are being done independently, by small studios and still get overshadowed by the big parties.
In lieu of cinematics every 12 seconds, and the budget to produce those scenes, these games push the story in creative ways like story-book sketches and good writing, sometimes with narration.
So maybe, the idea is to stop giving RPGs so much budget and runway to piss away on graphics. Clamp them back down to small teams that have to get creative. It’s not like we’re drowning in good 3D RPGs anyways. What do we have to lose? Another Final Fantasy 16? Skyrim re-re-re-re-remastered remix edition?
The isometric RPGs we do get are all generally well received, so it’s not like they’re some niche thing. We’ve just somehow been convinced we need 3D powerhouses in order for the game to be considered “good”. We don’t. A good game is a good game. Diablo 2 Resurrected was a huge thing, and it was just a reskin basically. We should praise and celebrate these kinds of games, and encourage more of them. The artstyle they use is apparently a dying concept, but it is one of those “limitations breeds creativity” kind of things, and in this case “limitations save money”.
And how many times do we need to see a Skyrim re-release. How many times do people really need to slog through that game?
My latest plays and/or recommendations that inspired this wall of text
Baldur’s Gate 3 (I dunno if I recommend this, but it prompted this rant)
Passageway of the Ancients (A solid first effort in need of more attention so we can get more of this)
Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness
Baldurs Gate / Icewind Dale Enhanced editions (free on Amazon Prime games as of this writing lol)
Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms
Pillars of Eternity (Still holds up)
Vendir: Plague of Lies
Stop buying the same thing over and over, and give one of these or more than one of these a shot. Live a little.
Also check out this Twitter full of pre rendered glory:
https://x.com/PRBG_Aesthetics?t=TbW2IfOd63OZSNjqi0xwiw&s=0
Next?
I am probably going to bitch about how there’s not really any party based first person RPGs anymore. Maybe.