Dragon Age Poll: RPG-ness

[TinCow]

But wouldn't hitting the roof be more realistic, in a sense? Becoming as powerful as you could ever be, then make the game more about players skill of managing tactics, style and ability?

I think the Baldur's Gate series is somewhat unique in that it truly is epic. Other games have claimed to be 'epic' in scale, but they rarely are. In BG, you start as a kid who's never left a glorified library and eventually become a God. Not a 'minor' God either, one of the big ones. The final Throne of Bhaal campaign actually represents these very well, by throwing massive hordes of enemies at you that barely slow you down. You truly feel like you're nearing God-hood when you carve your way through actual armies almost single-handedly. The challenges aren't the mortals you're fighting, they are your fellow competitors for the vacant God seat, and they are also essentially demi-gods themselves.

As for the game being about tactics... there are few games in existence that have ever done tactical combat as well as the BG series. Indeed, by the end of the final campaign, your enemies are so difficult that you often have to use very precisely timed and coordinated tactics to bring down their defenses and eliminate them before they overwhelm you. And that's with the nerfed battles that the game shipped with. The designers later released unofficial mods which restored the final battles to their original difficulty level. Those battles are some of the hardest parts I have ever experienced in any game ever, regardless of genre... and that's WHILE you're essentially a god.

This is one of the reasons people revere the BG series so much: not only a great storyline, but absolutely superb combat from beginning to end.